Prolonging Life / Instant Mini Steamed Buns
"He passed away peacefully and cleanly. He's gone to enjoy a carefree rest."
The auntie nodded in agreement, as though they were comforting each other.
"Mm, that's true."
The auntie nodded and pointed at the people wearing white cloth by the gate:
"His son hurried all the way and only got home today. He's making arrangements now. I still have to take them to the next house to spread the word."
"All right, go on. The folks next door should have just finished breakfast and haven't gone out to the fields yet. Someone will be home."
Qing Mu hurriedly said:
"Once I've tidied up here, I'll come over and help."
"All right."
The auntie answered, then took a deliberate look at Qing He Miao beside her and reminded Mother Qing,
"Oh, and don't forget to bring him along too. He knows about these things. He needs to be there to look things over. It's safer that way."
"Yes, all right. I'll have him go over in a bit."
Qing Mu readily agreed.
The auntie offered Qing Mu a few more words of comfort, then turned and led the men at the gate off to the next house in a hurry.
Chapter 40: Prolonging Life
They had come in a hurry and left just as quickly.
The courtyard fell quiet all at once, leaving only the faint sound of the cold wind brushing past the bare branches.
Qing He Miao, who had listened to the whole story from the side, stood where he was, feeling somewhat dazed.
He could hardly say they had been close. This was a relative he had never even heard mentioned in ordinary times; counting a few days ago, they had probably met no more than eight or nine times in his entire life.
But his head felt foggy all the same.
It was only when Qing Mu reminded him that he abruptly came back to his senses.
Qing He Miao wiped his face, let out a long breath, and pulled himself together before going back inside.
Then he changed into a dark coat, brought out the King Wen Drum and the War King Whip, and left home with them in plain sight.
He followed the road he had walked only a few days before and came once again to the quiet little courtyard.
Only this time, there were quite a few more people in the courtyard than before, all neighbors from the same village and people related to the family.
The atmosphere was solemn, but there was not much wailing yet. Most people were talking in low voices, helping with the preparations, or standing silently.
When they saw Qing He Miao arrive, those who knew him greeted him briefly.
Qing He Miao nodded slightly in return and, following their directions, went straight to the side room opposite the main house.
He lifted the heavy padded cotton door curtain. The room was darker than the main house, lit only by a low-wattage incandescent bulb that cast a dim yellow glow.
He saw the old man he had spoken with not long ago at a glance.
He lay quietly on an old, disused kang, covered with a clean, plain white cloth. His face was peaceful, as though he had merely fallen into a deep sleep.
Only his complexion was a grayish white, stripped of the luster of life.
After actually seeing the old man, Qing He Miao instead grew calm.
He first pressed his palms together and bowed slightly toward the old man as a sign of respect.
Then he stepped forward and gently placed the index and middle fingers of his right hand against the cun, guan, and chi pulse points on the old man's wrist, which lay exposed outside the thin covering and was already cold and stiff.
At the same time, he quietly circulated the Qi within his body and infused it into his eyes. The figure of a kindly old grandmother faintly appeared behind him.
He "observed" carefully.
He detected no sign of anything unusual.
The Qi belonging to life had completely dispersed from the old man's body, leaving only a physical shell slowly beginning to decay as nature took its course.
Very clean, very thorough.
Now he could be certain that the old man had truly passed away.
Qing He Miao sighed again.
Without saying much, he turned and sat down on an old wooden stool against the wall, placing the King Wen Drum and the War King Whip he had brought on his knees.
With him sitting in the room, the atmosphere seemed different.
The relatives who had been bustling back and forth seemed a little more settled, their steps and movements becoming a little less restrained.
At last, the old man's son, the middle-aged man who had led the group to Qing He Miao's gate earlier, finished his business and came back from outside with several male relatives from the same family.
Upon learning that Qing He Miao had arrived, the middle-aged man first went into the room and took another grief-stricken look at the old man, then found Qing He Miao sitting by the wall.
He hurried over and grasped Qing He Miao's hand. His own hand was rough and icy, and it trembled slightly.
"Xiao Miao."
His voice was hoarse and thickly nasal as he struggled to remain polite and hold on to the last of his composure:
"My dad... how is he? Is there anything we need to watch out for afterward?"
As it happened, by seniority, the middle-aged man could also claim kinship with Qing He Miao's family.
But in fact, that was how it was with the main surnames in a village.
Anyone willing to trace the connections could find that more than half the village was related, whether closely or distantly.
"Uncle, my condolences. I just examined him carefully. The old man passed very peacefully. There's nothing wrong."
Meeting the man's sorrowful gaze, Qing He Miao forced himself to pull together and gave the answer everyone most wanted to hear at that moment:
"The rest is up to you. Do your best to give him a proper send-off, so the old man can leave with greater peace of mind."
In fact, the methods of his lineage could not reveal the old man's cause of death or his condition before he died.
Every trade had its specialty; that was a forensic doctor's ability.
Although the world of The Outcast had supernatural concepts such as Outcasts and Feathering,
it had no "heavenly court or underworld" in the traditional sense, governing the cycle of reincarnation.
After ordinary people died, the vast majority of their souls would naturally disperse and return to heaven and earth, leaving almost no trace.
Only on extremely rare occasions would one become a spirit.
For example, his Yuzhou opera teacher, though he did not know whether the older generation of Outcasts had used some method on her or whether she had simply been lucky.
Apart from that, death was truly death: Qi became a clear breeze, and flesh became mud.
Not a trace would remain.
From an Outcast's perspective, being "completely clean, without resentment" mostly referred to the common state in which no special spirit or lingering obsession had formed.
But to ordinary people who did not know the truth, those words were an enormous comfort.
After hearing him out, the old man's son pressed his lips together and nodded repeatedly. With his free hand, he took from his pocket a payment for the "master," wrapped in white paper and prepared long ago.
After pressing it into Qing He Miao's hand, he spoke in a voice twisted and choked with emotion:
"Sorry for the trouble. Please keep an eye on things and take care of everything afterward, so... he can go..."
When he reached those last few words, he could no longer hold himself back, and his face twisted completely.
Tears burst from the big man's eyes and rolled down in great drops. His whole body bent at the waist as he began to wail.
His crying seemed contagious. Other cries soon followed.
Wails joined together at once.
They gave the inside and outside of the room the atmosphere they were supposed to have.
After quite some time, the crying gradually stopped under the comfort and direction of several older, experienced relatives.
Everyone began wiping away their tears and getting to work according to their assigned tasks.
They still had many specific, troublesome things to do.
Qing He Miao saw most of the relatives out of the side room, leaving only one or two of the deceased's family members to help with the old man's final preparations.
He sat back down on the wooden stool, positioned diagonally beside the old man's head.
Without looking at the old man's face, he was silent for a moment, then spoke softly, as though to himself and yet also to the deceased:
"Old sir, last time I came, you seemed so happy just chatting that I didn't give you a little 'performance.' I'll do one for you now, to ease your boredom."
With that, he picked up the King Wen Drum from his lap and tapped it lightly twice to test its sound. Then, without even clearing his throat, he began to sing softly.
He sang neither a funeral lament nor Buddhist chants or Taoist scriptures, but an excerpt from the Yuzhou Bangzi opera The Emperor's Procession, as though telling the old man a story.
"There was a Zhang Guiying who went to the capital to lodge a complaint... one loyal official, Wang Enshi, Chancellor Yanling..."
His singing was clear and full of flavor. As it rang out in the side room, it did not seem out of place at all. Instead, it strangely dispelled some of the gloom and fear brought by death.
After the relatives who had stayed behind to help prepare the body heard a line or two,
their emotions unexpectedly settled considerably. They were less afraid, and their hands grew much steadier.
Qing He Miao felt that, for people in their line of work dealing with spirits and ghosts, most of the time it was less a matter of comforting the dead than comforting the living.
After all, no one understood it better than Outcasts like them.
Death was the absolute end.
After a person died, there really was nothing left.
Chapter 41: Instant Mini Steamed Buns
The procedures that followed advanced step by step in the customary order.
As it happened, heaven showed the old man quite a bit of favor.
On the final day, although the sky was gloomy and the cold wind still bit to the bone, it did not pull any tricks like sending snow.
That allowed the relatives and friends to see him through his final journey relatively smoothly and lay him to rest in the earth.
It was not until several days after all the funeral arrangements had been completed that a fine, light snow began to fall from the sky.
The pure white snowflakes descended quietly, silently moistening the dry, hard earth and soon covering over this sudden upheaval.
Life swept up everyone's energy, carrying it toward troubles and trifles that seemed to have no end.
The days still had to go on.