Splash, splash!
"Make way for the dead. Let the yin men pass undisturbed."
Under the setting sun, Wang Dao Xuan flicked his hand, sending paper offerings fluttering through the air.
Behind him, the Tian family members wore mourning clothes, carried Mourning Sticks, and held funeral banners as they walked and stopped amid the mournful sounds of suona horns and gongs.
At every corner, they burned incense and scattered paper money. They also folded joss paper into the Chinese character for "king" and weighed it down with stones.
On the coffin behind him sat a child with powder and rouge on his face and his hair tied into a topknot pointing skyward. He looked around curiously, utterly fearless.
Burial customs differed throughout the Divine Land.
In some places, coffins were called "dragons," while the wooden frames and poles used to carry them were called "dragon poles." Moving them during a funeral could affect the family's feng shui, so there was a custom known as "suppressing the dragon."
The ritual of "suppressing the dragon" differed from place to place.
This was the custom of Patriarch Tian's hometown. A child sat on the coffin, while women also had to sit on the wooden poles on either side.
Of course, whether children or women, they were all people specially hired to eat at funeral banquets. They had long since grown accustomed to going back and forth like this and were not afraid of taboos.
Wang Dao Xuan was even less concerned.
He had presided over all kinds of weddings and funerals for others and had seen every sort of custom. He merely followed the family's wishes. As long as he did not violate certain taboos, provoke evil, or invite calamity, that was enough.
The reason they had specifically hired him was still because of