[An officer wore mourning of a lower degree for his secondary sons, but his grandsons did not lower their mourning for their fathers]
[An officer did not preside over the funeral of a scholar]
[No mourning was worn for a foster mother's parents; the wife of a man adopted as another's heir wore nine months' mourning for her parents-in-law]
[When a scholar's spirit tablet was placed with an officer's, the sacrificial animal was changed]
[A stepfather who did not live in the same household]
The vast Underworld.
It seemed forever caught at dusk, forever in the bleak, killing chill of late autumn.
A group of dried Corpses with iron-gray skin, dressed as Confucian scholars, knelt in perfect unison on the floor of a thatched hall, holding bamboo slips and reciting.
Their mouths did not open, their hands did not grip, and the stench of Corpses permeated the entire hall.
Not far from them, a burner of Incense Offerings blazed.
A “Corpse” sat upright inside the temple. The scholars' recitations mingled with the Incense Offerings, drifted beneath his nostrils, and were inhaled.
From a distance, the Incense Offerings resembled a Snake.
Farther away still.
Countless dark shadows lingered, each wearing a different face.
They could be someone's Maternal Grandma, or someone's grandfather or paternal grandmother.
They could even be Butterfly Woman.
A distant voice emerged from the dream. The smell of incense ash and burned paper lingered at Lin Feng's nose, blowing out of some crack and settling over him.
Amid this perfectly synchronized chanting.
Lin Feng sank into "peaceful sleep."
He lay "serenely" on the bed, his abdomen and chest resonating with the surrounding air in a strange way, producing a peculiar sound.
Low and Zhong.
It sounded like the Sacrificial Chant, yet there was