The first day of the wake.
Wei Xun's body was covered in blood and grime. Only his face was clean, washed by Baozhu's tears. Thirteenth Son lifted his tattered clothes and saw mangled flesh, severed tendons, and broken bones. His eyes reddened.
He kept his duty firmly in mind and carefully wiped down the body, determined to do everything he could for his senior brother after death.
In the process, he discovered that the blue-black meridians once visible all over Wei Xun's body had faded until they were almost imperceptible. The blood staining his cloth was dark. Thirteenth Son knew wounds and blood changed color after death, but judging by the time that had passed, the change should not have happened so quickly.
Perhaps it was because of his senior brother's strange illness, Thirteenth Son thought. To escape the sea of suffering completely, rather than endure torment bit by bit in the burning house of this mortal world, was not such a bad outcome.
The second day of the wake.
Washed and groomed, dressed in plain, clean clothes, and wrapped in thick white hemp cloth, Wei Xun looked peaceful and dignified in death. Baozhu returned from scouting the terrain and held him, weeping for a long time again.
Thirteenth Son opened his mouth, then hesitated-according to folk funeral customs, relatives had to restrain their grief and hold back their tears before the body was placed in its coffin, lest tears fall upon it. They said the tears of the living were terribly heavy to a soul. If tears fell on a corpse, its soul would be trapped by lingering attachments, unable to reincarnate or ascend to heaven.
But seeing her weep as though wringing out her heart's blood, her very innards torn apart by grief, he could not bring himself