Chapter 16 - Spiritual Incense and Blood Guide

After two days and one night, they finally reached their destination, a remote mountainous area in Zhaoqing, a place called Zhangshu Village. Mr. Xu was quite popular when he returned to the village. It seemed that he had come back many times. The straight cement road in the village must have been built by him, and it even extended all the way to the county seat. Mr. Xu first arranged for a meal. After the meal, Xiaojiu asked him to prepare some things. Mr. Xu asked someone to write down the items and go to the county to purchase them. They needed to prepare a big rooster, cinnabar talisman papers, three kinds of fruits, three types of sacrificial livestock, incense, joss paper, and other things. Xiaojiu said that the ritual would start at night. First, he asked for a place to take a nap and told them to wake him up at nine o'clock in the evening. Mr. Xu arranged for Xiaojiu to sleep at the village head's house. Xiaojiu didn't care about anything else and lay down to sleep immediately, as he hadn't slept well during the journey. His elder brother, Liu Heping, followed Mr. Xu to have tea and chat. At a little past eight in the evening, Liu Heping came to wake Xiaojiu up. Xiaojiu got up, washed his face, had dinner, and even drank a cup of tea before going to the banyan tree in the village. Because there was a Chenghuang Temple there, Xiaojiu went in and lit three sticks of incense, muttering something in an unintelligible way. Then he asked Mr. Xu to burn the joss paper personally. After that, they went back to Mr. Xu's old house. Xiaojiu asked Mr. Xu to set up a table and place all the sacrificial offerings on it. He asked someone to bring a bowl, pour some wine into it with cinnabar and grind it. Then he told Mr. Xu to take a needle and prick his middle finger to drip a few drops of blood into the bowl of cinnabar. Mr. Xu did as he was told. Xiaojiu picked up the comb of the big rooster, cut a little bit of it to let the blood flow into the bowl. He took out a writing brush and twirled it nine times, and then started writing talismans on the talisman papers. In total, he wrote three talismans. Then he picked up three sticks of incense and used the writing brush to brush the cinnabar onto the three sticks of incense. Only then did Xiaojiu begin the ritual. He lit the three sticks of incense and chanted the incantation. Xiaojiu spoke quite quickly, and the people around could only hear one or two sentences, something like "Above my head are the thirty - three heavens, disciple Liu Hejiu opens the altar for the ritual. I hope all the gods in the heavens will bestow their magic and pass it on to me, as urgently as the law commands." Then he burned all the three talismans, took out the pre - prepared red rope and tied it to the rooster's leg. He untied the rope of the rooster. Strangely, the rooster neither ran nor moved. It just stayed there obediently, no matter how Xiaojiu handled it. Xiaojiu asked Mr. Xu to hold the red rope in his hand and gave him the soul - summoning incense. He told Mr. Xu to lead people and follow the rooster, saying that the rooster would lead him to find the graves of his parents. When the incense in his hand was about to go out, he should replace it with another one, and it must not be extinguished, otherwise the magic would fail. In the dead of night, Xiaojiu didn't want to suffer on the mountain. He gave the red rope in his hand to Mr. Xu and also handed him the incense. He also told Mr. Xu that if the rooster ran too fast and they couldn't catch up and the rope broke, it didn't matter. But he must burn all the incense in his hand before coming back. Mr. Xu had no choice but to do as Xiaojiu said. Xiaojiu asked Mr. Xu if he was ready. Mr. Xu said he was. Xiaojiu picked up the cinnabar brush and touched the rooster's head, saying, "Heaven has its spirituality, the earth has its spirituality, and animals also have their spirituality. Today, with this divine brush, I open your spirituality. I hope you will lead the way well, and from now on, we will owe each other nothing." Strangely enough, after Xiaojiu finished speaking, the rooster started to walk outside, and it left the village and went towards the mountain behind. More than a dozen people followed it up the mountain, and Liu Heping also went with them. Xiaojiu moved a stool and sat down to rest. Mr. Xu followed the rooster. At first, it didn't walk that fast. But when they got on the mountain, the rooster walked faster and faster. However, no one noticed that the rooster had been bleeding all the time, leaving a trail of blood like making marks. The rooster had to walk fast, otherwise it would bleed to death. Mr. Xu couldn't keep up at all, and the rooster even broke free from the red rope and ran away. More than a dozen people searched all over the mountain but couldn't find it. In the end, they had no choice but to burn all the three sticks of incense as Xiaojiu had required before coming back. Xiaojiu had long expected this situation, so he didn't go up the mountain. There was no point in wandering around on the mountain. After waiting for more than an hour, Mr. Xu and the others came back. They said dejectedly that the little master, the rooster had run away and they didn't seem to have found the place. Xiaojiu, however, said indifferently, "It's okay, Mr. Xu. I'll go to the mountain with you tomorrow and we'll know then. Now, let's pack up and get ready to sleep. Everything will be clear tomorrow." Mr. Xu had no choice but to go and rest first. After all, he was old, and after wandering around on the mountain for more than an hour, he was really tired. The next day, after having breakfast, Xiaojiu led people to the mountain. He opened his "yang spirit eyes" and saw the bloodstains on the ground. He followed the bloodstains all the way to the edge of the mountain top. Standing there, he could overlook several villages at the foot of the mountain, and he could even vaguely see the houses in the county seat. The feng shui here was really good. It was a feng shui layout called "the celestial dog waiting for someone to return." No wonder Mr. Xu had made a fortune. This feng shui layout had both advantages and disadvantages. Although it could bring wealth, it also meant that one would end up alone in old age. Xiaojiu didn't bother about these things. His task was to help Mr. Xu find the graves. Everyone saw that the rooster was dead in front of two small mounds of earth. The rooster had died a worthy death, sacrificing its life in exchange for being reincarnated as a human in the next life. It had made a deal with Xiaojiu. Xiaojiu helped it open its spiritual wisdom and be reincarnated as a human, and it helped Xiaojiu find the graves of Mr. Xu's parents. Anyway, it was going to die and become someone's meal sooner or later. Using its death to exchange for being reincarnated as a human in the next life was a great deal. Xiaojiu pointed at the two small mounds of earth and said to Mr. Xu, "Your parents are buried there." Mr. Xu happily ran over and kowtowed in front of the mounds. He said, "Unfilial son has come back to see you two. It's my lifelong regret that I didn't send you off in your last moments." Xiaojiu asked someone to bury the rooster nearby, asked someone to place the sacrificial offerings they had brought and lit six sticks of incense. He handed the incense to Mr. Xu and said, "Offer the incense to your parents. Three sticks for each grave will be enough." After Mr. Xu finished worshipping his parents, Xiaojiu saw that Mr. Xu was a filial person. He didn't want to see him end up alone in old age without descendants. So he said to Mr. Xu, "Would you like to change the feng shui layout a bit so that you can have two descendants? As long as you can afford the money, I'm willing to bear the wrath of heaven." When Mr. Xu heard this, he was like grabbing a life - saving straw. He had had many women in his life, but none of them could get pregnant. And those who did get pregnant had miscarriages. He had no children and no wife all his life and was going to donate all his money after his death. He never expected that Xiaojiu said there was a way for him to have descendants. At the age of sixty or seventy, he almost kowtowed to Xiaojiu. Mr. Xu composed himself and said to Xiaojiu, "Little master, as long as you have a way, I'm willing to pay any price." Xiaojiu said that he didn't want to name the price himself and asked Mr. Xu to say it. After thinking for a while, Mr. Xu said, "How about one hundred million yuan RMB?" When Xiaojiu saw that Mr. Xu was willing to offer such a large sum of money, he immediately agreed and said, "It's a deal." Changing a person's destiny through feng shui would really invite the wrath of heaven for those feng shui masters. But for Xiaojiu, it was just a small matter. He had cultivated his "yang spirit" by defying the will of heaven. He had already been going against the heavens and had transcended the control of the heavens over him. Anyway, he was already defying the heavens, so a little more didn't matter. Xiaojiu planned to earn more money to buy precious medicinal herbs. Good medicinal herbs would definitely cost an astronomical amount of money. Xiaojiu said it lightly, but it wasn't that easy to do. But Xiaojiu was young and fearless, and he didn't know the seriousness of it at all. Defying the heavens to change one's destiny was not allowed by the heavens. Because many things were already predestined, and if Xiaojiu made this change, everything would be in chaos.