Chapter 338 Sending the King a Ship
"昘昘!"
Both sides of the dirt road were crowded with sprouting weeds. They could not escape natural disasters, but they could not avoid "man-made disasters". They withered into mud under the torment of wooden sticks, and a faint fragrance of green grass escaped.
Six little boys ran from east to west, then from west to east, holding branches in their hands. The wind, wind and fire were fierce, raising dust and smoke all the way.
A group of people happened to be running by, and Liang Qu stopped one of them.
Seeing a stranger coming into the countryside to stop the children, the farmer who was carrying dung on the road stopped and observed for a moment. He found that Liang Qu was wearing official uniform and left silently.
"Kid! Every time someone gets married or gets into a fight in your village, who will deal with it? Where does that person live?"
The boy swung the thin stick stained with grass juice, squinted at his companion hiding behind the corner, and remained silent.
"Hey!"
Liang Qu stood up and reached into his pocket, and unexpectedly found that he only had silver and banknotes on him, but no copper coins.
Chishan ran to a nearby tree, bit off a branch, lowered his head and handed it to Liang Qu.
Liang Qu held it in his hand with great strength, and the whole branch broke apart, revealing the wooden white core. He touched it again with his index finger and thumb, and the wood chips fell one after another, revealing a rough long sword.
Liang Qu shook the wooden sword: "Tell me, the wooden sword belongs to you."
"Over there!" The little boy pointed to the end of the road without hesitation, "The second house in the row on the left, the walls are one step at a time!"
"Okay! Let's go play."
Liang Qu exchanged a tree twig for the old position in his hometown and led him up Chishan to the door.
The doors of the houses are open, and villagers occasionally come in and out freely without obstructing the view.
The huge yard was filled with old men and women. They used glue and yellow paper to make paper boats, stacked on top of each other like layers of towers.
There was a large seven-meter-long paper boat in the center. Before he could take a closer look, he heard that a noble person was coming to the door, and the village elder ran out of the back room with a cane to greet him.
"I don't know if there are distinguished guests coming to the door. Some of them are not welcomed from afar, and some are not welcomed from afar. Ah Huang, go and make tea!"
"Hey, you don't have to be polite, old man." Liang Qu stopped the young man next to the old man and went straight to the point, "I was inspecting the countryside and accidentally heard that your village is going to worship the river god? Is it true or false?"
The village elder was worried: "It's true that this happened, is there something taboo about it?"
The old man and woman in the yard pricked up their ears.
If the government doesn't allow it, it will undoubtedly mean that their half-month's work will be in vain.
Liang Qu shook his head: "Relax, old man, I'm curious to ask."
What the people want to sacrifice and when to sacrifice, as long as it is not something similar to the Ghost Mother Cult, the government will not care.
Perhaps Liang Qu had a good-looking face, which made the village elder feel relieved.
"Whatever you want to ask, the common people will tell you."
"Can the village elder tell me when the village sacrifice will be held?"
"Tomorrow night, I will find a fortune teller to calculate the number of days. Tomorrow is an auspicious day for launching the boat. If you miss it, you will have to wait until late October. By then, the flood will have receded for more than a month. It will be too late, so all the folks are here to catch up. Make a paper boat!”
"Why the sacrifice at night?"
Liang Qu wondered, it was noon in Yixing Town.
It's pitch black at night, who can see clearly?
The village elder asked: "Your Excellency, are you a foreigner?"
"People from Pingyang County."
"That's right! We send the king's ship every year, all at night, light the fire, it's spectacular! It's not beautiful during the day."
The village elder told Liang Qu in detail.
The winds are different in ten miles, and the customs are different in hundreds of miles.
The sacrificial method in Huazhu County is not the same as that in Pingyang County, or it is different from most three-animal sacrificial forms. The main form is "send the king's boat".
In order to worship the river god, the villagers would specially build a royal boat.
Rich townsfolk used fir trees, while poor townsfolk used yellow paper. They invited the prince to the royal boat by inviting people to dance, and then loaded firewood, rice, oil, salt and various daily necessities, and burned them on the water.
Liang Qu rubbed his chin: "Sounds like the custom in the south? In Huaiyin Mansion, they usually sacrifice three animals, right?"
"Your Excellency," the village elder complimented, "I don't know why this is so. Maybe Rong Hanwen from the next village knows, and he knows better.
You don’t know, when the flood first came, a big crab appeared in the next village and saved people. Rong Hanwen said that it was the incarnation of the Jianghuai River God, and it came specifically to punish the Blackwater River God. This year’s flood will recede faster than in previous years. Hey, I didn’t expect him to be right!
The idea of several villages cooperating to send the king's boat was suggested by Rong Hanwen! "
Big crab saves people...
Liang Qu fell into silence, and he suddenly understood where the recent statements about the Jianghuai River God and the Blackwater River God came from.
Feelings are one's own.
The village elder rubbed his hands: "If your Excellency is interested in offering sacrifices, may I take you to see him?"
Liang Qu came to his senses without much entanglement.
"Okay, Trouble is taking me to see you."
Narong Hanwenneng proposed to jointly organize the ceremony, which obviously took the dominant position in the ceremony. It would be easier to find the other party to do the work, and there would be no need to travel from village to village.
"No trouble, no trouble. It's only a few miles away. Ah Huang, go get the cart!"
The village elder asked his son to pull a cart, then he got on the donkey cart and led Liang Qu to Rongjia Village next door.
Soon, Liang Qu met Li Zhengrong Hanwen from Rongjia Village.
A little old man with a completely white beard, neatly trimmed and full of energy.
Rong Hanwen saw Liang Qu on horseback from a distance and felt that he looked very familiar. As he approached, he asked cautiously, "Is this Mr. Liang in person?"
Liang Qu turned over and dismounted: "Rong Lizheng recognizes me?"
"Lord Liang, you forget things so much!" Rong Hansheng looked overjoyed, "The old man organized a village boat and went with your fleet! Does Mr. Liang have any impressions?"
"Oh, it's you."
Liang Qu suddenly realized.
He saved people all the way and passed many local fishing boats along the way.
It's just that there are too many people, so the impression is always vague.
In my memory, Rong Hansheng is indeed powerful. When the Shahe Gang fleet arrived, he had organized villagers to help with disaster relief everywhere, and he was quite accomplished.
"Mr. Liang? What Mr. Liang?"
The village elder who led the way was at a loss.
Rong Hansheng whispered: "Mr. Liang who got the red dragon fish!"
The village elder was stunned, and then he slapped his thigh after realizing it: "Oh my, old man, I am really blind. It turned out to be Mr. Liang in person!
I was wondering how there could be such a majestic horse and such a majestic official! It was Mr. Liang in person!
Everyone outside said that you are the descendant of Prince Chi, so we sent the boat to you!
Isn't this a coincidence?"
So mysterious?
Liang Qu remembered that the Huazhu County inspector mentioned it, but he didn't expect it to be true. Everyone really regarded him as the reincarnation of Prince Chi.
So everything went very smoothly afterwards.
Rong Hanwen saw that "Prince Chi" was interested, and immediately proposed to let Liang Qu be the fire starter.
This was exactly what Liang Qu wanted.
Prince Chi is Prince Chi.
Liang Qu agreed, and Rong Hansheng was overjoyed.
It was so great to let Liang Qu start the fire!
"Sir, come in and take a look at the big boat of our Rongjia Village!"
Liang Qu couldn't refuse the kindness, so he came to Rong Hanwen's house to see the boat. He found that the paper boat in Rongjia Village was bigger than the one in the neighboring Shanjia Village. It was three feet long, ten meters long, and there were a lot of rattan supports inside.
There was a palace on the board of the boat, with a hip roof, which was composed of a main ridge, four vertical ridges and four ridges, forming a hanging mountain wall, which was usually more common in palaces and temples.
There was no specific sculpture inside the hull, but a tablet with four big characters "Dai Tian Xun Shou" was used instead. There was an empty table in front of the plaque for placing offerings.
Rong Hanwen accompanied him and introduced: "The purpose of sending the king's boat is to 'make the country peaceful and the people safe, the weather favorable, the community peaceful, prosperous, all living beings active, and all industries prosperous'.
The direction in which the mast falls determines the fortune of the village in the coming year. Falling towards the village is auspicious, and falling towards the Black Water River is very unlucky."
Liang Qu wrote them down one by one, looking at the offerings on the empty table.
"The time is too short, and we can't catch any good water beasts..."
The Black Water River is a river, not a swamp. It is more difficult to catch monsters in it than to catch treasure fish.
In one day, there is no decent monster at all.
"Maybe you can catch a treasure fish?"
The next evening.
Red clouds and red clouds, smoke curling.
Liang Qu took two big treasure fish worth nearly 100 taels of silver, rode up Chishan to Rongjia Village, and put the treasure fish into the paper boat under Rong Hansheng's gratitude and refusal.
After dinner, Rong Hansheng's son beat gongs and drums, and the young and strong men in the village gathered at the door of Rong Hansheng's house. When everyone arrived, they carried the big boat and walked to the road.
The team poured out from several villages, like a trickle of water flowing into the sea, forming a huge team and slowly moving towards the Black Water River.
The long team was orderly in chaos. At the front was the drum band, the dragon and lion team, followed by the king's boat and various small boats, and the young and strong took turns to carry the boats forward.
The older villagers held thin incense and followed the team devoutly.
The owner of the king's boat team would place offerings at the door when the king's boat team passed by, implying that the king was invited to enjoy.
After the disaster, most of the people could give a bowl of white rice, and after the sacrifice was over, they could take it home to eat, which was not a loss.
Half an hour later, the king's boat came to the river, and the whole shore was covered with a deafening sound of firecrackers.
The drummers played and sang, and three Taoists performed rituals around.
Liang Qu asked Rong Hansheng and learned that the Taoist priest was not a proper Taoist priest at all, but a temporary Taoist priest of the villagers.
Poor places have their own ways of dealing with the poor.
Everything was ready. The young and strong men carried the boat and pushed it into the river. The huge paper boat drifted slowly, and the people leaned forward one after another and released the small paper boats with burning candles.
Under the expectant eyes of the crowd, Liang Qu sat in the wooden basin, and with the help of the young and strong men, he leaned against the king's boat and threw in the torches.
The flames licked, and the paper boat ignited a ball of bright orange light, illuminating the shore and the center of the river.
Layers of waves separated layers of orange light.
The entire river surface was connected by vast orange fire, echoing with the stars in the night sky.
In the king's boat, the tall mast was shaking, and the villagers stared at it intently, and it was about to fall into the river.
A few streams of water quietly surged, pushing the direction of the mast, and slowly fell towards the village.
Boom!
Countless ashes rolled into the sky with sparks.
The cheers on the shore were like a tide.
[Sacrifice to Huaijiang River, river favor +0.0177]
