Chapter 0026: Fated to Have No Children
I knew from a young age that when I was born there was a tide of thousands of snakes, so the villagers didn’t like me and my parents rarely brought me back to the village.
When grandma wanted to see me, she would go to town to see me.
The only time I go back to the village is during the Chinese New Year to worship our ancestors. It’s very lively then and there are many people of my age.
But now, when I was flipping through the roster, I suddenly realized that none of those so-called peers were younger than me.
I flipped through the roster three times and went over it in my mind.
Really do not have!
The last person born on the roster was called Long Liuze. His birth date was the same as mine, just over an hour later.
Since I wasn't on the roster, I saw him right away.
The annotations behind his birth date only have three words: Village Guardian.
In other words, this person is Niu Er.
I held such a large roll of names in my hand, trying hard to recall which family had children brought back for the ancestor worship.
But after thinking about it, there is not one.
My throat seemed to be strangled. I put down the roster and searched around the office.
But apart from the official seals, official accounts, and messy information, there was nothing left.
The whole room was quiet. I was holding the roster and suddenly felt a little nervous.
Is it that no children have been born in the village in the past 18 years, or is it that those who later gave birth to children outside wanted to cut off ties with Huilong Village and did not report it to the village, so their children were not included in the roster?
I seemed to hear Niu Er shouting loudly in the distance. I held the roster, locked the door and went out.
The only way to know about this kind of thing is to ask grandma.
When I walked to the square outside the court, I felt like someone was watching me and I couldn't help but look back.
There was only a three-story tiled building with a half-story attic on the third floor.
In the past, before the New Year’s Eve dinner, the village chief’s uncle, Long Xia’s father, would place the ancestral tablets in the main hall of the court.
The people in the village, grouped as families, knelt in the square and worshiped together in front of the tablet in the three-story building.
Now it seems that we are worshipping this building!
Although I didn't believe in this before, after the worship, my uncle would lead the older generation to give each person red envelopes. They were from the village's public account and there was a lot of money in it, so I still enjoyed the worship.
Looking back at the building, I slowly took a few steps back and knelt down slowly.
Just as I was crawling on the ground and preparing to kowtow, I suddenly looked up.
Sure enough, a dark flash appeared at a window on the third floor.
I stared at the window, my eyes slightly lowered back, looking at the locked door of the main room.
When offering sacrifices to ancestors, the place was filled with tablets, densely packed together, and each one had a name written in traditional Chinese characters...
Long Xia has been studying in the county town since she was a child. She knows more characters than I do. One year, she showed off in front of me and read to me the traditional Chinese names on the tablets.
"The spirit place of the ancestor dragon's name, the spirit place of the ancestor dragon's hero..."
Ancestors...
I breathed heavily, stuffed the thick roster into my backpack, picked up a piece of firewood nearby, and smashed it against the glass next to the main room.
When I climbed in through the window, all the tablets in the main room were standing there quietly.
The blocks were like a pile of small mountains, and I scanned the top three words one by one.
Ancestral Dragon!
Ancestral Dragon!
Ancestral Dragon!
Can't women offer tablets? Why are all of them men, and all of them have the surname Long!
The words of the motorcycle driver flashed through my mind , and I started to run up the stairs in the main hall.
But just as I was about to go up the stairs, the black snake jade bracelet on my wrist moved, and Mo Xiu stood in front of me, stopped me, and shook his head at me.
"Mo Xiu..." I panted slightly and looked at him: "Let me go see her? I want to ask her a few questions."
"She can't speak." Mo Xiu shook his head at me and said softly, "Don't go."
Outside the house, Niu Er was humming a song: "The daughter of the Long family was entangled by a snake, became a snake mother, and gave birth to a snake baby. She gave birth to a snake, but the surname was Long. Don't you think it's strange? Don't you think it's weird?"
He walked closer and closer, and shouted outside the square: "Long Ling, I'm so hungry, I want to eat."
Mo Xiu still stood in front of me, stopped me, and shook his head at me: "Go back, you know enough."
I looked at the staircase that turned upwards and gave Mo Xiu a bitter smile: "I will find out."
He turned around and crawled out through the broken glass window again. When he looked back, those wooden carved and red-painted tablets looked like monsters squatting there.
As soon as I came out, Niu Er immediately said to me: "Long Ling, I'm so hungry, eat! Eat!"
I looked at him, nodded, and took him out of the village.
So many people died in the village that people from nearby villages all avoided it.
So there was no way to get a taxi. What was even stranger was that so many people died, but except for my sixth uncle, no one else returned to the village.
I took Niu Er to the border of the next village and finally caught a motorcycle.
When I returned to Qin Mipo's house, she was cooking while coughing.
I looked at my grandmother and helped her. She looked up at me from time to time and asked, "Did you find Long Xia?"
"No." I also felt strange why Long Xia didn't return to the village.
Turning his head to look at Qin Mipo: "Aunt Qin, do you know how to tell horoscopes?"
Qin Mipo looked at me with a strange look and suddenly shook her head: "No."
When she said this, her eyes fell on the black snake jade bracelet on my wrist.
I just nodded, and after dinner, I left Niu Er with Qin Mipo and called the motorcycle driver directly to ask him to take me to town.
I didn't dare ask him to take me directly to the Snake Hotel, so I just asked him to take me to the street corner.
When I got home, I found the key and took out the electric scooter that my mother rode.
Aunt Liu heard the noise and ran over to see who it was. When she saw it was me, she seemed to breathe a sigh of relief: "It's Long Ling? Why are you back?"
"Aunt Liu." I pushed the electric scooter out the door and locked it.
He said to her, "Do you know where my uncle's house is? I want to find my uncle for something."
"How can you have an uncle?" Aunt Liu clapped her hands and looked at me with sympathy.
He laughed dryly, "I have known your mother for nearly twenty years, and I have never met her family. I have never even mentioned them."
"It is said that your mother was abducted by your father and eloped. Your mother's family may not even know about it." Aunt Liu had a smile on her face.
She patted me on the shoulder and said, "Do you miss your parents? If you have anything to ask, come to me. Come on, you haven't eaten yet, I'll make you some noodles!"
"Have you really never heard my mother mention it?" I tried hard to recall, and it seemed like I really hadn't.
The motorcycle driver said that the people of Huilong Village have to match their horoscopes before marrying a wife.
Those who elope will be caught and even have their babies aborted.
"You don't know whether you have an uncle or not?" Aunt Liu tentatively reached out to touch my forehead and asked worriedly, "Do you have a fever?"
I shook my head, tried the electric scooter, and said to Aunt Liu, "I have something to do. I'm leaving now. If you need anything, call me."
My mother usually rides this electric scooter to play cards. I also ride it to go to school sometimes, so it is quite comfortable to ride.
I rode to a deserted place, took out the thick roster from my backpack, and wrote down the birth dates of several aunts who had married into Huilong Village.
Then I rode my bike to the bridge in the town, where there were many people setting up chess pieces, fortune-telling and horoscope reading.
I went in and walked back and forth twice.
Finally, I found an old man who looked more reliable and asked him to help me read my fortune.
A bunch of people, either playing cards or chess together, or playing with their mobile phones.
If they see me, they will immediately call out: "Little girl, tell fortunes, draw lots, and calculate the eight characters and four pillars!"
Only the old man was wearing reading glasses. It was almost summer, and he was still wearing a tattered jacket, flipping through an old book.
When he saw me sitting down, he put down the book and said, "Young girl, are you trying to predict your marriage fate?"
"Yeah." I thought about it and decided so.
But the old man looked at me, his nose twitched slightly, and his eyes moved down my shoulder to my wrist.
Just at this moment, the black snake jade bracelet on his wrist moved.
Slowly swimming under the clothes on my wrists, Mo Xiu whispered in my ear: "Let's go."
I was stunned for a moment, but stood there without moving.
The old man looked at me, suddenly picked up a yellowed bamboo stick next to him, and lashed it towards my arm with the black snake jade bracelet wrapped around it: "The Taoist priest is here, why don't you show yourself!"
But before the bamboo stick hit my arm, there was a "crack" sound, and every section of the bamboo stick instantly cracked.
The old man stood up suddenly holding the bamboo stick, looked at my wrist and asked, "What's on your wrist?"
I thought about it, pulled open my sleeves, revealing a black snake jade bracelet.
The old man pushed his reading glasses and looked at the black snake jade bracelet, his eyes flashing with understanding.
Looking at the black snake jade bracelet, he nodded respectfully: "I'm sorry."
He turned to look at me and said, "Let me see the horoscopes you are going to match."
I handed over a copy of my horoscope, and the old man read it and said, "The horoscope you gave me shows that he is blessed but childless. However, he will have descendants. This is a good fate! It's a pity that he died in vain. There is nothing to calculate."
"What about this?" I handed it over again.
Mo Xiu seemed to sigh softly in my ear, but did not stop me.
The old man took it and looked at it, then suddenly held it still: "You are from Huilong Village, right? This is the horoscope for marrying a daughter-in-law in Huilong Village. Is your last name Long?"
