It stands to reason that the goddess is the mother of my good friend, not only will she not lie to me, but she will do her best to find a way to solve it for me, I should really believe in her and be grateful to her like Xiao Yi.

Not at all.

On the surface, I was respectful, nodding my head, my eyes and words were full of reverence and gratitude, but in fact I didn't scoff at her sworn words, but more than half-believed, not that I didn't believe her, but that I never believed in God.

Born in a new society, raised under the red flag, and educated for so many years, I would rather believe in the existence of aliens than believe in the existence of ghosts and gods in this world.

In particular, she said that Xiaohai was a child and needed to be replaced, which made me even more disbelievable.

"Changing children" is often mentioned in the village.

During the slack time, women often gather under the big tree at the entrance of the village, they whisper and mutter, and the topic is always inseparable, whose daughter-in-law is pregnant, whose woman is beaten again, whose child is a child, who spends a lot of money to change the baby for a child......

My mother is a local goddess, not too famous, but I still know a little bit about the so-called Shinto mana, and the more I have been in contact with it, I naturally know a little bit more.

The boy in their mouth is not the boy body mentioned in the TV series, where the practice of superior martial arts is, it seems to say that a child with the characteristics of a child will not live to be eighteen years old, or even if he can grow up, but life and marriage will always have twists and turns, in a word, if the child said by the goddess is a child, it is best to change the boy before becoming an adult.

The ceremony of changing the child must be carried out by the goddess, first look at the so-called auspicious day of the zodiac in their mouths, often choose every sixth or ninth day and other smooth days, with bamboo, colored paper to tie a dummy, and then the goddess will look for a person born in the same year, the same month and the same day as the child who needs to change the child, write the name of the person on the dummy, and burn the paper figure in front of the offering table after the most difficult practice.

The goddess said that if you put a paper man in place of a boy to report to the underworld, then even if this person in the yang world gets rid of the identity of a child, he can get married and have children smoothly from now on, and there will be no more stumbles.

It is conceivable that which parents will ignore their children after knowing that they are children - this is a big event for the child's life, not to mention that the hard work of the goddess is only eight hundred, even if there are more parents.

When she was sixteen years old, her mother held a ceremony to change the child according to the instructions of the local goddess: her mother arranged for her to stay at home, and told her not to go anywhere before 12 o'clock and to close the door tightly, and she pedaled a tricycle to find the goddess, and the car was full of gifts, all of which were for use - the goddess was a classmate's cousin, and she was unwilling to accept money, so in order to show her sincerity, her mother bought hundreds of yuan of things.

When my colleague's mother came back, she asked her daughter if she felt a hot pain in her left ear as if she had been twisted at 11 o'clock just now—that was the time for the goddess to do the trick.

My colleague was very surprised to tell me that she didn't feel it at the time, but when my mother asked her, she remembered that at 11 o'clock, she was lying on the bed reading a book, and her left ear seemed to be twisted by someone as the goddess said, and it hurt and jumped, but it was soon healed......

"You say I don't believe in God either, but that time was so special that I can still remember ......it clearly," a colleague who read graduate school told me that his face was full of surprise and a look of disbelief.

I feel the same way, but I still don't believe it.

In fact, my mother is also a goddess, in the local is a little "famous", often there are villagers and neighbors with children or a melancholy face to come to my house, my mother will lead them to a secluded place to coo for a long time, many of those people are sad face to come in, happy to leave.

However, my mother's magical power "can only bloom inside the wall, and red outside the wall", outsiders believe it, but my father and I don't support it at all.

Speaking of my mother's sudden supernatural powers, it is quite legendary, and I still remember it clearly.

In the autumn of the year when I was eight years old, my grandmother, who had been paralyzed in bed for many years, died, and in order not to revitalize and leave a corpse, the family did not make a big deal out of it, but secretly pulled it to the cemetery after being buried in a coffin.

On the second day after my grandmother sent her to the ground, my mother suddenly seemed to be a different person, her tone and demeanor seemed very unfamiliar, and she made some strange movements inexplicably, rolling her arms and kicking her legs...... My siblings and I cried in fright, and my grandfather comforted us by saying that my mother was overly stimulated by sadness.

But since then, the mother seems to have some magical powers, often at home to others to lose chickens and dogs or children to frighten and other things that only a god woman will do, but the mother in the mouth of the great immortal is very special, do not ask for money, just give a pack of cigarettes as you like.

But that's it, my father doesn't allow it, he is ashamed of this kind of behavior, saying that it is deceptive and partial to wealth, "we don't worry about eating and drinking and not doing that", my father does not support it, and we don't believe it, I often deliberately ask my mother about tricky topics, as long as she can't say it, she will sarcastically "say that her fairy girl went back to her parents' house" and other bastard words.

Maybe it was because she was snubbed, or maybe it was for other reasons, her mother rarely mentioned her possessed fairy at home, but occasionally someone came to look for her, and she didn't shirk it, she still looked at it, but never took anything again, so that even if my father was not used to seeing the face of the villagers, it was not easy to interrupt.

When I went back to my parents' house that time, I also mocked her intentionally or unintentionally when I ran away from Xiaohai: What kind of god are you, what kind of saint are you, why can't you find Xiaohai here!

That being said, everyone has freedom of belief, and we don't bother to interfere, but in my heart I have always thought that praying to God and worshiping Buddha is to comfort our hearts, and it is a kind of longing and extravagant hope for mortals like us in the face of powerless things—always hoping to use supernatural power to help us solve helpless problems.

People live a lifetime, how many ditches and bumps do we have to encounter in autumn, some things we spend our energy, use our brains to solve, some are powerless, like the fact that Xiaohai ran away, we are already desperate.

When we want to solve some thorny problems, we often pin our hopes on those ethereal and illusory gods, like the legend, these gods are omnipotent, ubiquitous, and they are compassionate and universal to solve our problems.

The grand occasion of worshiping God and worshiping Buddha is not only popular in the wild and ignorant ancient times, but also in the current society with a high degree of civilization development, all kinds of "gods" are still in vogue, looking at the land of Shenzhou where it is the most lively, what is the most prosperous, it seems that in addition to the bright lights of Dongguan, it is those temples and ancient temples, no matter how remote and quiet the location is, it is still people who come and go to seek wealth, sex, officials, longevity, all living beings, bustling, all for profit.