After the plague, the White Deer Plain showed emptiness. During the months of the plague, there was a sound of carrying and burying the dead in Bailu Village, and the cry could no longer arouse the sympathy of the neighbors and only became a signal: someone was dead. The plague was naturally stopped with the onset of winter. In September, when people were sad and sad to harvest and plant wheat in autumn, there was no joy and urgency for harvesting and sowing seeds in previous years. This year, because of the rainy season, the harvest of bread and millet and beans was good, but the good harvest did not bring joy to the fields and yards. Someone suddenly threw himself on the golden pile of grain that had just been removed from the chaff, and cried bitterly for his dead relatives; Someone took down the flail that was being beaten and took out the cigarette pouch: Everyone is dead, what do you want to do with this grain! People are still dead in the autumn harvest and autumn sowing. The winter wheat was planted in a tender green color, and just after the lunar month of October, suddenly an overwhelming snow poured down, and some hardy trees had not yet lost their leaves, and could not bear the weight of the snow and snapped their branches. In the cold after the heavy snowfall, the hoofs and paws of the plague were frozen, and the frequency of diseases and deaths was greatly reduced. It was not until after the winter solstice that the terrible plague in Bailu Village was completely cut off, and at that time, the Demon Tower of Liuling Town, which Bai Jiaxuan commanded, had just been completed. The firewood piles in the village alleys no longer reproduce the scene of gathering together in the cold winter of the past year, like the ancient temple where people go to the temple fair early in the morning to visit the lively, but they will never return to the village alleys of Bailu Village.

Bai Jiaxuan first called back the second daughter-in-law and Xiaoyi in the mountains, and then asked the two brothers Xiaowu and Xiaoyi to go to the second aunt's house in the city to pick up Bai Zhao's family. Bai Zhao was very saddened by the death of Xiancao, and almost instinctively repeated a heartfelt sentence: "The damned don't die, and the undeserving can die!" What am I doing alive......" Bai Zhao naturally accepted the fact that the fairy grass had died, but it was strange for Lu San's mutation. She finally drove to the gatehouse of her house in an ox cart driven by her two grandsons, and noticed something unusual at the first sight of Lu San. Lu Miki Mu Nene said a word of "back", turned around and went to unload the cattle, and did not meet her again until dinner in the evening. When it was dark, Lu San came from the enclosure to have dinner, drank a bowl of rice soup slowly, ate a soft baogu bun, and got up and left, without saying hello to anyone or gossiping. After Lu San's slow and heavy footsteps disappeared, Bai Zhao asked his son Bai Jiaxuan: "The third child doesn't look right?" She didn't know that Lu San was possessed by Xiao'e's demons. Bai Jiaxuan said lightly: "The third brother is old!"

Xiao'e's bones were excavated from the cave and had grown a layer of green moss. The hard firewood brought by the families voluntarily piled up a hill in the kiln yard, and the blazing flames burned for three days and three nights, and finally the firewood ashes and ashes were packed into a porcelain altar and buried under the base of the tower. The craftsman who repaired the pagoda asked Bai Xiaowu, who was in charge, to say that the back cover could be covered. As soon as Bai Xiaowu said a sealed word, Bai Jiaxuan, who was standing on the side, gestured to the craftsman to suspend the execution of Xiaowu's instructions, and he was looking at the grass on the kiln ridge with great attention, and everyone was surprised to find that there were many butterflies flying in the basil grass that dried up after the snow. Bai Jiaxuan said: "That's a ghost moth, everyone caught those ghost moths, and none of them flew away." The clansmen took off their clothes, took off their hats, chased and pounced on the slopes, picked up the killed moths and threw them at Bai Jiaxuan's feet. It was a lot of colorful butterflies, pure white, pure yellow, pure black, and white-winged black-spotted ...... Bai Jiaxuan borrowed a shovel from someone else, shoveled those dead moths to the porcelain altar root under the base of the tower, and then let the craftsman cover the back. Ten bluestones are pressed on top of it in a pile, taking the meaning of "never turning over". A celebration was held for the inauguration of the Demon Town, with gongs, drums and firecrackers ringing out. Since the tower was erected, Lu San really did not have any ghosts and demons, but he became a completely different person. Lu San was short of words, often did not say a word from morning to night, and sat there silently with dementia; His memory is also far behind, and he often drives the cattle to the field with a plough stick, only to find that he forgot to put an iron ploughshare on the wooden plough or forgot to take a whip; He used the dry tobacco pouch for most of his life and lost it three or four times, but others picked it up and returned it to him; His usual initiative was vanishing, and his former industriousness had become lazy, and he was listlessly pushing the dirt cart washers, and lazily digging up the manure of the cattle pens, and especially his eyes, all the aura of loyalty and resoluteness and straightforwardness that had been condensed were gone, like a wick that had been burned out of oil, and like wood that had been eaten away by insects. As soon as Bai Jiaxuan found out about the changes in Lu San, he secretly thought that the person who was possessed by the demon was this kind of frame, and the ghost demon attached to the human body sucked the essence blood of the living to be nourished in order to become sperm. A sick person can make up for the deficit by eating good food after recovery, while a person possessed by a demon can never recover like a chaff carrot in spring. Bai Jiaxuan once found that the rabbit baby reprimanded Lao Tzu Lu San in front of the pier, and the dry grass in the mouth of the bullet suspect Lu San was always untidy. Bai Jiaxuan reminded the rabbit baby with a cold face: "Talk and look at the little wow!" That's you—big!" He hadn't yet found any obvious dislike or disrespect for Lu San, but his contemptuous eyes were omnipresent. Once at the dinner table of a family, Bai Jiaxuan saw an opportunity and instructed his two sons and Lusan's son Tuwa together: "You third uncle, you are old. That's what people look like when they're old. From tomorrow, the two of you will take over from the third uncle to care for the livestock. He will do whatever work he wants to do, if he doesn't want to do any work, even if he doesn't do any work, none of you are allowed to point out him, let alone impeach him, and he is not allowed to squint at him and yell at him in a rough voice! Did you listen to that?" Hyo-yi first hurriedly replied, "Listen." He has a very close relationship with Lusan, and he supports his father's words. Xiaowu did not lose the way of the future patriarch, and nodded solemnly. Only the rabbit baby was silent, and only after a while did she raise her blushing face, her cheeks full of tears, and regretted that she had spoken disrespectfully and faux pas to her father. Bai Zhao annotated Bai Jiaxuan's words to his grandchildren: "Your father has always treated your third uncle as a person in our house!"

After the land froze, Bai Xiaowu led his younger brother and rabbit baby to start the major work of applying winter fertilizer to the wheat field. Xiaoyi has loved to caress livestock since he was a child, prefers to shout carts, and volunteers to pull cattle to set carts. Lu San did not participate in the manure delivery labor for the first time, and Bai Xiaowu arranged for him to manage the livestock in the trough, and he could help load the car at will when he was free, which provided an opportunity for Xiaoyi to call the car independently. The rabbit baby is always easy-going and shy, and when Bai Xiaowu asked him in a kind tone which job he wanted to do, he said: "I will do whatever you tell me to do, and you can place it as you like." Bai Xiaowu said: "Then you can follow the car!" The rabbit said, "That's right." As he spoke, he scooped up the shovel and loaded the carriage with dung. Following the car is actually loading and unloading, filling the manure field with manure, then sitting on the tail of the car, and then using an iron planer rake to plow the manure from the car. The rabbit baby has been trained into a free and easy posture of skilled manipulation and manure, unhurried, shoveling up the dung from the huge dung pile and throwing it into the carriage, spitting some spit on the palm of the hand from time to time and rubbing the palm. After the carriage is full, the rabbit uses a shovel board to beat the dung that comes out of the carriage to prevent the ox cart from scattering dung blocks when it bumps on the dirt road of the Pagoda. He carried a planer to the side of the wagon, then pushed the wagon from the tail of the wagon to help the scalper start. Bai Xiaowu watched the ox cart drive out of the gate of the enclosure from the side, Xiaoyi shook the whip while shouting at the livestock, twisting his waist that was not yet strong and a little pretentious, he couldn't help laughing.

Bai Xiaowu returned to the enclosure, scooped up the head in front of the dung heap, and smashed and planed the dung that had accumulated for a year and had been compacted, so as not to pull the large dead tower into the wheat field and crush a lump of wheat seedlings. This simple and soothing labor not only does not hinder thinking, but promotes the calmer and more active thinking, and regrets the mistakes of oneself in the major controversy over the construction of temples and pagodas.

At that time, he had just returned home and saw his mother's mourning hall, and it was only when he saw a bunch of silk and purple incense on his mother's mourning hall that he felt what the plague meant. In his indescribable grief, he happened to meet a group of men and women kneeling in front of the ancestral hall, and saw familiar and unfamiliar faces, all with sadness and hope. The three old men immediately surrounded him, told him the strange story of Xiao'e's ghost possessing Lusan, and asked him to ask for the people's life and lead the people to repair the temple to house the soul of Xiao'e, who died violently. The old man said, "What is Xiao'e? Build a temple for her, build a temple! Now we have to take care of the whole life of the primordial! It is said that the living do not care about the dead. What a comparison with ghosts!" The old man revealed to him that Lu Zilin was also obedient to everyone's wishes, and only the old patriarch was stubborn. Bai Xiaowu couldn't stand the atmosphere formed on that occasion, and as soon as his mind was hot, he agreed with the old man's motion on behalf of everyone, and generously said: "I'll tell my father about it." ”…… Although he quickly calmed down and obeyed his father's wishes, and although he supervised the construction of the evil tower as scheduled, the vacillation and mistakes at the critical juncture still left a shadow, and even became a heart disease, and he always suspected that his father was disappointed in him because he saw through him. Bai Xiaowu wanted to make up for his mistakes with his firmness, and finally thought of a major action, and after careful consideration, he felt that it must be in line with his father's wishes, so he decided to solemnly propose it when he asked his father for peace in the evening.

The winter sun slowly rose, and the faint red light still made people feel warm, and the heavy frost began to change color. The father walked into the enclosure on crutches to observe the work of his sons in delivering dung. At this time, Xiaoyi drove the ox cart, and the rabbit baby sat in the carriage into the circle, and the young man's energetic frame could not help but be moved when he saw it, Bai Jiaxuan made an exception and said a joke to the children: "Today's soldiers are all baby soldiers!" Xiaoyi and Rabbit were even more cheerful when they received this rare joke-like reward, and the two of them filled a cart of dung and shouted out of the circle. Bai Xiaowu felt that his father was in a good mood at the moment, so he decided to tell what he was going to say in advance in the evening, and when his father walked to the dung heap with a cane, he said to him with a cane: "Dad, I want to fill in the family tree." Bai Jiaxuan was obviously concentrating on the degree of maturation of the manure nest in the stable, and he didn't expect his son to say such an important thing, so he couldn't help but raise his head to look at his son, and then there was an "um" in his throat. Bai Xiaowu explained: "There are so many people who have died, they should be filled in on the family tree, and they should be ...... during the New Year" Bai Jiaxuan immediately agreed: "Okay." Bai Xiaowu further explained the deeper intention: "Eighty percent of doing this is to stabilize the living, and two percent are to pay tribute to the dead." When the dead are placed on the genealogy to pay respects, the hearts of the living are relieved - the village is too scared. Bai Jiaxuan looked into his son's eyes and nodded, adding, "That's the end of it." The death of the man is the end of the genealogy, and the thinking of the dead of the living is also the end of it. You can't think about the dead day and night, day and night, day and day, and you can't miss anything anymore, but you miss the hour and delay the trip. Bai Xiaowu was very encouraged, this matter undoubtedly achieved his father's heart, and getting his father's praise made him emotional, and then said his specific thoughts: "You have to say hello to Uncle Zilin first, I am a junior and it is not good to tell others about this." Bai Jiaxuan corrected and said, "You go and tell him." This is not a matter of our family and his family. This is a matter of the clan. You are the patriarch, and he knows it. If you come forward to tell him about the great affairs of your family, he will not care about your seniority. Bai Xiaowu accepted his father's words and felt even more angry, and continued to say thoughtful measures: "I want to make this ceremony a little more solemn, so as to warm everyone's hearts and sweep away the atmosphere of panic and corruption in the village." Bai Jiaxuan stuck his crutches into the dung heap and appreciated this consideration: "Okay, you will think about things and deacons!"

Bai Xiaowu went to Lu Zilin's house for two nights in a row, but he couldn't see anyone, and at noon on the third day, he simply walked into the security center where Lu Zilin worked in Bailu Town, and saw Lu Zilin and Tian Fuxian talking in a low voice, judging from the somewhat stiff look and the same stiff tone when they greeted him, the two of them may be talking about a secret thing that at least they don't want the third person to hear, and he sat down without caring and opened up. Lu Zilin seemed a little frustrated when he heard this: "Oh, you said that you are going to fill in the family tree?" You and your dad will do it. Bai Xiaowu seemed to feel slighted: "The day before the big sacrifice ceremony of the god axis, did you get a position?" Lu Zilin had no interest or enthusiasm, and said flatly: "Forget it, I won't participate, there are many things in the security office recently." Bai Xiaowu no longer pleaded and said goodbye, and said modestly when he went out: "If I make a mistake and cause trouble, you have to advise me in time." Lu Zilin waved his hand indifferently to send Bai Xiaowu out, turned around and walked back to the original chair, and said to Tian Fuxian without waiting to sit down: "Bai Jiaxuan, this person loves to do these things all day long, and now he has taught his son too, and he came to do things in the ancestral hall!" Tian Fuxian further used Lu Zilin's mocking tone to aggravate the ridicule: "The head of the clan, what else can you do besides the ancestral hall?" Does he know what is going on outside the ancestral hall walls? This man!" The two of them then continued their conversation, which was interrupted by Bai Xiaowu.