In the countryside, there are many people of the older generation who will put a picture on the wall and draw four people on a large white piece of paper, maybe less than this number, but I don't know exactly how. These people only painted the upper body, there were men and women, still ancients, wearing slanted clothes, flowery, men wearing ancient round hats, women combing old buns and hairpins. They are not lined up in a row, but in pairs, up and down. After pasting the picture on the wall, nail a wooden board under each of them, place an incense burner, and offer one in front of each person. Light incense and try not to extinguish it. They had to be covered with a curtain. This is the unknown "Guardian Immortal", different places have different names, "Guardian Immortal" is more easy to understand, but in our place it is called "Buddha". It's not that with it, the family will not have disasters, and it will be smooth sailing. It's actually a kind of spiritual sustenance, I guess.

As for who painted them, there is no way to know, and the adults don't want to say it, which adds to its mystery.

My fourth grandmother's house worships it.

I remember when I was a child, my mother took me to her house to play, they were talking in the back room, I had nothing to do, I walked around the house, came to the outhouse, to see if there was anything interesting, I saw a flower curtain, I walked over, opened it and looked, a picture appeared in front of me, the painting painted four people in full bloom. At that time, I thought this painting was very strange, their white faces had more white eyes and few black eyes, and they looked miserably ahead, and the women's lips were red like blood. They belong to the gods, but they seem to me to have a haunting spirit. I looked at the incense burner again, and there was a stick of incense in each of the incense burners, and the gray smoke drifted upwards, and a layer of ash fell on the surface of the furnace. The mischievous me stepped forward and changed the position of the incense burner up and down, and then left and right, purely for fun.

I ran to the back room and said to my mother and grandmother, "I changed those incense burners. ”

Unexpectedly, the fourth grandmother's face changed greatly, she came to the outhouse in a panic, bowed to the painting, and said: "Buddha forgive, children are not sensible, don't blame." Then he replaced the incense burner.

Mom pushed me and whispered, "Stop being naughty! ”

I'm not convinced, isn't it just a painting!

When it was almost dinner, my mother and I returned from the fourth grandmother's house to my grandmother's house.

In winter, it gets dark early, and after dinner, although it is only 7 o'clock, it is already dark outside. I lay on the kang to read the villain's book, and my mother and grandmother sat on the kang and weaved fishing nets. The lamp hangs down from the beams of the house, and a lampshade is installed, and the light gathers to the kang, and the rest of the place is dark. We do our part in the light. After reading a few pages, I began to feel sleepy, leaning on the quilt, my eyelids fought, I forced my eyes to open, but soon squinted again, and my consciousness was blurred, as if in a dream, the voices of my mother and grandmother became distant. In the haze, I saw a person sitting on the sofa diagonally opposite the kang, because the light was dim, I couldn't see her appearance clearly, but I could see that it was a woman, who seemed to have an old bun and a hairpin, and the pendant on the hairpin was shaking.

"Mom, there's a guy sitting there." I say.

My mother and grandmother were startled and looked in the direction I was looking.

"Who's there! Go to sleep! Mom ordered.

I went to sleep. Soon fell asleep, almost as soon as I touched the pillow, I fell into a dream, a real dream.

In my dream, I saw an incense burner, and the smoke was rising around it, and the incense burner was hanging in front of me not far away, but other than that, I could not see anything, and the smoke that surrounded me was the smell of burning incense, and it seemed that the smoke came from the burning incense in the incense burner. A woman came out in the smoke, wearing a long, long, pink-slanted jacket that reached her ankles, and combing her old hair in an old bun with a hairpin in it, the pendant on which dangled as she walked. Her face was very white, with many white eyes and few black eyes, and her lips were red as if they had been smeared with blood. I suddenly felt that this person was familiar, and of course, even if I didn't remember who she was, I knew when I saw the incense burner that it was one of the people in that painting. She was expressionless and didn't speak, and she walked closer and closer to me. I tried to escape, but I couldn't. I saw her walk up to me, take the incense from the censer, and poke the burning one at my brow. "It hurts—" I cried out, crying, and then woke up all at once. It turned out to be a dream, and my scared heart stabilized. However, although I woke up from the dream, my eyebrows were really painful, and there was a burning sensation.

"It hurts here." I pointed to my eyebrows and said to my mother and grandmother, who were still working.

Mom came over and looked at it and said, "Oops! The center of the eyebrow was broken and bleeding. Like a rouge、、、、、、 huh? How can there still be dust? ”

Since then, I have a round scar on the center of my eyebrows, which looks like rouge.

A few days later, a cousin, who was the grandson of the fourth grandmother, came to play with me.

"Let's go, go to my house to play, and I'll teach you how to write." Said cousin.

I didn't dare to go, but the strange face of "Buddha" came to my mind. But my cousin dragged me hard.

When I arrived at the fourth grandmother's house, I quickly hid in the back room.

"Oh~, you're afraid of the 'Buddha', I'm not afraid." My cousin said, straight-chested, looking like a hero.

"Humph! Who's afraid! I was not convinced, but I still touched the scar with a weak heart.

My cousin suddenly shouted, "Look at me! I am Monkey King! Lao Sun is here! ”

He shouted, picked up a stick, waved it, and jumped into the outhouse like a monkey.

I followed him out and saw him striking the curtain with a stick.

"Don't 、、、、、、" I didn't finish speaking, but I heard a "boom", as if the incense burner had fallen to the ground.

My cousin knew that he was in trouble, so he was so frightened that he dropped his stick and stood there not knowing what to do. I didn't care about him, and I was afraid that the "Buddha" would even blame me, so I ran back to my grandmother's house alone.

The next morning, when I woke up, I could hear my grandmother and my mother talking in the outhouse, and I only heard my grandmother say, "When I wake up in the morning, my face is like that." "So what can I do? In case of any scars, how can I find a daughter-in-law when I grow up? Mom said. Bow to the 'Buddha' and see if it can be good. ”

"Buddha" again? I hurriedly got dressed and asked what was going on.

It turned out to be my cousin's business. Yesterday he knocked over the incense burner, and the incense poked into the face of a "Buddha", burning half of the face of the "Buddha". This morning, when my cousin was washing, he looked in the mirror and saw that half of his face was black in the mirror, at first he thought it was the ash at the bottom of the pot, so he went to wash it, but he couldn't wash it off, so he knew that the big thing was not good, and hurriedly told the fourth grandmother.

The fourth grandmother bowed reverently, burned some paper money, and asked someone to redraw the "Buddha", which can be regarded as a facelift for the "Buddha". In this way, the half of my cousin's dark face was restored to its original appearance. The scar on my brow is gone.