A fire was thrown into the cave and burned clean, although Chaozi coveted the wood inside, but he did not do the business that required human life.

When I returned to the broken school at the bottom of the mountain, I saw that the door was full of people wearing linen and filial piety, and I was dumbfounded.

When the relatives and guests saw that it was the man who came back, his sisters and sisters hugged him, crying and crying, shouting and shouting, and telling all kinds of misfortunes after he left home, completely ignoring the reason why he disappeared for several days.

When the elder saw that Cha Wenbin had also returned, his face showed embarrassment, and he whispered that he had gone last night to see if this Cha Daoist could make a dojo.

When Cha Wenbin saw this scene, he also felt a little guilty, although the mother-in-law was not really dead, but such a toss could be regarded as a waste of money and labor.

Hurriedly led Ah Fa into the house, in the hall, on the wooden board, a woman's face was pressed by a piece of yellow paper, and some of her juniors were kneeling around.

The crying person saw that Ah Fa was back, and the crying was even more energetic, Ah Fa was so that he thought that his mother-in-law had really returned to the West, and his tears soared, and he grabbed Cha Wenbin's arm and begged him for help.

Inside the hall, a lacquermaker was busy painting a new cedar coffin, which was mixed with the scent of incense paper, paint, and wood. Cha Wenbin bowed his head to the steward who had been following him, and the man helped up the kneeling people on the ground, and then beckoned the aunts who were watching the excitement to lead them all out to rest.

After death, it is generally parked in the countryside for three days and placed in the middle of the gate. It was an old school, and the villagers had found a classroom in the middle, and the door was open. Before the funeral, this door was not allowed to be closed, but Cha Wenbin closed the door at this time. Except for Ah Fa, everyone was cut off.

Cha Wenbin said to Ah Fa: "The people in the village have a lot of mouths, and when she wakes up, I will naturally lie for you, just say that your mother-in-law was taken by the heavenly fairy to be a maid for a few days, and now that the merit is complete, it is time to come back." ”

Ah Fa nodded desperately, although his mother-in-law was fierce and spicy, and he was still stunned, but he was also a confidant on the kang, how could he be willing to leave like this.

took out the evil bell, Cha Wenbin shook it a few times on the woman's head, and said softly: "When the bell rings, the soul of the person wakes up in the dream, and the seven spirits return to their places to continue their lives." ”

Raise a Heavenly Master Talisman again, pinch it with both hands, and then circle the woman's face, and throw it into a bowl with water before it is completely burned.

Cha Wenbin handed the bowl to Ah Fa: "You pinch her mouth and pour it in." Turning to leave, he gently pushed the door open a crack, and the people chattering outside immediately stopped, and they all looked at this Taoist priest.

After a while, a woman's cry began to be heard in the room, "You dead ghost, where the hell have you gone?" Then a man cried, and then a husband and wife hugged and cried.

Since then, Ah Fa's mother-in-law often calls herself a fairy aunt, and she also pretends to do something for others, but it is basically ineffective......

I have the impression that in the three years that followed, I had not met Cha Wenbin, nor had I heard anything from the adults. There are also people who need to invite Taoist priests at home, and they have remembered this person, whether they went to invite them themselves or asked someone to find them, there is no news of him.

Later, when I saw him again, I was already in elementary school, and Uncle Wen Bin was older than now, and his eyebrows were full of weather. It was also that year that Cha Wenbin accepted his first apprentice, and the only apprentice he accepted in his life. Originally, I had the opportunity to worship him, but at that time, my understanding of the Taoist profession of gods and ghosts was only limited to dealing with the dead, and I had already begun to receive modern education, and my deep materialism told me that it was just a feudal superstition.

Many years later, when I traced his footprints for a book again, interviewed many people who knew him, and people who were saved by him, I realized that there was really such a thing in this world.

Many of the memories of youth have been blurred. I don't think it was for the reunion with my aunt, uncle and third aunt in my hometown last year, they talked about that person, talked about the Taoist priests who belonged to that era, maybe I was holding a computer in my hand, but I only knew the Taoist priest who could throw talismans and summon dogs in the game.

I began to try to look through that memory, to find his lost three years, and no one knew where he went. The people I interviewed included the prototype Chaozi and Zhuo Xiong in the book, and the man named Dashan, who is now long past the age of their establishment. I've been trying to find out where Cha Wenbin's lost three years have gone, and what has happened in those three years.

Later, through many people, I finally found the apprentice he accepted back then, and vaguely restored some things through patchwork and later inference.

After this time from Afa's family, Cha Wenbin first went to the provincial capital to visit his son. At that time, Miss Leng was not married, and until a few years later, she was still not married.

His son had already begun to integrate into the life of the city at that time, and he was still young and did not understand how he would be different from other male classmates in the future, but Cha Wenbin only appeared once in a long time, so that the child gradually began to feel that his father had become stranger.

Perhaps only the child's intuition is the most accurate, and Cha Wenbin did begin to change in those years.

The first thing that changed was his hand, the fingers of his left hand seemed longer than normal, but they were much thinner, very much like a folded old cowhide attached to a heel of steel bars, and the blood vessels and nerves under the skin appeared thick, curved and earthworm-like around the entire back of the hand. His left hand had begun to become unable to fully straighten, and if he did not exert force, it would bend like an eagle's claw. More and more, Cha Wenbin chooses to put one hand in his pocket and eat, but does not hold the bowl when there are many people.

The next change was his personality, he began to become a little restless and irritable, often waking up in the middle of the night and never being able to sleep again. He began to have verbal conflicts with his friends, in the past, even if Chaozi did something out of the ordinary, Cha Wenbin was up to the point, and now he would sometimes even scold.

There is also the fact that he is becoming more and more reluctant to go out, locking himself in his room all day long, and even sometimes Dashan comes into the house to bring him food, and he comes out to tell the other two that Brother Wen Bin's house feels cold, uncomfortable, and panicked.

During that time, he no longer lit sandalwood as usual, but instead burned ordinary tribute incense. Three roots, extinguished and continued, the house was full of smoke all day long, and normal people would be smoked in the eyes and couldn't stand it, but he didn't go out.

This kind of locking yourself up all day lasted for about a month. Finally, in the late autumn of that year, Cha Wenbin left. What was found was the mountain that brought him breakfast, and on the table in Cha Wenbin's room, a letter was left, and Cha Wenbin disappeared with him, along with his Qiankun bag, as well as his seven-star sword, and the little golden tadpole.

There are only eight words in the letter: Tao always does nothing and does nothing

This is a passage from the thirty-seventh chapter of Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching", and today's scholars still have their own different views on this sentence.

As for Cha Wenbin's explanation of this letter, I heard his apprentice tell me later.

He said: When the master explained this passage to him, he said: When the Tao is biochemically nourishing all things in heaven and earth without purpose and intention, it also allows all things in the world to operate according to certain rules with purpose and intention, so that it can be said that "Tao" is actually biochemical and nurturing thousands of things in the universe and heaven and earth in a purposeless and purposeless and purposeful way.

This explanation was later understood by me as Cha Wenbin's view of life. His life was originally an unintentional arrangement, but it seemed to be deliberately arranged by God, a seemingly aimless thing, and finally achieved a certain goal that God wanted to achieve.

Later, we deduced that in the three years that he disappeared, Cha Wenbin went to find the intention and purpose of the Mandate of Heaven in this path, trying to know the true Mandate of Heaven. As for whether he knew or didn't know, and how he went to find out, he can only start with some things that happened back then.

When Chaozi and the others saw Cha Wenbin again, it was the early winter of the third year, and when Dashan got up lazily and opened the door, they found a man in ragged clothes standing outside the door, and that man was Cha Wenbin. There was one more person beside him, a boy of eleven or twelve years old, who held in his hand a golden toad, about the size of a palm, with only three legs, one of which had a red thread tied to it, and the other end of the red thread hung from the boy's wrist.