All is impermanence.
This is the law of creation and extinction.
When creation and extinction are both extinguished,
that quiet extinction is true bliss.
Life flows on like a babbling brook, and people are like the duckweed and minnows within it, drifting or swimming at ease. The seasons rotate in turn, and time scatters the joys and sorrows, partings and reunions of the mortal world on the wind.
Neither the era nor the region can be traced; all things arise and perish according to fate!
Five miles southeast of Songshan Town, Linjiang County, in the State of Wu, there stood a low hill shaped much like a crouching cat, hence its name: Mao'er Ridge.
The hill was covered with pine trees, green bamboo, moso bamboo, and dense patches of cogongrass—all essential materials used by the local villagers for building houses.
To the west of Mao'er Ridge flowed the Linjiang River. Linjiang Village nestled itself between the mountain and the river, where generations of villagers had chopped wood, built homes, and tilled the fields, multiplying over time to form a natural settlement.
Linjiang Village consisted of around a hundred households, with the Lin family serving as the prominent clan of the village. Scholar Zhu Lin Shitong was the representative figure of the Lin clan.
Master Lin owned more than three hundred mu of upper, middle, and lower paddy fields and dry land in Linjiang Village. Over half of the hundred-odd households in the village were tenant farmers working for the Lin family.
The shrill notes of the suona pierced the air!
Nothing breaks the hearts of kin more deeply!
March sixteenth: favorable for travel and breaking ground, unfavorable for weddings.
Today was the day of Master Lin Shitong's funeral.
Since the turn of spring, amidst the shifting cold and warmth, Master Lin had fallen ill with a severe chill. After lying bedridden for half a month, he had breathed his last at the age of fifty-two.
Master Lin was a famously benevolent man in the local area, and the Lin family was a gentry lineage of wealth and influence spanning a radius of ten li and eight villages. Moreover, the Lin family was flourishing with progeny, leaving Master Lin surrounded by children and grandchildren.
Consequently, today's funeral procession was quite magnificent.
The villagers gathered in groups, trading stories of Master Lin's charity and benevolence.
It was a pity that good men do not live long; Master Lin had departed this world far too early...
In his lifetime, Master Lin Shitong had taken one wife and two concubines, siring four sons and two daughters, along with six grandsons and two granddaughters—a truly prosperous lineage.
Combined with the clansmen and neighbors who had come to pay their respects, the long funeral procession stretched all the way from the Lin Family Old Residence to the Lin family's ancestral graveyard on Mao'er Ridge.
Master Lin Shitong's filial sons and grandsons followed the eight bearers carrying the coffin, marching forward in sorrow.
Along the way, the suona and gongs played a continuous string of mournful dirges.
The filial descendants scattered paper money all the way, weeping as they offered their filial farewells to their departed kin.
Master Lin's youngest son, Lin Zezuz, was only fifteen years old.
When he was eight, Master Lin had sent him to Songshan Private School in the town—run by the master's own classmate, Scholar Zhu—to receive his early education, where he had remained ever since.
Lin Zezu was somewhat slender, and wearing the mourning garb made the coarse white garments appear all the more oversized on him.
Naturally frail, Lin Zezu had been the very first person in the Lin family to contract the severe chill.
After much medical attention, Lin Zezu had finally managed to survive. Yet no one knew that the current Lin Zezu had his core replaced by Lin Zezu, an ordinary everyday person from the blue planet.
After his soul transmigrated, Lin Zezu had absorbed the original owner's complete memories, carefully sorting through them forwards and backwards over the past few days.
Eighteen years ago, the original owner was born after Master Lin took in Xiao Xiangyu from the Zuichun Brothel.
Alas, Xiao Xiangyu was cursed with a beauty's misfortune; she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and passed away while giving birth to the original owner.
From that moment on, the original owner was branded with the stigma of being a "mother-curser."
And because his biological mother had been born in a pleasure house, the label of "the prostitute's son who cursed his mother to death" had weighed heavily on Lin Zezu for over a decade, making it hard for him to breathe.
At home, he was ostracized by his legal mother, older brothers, and family members. At the school, he never dared to speak above a whisper, doing his utmost to close himself off and suppress his presence for fear of being looked down upon by others.
Fortunately, the original owner had inherited his biological mother's refined and delicate looks, which earned him a fair amount of care from Master Lin during the old man's lifetime.
When the original owner turned eight, Master Lin had sent him to the private school for his education.
However, Master Lin deeply disliked the original owner's timid and submissive personality. Every time he saw him, he would berate and scold him in exasperation, furious that he failed to live up to expectations.
Over the past few days, Lin Zezu had carefully maintained the original owner's persona of being taciturn, timid, and submissive.
It was stifling and helpless!
At that moment, Lin Zezu followed the funeral procession feeling neither sorrow nor joy.
Whenever he feared others might notice, he would let out a couple of loud, dry wails and forcefully squeeze out a few tears.
Rather than calling the funeral procession sorrowful, it was more accurate to say that the current Lin Zezu was far more worried about what his legal mother and eldest brother would do to him—this "prostitute's son who cursed his mother"—once the funeral was over.
Whether they would saddle him with an additional charge of cursing his father to death was hard to say.
After all, he had been the very first person in the Lin family to catch the severe chill. Yet now he was alive and well, while the main pillar of the Lin family, Master Lin, was separated from his family by the boundary of life and death.
Master Lin's coffin had already entered the ancestral graveyard. The geomancer had selected the third quarter of the Chen hour as the auspicious time for burial.
Under the direction of the funeral director and clan elder Lin Wangshui, the eight strapping men carrying the coffin steadily lowered Master Lin's coffin into the grave pit, which had already been sprinkled with quicklime.
At that point, the geomancer took the lead, guiding Master Lin's male descendants as they circled the graveyard pit eight times from east to west, accompanied by the heart-rending notes of the suona.
After the eight rounds,
the geomancer instructed clan elder Lin Wangshui to select nine robust young men, who began scattering a layer of dry quicklime over the coffin.
Once the lime had been scattered,
the eldest son, Lin Zeguang, shoveled the first spade of earth over the coffin.
Next came the second legitimate son, Lin Zezong.
Then followed the eldest grandson, Lin Minju, the eldest son of Lin Zeguang, and the second son, Lin Minjin.
After them came the third grandson, Lin Minxiu, the eldest son of Lin Zezong, and the fourth grandson, Lin Mingcai, the second son of Lin Zezong.
Only then was it the turn of the third concubine-born son, Lin Zeyao, and the fourth concubine-born son, Lin Zezu.
Following them came the fifth grandson, Mincheng, son of Lin Zeyao, and the sixth grandson, Minxin, the second son of Lin Zeyao.
Once the direct descendants had finished covering the grave with earth, it was the turn of the Lin clansmen.
The various members of the clan shoveled earth onto Master Lin's coffin in order of seniority and status.
Many people had come today to see Master Lin off on his final journey.
Not only members of the Lin clan, but also the tenant farmers of Linjiang Village.
They all brought their own tools, such as shovels and bamboo baskets filled with earth, to bid farewell to this benevolent master of the Lin family.
First, to fulfill neighborly ties;
second, to honor a debt of gratitude.
Master Lin's passing was a heavy blow to the Lin family, leaving his eldest son, Lin Zeguang, overwhelmed with grief and immense sorrow.
Under the methodical direction and coordination of the master of ceremonies and clan elder Lin Wangshui, the funeral proceeded smoothly, and the burial mound was soon covered over with earth.
A string of firecrackers burst.
A pile of yellow joss paper burned.
Handfuls of paper money fluttered and danced in the air.
From this day forward, Master Lin Shitong would rest here in eternal slumber, separated from his descendants by the veil of life and death.