A disabled sheep with a fused soul?
For a moment, the man's words sent a shock through me, wondering what exactly he meant by them.
"That lamb was deformed from the moment it was born; its two front legs were lame and it could only walk on its knees." As the man spoke, he took a deep breath, his expression seemingly suffocated, and then continued, "Do you know what kind of condition will arise when that happens?"
"What kind of situation will arise?" I asked in disbelief, "That the lamb won't be able to run fast enough, will it?"
"That's all secondary," the man sighed, "it can't stand up on its front legs, the biggest effect is that it can't get milk, for one thing, it's not tall enough to reach ****, and for another, it can't squeeze the other lambs, and besides, that ewe doesn't seem to treat its deformed child well, and basically won't give it open small, that's why that lamb is dying, that's not sick, that's hungry, it's dying of hunger."
"What goes around comes around, that's how animals are, you can't expect them to be like humans," I said shaking my head.
"As long as there are children with deficiencies, human parents don't always treat them well either!" The man interrupted me.
Those words pierced my heart, for I remembered the little muddler, and at that moment I did not feel like being silent.
"It was only after that wandering spirit possessed that lamb's body that it discovered its condition, but there was nothing it could do, although that body was terrible, at least it would allow it to temporarily escape the rush of the earth back into the sun, so it had to reluctantly stay inside that lamb's body." The man continued.
"And what about the soul fusion?" I couldn't help asking.
"It was an act of desperation," the man said with another sigh, "It was dawn, the sun was rising higher and higher, the sheep had long since left the pen, and only the lamb was left lying in the sun. Its breathing was getting weaker and weaker, and finally it could not hold on a bit longer, and its legs and feet were twitching to leave its soul."
"Leaving the soul?"
"Before a living soul dies, if it doesn't die a violent death, generally the three souls and seven spirits depart one by one," the man explained.
"Well, I see, and then what happens," I nodded, pursuing the question.
"Then when that wandering soul saw this condition, it became very anxious in its heart, because it knew that once that lamb had finished leaving its soul, that lamb would become a corpse, and once that lamb became a corpse, it could no longer provide it with any shelter, it was going to be scattered by the sun, and it was going to have its soul scattered. So at that time, in its desperation, it could only desperately grab the last wisp of the lamb's living soul and prevent it from leaving." As the man spoke, he shook his head and laughed bitterly, "But his power was too weak after all, and he could not stop that lamb's living soul at all, and in the end it was even dragged by that living soul to poke half of its body out from inside the lamb's body."
"In doing so, his soul was also exposed to the sunlight, and immediately scattered a soul." The man paused for a moment as he spoke, "However, at that very moment, as he was grasping and tugging at the last strand of the lamb's living soul with all his might, that living soul rebounded violently and filled the place of the soul he had scattered. In this way, he fused with that lamb's soul and took its place, completely dominating that lamb's body; to put it bluntly, he became that lamb."
"Wonderful, wonderful!" I snapped my fingers in admiration, but the figure was silent; he didn't seem to like the story very much.
"Only after that did he really feel the pain of that lamb, it was hungry, thirsty and weak to the core," the man was silent for a long moment before continuing, "but he gritted his teeth and held on, even struggled to his feet and crawled on his lame legs to the door of the sheepfold, then he gave a mighty cry for someone to come and give him a hand. "
"Who saved him?" I asked.
"No one saved him, the world is a cruel place and the owner of that sheepfold didn't like the disabled lamb either, when the guy saw him lying on the ground screaming, he knew he wasn't going to live long, so he picked him up and prepared to throw him away." The man said with hatred.
"That's a sad story," I was speechless and couldn't help asking, "What happened afterwards?"
"The owner of the sheep pen carried the dying lamb all the way to the entrance of the village and was about to throw it into the gutter when a little girl passed by and, seeing the poor lamb, saved it from the owner's hand. The owner told the girl that the lamb would not survive, but the girl took it home anyway." As the man spoke, he couldn't help but ask me, "Do you know who the girl was?"
The stalk was too good a guess, so I couldn't help but say to him at that moment, "It was that San Yin virgin."
"Yes, that's her, it's such a coincidence," the man sighed, and then continued, "After she took the lamb back, she not only fed it and brought it back to life, but she didn't mind its disability at all, and took good care of it, naming it Black Moon. Because the lamb had a round piece of black hair on its back."
"Black Moon?" Hearing this, I understood a little what all this was about and unconsciously said to the man's back, "Is that you?"
"Listen to me," the man interrupted and continued, "she really was a very kind girl, she was only six or seven at the time, but she did everything she could to look after the lamb, like sewing a pair of leg guards for it when she saw its front legs bleeding on the ground. Although they were very roughly sewn, they really protected the lamb's knees. When the lamb was out grazing, for example, she was often bullied by wild children and dogs because she was slow, and she would always stand up for it, even being beaten and cried by the children. However, even though she loved that lamb very much, she could not be with it all the time after all, so very often that lamb would still be kicked and beaten around by some wild children and tortured to the point of pain."
"Whew-" The story brought tears to my eyes and was so depressing that I couldn't help but breathe hard.
"And then what happened?"
"Then she thought of a way to tie a pair of bells around that lamb's neck, so that whenever the bells rang abnormally, something was definitely bullying that lamb, in which case she would be the first to arrive." The man stopped talking at this point and was silent.
"Bells?" Hearing this word, I subconsciously touched my coat pocket and couldn't help but clutch the pair of yin-yang bells, feeling that the bells spoken of in this story should be the same pair.
"And then after that?" Seeing that the man was silent, I couldn't help but prod.
"And then after that, the lamb grew up and had meat," the man's voice began to choke, and I fell silent, unable to bear asking further questions.
"They, they tied it up and prepared it for slaughter, and the night they learned the news, the girl cried most of the night, and then at almost dawn she secretly set that lamb free, and she ran all the way with it in her arms, and it was dark and she fell several times, but each time she gritted her teeth and got up and carried it and kept running."
"She kept running and running, and finally she didn't know how far she ran, but she came to the bottom of a big mountain, and when she got here, she couldn't run anymore and had to stop, and then she knelt down on the ground and untied the rope around the lamb's neck and told it, "O Black Moon, go away, go as far away as you can, and don't ever come back, okay? Don't ever come back!" The man's shoulders shrugged as he spoke, his voice sticky.
"She thought the lamb couldn't understand her, and for that reason she beat it, in order to drive it farther away, to try to keep it from finding its way back. She was crying as she beat it ..."