On the snowy night of 1988, the mountain-revering ceremony in Linjia Village was a little strangely quieter than in previous years.
Lin Hui squatted in the corner of the ancestral hall, helping her mother wipe the dust from the base of the sacrificial stone. The spiral patterns on the stone surface were blackened by the incense, but glowed with a warm light under the firelight, like jade that had been soaked for hundreds of years. Her mother's hand was very steady, and when her fingertips touched the lines, she always paused lightly at a certain turning point - that was the movement Lin Hui had seen since she was a child, like talking to a stone.
"Ah Hui, remember," her mother's voice was warm and mixed with the crackling sound of the fire pit, "respecting the mountain is not asking for anything from the mountain, but saying to the mountain, 'We are here.'" She inserted three sticks of pine sticks into the incense burner, and smoke rings curled up, swirling on the beams, and actually followed the lines of the rafters, forming a faint spiral.
Purpose: to kill time