Replacing the beam in the Ancestral Hall was a major event, especially with spring plowing about to begin and the ancestral rites imminent.
Carpenter Li, with his crew, carefully stripped the bark, planed, and shaped that thick locust trunk, selecting the straightest, hardest section as the new beam.
The old locust wood was dense and heavy, its weight a burden to lift, so hoisting it up to the roof required considerable effort.
On the day the new beam was set across the ridge of the Ancestral Hall, almost everyone in the village gathered in the open space before the hall.
Third Elder Uncle personally presided over the simple beam-raising ritual, sprinkled wine, and recited words of blessing.
Sunlight struck the freshly planed beam, giving it a warm, pale yellow sheen. The charred mark that had once been scorched by a lightning fire was no longer obvious after the skilled workers’ treatment.
Only a faint dark shadow lingered deep within the grain, looking almost like a natural growth ring, which somehow added an air of antiquity and gravitas.
“This beam is solid!” Carpenter Li stroked his beard and looked up at the beam spanning the hall with some pride. “Old locust wood is sturdy. It’ll hold for generations of offering incense without problems.”
No one brought up that night’s strange lightning strike or the danger during the felling anymore.
The new beam had been securely installed, the Ancestral Hall restored, even more stable than before, and that was enough.
People’s attention quickly turned to the upcoming ancestral ceremony.
For this isolated, traditional mountain village, ancestral worship was the most important event of the year after the New Year.
Praying to the ancestors for favorable weather, abundant harvests, and the safety and prosperity of descendants was the core ritual that sustained clan cohesion.
The whole village sprang into motion: cleaning the hall, polishing the ancestral tablets, preparing the three offerings, rehearsing the ritual flow… even children were ordered not to play or make noise. The atmosphere was solemn and busy.
Ling Wan’s remaining consciousness, while deeply asleep and rising and falling with the earth’s pulses, was occasionally roused by strong, human-energy-filled fluctuations.
Those were the villagers’ vigorous life-energy and focused wishes, like stones thrown onto a calm surface, creating ripples that passed through the ground and faintly reached the tips of her roots buried deep underground.
But these surges were too intense and noisy for her, each time throwing her fragile awareness into chaos. She had to force herself deeper into the background, gentler heartbeat of the earth’s vitality to avoid being torn apart.
The day of ancestral worship finally arrived.
Before dawn, the Ancestral Hall and its surroundings were already brightly lit.
The entire village, young and old, men and women, bathed and changed into their cleanest clothes.
In order from the eldest to the youngest, faces solemn, they filed into the hall under the clan leader’s guidance.
Incense curled and candles blazed.
The ancestral tablets had been polished to a mirror-like shine, standing quietly on the shrine. The newly replaced locust beam spanned above, appearing especially steady and dignified in the glow of incense and candlelight.
The three offerings were displayed at the front, fruits and pastries arranged at the side. The clan leader led everyone in three kneelings and nine kowtows, reciting the sacrificial text in an aged, solemn voice that echoed through the hall.
The text recounted the ancestors’ hardships and achievements, reported the year’s harvest and livelihoods, and pleaded for continued protection over the descendants.
Every prayer, every kowtow, was accompanied by the villagers’ sincere wishes.
Those wishes, formless and intangible, at this solemn moment of ritual gathered into a weak yet pure spiritual force.
This force was not directed at any specific deity but toward the hall itself, toward the ancestral tablets, and quietly permeated every brick, every beam and column of the hall.
Part of that force, as if drawn, silently swirled around the newly replaced locust beam.
The beam quietly bore the roof’s weight and silently accepted this rustic will born of bloodline and land.
Deep within the grain, that nearly healed old scar left by lightning and axe now, in an unnoticed corner, imperceptibly seemed to absorb a thread of near-nonexistent breath.
The ritual continued from early morning until the sun was high. When the last toll of the bell faded, the villagers, led by the clan leader, performed their bows and then respectfully filed out of the hall. The main doors were not fully closed, to show ancestors and descendants remained together.
When the bustle faded, the hall returned to silence, only the perpetual lamp and incense burning quietly.
Outside on the hillside, beside the lonely tree stump of the old locust tree that everyone had forgotten, the spring chill soaked with overnight moisture had already dissipated.
Warm afternoon sunlight poured unshielded over the rough cut surface of the stump and the damp surrounding soil.
In the earth, the remnant roots of the locust tree, faintly in tune with the pulse of the living ground, having endured a long winter and severe damage, had also been subtly soaked by that special spiritual vibration released during the ancestral rites.
Now, under the twin urges of warm sunlight and the earth’s spring vitality, they finally pushed up whatever tiny sliver of life had been amassed for so long.
At the center of the stump’s cut surface, a grain-of-rice-sized, dim, almost vanished soft green glow, as if roused from the deepest dream, very slowly brightened for a moment.
Under the sunlight, at the rough, cracked, dust-covered edge of the ancient stump where it met the soil, a speck smaller than a tender grass shoot, covered with goose-yellow fuzz and trembling…
A new bud.
Soundlessly, it pushed its head out.