Xie Mingxian felt that whether the matter in his heart was truly put down had a considerable impact on his psychology. Just like before he went home, he had almost elevated the conflict with his father to the height of class struggle. Now this contradiction still existed, but it had been lowered all the way from class struggle to internal contradictions among the people, and this struggle level was still continuously declining. When Xie Mingxian walked into the house and saw his father already in the courtyard preparing to carry the coffin for the funeral, Xie Mingxian lowered this contradiction level again in his heart to the grade of internal family contradictions.

After having such a feeling, Xie Mingxian suddenly felt very strange; why didn't he have such an understanding before? If Xie Mingxian pushed his own lack of progress onto the "decaying Confucian culture," it would also be possible. Confucian culture talked about fatherly kindness and filial piety, about harmony, about all beautiful things. At that time, Xie Mingxian really longed for these things in books to exist. He hoped to live in such a world.

Looking at these texts from a dialectical perspective, Xie Mingxian immediately had a completely different understanding. The purpose of propaganda is to achieve things that are difficult to achieve. If this world were not full of contradictions and cruel struggles, the set propagated by Confucianism would have no meaning of existence at all. It was precisely because of the hope that the world could be better that Confucian sages established thoughts and formulated systems. And Xie Mingxian undoubtedly did not reach the level and height of Confucian sages before. He didn't understand those books at all, just as "A Madman's Diary," which Xie Mingxian suddenly recalled in his hard thinking last night, said: Everything must be studied before it can be understood. In ancient times, people were often eaten; I remember this too, but not very clearly. I opened history to check; this history had no dates, and on every page were scrawled the words "Benevolence, Righteousness, and Morality." I couldn't sleep anyway, so I read carefully for half the night, only to see words from between the lines; the whole book was filled with two words: "Eat People"!

The sun continued to climb up. After it was bright, several young men from Xie Mingxian's uncle's family arrived at Xie Mingxian's house to take over. They didn't dare to go directly to Xie Mingxian's house yesterday, but only saw from a distance Xie Mingxian riding on a tall horse, returning to his hometown gloriously surrounded by hundreds of mighty troops. So although they were in their early twenties or nearly thirty, they all looked at Xie Mingxian with awe and envy.

Xie Mingxian's father, Xie Fuzheng, invited everyone to drink water first, and then pointed to the wooden bars and ropes leaning against the wall, "Prepare to carry the person away."

The young men were a bit cramped after hearing this. The leader was Li Shouxian's cousin. He said hesitantly: "Uncle, if we don't carry it well, please don't blame us."

There was still no expression on Xie Fuzheng's aged face. He said calmly: "You can come to help; this is you valuing the relationship of relatives. I really can't carry it anymore, so I have to rely on you young men. What's good or bad about carrying? If we are tired on the road, we will rest; if we can't walk fast, we will walk slowly. Carrying your aunt to bury her, I will be endlessly grateful to you. When we come back, I will treat you to a meal."

After speaking, Xie Fuzheng took out several red envelopes from his bosom and distributed one to each young man.

Seeing that Xie Fuzheng was not picky at all and gave red envelopes, the expressions of the young men immediately relaxed. They pinched the thickness of the red envelopes, and almost beaming with joy, they came up and began to insert the wooden bars under the coffin and set them up, then used ropes to tie the coffin firmly to the wooden bars. Fearing that the wooden bars were not strong enough, two wooden bars were placed at each of the three rows of positions for six people to carry. The ends of the bars were wrapped thickly with white cloth, which neither hurt the shoulders nor made it hard to exert force.

Seeing that these were ready, Xie Fuzheng said to Xie Mingxian: "Do you want to look at your mother again, or look a few more times when we arrive at the graveyard?"

Hearing this, Xie Mingxian couldn't help crying again. He held the coffin opening and looked at his mother's remains, unable to bear letting people close the coffin no matter what. His cousins saw Xie Mingxian crying sadly and wanted to come up to persuade him but didn't know what to say, nor did they dare to come up rashly to persuade him. Xie Fuzheng invited several people to the back room to drink tea and eat snacks, letting Xie Mingxian vent his sadness here alone. Before going to the back room, Xie Fuzheng said to Xie Minggu: "Close the door; what is there for others to see?"

Xie Mingxian didn't care about these arrangements of his father at all. Thinking that he would be separated from his mother forever, he couldn't stop crying. He had seen birth, old age, sickness, and death before. On the battlefield, so many fresh young lives turned into corpses covering the ground in an instant. There would always be corpses on the river after floods. When Xie Mingxian did "underground work" in Shanghai, even in years without war and natural disasters, there were dead bodies on the streets of Shanghai every day. Old, young, male, female; every winter, countless poor people died. At that time, Xie Mingxian also felt sad, and after sadness, a strong desire to change this tragic situation in China arose in his heart.

Now his mother passed away, and Xie Mingxian's feeling was completely different from before. It was as if a big piece was forcibly dug out of his own soul. Even knowing that his mother would pass away eventually, that huge hollow feeling could not be filled no matter what. That feeling of emptiness made Xie Mingxian tremble all over. He knew very well that he had lost his dearest mother forever.

After crying for a while longer, Xie Mingxian left the side of the coffin, knelt silently in front of his mother's coffin, and began to burn paper money in a basin. The People's Party absolutely did not recruit religious believers, nor did it advocate any view of the world after death. If these old rules of funeral procession must be raised to the level of principle, that would be engaging in feudal superstition. However, Xie Mingxian didn't care at this time. That part of brain cells in his mind controlling Provincial Party Secretary Xie Mingxian was still active. If someone questioned Xie Mingxian why he did this at this time, Xie Mingxian would definitely tell that person calmly that he didn't actually believe in this, but his mother did, and Xie Mingxian did this entirely for peace of mind.

Simply but without missing a single link, he completed the traditional funeral procedures. Xie Mingxian found that as long as no thought of showing off to others was mixed in, and as long as no meaningless gaudiness was mixed in, these traditional funeral procedures effectively organized the process of people painfully separating from their relatives. Every step expressed grief, and the completion of every step could roughly give a little comfort to the psychology of the living.

As a former Xiucai of the Qing Dynasty, Xie Mingxian knew very well that the "Doctrine of the Mean" said: occupy the position, practice the rites, play the music, respect what they honored, love what they were intimate with; serve the dead as if they were living, serve the departed as if they were present; this is the perfection of filial piety.

Xie Mingxian finally felt that for the living, this was indeed a good way to greatly alleviate the pain of losing a loved one. Although this actually had no effect on the dead.

It was also at this time that Xie Mingxian heard a knock on the door from outside first, and then someone shouted: "Is Brother Mingxian in?"

Xie Mingxian's fighting nerve immediately became active. Holding a funeral and burying relatives was originally just a very private matter, but in human society, this was not a simple private matter. At least in the eyes of many people, it was not a private matter. This is not a joke. In the summary of people's bankruptcy caused by borrowing loans when the People's Party did social surveys, the reason "weddings and funerals" ranked second, and ordinary people's bankruptcy caused by eating, drinking, whoring, gambling, and smoking was far behind "weddings and funerals."

For Xie Mingxian, holding such a simple funeral was impossible to make him bankrupt. Moreover, Xie Mingxian's father Xie Fuzheng didn't even use Xie Mingxian's money. From the coffin, clothes, even the red envelopes distributed to the coffin bearers, and the wine and food to entertain those who helped, facts proved that Xie Fuzheng had prepared all this long ago. However, reality proved that even if the Xie family kept such a low profile, there were still people unwilling to let the Xie family go.

At this time, there was no one else in the courtyard. The secretary looked at Xie Mingxian. Xie Mingxian waved his hand to him, signaling the secretary not to open the door or answer first. Those people outside urged Xie Mingxian to make up his mind. He originally wasn't sure what to bury with his mother. Putting copper coins in the mouth, or even gold, silver, and beautiful jade, couldn't make Xie Mingxian feel anything to be proud of. Xie Mingxian took off his party emblem from the shirt inside his clothes and pinned it seriously on the pillow by his mother's head. Xie Mingxian found that this was the thing that truly made him feel proud and could entrust his grief.

Regardless of how they knocked on the door or shouted outside, Xie Mingxian called the secretary over to close the coffin together. He breathed a sigh of relief, wiped away tears, and tidied his clothes. Only then did Xie Mingxian go to open the door.

A large crowd of people gathered outside the door darkly. At such a critical juncture of spring plowing, these people didn't go to work in the fields but ran to Xie Mingxian's house, which really made Xie Mingxian feel very disappointed.

The one knocking on the door was the one who claimed to be Xie Mingxian's childhood classmate yesterday, with several old men standing behind. Seeing the door open, that "classmate" poked his head in to look first. There were no comrades from the troops in the courtyard at all. The "classmate" then withdrew his body and said to Xie Mingxian as if relieved of a heavy burden: "Brother Mingxian, how are you planning to give our aunt a grand funeral?"

Xie Mingxian said in a very calm tone: "No grand funeral. I plan to bury my mother today, and this matter ends here."

"What?!" Xie Mingxian's classmate immediately screamed. He looked Xie Mingxian up and down slightly exaggeratedly, "Brother Mingxian, you are such a big official now. Speaking of which, this is also a former governor. If you handle our aunt's funeral like this, you will be laughed at."

"Hehe," Xie Mingxian sneered a few times. He and his mother had lived amidst people's jokes for decades. This group of people who had mocked Xie Mingxian actually had the face to say that Xie Mingxian would be laughed at for handling the funeral simply. This was really too "humorous."

Seeing Xie Mingxian sneer, that "classmate" also knew what Xie Mingxian was sneering at. A look of embarrassment flashed across his face, and then the "classmate" leaned forward, almost whispering against Xie Mingxian's ear, "Brother Mingxian, there were indeed people who laughed at you before, but if you handle our aunt's matter grandly this time, who would dare to laugh at you when this matter is mentioned in the future? Why don't you understand?!"

Xie Mingxian wanted very much to question his "classmate": who do you think you are? But anyway, the People's Party had discipline, and Xie Mingxian was unwilling to intensify contradictions meaninglessly. He stepped back slightly and said indifferently: "Let them laugh if they want to. This is how I do things. If everyone has nothing else, then hurry to the fields to work. We will finish the funeral ourselves."

Seeing that Xie Mingxian refused to give in, that "classmate" had no choice, and they dared not really do anything to Xie Mingxian. The "classmate" turned his head in difficulty to look at the several old men behind him.

The "Granduncle" from yesterday saw that Xie Mingxian was impervious to reason and knew that Xie Mingxian's "classmate" could not persuade Xie Mingxian no matter what. He stepped forward, "Mingxian, how close your mother was to you back then. Every time I saw your mother taking you out, she protected you like a chick. Do you have the heart to let your mother be buried just like this? Can you still be considered filial?!"

Hearing this "Granduncle" question his filial piety like this, it actually wiped out the little bit of guilt remaining in Xie Mingxian's heart completely. No matter how Xie Mingxian blamed himself, if he showed weakness to this group of people and was manipulated by them at this time, Xie Mingxian felt that this would be the greatest unfilial piety to his mother.

Standing steadily at his own door, Xie Mingxian said calmly: "Granduncle, whether I am filial or not, my mother knows, and I know myself. This is a matter between us mother and son. My mother can't hear whatever you say now, so why bother? Granduncle, I'm afraid you have been standing for quite a while. I think you shouldn't tire yourself out; why not go home and rest for a while first?"

Hearing Xie Mingxian's words, the faces of these people in front changed greatly, while someone behind couldn't help snickering.

"Granduncle" kept a straight face, chattering about how unfilial Xie Mingxian was doing this and how he let down Xie Mingxian's mother. The secretary behind Xie Mingxian was already full of anger and was about to step forward to say something when Xie Mingxian stopped him. At this time, Xie Mingxian had completely figured it out. Not only Xie Mingxian himself, but his father Xie Fuzheng, who was entertaining guests in the back room at this time, didn't care at all about what these people in the village would say. Even if Xie Mingxian's "reputation was ruined" in his hometown from now on, and even those surrounding places also thought Xie Mingxian's "reputation was ruined," so what? Xie Mingxian would eat when he should eat, sleep when he should sleep, and live as he should live. As long as the system established by the People's Party existed, no one could openly harm any person living a normal life. Let others say what they want.

Seeing Xie Mingxian looking determined like a crow eating a weight, and "Granduncle" having cursed and attacked for a good while, seemingly tired quite a bit. Finally, "Granduncle" stopped talking. He paused to pant for a moment before continuing to ask: "Then Mingxian, how exactly do you plan to hold the funeral?"

"I'll carry my mother out and bury her; that's how the funeral will be held." Xie Mingxian replied.

Hearing this, "Granduncle" sneered, "Then where do you plan to go out from?"

Xie Mingxian felt quite strange in his heart; what was this strange question about? Maintaining his calmness, Xie Mingxian replied: "Just carry her out through the door. What is there to ask about where to go out from?"

A big sneer appeared on "Granduncle's" face, "This is not a rule of the Xie family alone; this is an old rule of thousands of years. A concubine! When dead, she cannot go through the door. A hole must be chiseled in the wall to go out from the hole."

Now, before Xie Mingxian made a sound, the secretary was truly furious. If it was a small conflict before, what this "Granduncle" said now clearly showed that he wanted to confront to the end.

How could Xie Mingxian not guess the secretary's reaction? He turned his head and pressed the secretary's shoulder, telling this young man to calm down. Turning back, Xie Mingxian asked loudly: "Then what if I insist on carrying the person out through the main gate?"

Granduncle did not give in either. He pointed to the door and said: "We old guys will move chairs and sit at the door. If you want to go out, just crush over us!"