Fu Sang finished this meal to the sound of retching coming and going.
Of course, he himself didn’t eat a single bite. Although he wasn’t picky, eating raw, charred lumps of charcoal was beyond the scope of “not being picky.”
That’s called pica.
It’s a psychological disorder.
After the meal, Wu Renmei yawned and went inside to take a nap. The other four people in the small household finally had a moment to sit in the yard and compare notes.
As the “youngest child” in the family, Zhuge Buyi received the most “care”. Wu Renmei forced him to eat a big bowl of rice. He had just finished vomiting and was now rinsing his mouth with clean water in the corner.
“Can someone explain to me how my younger brother ended up in this godforsaken place??” Seeing his younger brother’s face at the door just now, Zhuge Buhuo really thought he was dreaming.
“It’s a long story…” The whole cause and effect was hard to explain, but fortunately, Fu Sang summarized it for him:
“I went to Shanghai to help someone with Feng Shui and ran into him trying to steal my business. I generously gave up the deal, but he wouldn’t let it go and followed me all the way to Yongfu, like a piece of sticky candy I couldn’t shake off. I’m quite helpless too.”
Hearing Fu Sang calmly fabricating so many details, Zhuge Buyi became anxious: “That’s not how it was! He was being mysterious, saying that you sent him a dream informing him you were in danger here. I was worried about you and couldn’t reach you, so I followed him here!”
“Me? Send him a dream?” Zhuge Buhuo scoffed, “He was conning you. Would he care if I lived or died? Obviously, he couldn’t reach this goth girl, so he came looking using her chat history reports! If it was just me in this godforsaken place, would he even give me a glance?”
When it came to exposing Fu Sang’s true nature, Zhuge Buhuo was terrifyingly astute.
“Who are you calling goth girl?” Huo Wei kicked his stool.
With that, the veil that had been over Zhuge Buyi’s eyes the whole time was finally pierced.
He looked at Fu Sang, holding onto a last shred of hope, “You lied to me?”
Fu Sang admitted openly: “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re stupid.”
Zhuge Buyi was struck as if by lightning.
In fact, Fu Sang hadn’t actually intended to bring Zhuge Buyi along on this trip. After all, no normal person would willingly go find themselves a big dead weight that would hold them back, and he didn’t want more people from the Zhuge family to know about Qi Changying.
He only wanted to ask Zhuge Buyi if he could contact his brother, to confirm whether Huo Wei’s loss of contact was due to an accident on her end.
Who knew this kid would be so hard to deal with, and was so devoted to his brother. He clung to him all the way from Shanghai to Yongfu…even the grueling journey of bus, shared bike, hard-seat train, then another long-distance bus couldn’t shake him off. With no other choice, and pitying his eagerness to save his brother, he decided to bring him along. Fortunately, he was a gullible college student, easily coaxed into taking the blood oath during breakfast.
Of course, at the moment he decided to bring him, pity for the genuine affection between brothers was only a very small, negligible part. Fu Sang was more interested in the “family’s number one genius” title attached to him, thinking this person might not be a coward and could be of some use.
Who knew that “number one genius” only referred to memorizing books quickly and well, while his practical combat adaptability was a grand total of zero.
People like him had no business being on the nether path…Hengshui was where he truly belonged.
**Hengshui is a city in Hebei province, China that’s famous nationwide for its tyrannical exam-preparation high schools (especially Hengshui High School), which is a symbol of intense academic pressure, militarized study schedules, and grind culture.
It turned out that a family still couldn’t produce two different kinds of people; it was really one nest, two idiots.
“I’m warning you, you surnamed Fu, you can insult me, but you can’t insult my little brother!” Zhuge Buhuo pointed at him, then helped Zhuge Buyi brush off the dust, managing to squeeze in a moment of sympathy: “What happened to you? Did you piss off that little brat?”
“Not really…” Zhuge Buyi scratched his head. “I came here with Little Martial Uncle, but when we got to the village entrance, he disappeared in the blink of an eye. I went into the village alone, walking around looking for you guys, when that little girl ran over calling me Didi, saying something about eating that I didn’t understand. After I refused twice, she got angry, and then weird things grew out of the ground. I couldn’t beat them, so I had to come with her.”
“Let me tell you, don’t associate with this guy surnamed Fu. He’s sinister. He’d sell you off and you’d still be counting the money for him!”
Aside from the part where he lost his martial uncle, Zhuge Buyi’s other experiences were quite similar to those of Zhuge Buhuo and the others, so the older brother quickly shared his wisdom, “It’s like this. Although we don’t know why, the village we’re in now is very eerie. Since she calls you Didi, you have to play the role of her Didi. Her Didi is called Wu Renshuai, he has an intellectual disability and is mentally challenged. Remember, don’t act too smart. You have to do whatever she tells you to do. From now on, you are Wu Renshuai. You live in this courtyard. Except when she tells you to go out, you can’t step out of this courtyard. You must do everything according to her arrangements to stay safe.”
Fu Sang, as an outsider, really shouldn’t intrude on the brothers’ private family talk, but it was just too funny.
“Just stay in this courtyard? Follow her arrangements? Stay safe? The world outside is too glamorous, are you really going to make a home here and stay forever?”
No wonder they’d been here two days and hadn’t figured out a damn thing…they were too absorbed in role-playing they lingered in fascination.
“Don’t just talk from over there without understanding the situation!” Zhuge Buhuo pointed at the courtyard gate, “If you dare, try going out!”
What was there to be afraid of?
Hearing this, Fu Sang shrugged, walked briskly to the door, and dramatically stepped across the threshold.
Then, through the doorframe, he looked back at the few people in the courtyard from a distance and spread his arms.
Showing off his intact, 99% new self.
“Hey…”
Zhuge Buhuo silently put his hands on his hips.
He glanced at the room where Wu Renmei was sleeping.
“That’s not right…”
As the family’s “A Ma,” he had tried to sneak away last night while Wu Renmei was fast asleep. But as soon as one foot crossed the threshold, he couldn’t lift his back foot. It was as if the sole was stuck to the ground with super glue. Turning around, Wu Renmei was standing quietly behind him, asking where he was going.
“What’s your identity? What does Wu Renmei call you?” Huo Wei leaned against the side with her arms crossed, hitting the key point.
“Big Brother.” Fu Sang answered briefly.
“Big Brother? Where did Wu Renmei get a big brother? There were only three people in the family photo.” Zhuge Buhuo was dumbfounded.
“She calls me A Ma, calls Goth Girl Ah Tian, and calls my brother Didi… What did she say to you when you first met?”
“She asked if I was here as a guest.”
“Pa!”
Zhuge Buhuo clapped his hands, exchanged a look with Huo Wei, and understood, “You’re not from this family, so she doesn’t care if you leave the house!”
“Then I’m quite free.” Fu Sang agreed.
Since he was already out, he couldn’t be bothered to go back and talk nonsense with these people. He turned to leave.
“Hey… where are you going?” Zhuge Buhuo called out to him.
“To find a way out of here.” Fu Sang said calmly, “Born in hardship, die in comfort…this is the second lesson Uncle is teaching you. Don’t wander around unnecessarily. Before I come back, just curl up in your shell according to your safe survival plan. Don’t cause trouble for Uncle.”
“Are you coming back for dinner tonight?” Huo Wei looked at her one and only lifeline with eager eyes.
“If it’s the same as lunch, then no. I don’t deserve that good fortune.”
Fu Sang waved his hand as a farewell and sauntered onto the potholed stone path at the entrance.
This village wasn’t big. Wu Renmei’s courtyard was already deep and far inside the village. A couple more steps led to a small path going up the back mountain.
Given that the village itself was built deep in the mountains, the existence of this path struck Fu Sang as slightly eerie.
Where did it lead?
Given that the structure of this mountain was a large domain nested with smaller domains, since the small domain had started the moment he entered the village, theoretically it should end the moment he left the village.
But Fu Sang looked left and right and didn’t see anything resembling the deep dark void at the village entrance anywhere along this path.
Did this small domain only allow entry and not exit, or had the small domain not ended yet, with something else at the end of the path?
Fu Sang leaned toward the latter, so he stepped onto the dirt path and continued walking.
He was a man of action. Rather than standing there pondering, he’d just walk faster and go see for himself.
The weather in the small domain was great, with clear skies and not a cloud in sight. But even though the sun was bright and the light was brilliant, it wasn’t very warm on the skin.
Walking into the mountains, the plants here grew especially lush, their outstretched leaves blocking the sunlight, leaving only shade below.
There was indeed something on the mountain, because along the way, Fu Sang saw grave mounds of various sizes scattered not far from the path, along with unconscious wandering souls lingering and drifting through the cemetery.
The saying goes “living off the mountain, eating from the mountain.” People who live by the mountains naturally bury themselves in the mountains after death, this was a normal phenomenon.
Out of professional habit, Fu Sang always took a few extra looks when passing a graveyard. After passing a few, he frowned slightly, vaguely feeling that the arrangement of those grave mounds was a bit odd.
Their placement seemed to have no regard for any rules…wherever they dreamed, they buried; wherever there was space, they buried. A few graves were even built in Feng Shui dead zones.
If someone didn’t care about such things at all, it wouldn’t matter, but as far as Fu Sang knew, Yongfu, especially some remote villages, placed great importance on Feng Shui and spirits. This was evident from the handicrafts hanging in Wu Renmei’s house and the reverently placed ugly unknown statue.
It seemed the village’s Feng Shui master wasn’t very reliable.
Withdrawing his gaze, Fu Sang continued walking along the path.
A trace of coldness touched his fingertip, and a wisp of black smoke emerged from the snake-bone nail, winding around his lowered finger. Seeing that he didn’t refuse or stop it, it followed his wrist, his forearm, all the way to his shoulder, and finally solidified into a specific shape behind him.
Qi Changying habitually wanted to lean close to Fu Sang’s ear, but remembering Fu Sang’s earlier words, he kept a bit of distance before speaking, “Those lingering souls have no scent, just like the little girl.”
“Mm, I know.”
“What does that mean?” Qi Changying asked curiously.
Fu Sang glanced at him, didn’t answer his question, but instead said, “Do you remember the big, flat, square iron box I have at home?”
“Yes.” Qi Changying nodded.
“Have you seen people inside it?”
“Yes.”
“Do they have a scent?”
“No.”
“Then would you think those people are really inside the box?”
“You told me they are just moving pictures.”
“Mhm.”
“……What you mean is, the people in this village aren’t real either. They’re just moving pictures too?”
Fu Sang felt that Qi Changying was smarter than Zhuge Buyi. At least he thought for himself instead of constantly asking “why.”
So his mood improved a bit. He had originally planned to explain a little more to Qi Changying, using something like immersive VR equipment as an analogy, but then he remembered that this ignorant ghost didn’t know what VR was either, and with his curiosity, he would definitely ask until he got to the bottom of it once he encountered an unfamiliar term. So he got annoyed again and didn’t continue expanding on the topic.
“If they are just moving pictures, why is Young Master Zhuge still so wary?”
“……Can’t you just call him by his name?” Fu Sang sometimes really couldn’t stand Qi Changying’s laughable ancient habits.
“Because he’s stupid. He’s been here two days and still hasn’t figured out the problem, just stupidly going on about ghosts. Besides, aside from the actors, there’s also a director behind the play.”
He still mentioned two new concepts that Qi Changying didn’t understand.
Qi Changying’s eyes widened slightly, about to ask something else, but the next moment, he seemed to be drawn by something.
Noticing this, Fu Sang looked up in the direction of Qi Changying’s gaze.
At the end of this small path was a dilapidated temple hidden halfway up the mountain.
Fu Sang called it a “dilapidated” temple without any personal bias, purely objective description. Even calling it a “temple” was an overstatement.
It was just a dilapidated house that couldn’t even shelter from wind and rain. At the entrance sat a large iron incense burner missing a leg. There was no incense inside, just ash.
Fu Sang went over, dipped his fingertip into the ash, brought it to his nose to sniff, then frowned and turned away.
He walked straight toward the dilapidated temple’s door.
Qi Changying reminded him in time,
“There seems to be someone inside.”
Fu Sang raised an eyebrow slightly, indicating he knew.
He stood in front of the door, which was barely closed, but didn’t rush in.
After standing still for a moment, he raised his long leg and kicked open the two broken wooden doors in front of him.
As the doors swung open under the force, he noticed a strange scraping sound from above the doorframe.
The next second, a dark shadow flashed before Fu Sang’s eyes. A heavy object fell from the door. With a “clang,” it slammed heavily onto the ground, raising a thick cloud of dust.
Fu Sang looked down, a hint of mockery flashing in his eyes.
It was an iron plate densely studded with long nails, points facing downward. The entire plate had been propped between the two doors. Anyone pushing the doors open would cause the iron plate to lose its support and fall freely, and the person underneath would either be impaled or have their skull cracked open.
A crude trick.
“Bang!”
Another abrupt noise came from the other end of the dilapidated temple, as if something had fallen to the ground.
Fu Sang looked up.
The temple was pitch black inside. Almost all the broken holes, doors, and windows had been nailed shut with wooden planks, with only slivers of light coming through the gaps between the planks. The noise earlier sounded like someone had moved and thrown something aside, because a large patch of light had suddenly appeared in the darkness. It was daylight streaming in through a dog hole in the corner of the wall.
But the light was quickly blocked, because someone was kneeling on the ground, trying to crawl out through the dog hole.
Realizing this, Fu Sang raised his hand. The Ghost Blood Whip moved at his will, flying to bind the man’s limbs. Then he formed a hand seal and yanked back. With the man’s terrified wail, he was dragged like a sack to appear before Fu Sang.
Suddenly dragged from darkness into the light, the man squeezed his eyes shut tightly, a pained expression on his face.
Fu Sang gave him a quick once-over.
He was a rather portly middle-aged man, around forty or fifty years old, plump and round but not tall. Visually, he looked like the festive New Year’s suckling pig tied up for slaughter.
What surprised Fu Sang a little was that this really was a human.
A living person who, like him and the village’s A Ma, Ah Tian, and Didi, had wandered into this place by mistake.
Unfortunately, Fu Sang treated humans and ghosts the same.
He was even worse to humans.
He raised his foot and kicked the man’s thigh hard, “Name, identity, purpose. Speak clearly, or die.”
“…Brother, little brother, little brother, spare my life!”
Hearing the word “die,” the man clearly panicked, stammering, “I, I’m called Chen Binglong. ‘Chen’ as in the ear radical, ‘Bing’ as in the third heavenly stem, and ‘Long’ as in the dragon that flies in the sky. I don’t have any identity, just a passerby! And I have no purpose either, really! That thing on the door just now wasn’t aimed at you…I mean, we have no grudges, I’ve never even met you before, why would I want to harm you? It’s just that this place is too eerie, I was scared, so I set that up for self-defense… You’re human, right? I can see you’re breathing, you’re alive, right? Are you a Daoist master or something? A fellow practitioner… Please spare me, spare my life, okay?”
The man’s small features were squeezed together in the middle of his round, rough face, his smile ingratiating.
