“Evil thing?” Huo Wei’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, it’s a long story. Come to think of it, I should have told that red-eyed Daoist priest about it when I ran into him this morning, but he was quite fierce and sinister. He scared me so much I forgot…I’ve only remembered it now.”
Tired from standing, Chen Binglong simply sat down on the spot and began telling the story without prompting.
“Let me tell you three in detail! This Mitou Village makes its living by growing tea. You city folks might not know this, but growing tea is a job where you work a lot and earn little, and it all depends on the heavens for a meal. Do you know what ‘depending on the heavens for a meal’ means? It means if the heavens are kind, the people below get to eat, but if the heavens are displeased and the harvest is bad, then the whole year is ruined! So the people here like to worship gods, it’s just finding themselves a faith, which is quite normal. Because the mountain behind them is called Hubizi Mountain, and the mountain god they worship is called the Hubizi God.
“All around here, at least thirty years ago, basically whichever area you were in, you believed in whichever god that area had, and each area’s god protected different things. Like the people here in Mitou Village, they believed that as long as you were diligent enough, the Hubizi God would bring them good weather and good harvests, and even the health and fortune of their family members were under the Hubizi God’s jurisdiction. If someone in the family had a minor illness or misfortune, it meant you were lazy, not diligent enough, and you’d angered the Hubizi God. So what did you have to do? You had to work twice as hard, accumulate blessings through labor, and then the Hubizi God would forgive you.”
Although gods and ghosts both fell under the category of the metaphysics, for nether path spirit masters, ghosts were something you could actually see, but gods were ethereal and unseen.
Every sect had its own taboos. Aside from occasionally paying respects to their founding patriarch, the spirit master lineage generally didn’t have contact with gods or Buddhas in their daily lives.
They didn’t even believe in the most widely worshipped gods, so naturally they wouldn’t believe that this small village’s little mountain god was real either.
So to them, Chen Binglong’s story inevitably sounded dull and nonsensical.
Zhuge Buhuo urged: “Just get to the point already, what does ‘evil thing’ mean? What happened here before?”
“That brings us back to that little girl with the braids.”
Chen Binglong cleared his throat, “If I remember right, that girl should be called Wu…”
Zhuge Buyi reminded him, “Wu Renmei.”
“Right, Wu Renmei, that name is quite unique. Her brother’s called Wu Renshuai. One ‘mei’ (beautiful) and one ‘shuai’ (handsome).”
Chen Binglong chuckled:
“Her family had no parents, I remember they should have gone out to work…anyway they never came back. Besides her, there was only her brother and an old woman in the home. I forgot whether it was her paternal or maternal grandmother, anyway, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is her brother.”
“That kid was born slow. At four years old he still couldn’t walk properly, and couldn’t speak clearly either. The villagers didn’t really like their family. Do you know why? Because the young people in that family had restless hearts, they were unwilling to stay in the tea gardens and work. Their hearts were wild, running off and not coming home. Giving birth to such a slow child was the mountain god’s retribution.”
“The old woman wasn’t happy either. The young ones had run off and left her, an old widow, at home. Who was going to do the work? Who was going to plant and pick tea? Who was going to raise the kids? The elderly, having heard that same set of beliefs for generations, believed it too. So, she even wanted to abandon the mentally challenged child instead of raising him. But the little girl felt sorry for her brother. Whenever the old woman threw the child away, she’d secretly carry him back. When the old woman didn’t want to take care of him, she did it herself. The old woman’s heart softened and she just let her be.”
“So the child stayed, but the Hubizi God was still angry. What to do? The old woman tried to atone by doing everything herself. All year round, she did all the work in their family’s tea garden, busy as a bee and never with a moment’s rest. Wu Renmei helped too, but she was just a little girl, how much could you expect her to do? Most of it was still shouldered by the old woman alone.”
“In fact, it wasn’t just the tea garden. Whenever there was a funeral or a wedding in the village, she’d be the first to rush over and help. She was the most diligent and did the most work, all in the hope that the mountain god would see her sincerity and stop making her family’s mentally challenged child suffer.”
“But it was no use! The child didn’t get any better at all. Not only was his mind slow, he also got a seizure disorder-epilepsy! The villagers said the mountain god had come to take the child away, or that he’d been possessed by something unclean. Anyway, they blamed it all on that pair of wild, lazy husband and wife who ran away, saying that escaping labor and leaving the mountains meant they couldn’t atone for their sins even if their parents worked themselves to death!”
“And then guess what? In the year the child got epilepsy, the heavens grew angry. That year’s harvest was so bad every household was sighing and lamenting with no way to make a living. The old woman also collapsed from exhaustion, too sick to even get out of bed. Although the villagers didn’t say anything openly and helped out where they could, privately they all felt her family was a bad omen. And all misfortune was because of that young couple that had run away.”
“…That’s absurd. It’s wrong to not want to stay in the mountains and want to go out and make a living?” Huo Wei frowned, genuinely unable to understand.
“Pfft, it was the 1990s, and in a remote, backward little village. So it was quite normal.”
Chen Binglong waved his hand and continued.
“With the old woman sick, the only able-bodied person left in the household who could run and jump was Wu Renmei. But she was just a little girl, she didn’t understand anything. She only knew that the adults believed in gods, so she ran to the mountain god temple on the mountainside every day, probably to pray for the mountain god’s protection or something. I’m not too clear about what happened after that. Anyway, one day, her brother went missing, and in the middle of the night, a big fire suddenly broke out in her house.”
“The summer that year was particularly harsh and really dry. A spark could set a whole area ablaze, and it was hard to put out. In a few hours, it burned down half the village and the tea gardens behind it. After that I really don’t know. I think a lot of people died. Anyway, I felt that this place was unlucky and eerie, so I never came back.”
The story should have ended here. The three were silent for a moment, then it was Zhuge Buyi who spoke first:
“How do you know all this? You came to Mitou Village thirty years ago. What for?”
“Me? I was just a lazy good for nothing young man back then,” Chen Binglong chuckled:
“I had a bit of money at the time and heard that the tea here is good, so I wanted to do some business. You know you have to find the source for stock, right? I used to go over mountains and through valleys into these little villages to negotiate prices directly with the tea farmers. Cutting out the middlemen saved a lot of money. I stayed in Mitou Village for a long time because their tea quality was good and sold well. I was even thinking of a long-term partnership, but who knew something like this would happen just a few years later?”
Listening, Zhuge Buyi nodded.
Having asked and heard everything he needed, he looked at Huo Wei and Zhuge Buhuo. In this completely unfamiliar, perilous, and increasingly eerie place, having lost Fu Sang, he proactively took on the role of command:
“Wu Renmei has run off somewhere. We need to find her. Since she’s the protagonist of the story both thirty years ago and thirty years later, then everything here might be under her control, and only she should know where Fu Sang is.”
Huo Wei was frightened earlier, and now just mentioning Wu Renmei’s name gave her goosebumps.
But then again, if it was for finding Fu Sang, she could grit her teeth and go through it.
So she nodded. Before leaving, she remembered to instruct Chen Binglong:
“It’s your bad luck to be caught up in this. Just stay here. If we find a way out, we’ll come back for you.”
“Hehe… well, thank you so much!” Chen Binglong rubbed his hands together, held back again and again, but still couldn’t resist asking out of curiosity:
“…So you guys really are in this line of work, right? Is Wu Renmei human or ghost? She’s a ghost, right? Can she hurt people? Is she fierce? Can you guys take her down? Do you need any help? Are you confident? Is there anything I can do???”
“No need. Just stay put and don’t cause trouble.”
Zhuge Buhuo really couldn’t stand this uncle’s slick demeanor. He waved his hand impatiently, and only remembered to ask as he was leaving:
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Me? I’m Chen Binglong.”
“Chen…?” Zhuge Buyi beside him was startled upon hearing this name.
He looked at Chen Binglong and confirmed:
“Which three characters?”
…
“Whoosh whoosh, wind blows strong…”
“Drip drop, rain falls down…”
“Pat pat pat, hurry home…”
“Haha… ahahaha…”
Irritating noise came from outside the dilapidated temple. Fu Sang frowned and glanced toward the door.
Qi Changying sat cross-legged under an old tree not far from the dilapidated temple, chanting nursery rhymes while tickling Wu Renshuai’s armpits, making the little ghost giggle foolishly and writhe on the ground like a maggot.
‘How boring.’ Fu Sang rolled his eyes slightly.
Not wanting to listen at all, he casually cast a talisman, isolating the insufferable children’s channel outside the temple.
The world returned to peace. He held up a flashlight and carefully examined the mountain god temple.
He had already roughly gone through Mitou Village once. Most of the buildings inside had been licked by fire to some extent, with the area around Wu Renmei’s house the most severely burned. Only the buildings near the village entrance were intact, but they looked like they hadn’t been lived in for a considerable time.
Then there was this dilapidated temple hidden halfway up the mountain.
Earlier Qi Changying had said Wu Renshuai’s death was related to that ugly thing, the Hubizi God, which was why he reacted so violently to the statue.
Fu Sang didn’t know if gods really existed in this world, but he knew that in these remote mountains and deep forests, most of these obscure, odd “gods” were fabricated by humans as spiritual crutches.
Since gods weren’t real, Wu Renshuai couldn’t have died because of a god.
If not because of a god, then it had to be because of humans.
Ghosts below a certain rank couldn’t stray too far from where they died. They were trapped in this space, unable to find release.
And the more tragically someone died, the more strongly their ghost would react to things related to their death.
Just like how Wu Renshuai insisted on biting the statue to pieces.
He met both of those criteria.
Fu Sang had inspected the village and found that all the statues in Mitou Village had been gnawed clean by Wu Renshuai, but there was one place that might not have fallen victim to his poison mouth yet.
This dilapidated temple.
Sure enough, the closer they got to the mountain god temple, the more violently Wu Renshuai reacted, and he desperately tried to escape.
But it was fine now, because after Qi Changying’s intervention, although the little ghost still didn’t want to enter the temple, he was no longer in distress, and was even giggling creepily from the tickling.
Children, whether alive or dead, are annoying.
They are annoying when they’re fussing, and even more annoying when they’re laughing.
Now with the children’s channel on mute, the whole world seemed to quiet down, and Fu Sang could finally concentrate on observing the interior of the mountain god temple.
His memory was decent. For instance, he could confirm that this dilapidated temple, aside from not having its windows boarded up with planks, was identical in every other way to the one inside the small domain.
Even the clutter piled inside was more or less the same.
Fu Sang took a look around.
When he’d caught Chen Binglong inside the small domain, Fu Sang had also taken note of the miscellaneous items in the temple. After all, although he didn’t believe in gods, he knew that a normal temple wouldn’t have personal household items like tables, chairs, benches, beds, clothes racks, or cardboard boxes placed inside.
But Chen Binglong said he’d been hiding in the temple for over half a month, so it made sense for the place he stayed to have these things. Still, the origin of these items was questionable.
Now it seemed that question might not be necessary after all, because it appeared those objects weren’t things Chen Binglong had gathered himself, but were originally in the temple.
But that made things even stranger…
Assuming the temple had been like this even before Mitou Village was consumed by fire, then back when the villagers still worshiped the Hubizi God, who could have moved their home in here and lived openly?
If he remembered correctly, such behavior should be considered a great disrespect to the god, and the person would have been tied to a stake and burned alive by fanatical believers.
With questions in mind, Fu Sang casually rummaged through the boxes beside him, trying to find something that could tell him who the owner of this place was.
But before he found anything useful, he was first drawn by a piece of yellow plastic sheeting that had been crumpled up and shoved between the boxes.
The color was quite eye-catching, but Fu Sang had no memory of it at all, which could only mean it hadn’t appeared in the small domain before.
—It was suspicious.
Fu Sang had a remarkably precise intuition for these things.
The sheeting was the most ordinary plastic woven tarp. It was very large, very dirty, and covered in dust.
Fu Sang picked up a corner and shook it open.
As the fabric unfurled, an indescribable smell hit him.
It was both fishy and putrid.
Fu Sang frowned, looking down at the inside of the plastic sheeting, the source of that stench.
There was a large dried, blackened stain inside.
As if some liquid had been spilled, and the filth hadn’t been cleaned, but had simply dried there over several years.
As for what kind of liquid it was…
Whether it belonged to a person or an animal was unclear for now, but it was blood.
After observing for a while, Fu Sang tossed the sheeting aside.
He was dusting off his hands when his peripheral vision caught a red figure that had somehow appeared at the entrance of the temple.
He raised an eyebrow slightly and turned his gaze.
He saw Qi Changying, along with his voice, blocked outside by the talisman. He was looking at him with eager eyes, clearly wanting something.
So Fu Sang flicked his hand. With a soft clink of the Ghost Blood Whip, the talisman was withdrawn, and Qi Changying could finally come to his side.
But to Fu Sang’s surprise, Qi Changying didn’t come over to smell him or do anything else.
He only hurriedly said “Come look” to him, then directly took his hand.
Not the wrist, but the hand.
The Crimson Evil’s cool touch met Fu Sang’s palm, and he(Qi Changying) curled his fingers to gently hold it.
Perhaps because it was the first time in his life, the process felt drawn out. Fu Sang frowned, then looked up at Qi Changying, his eyes conveying disapproval of his behavior.
But Qi Changying didn’t notice his gaze.
So Fu Sang lowered his eyes and pursed his lips, though he didn’t pull away.
Qi Changying led him to the old tree outside the temple that had been serving as a temporary daycare.
Wu Renshuai sat crouched there. Seeing the one who’d hit him approaching, he didn’t offer a friendly face, still baring his teeth and hissing at him viciously.
Fu Sang thought he needed another beating.
However, before he could quickly turn his thoughts into action, Qi Changying first let go of him and walked over quickly.
He went to Wu Renshuai’s side, crouched down, and held the child’s shoulders to soothe him. Then he hesitated slightly, looking up at Fu Sang.
“What are you trying to show me?” Fu Sang was running out of patience. He stood at a moderate distance, arms crossed, and asked.
Qi Changying didn’t speak. He only frowned slightly, lowered his head to whisper something to Wu Renshuai, and then lifted the child’s clothes with his hand.
Wu Renshuai was wearing a loose fitting old man’s undershirt. It was clearly not a child’s size, and it looked like a dress on him.
Qi Changying held the edge of this loose undershirt and slowly pulled it up.
What could Qi Changying possibly be trying to show him by lifting the kid’s shirt?
Fu Sang didn’t pay much attention at first, but soon, his gaze froze…
Because Wu Renshuai’s abdominal cavity was empty.
Empty in the physical sense.
The child’s stomach had been split wide open, and the reddish-black wound gaped open.
There were no internal organs.
At least Fu Sang didn’t see any.
