“Thud!”
A muffled thud suddenly came from beside her.
Wu Renmei came back to her senses and saw Ah Tian collapsed on the ground, her face pale.
“Holy crap, what was that sound?” In the dead of night, any noise would be highlighted by the silence, and this almost immediately caught the attention of the two men in the temple.
Wu Renmei knew they had to leave.
She wiped the tears that had streamed down her face at some point and reached out to pull Ah Tian up.
But perhaps because she was too frightened or for some other reason, Ah Tian seemed unable to move her legs. Even though Wu Renmei used all her strength, she still could not pull Ah Tian up from the ground.
In her memory, the sky that night was exceptionally clear, and the moon was unusually bright.
Moonlight spread a veil of white light across the ground, but around the corner of the temple’s mud wall, a shadow slowly cut through the white veil. The tear grew larger and larger, until finally, a man covered in blood appeared in Wu Renmei’s field of vision, holding a pair of scissors dripping with blood.
At that moment, it was as if someone had pressed the mute button on Wu Renmei’s world.
She couldn’t help but scream, but she barely heard herself.
When she came to her senses, her throat was already sore, and she had reflexively scrambled to her feet.
She ran down the mountain as fast as she could.
When faced with overwhelming fear, people often lose their reason and only follow their survival instincts.
Just like Wu Renmei. It was only after she ran along the path behind the mountain temple until she was exhausted, missed a step and rolled down the slope, finally lying in the grass staring at the round moon in the sky, that she suddenly realized she had left Ah Tian behind.
Wu Renmei couldn’t help but burst into tears.
She covered her face and curled up in a ball in the grass.
She thought, she was really a bad sister, a bad friend.
She had personally sent her younger brother to be disemboweled, dragged her friend up the mountain in the middle of the night, and then left her friend in front of that demon.
She didn’t dare imagine what would happen to Ah Tian if she was caught.
She knew she should go back to help Ah Tian and save her.
But she didn’t dare.
She didn’t dare.
Vaguely, she heard movement nearby, as if the man and the doctor had come down to search.
She was terrified. She didn’t want to be caught. Fortunately, she found a relatively hidden cave nearby, big enough for her to crawl into and hide.
She didn’t know how long she had hidden in the cave.
It might have been a really long time, or maybe she was so nervous that time felt unbearably long and difficult.
In short, that night was very long, so long that it seemed like dawn would never come.
Later, because she was too uneasy and restless inside, Wu Renmei couldn’t help but leave the cave. She wanted to quietly climb to a higher place to see where the two men were and whether they were still looking for her. She also wanted to figure out how to avoid them so she could see Ah Tian and the other villagers, how to tell them the truth of what she saw, and how to make the adults punish this big liar who was pretending to be the mountain god, to avenge her brother and Ah Tian.
But when she finally found a high place overlooking the village and struggled to climb up, what she saw was not the village sleeping in the darkness of night…firelight reflected her eyes.
She saw flames devouring the small houses and courtyards, the fire almost swallowing more than half of the village.
The weather had been dry lately. The fire could have started anywhere; as long as a few sparks appeared, the wind would spread it across the area.
It was the middle of night, when everyone was fast asleep. People had no time to put out the fire, and even saving themselves became a problem.
Wu Renmei’s eyes felt dry and sore.
She saw her own house surrounded by the heart of the fire, and she could barely make out the outline of the house through the flames.
That was her only home, and inside was her seriously ill, bedridden A Ma.
Wu Renmei forgot everything else. She ran down the mountain as fast as she could, falling several times along the way, almost rolling from the mountainside all the way to the foot.
The fire woke up the sleeping village. The young and strong men, wearing thin sleepwear, helped put out the fire. Some people were shouting, some were crying. The once peaceful little village seemed to have turned into hell, carrying fire and pain through the night towards dawn.
In the darkest moment before sunrise, Wu Renmei ran along the village paths. She felt neither fatigue nor pain.
She just wanted to go home.
Her vision was blurred by tears, but she wiped them away with her hand before they could fall.
Gritting her teeth, Wu Renmei turned down one path after another, heading towards where she remembered home was.
Several people stood at the entrance of her home. Ah Tian’s hunchbacked grandfather stood there with his cane. When he saw Wu Renmei, he hurried over with his bowed legs, grabbed her shoulders, and asked over and over, “Where is Ah Tian?”
Wu Renmei bit her lip, unable to answer.
People started pointing at her and whispering. Wu Renmei heard them say the fire was the mountain god’s curse, because someone had seen that the fire started from the back wall of the Wu family’s house.
The Wu family’s house was made entirely of wood. The weather was dry, so it caught fire easily. With even a little wind, sparks would fly over and set other places ablaze.
How many people would be left homeless with this fire? How much money and property would the village lose?
It was all their fault.
This was the disaster they brought, they were the ones who dragged the villagers down.
What unlucky ghosts, what jinxes.
“No, that’s not true!”
Unable to bear it any longer, Wu Renmei screamed, cutting them off.
“The man living in the temple is a liar! You’ve all been fooled by him!! He harmed Ah Shuai, he harmed Ah Tian, and he wanted to harm me! He’s not a god at all! No!!!”
Wu Renmei shouted until her voice was hoarse. Crying, she shoved aside the people blocking her way and, ignoring their attempts to stop her, ran headlong toward the house engulfed in flames.
Before, A Ma often told her that children shouldn’t play with fire, because fire was a very dangerous thing. Wu Renmei listened to her and always kept her distance from that hot, orange-red thing.
But this time, she couldn’t back down.
Because A Ma was still inside the house. She was very sick and couldn’t get up on her own without help.
She had to find her and save her.
She had already lost her brother and Ah Tian; she couldn’t lose A Ma too.
Wu Renmei had prepared herself and summoned all her courage, but she still couldn’t get through the flames to find A Ma.
Because when she entered the courtyard, she tripped over the threshold and fell heavily to the ground.
Before she could get up, she saw the pillar of the wooden shed above her break from the fire and come crashing down on her.
Then Wu Renmei couldn’t feel anything anymore.
Tiredness, sleepiness, pain, sadness, fear, heat…
She couldn’t feel anything.
In a daze, she vaguely remembered that this threshold at home hadn’t tripped people up before.
But after that big brother gained the villagers’ approval and moved into the mountain temple, one day, A Ma took a lot of money and invited him to their home to look at the feng shui. She wanted to know what else she could do to make the mountain god happy and make her children’s health improve.
The big brother looked around the house, said a bunch of things Wu Renmei had heard countless times before, like being kind and hardworking… Finally, he told A Ma to raise the threshold of the courtyard gate. He said that every time you step over the threshold, you’re stepping over one of life’s hardships, and it could atone for the family’s sins and accumulate blessings.
A Ma believed the big brother’s words wholeheartedly. The very next day, she hired the best craftsman from town and spent a large sum of money to have a new, high threshold made from the finest wood.
That threshold was really high. At first, Wu Renmei wasn’t used to it and would always trip over it.
Back then, A Ma was still quite healthy. She would be drying tea leaves in the yard, and when she saw Wu Renmei trip, she would quickly walk over with a smile to help her up and gently say:
“Ah Mei, watch your step.”
That was one of Wu Renmei’s few happy memories.
Because A Ma was always very busy, often having no time for her and her brother. But at that moment, A Ma held her in her arms, and she could smell the scent of sunlight and tea leaves on A Ma. Looking up, she could see A Ma smiling and talking to her.
The scene was very warm, very peaceful.
So later, Wu Renmei also loved saying that phrase. Whenever someone came to visit, she would imitate A Ma’s tone from back then and remind them, “Watch your step.”
She should have remembered to lift her leg a little higher when stepping over the threshold. She should have gotten used to this a long time ago.
But this time, she forgot again, and fell again.
But this time, no one could help her up anymore.
Wu Renmei’s world was swallowed by fire and darkness. When she woke up again…
She didn’t expect to wake up again at all.
At that time, she wasn’t sure whether she was alive or already dead, and she didn’t know what had happened.
She only knew that when she opened her eyes again, the small village she had lived in for over a decade had turned into a charred, black ruin.
She wandered aimlessly through the village, not finding a single living soul. She was so lonely it felt like she was the only person left in the world.
She didn’t understand. Only one night had passed…why had things turned out like this?
This place was so familiar yet so strange. She couldn’t find anyone anymore, she had no home.
She didn’t know how long she wandered around. She felt no fatigue nor hunger. With nowhere else to go, she returned to the cave she had once stumbled upon and hidden in.
That place had given her an unparalleled sense of safety when she was panicked and scared.
She treated this place as her second home.
The cave was very dark, and the wind blowing in made it a bit cold, so Wu Renmei could only shrink as far back as she could.
Finally, she pressed herself into the innermost corner of the cave, curled up her body, and fell into a deep sleep.
She remembered that after falling asleep that time, she had a very, very long dream.
In the dream, the pitch-black cave became bright and clear. She got up and found a slender big sister sitting beside her.
That big sister sat cross-legged with her back to her, her clothes spreading out beneath her like a flower.
Actually, Wu Renmei couldn’t see that person’s face.
The reason she called her “big sister” was because that person had very long hair, woven into a beautiful and complex braid at the back of her head. White ornaments were braided into the hair, and a white hairpin was inserted horizontally at the end. It was exquisite and beautiful.
Wu Renmei was a little mesmerized.
It was only when the “big sister” spoke, in a cold, low voice, that Wu Renmei realized she wasn’t a woman, but a young man with long hair.
“I want your soul,” the young man said bluntly.
The statement came without warning, leaving Wu Renmei a little bewildered: “Wh-why?”
“Because I need it.” His tone was cold, and after a pause, he continued:
“In exchange, you can make one wish.”
Hearing the word “wish,” Wu Renmei asked tentatively, “Anything at all?”
“Yes.”
“Then I want my brother and my A Ma to come back.”
As she said this, Wu Renmei’s eyes welled up with tears, and her heart ached too:
“I want to go back to the peaceful days before, I want none of this to have happened, I don’t want to keep living on so alone… Can you do that?”
“The dead cannot be brought back to life, and what has already happened cannot be undone by human power.” After a brief silence, what the young man said was a little cruel.
Wu Renmei lowered her head: “…But you just said any wish was allowed.”
“Did I say no?”
“No…”
“If you want to revive them, turn back time, or correct the mistakes, I can’t do that. I can only give you a dream. In the dream, you’ll have everything you want. But every dream must end. I don’t know when you’ll wake up…it could be in a quarter of an hour, or it could be in ten thousand years.”
The young man said things Wu Renmei only half understood, then asked her again:
“Do we have a deal?”
“…”
Wu Renmei didn’t answer right away.
She used to hear A Ma talk about things like fate and souls. Although she couldn’t feel her own soul, she knew it was probably something very important and not to be given away lightly.
So after a brief moment of hesitation, she asked:
“What do you need my soul for?”
“To break a formation.”
“What… formation?”
“You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.”
“Oh… If I don’t give it to you, what will happen?”
“Nothing. I’ll keep waiting.”
“How long will you wait?”
“I don’t know.”
“What if you never find anyone?”
“Too many questions.”
“Alright… Then don’t wait anymore. Use mine.”
Wu Renmei hated waiting the most.
She used to sit at the village entrance day after day, waiting for her parents.
Her parents never said when they would come back, so she waited every day, from sunrise to sunset. When it got dark, she would pack away that day’s disappointment, turn the page, and start a new round of hope and waiting the next day. She did this for many years.
She knew what it felt like to wait aimlessly, so she didn’t want this young man to keep waiting like she had.
Although she didn’t know what a soul was, or what breaking a formation meant, trading it for an end to her loneliness and a beautiful dream didn’t seem like a loss.
Having convinced herself, Wu Renmei wanted to ask one last question: “Will breaking the formation hurt…?”
“No.” The young man seemed to dislike talking, each sentence was very short.
“Then what do I need to do?” Wu Renmei asked again.
“Nothing.”
The young man kept his back to Wu Renmei the entire time. She was curious about what he looked like and wanted to go around to the front to see his face, but she felt it would be impolite, so she never did. She just stared at his back, lost in thought.
Later, she heard him say again:
“When you enter the dream, your painful memories will be removed. Once I send you in, my task is complete.”
“Also, I only guarantee the beginning, not the end. If external forces later intervene and affect the momentum, your dream will have some deviations, or even cause your memories to awaken. At that time, you will have to endure the pain you suffered all over again.”
“I told you, what has already happened cannot be changed. The price of clinging to the beautiful is reliving the pain the moment the dream ends. You must understand this.”
“Alright… But what if the dream ends? Where will I go? Can I still find you?”
“You will disappear.”
The young man’s tone was cold. After a brief pause, he added:
“But your karmic connections and opportunities are not yet exhausted. When the dream scatters, there will still be a turning point.”
“A turning point? What is that?” Wu Renmei could never quite understand the young man’s words well.
“When love and hate are both resolved, only then will you find completion.”
As she heard these words, it was as if mist and clouds were spilling out from all around. In Wu Renmei’s eyes, the young man’s figure grew increasingly illusory.
Drowsiness surged like waves.
In a daze, she saw the young man stand up, his long braid hanging down his back, swaying slightly.
She opened her mouth and finally managed to ask:
“…Big brother, what should I call you?”
The young man stood behind a thin veil of mist and clouds, wearing a loose, wide-sleeved black robe. Several thin red cords hung at his waist, along with many small copper trinkets.
He turned his head slightly upon hearing this question.
Wu Renmei still couldn’t see his features clearly. No matter how hard she tried, she could only make out a little of his profile.
“Li.”
Just before her consciousness completely sank into darkness, Wu Renmei heard the young man’s indifferent voice:
“My name is Su Li.”
