Chapter 6

The wooden plaques had designs carved into them.

My task was to coat the grooves at the center with fish-bladder glue, then fill them with copper powder.

Hundreds of women occupied the cellar, all repeating the same task.

“You! Clumsy little fool, why are you so slow? Can’t you see you’ve spilled it over the edges? Do you ever want to go home?”

A shout, then a whip struck my hand. The copper powder scattered.

The woman beside me caught some of it. She began to whimper, only to choke it back at another shout from the guard.

“Boss, she’s blind!”

A younger guard cried out in surprise. Only then did the first man notice I’d been using both hands to identify everything unfamiliar.

He swore under his breath. “What’s wrong with Chun Sanniang? Sending us a blind girl.”

“What do we do, boss? She gets in the way, and she’s slow.”

“Lock her in the dungeon. The master can decide.”

That was how I ended up in a cold, damp cell.

In all my seventeen years, I’d never encountered anything so absurd.

Bracing myself against the wall, I stood and felt my way to the wooden bars. Iron spikes had been bound to them. The pain made me shudder.

“Stay away from there. They’re covered in spikes.”

A resentful voice came suddenly from a corner. Startled, I pressed against the wall and asked warily, “Who are you?”

“A mere mortal isn’t worthy of knowing my name!”

The boy sounded haughty, but there was a tremor of tears beneath it.

I moved toward his voice. He immediately stopped me. “Halt! Don’t come near me!”

“All right, I won’t. Were you captured too?”

I asked gently.

“What do you think? That I’m on holiday?”

He complained through his tears. “Being locked up was bad enough. Now they’ve put someone else in here. Is Heaven determined to make me miserable?”

He cried so bitterly that I had no idea how to comfort him. I sat in silence a long way away.

I wondered whether Ying Que had returned to the inn.

I’d slept too deeply to know where he’d gone. Presumably he’d spotted the demon seizing people in the street and followed it.

Cold drafts swept through the cellar. Water dripped now and then.

“How can you be so calm?”

I didn’t know how long he’d been crying before I heard his muffled question.

“Panicking won’t help. It’ll only frighten you more,” I answered honestly. “Better to calm down and think. We might find a way out.”

“You’re so strange!”

For some reason, he became agitated. “You don’t look very old, but you talk like an elder. You don’t cry or struggle after being locked up. You’re making me look ridiculous!”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You’re laughing inside!”

He began sobbing again. “Fine, I’m useless and cowardly. That’s just how I am…”

I had nothing to say.

There was no talking to him.

In truth, it wasn’t that I was especially calm.

Absurd though my present circumstances were, I’d had a rough life from childhood. Even a fortune-teller had shaken his head at the sight of my face.

Experience had taught me that panic was useless. It could even cost you your only chance to survive.

The boy kept sobbing. I tried to reassure him. “Don’t be afraid, young sir. I have a friend outside. I left a clue. If he finds it, he’ll come and save us.”

“Keep dreaming. The women in this town have all been taken to fill plaques with copper powder. The men have been taken to cut trees and build a shrine. Sooner or later they’ll catch your friend too.”

“They won’t. He’s an immortal!”

“An immortal?”

He suddenly stopped crying and asked urgently, “Who? What’s his name?”

“Ying Que. He slew a huge river demon in our village. He’s lost his powers because he’s undergoing a tribulation, but he’s still very—”

“Ying Que? Are you sure it’s Ying Que?”

Before I could finish, he came right up to me.

“I’m his friend too!”

He said, “My name is Lingyun. I’m the deity of this mountain.”