Chapter 1

Deer Enclosure was a place that few people set foot in anymore.

First, the mountains here were complex and easy to get lost in; second, there were rumors of ghosts and Monsters that ate people.

Long ago, this land belonged to the Southern Song Pingjiang Prefecture.

At the foot of the mountain lay a prosperous village.

In the village lived a tea merchant named Li Dahu.

Li Dahu had three daughters.

The two older ones were born to his wife, Chen Shi.

The youngest was called Li Niannian, five years old, born to his concubine, Lin Shi.

Li Dahu dreamed day and night of having a son.

That year, during a famine, a skinny Old Beggar collapsed at Li Dahu’s doorstep. The Li family saved him and gave him several meals.

The Old Beggar claimed that he had once been a Sorcerer in his youth, skilled in fortune-telling and feng shui.

After being taken in by the Li family for a while, he hesitated, then said that to repay their kindness, he had a way for his benefactor to have a son.

This method was rather sinister, called Skull Needle for Son.

A long needle would be driven into the skull of one of Li Dahu’s daughters, then sealed in a coffin and buried in the Wind-Swept Cave Land.

This would scare away the female Ghosts seeking reincarnation.

In time, the Li family would surely have a son.

After much thought, Li Dahu agreed.

Naturally, it was the concubine’s daughter-Li Niannian-who was buried.

I am that unlucky child.

So much time has passed that I can no longer remember how much it hurt when the long needle was driven into my skull.

After all, I was only five years old then.

I vaguely recall that Li Dahu was my father, and he was actually quite kind to me.

During lantern festivals and market fairs, he would take me out to play.

He would smile and buy me sugar figurines and rabbit lanterns.

But later, the scene changed. Amid my mother’s wailing cries, several large hands pinned me down.

They buried me in the mountains.

The Old Beggar left the village afterward.

Before he left, he told Li Dahu that when a son was born, he must dig up my coffin at noon, rebury it elsewhere, and let me reincarnate.

Within three years, Li Dahu got his wish and had a son.

That son was born to my mother.

They were so overjoyed that they completely forgot the Old Beggar’s words.

Even my mother was lost in the happiness of having a son and forgot about me.

The Wind-Swept Cave Land, with the Dead Mountain beside it, gathered yin and received yang-a perfect Corpse-Nurturing Land.

The Old Beggar must have forgotten to tell them: the longer I was buried, the greater my resentment grew.

By the time they dug up my coffin, ten years had passed.

It all started when Li Dahu’s precious son suddenly fell ill with a strange disease.

The child grew as thin as a skeleton. Every night, he would clutch his head and roll around on the bed, black blood streaming from his seven orifices, crying endlessly.

Li Dahu panicked and summoned every doctor and expert within a hundred miles.

He actually found a Fortune Teller with some skill.

The Fortune Teller said the Li family’s son was cursed by resentment.

So I was dug up.

At high noon, under the blazing sun, my coffin was opened in a clearing in the wild.

Many people witnessed it with their own eyes: a lifelike girl’s corpse, barely clothed, shriveled in the blink of an eye, dried up, her long hair like withered grass, her appearance terrifying as an old crone.

When I was buried, I was five years old.

In that Corpse-Nurturing Land, day after day, year after year, I grew into the form of a fifteen-year-old girl.

Though that form, exposed to sunlight, withered in an instant like a fleeting flower.

To this day, I still don’t understand how the Fortune Teller had the courage to utter the words “Zombie as Medicine.”

Indeed, in the Southern Dynasties, there was a remarkable man named Jing Fang.

After his death, his tomb was robbed by soldiers. The saying “Zombie Flesh Can Be Medicine” was popular, and those men cut him apart piece by piece.

During the Five Dynasties, there was also the practice of taking soil from exposed corpses and boiling it as medicine to cure illnesses.

The Fortune Teller knew well that my death was strange, yet still dared to have the Li family cut my flesh and boil it into medicine.

I suppose the Li family must have paid him too much.