Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Sir, why are you running? Just tell me where Wei Wuyang is!”

Lu Lingzhu shouted herself hoarse from downstairs, but the old man kept his door shut tight and played dead upstairs. After we yelled for a while and he still refused to open up, we had no choice but to give up. We figured we would head into the village and ask someone else.

Just as we turned to leave, a little boy of about eight or nine suddenly came hurrying out of the stilt house.

All the hair around his head had been shaved clean, leaving only a patch in the middle tied into one long braid that swung back and forth as he moved.

“Outsiders?”

The little boy stared at us curiously.

“Oh, I know. Are you relatives of Aunt You? Here for the ritual?”

“My name’s Xiao Lei. Come on, I’ll take you there.”

Xiao Lei acted as if we’d known each other forever. He came over and took Lu Lingzhu’s hand and mine. Lu Lingzhu and I exchanged a tacit glance, then let him lead us toward the village.

From the sound of it, this ritual would probably draw a lot of villagers. Once we got there, it would be much easier to ask around about Wei Wuyang.

As Xiao Lei walked, he told us that Aunt You had passed away three days ago, and today happened to be the day of her funeral procession.

“In a bit, you’ll get to watch the Ox-Cutting. After it’s done, you can even drink fresh ox blood.”

As it turned out, among the Shui people, there was a funeral rite called Ox-Cutting and Horse-Striking. If the deceased was a man, his family would kill a horse as an offering so he would have a horse to ride in the underworld when he went to do business.

If the deceased was a woman, they would kill an ox so she would have one to plow the fields with in the underworld.

The process of killing the ox was carried out by the deceased’s family, with each person taking a turn to cut it, slowly slaughtering it to death. That was what they called Ox-Cutting.

Because the process was too bloody and cruel, many young people had started to reject this custom.

“Are you scared of Ox-Cutting?”

Xiao Lei licked his lips, then suddenly stopped and stared at Lu Lingzhu and me with an utterly serious expression.

“If you’re scared, you don’t have to go.”

I quickly shook my head.

“Please, what’s there to be scared of? Forget cutting an ox, I wouldn’t even be scared of cutting a person.”

My tone was firm and decisive, for fear that Xiao Lei would change his mind and refuse to take us.

Xiao Lei let go of our hands. His pitch-black eyes fixed on me for a moment before he burst out laughing.

“Haha, not even scared of cutting a person?”

“That’s perfect.”

There was something eerie in the way this little guy spoke. Afraid of giving ourselves away, Lu Lingzhu and I didn’t dare talk to him anymore along the way. We just lowered our heads and hurried on.

The entire village had been built along the mountainside. At the deepest part of the village was a relatively flat slope. Standing on it, we could see a small waterfall caught between the layered peaks opposite us.

Great billows of vapor surged over from the mountain across the way, looking like a thick fog had settled over everything.

The moment we reached the slope, Xiao Lei slipped into the crowd and vanished.

The rest of us squeezed into the throng as well, standing on tiptoe with curiosity to look at the bonfire in the center.

Beside the bonfire stood a wooden stake, and tied to the stake was an ox.

An old man dressed in a loose, collarless blue cloth shirt, with a blue headcloth wrapped around his head, was holding a small bowl in his hand and muttering something at the water buffalo.

The moment I saw the old man’s face clearly, I was stunned.

“Isn’t that the old man from the village entrance? How did he get here faster than us?”

The instant I opened my mouth, the old man noticed me.

He raised the little bowl in his hand to his face, drained the liquid inside in one gulp, then strode up to us. “Pffft-” He spat the stuff in his mouth straight out.

A pale-blue mist exploded outward, carrying a pungent, fishy stench.

In that split second, I reacted as fast as I could. I grabbed Song Feifei by the arm and yanked her in front of me as a shield.

When I turned my head, I saw Lu Lingzhu hiding behind Jiang Haoyan, glaring at me.

“Wow. Since she’s not your own disciple, you really don’t feel bad using her, huh?”

Song Feifei had been sprayed completely senseless. She stared at the old man with dull eyes.

“What are you doing?”

The old man said nothing. Seeing that he hadn’t managed to spray Lu Lingzhu or me, he didn’t seem discouraged. Instead, he lifted the bowl and thrust it straight in front of us.

I was baffled by his whole string of bizarre actions and still standing there in confusion when a sudden, agonizing pain shot through my wrist.

I looked down and was shocked.

The wound on my wrist had split open. The whitish layer that had been covering it had cracked apart like an eggshell, and from within the fissure, a hand was actually reaching out.

It was a very small hand. All five fingers were covered in scales, and the nails were long, like the claws of a lizard.