Chapter 5

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

I remembered the words in Father’s letter.

Do not eat the immortal flesh.

Father had not said why, but there was undeniably something uncanny about it.

My mother-in-law’s health had improved greatly, but…

She had not left her quarters for a long time, claiming she had secluded herself to chant sutras and cultivate her faith.

I tried several times to visit her, only to be turned away by the old nurse in her courtyard.

Meanwhile, I noticed the estate buying more and more raw meat—far beyond what we ate each day.

In the end, no one knew where all that meat went.

None of the men I had sent to the capital returned with news.

My heart sank. Just when I did not know what to do, Wen Ge came home.

The Xianbei had suffered a crushing defeat, and the fighting had temporarily subsided.

At last, he could return.

Wen Ge stood beneath the eaves, as though the wind and sand of the frontier still clung to him.

The young general’s features were sharp as blades, and the killing aura of the battlefield had not entirely faded.

“Sister-in-law,” he said.

The wind rocked the lantern, its wavering halo softening the hardness of his face.

For a moment, he was once more the seventeen-year-old boy who had left home with reddened eyes and told me, “Sister-in-law, I’m leaving. Take good care of yourself.”

We had not seen each other in two years. Even now, he was only nineteen, not yet of age.

Yet as he stood there, all his former youth and awkwardness were gone.

Something in me loosened, and I finally smiled at him.

I did not know why, but once Wen Ge returned, the weight pressing on my heart lifted a little.

…

His return did nothing to improve the situation.

My mother-in-law had always doted on her younger son. Yet when Wen Ge came home, she claimed to be unwell and did not even come out to see him.

When Wen Ge tried to visit her, he too was stopped.

Eager to display her devotion, Lady He had her maid bring over chicken soup she had made herself that very evening.

I stopped her.

I had seen my mother-in-law eat raw meat with my own eyes. After that night, however, she became much more cautious and never came out to eat it again.

I had told Wen Rong there was something wrong with his mother. He merely said that after eating the immortal flesh and recovering her health, she needed meat to restore her strength.

As for Snowball, he frowned and berated me.

“Nonsense!”

“Mother is the kindest person alive. She cannot even bear to step on an ant. You think she ate Snowball? You must have lost your mind!”

He did not believe me at all.

Unease continued to gnaw at me.

My mother-in-law had already eaten a cat. So much time had passed, and still the household bought more meat every day.

It was plain that her urges were becoming harder to restrain.

Recently, only the old nurse who had come with her dowry remained to serve in her room.

Everyone else had been sent away.

The thick scent of kinam hung over her quarters all day, so strong it was almost suffocating.

As if it were hiding something.

I feared the maid would be in danger if she went inside.

But when Wen Rong saw me stop her, he scolded me.

“Mother has been ill for days, and I haven’t seen you bring her so much as a mouthful of soup or water. Look how filial Lady He is!”

“You refuse to show Mother any devotion yourself, and now you won’t let her do it either? What a jealous shrew.”

Before I could answer, Wen Ge stepped in front of me and frowned.

“Don’t speak to Sister-in-law that way.”

“Oh?”

Wen Rong sneered. His gaze traveled between Wen Ge and me, and his mouth slowly curved in mockery.

“How protective you are of her.”

He stepped closer, the reek of wine seeping from his robes. “Wen Ge, don’t tell me you’ve taken a fancy to her?”

The courtyard fell silent.

Every maid bowed her head, wishing she could bury her face in her chest.

I clenched the edge of my sleeve.

I knew Wen Rong was not only attacking me.

He was attacking Wen Ge as well.

He had always hated his younger brother. Wen Ge was several years his junior, yet he had already attained the fifth rank as a General of Soaring Valor.

After his latest achievement, his future prospects were boundless.

Wen Rong, by contrast, was an ignorant wastrel who haunted the pleasure quarters. Even when my mother-in-law brought lavish gifts to the official responsible for appraising candidates, the man refused to grant him a rank.

An official career was naturally beyond his reach.

When the clan spoke of Wen Ge, they praised him. When they spoke of Wen Rong, they merely shook their heads.

That only made Wen Rong hate his brother more. Several times, I heard him curse Wen Ge in his drunkenness, wishing he would die on the battlefield.

Wen Ge said nothing. He simply looked at Wen Rong.

His gaze was perfectly calm, yet Wen Rong took half a step back without realizing it.

“You…” His voice faltered. Then his face flushed, as if his own retreat had enraged him.

“Don’t think a little military merit gives you the right to swagger around this estate! I am your elder brother! What does it matter if you’re a general? Once you come home, you still have to—”

“Ah—!”

A scream, abruptly cut short, interrupted him.

It came from my mother-in-law’s room, so shrill that it did not sound human.

Wen Ge reacted first. He shoved Wen Rong aside and sprinted toward the inner courtyard.

The rest of us followed.

The closer we drew to my mother-in-law’s quarters, the stronger the kinam smelled.

Wen Ge kicked the door open.

“Mother!”

Inside, the dense, warm, fresh tang of iron mingled with the last kinam smoke curling from the censer, forming a cloying sweetness that made my scalp crawl.

The sight within froze all of us where we stood.

The carved red sandalwood windows were still shut tight. Smoke still drifted from the censer before the golden Buddha. In its shrine, the gilded statue remained benevolent and serene, its lips faintly curved as it looked down upon a room drenched in blood.

My mother-in-law knelt on the floor.

She still wore her plain white nightclothes, but now the entire garment was soaked in red.

She held someone in her arms.

The maid who had brought the chicken soup.

My mother-in-law’s fingers dug into the maid’s shoulders. Her whole face was buried in the girl’s neck. From where their bodies met came the tooth-aching crunch of splintering bone, mixed with the wet sound of blood being swallowed.

The maid was still twitching.

Her eyes bulged so far they seemed about to burst from their sockets. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged.

A huge chunk had been bitten out of her neck. Torn flesh curled back from the wound, exposing the stark white bone beneath.

Blood poured out in torrents.

My mother-in-law raised her head. Strips of skin and flesh hung from the corners of her mouth, swaying as she chewed.

Every hair on my body rose. I felt as if I had plunged into an icy abyss.

Her eyes.

They were no longer human eyes.

Her pupils had shrunk to black pinpricks. The rest was a murky gray-white. There was no anger in them, no fear, no human emotion at all.

Only hunger.

Pure, endless hunger.

She stared at us, a low whine rumbling in her throat like a feral dog guarding its food.

Then she lowered her head and bit again.

This time, her teeth sank into the back of the maid’s neck.

Crack.

The bone broke with startling clarity.

The maid’s neck bent backward at an impossible angle. Skin tore, blood vessels snapped, and a jet of blood sprayed three feet into the air, splattering the golden Buddha from head to toe.

The gilded statue kept smiling.

The maid’s head rolled free, spun several times across the floor, and came to rest before the Buddha.

Its eyes stared straight up at the statue.

“Aaaah—!”

Lady He screamed. Her legs gave out beneath her, and a dark patch rapidly spread across her skirt.

She had wet herself in terror.

Wen Rong staggered back several steps, his face drained white and his eyes wide with horror.

At the sight of living people, my mother-in-law instinctively lunged toward us.

I shouted,

“Someone tie her up!”

“Tie her up.”

No one moved.

“What are you standing there for?” I turned toward the guards outside the courtyard. “Get a rope! Hurry!”

The thing before us was no longer my mother-in-law.

It had begun to eat human beings.

The guards looked at one another, their feet seemingly rooted to the ground.

“No one move!” Wen Rong finally came back to himself. “That is my mother! She is the old madam of the Wen family. Who dares bind her?”

I flung off his hand and stared into his eyes.

“Didn’t you see what she just did? She bit through a living person’s neck! She isn’t your mother anymore. She’s a man-eating monster!”

Wen Rong choked, then shouted, “Mother is only ill! She’s delirious! Let anyone try laying a hand on her!”

“My lord is right.” Lady He climbed to her feet, her voice still shaking, but she had already moved behind Wen Rong.

“The old madam ate the flesh of an immortal. How could she be… how could she be a monster?”

“Madam, even if you bear a grudge against the old madam, she is still your elder. How can you be so disrespectful?”

I gritted my teeth.

I could understand Wen Rong refusing to bind her.

He was her son. Besides, he likely did not want a scandal spreading beyond the estate.

If outsiders learned that the Wen family’s old madam was a man-eating monster, his hopes of an official career would be destroyed for good.

But Lady He was opposing me only for the sake of opposition. She was a fool with nothing in her head but the struggle for a man’s favor.

My mother-in-law had meant to charge at us, but she apparently could not bear to abandon the corpse in her arms. She was tearing at it with both hands.

Her fingers plunged into the abdominal cavity. She scooped out handful after handful and stuffed them into her mouth.

“Tie up the old madam.” Wen Ge, silent until now, finally spoke, his expression grim.

His voice was not loud, but it cut through the commotion like a blade.

Wen Rong turned to argue. The moment he met Wen Ge’s eyes, he swallowed the words.

There was murder in Wen Ge’s gaze.

It had been tempered amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

“Mother is ill,” he said, one word at a time. “Gravely ill. She needs treatment.”

Wen Rong opened his mouth but did not dare speak again.

Wen Ge passed him and approached the guards.

“Get rope. Rawhide, soaked in tung oil. There should be some in the storeroom.”

The guards scrambled away in terror.

They soon returned with rawhide rope as thick as a child’s arm, hardened by tung oil until it felt like an iron bar.

My mother-in-law still crouched over her meal.

Only when Wen Ge entered the room did she jerk up her head. A threatening hiss escaped her mouth, and she sprang at him.

She moved far too quickly for a woman over fifty.

Wen Ge sidestepped, seized her wrist, and wrenched her arm behind her back.

My mother-in-law let out an inhuman howl as he twisted her entire arm behind her.

He frowned slightly, applied more force, and pinned her to the floor.

“Bind her.”

The guards swarmed forward and wrapped her in the rawhide rope until she resembled a bundled dumpling.

Wen Ge used the army’s knots for securing prisoners. The more she struggled, the tighter they drew.

My mother-in-law writhed and howled on the ground, her voice strange and her hair in disarray.

Not a trace remained of the old madam who had once prized decorum above all else. She looked like a bound beast.

Wen Ge watched for a moment, then said heavily,

“Nail every door and window shut. No one is to go inside.”

He paused, glanced at the maid’s corpse, then at the trembling Lady He and the bloodless Wen Rong.

“And one more thing. Not a word of this leaves the estate. Anyone who speaks of it will be punished under military law.”

…

That night, I told Wen Ge everything that had happened.

He sat stunned for a long time. “You mean Mother became like this because she ate the immortal flesh.”

I shook my head. “I can’t be certain, but there is no other possibility.”

Wen Ge went still.

After a long silence, the young general who had led a few dozen men deep into the steppes and desert, heedless of life and death, spoke in a trembling voice.

“I heard the immortal flesh granted eternal life.”

“But did I… do this to Mother?”

His lips parted, his eyes reddening. “I…”

Then he abruptly looked up.

“Sister-in-law, what about you? Have you and my brother eaten it?”

“Not yet. The other two pieces arrived at the estate only today. They haven’t been prepared.”

After a moment’s thought, I took out the message Father had written.

The scrap of his sleeve was crumpled beyond recognition, but the words in blood remained clear.

Do not eat the immortal flesh.

I handed it to Wen Ge.

“My father sent this from Luoyang by express rider.” I sighed softly.

“I sent men to the capital for news. Not one of them has returned.”

Wen Ge took the cloth and lowered his head to study it.

“The Grand Astrologer called it immortal flesh,” I said quietly, “but I’ve seen what it looks like raw.”

“Even after it was cut away, it still moved. There is something far too uncanny and wicked about it.”

Wen Ge raised his eyes to mine.

Our gazes met.

Those eyes, which had watched a thousand men die on the battlefield, reflected the trembling lamplight. For an instant, they held the expression a nineteen-year-old boy ought to have worn.

Vulnerable.

Lost.

But the bewilderment vanished almost at once, replaced by calm decisiveness.

“Your father must know something,” he said. “Something terrible has probably happened in Luoyang.”

I nodded, my throat tight.

I looked toward the room where we had imprisoned my mother-in-law.

From behind the nailed-shut door came the sound of teeth gnawing wood.

Crunch.

Crunch.

The wind blew out one of the lanterns.