Chapter 11
Chapter 11
I was intensely curious about the Corpse King inside the Hundred-Bone Pagoda, but one look at Aunt Qin’s exhausted state told me this was not the time for questions…
The important thing was to put the transformed corpse into a niche on the sixth story as quickly as possible.
I continued holding its feet and slowly shuffled forward behind Aunt Qin.
Only a dozen or so steps remained. Everything went smoothly, and no further accidents occurred.
Aunt Qin shoved the body directly into the niche, head first and feet facing out.
Then she told me to prick my middle finger again and draw a little more blood…
With a miserable expression, I held out my hand. Aunt Qin swept her sleeve over it. I felt a sting no worse than an ant bite, and suddenly my fingertip was covered in blood.
Dipping a finger into it, she swiftly wrote the Chinese character for “seal” above the opening of the corpse niche.
Then she drew a counterclockwise triangle around the character.
At each corner of the triangle, she added a counterclockwise circle.
Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on me, but the character, half writing and half sigil, seemed to flash once before fading back to normal.
When she finished, Aunt Qin finally breathed a sigh of relief.
I sensed her entire presence lighten, as though she were once again sitting in the sun on the stone outside her ruined house at the edge of the village.
She turned and addressed a niche across from us on the sixth story. “Then we have an agreement. Help keep an eye on this drowned revenant. I will certainly fulfill my side of the bargain. I know you understand me, so I won’t use corpse speech. It hurts my throat.”
Was Aunt Qin talking to a corpse again?
Startled, I looked in that direction too.
But I saw nothing unusual beyond rows of corpse niches and the indistinct old bodies inside. I could not tell which niche held the formidable Corpse King.
Even Aunt Qin had needed to humble herself and negotiate carefully with it before placing Wang Fei in the Hundred-Bone Pagoda.
“All right, Little Wu, the matter is settled. Let’s go home. Nothing strange will happen on the way back. We can relax and treat it like a pleasant boat ride.”
She gently ruffled my hair.
“Okay, Aunt Qin!”
The thought of having fun lifted my spirits, and some of the lingering fear subsided.
After leaving the Hundred-Bone Pagoda and walking out of the Yishan Burial Ground toward the little wooden boat on the riverbank, I could no longer contain my curiosity.
“Aunt Qin, that Hundred-Bone Pagoda Corpse King…”
Aunt Qin burst out laughing.
She seemed amused. “I wondered whether you could really hold that question in forever.”
I scratched my head. “Keeping quiet this long wasn’t easy. If I hadn’t been scared, I would have asked inside the pagoda.”
Aunt Qin explained it to me.
Although the drowned people buried in the Yishan Burial Ground were benevolent ghosts whose resentment had been dispelled through rites, the accumulation of centuries meant that even the dead remaining there would eventually develop a hierarchy.
In theory, after such a long period of abandonment with no new bodies being added, encountering a truly formidable ghost should have been unlikely.
Yet the Hundred-Bone Pagoda contained a Corpse King even more powerful than the drowned revenant!
That was very strange.
Its appearance had taken even Aunt Qin by surprise.
Fortunately, she understood corpse speech and hurriedly explained the situation to it.
The Corpse King was still relatively benevolent, but it considered the Hundred-Bone Pagoda and even the entire Yishan Burial Ground its territory. Burying an ordinary dead person there was no problem, but bringing in a drowned revenant would affect both the feng shui and the energy of the land…
So it refused!
Aunt Qin had no choice but to reason with it, asking whether it had any wish she could fulfill in exchange.
The Corpse King said it could not think of anything for the moment. Instead, it demanded a promise: on this exact date seven years later, we had to return to the Hundred-Bone Pagoda. It would tell her what it wanted then.
Naturally, Aunt Qin could only agree.
The situation had actually been extremely dangerous. Wang Fei suddenly interrupted, telling the Corpse King that he did not want to be placed in the Hundred-Bone Pagoda either. Their desires aligned, he argued, so the Corpse King should ignore the accursed living woman!
Fortunately, the Corpse King was not an evil revenant. In the end, it accepted Aunt Qin’s proposal–one future promise in exchange for permission to place Wang Fei’s body inside the pagoda.
“I thought everything in the Yishan Burial Ground was supposed to be good. Why did it have so many demands? What if it asks for something outrageous when the time comes?” I muttered unhappily.
We were far enough away that I was no longer afraid it might hear me.
Aunt Qin grew serious. “You mustn’t say that, Little Wu. In this world, karmic burden circulates through every life. Whether living or dead, no one has the right to demand another person’s help for nothing. Since the Hundred-Bone Pagoda has a master, we naturally have to pay a corresponding price. Remember this: if someone ever gives you everything while asking for nothing in return, be careful! Something momentous may be waiting for you later.”
“Oh…”
I nodded vigorously, but still asked, “What about parents?”
Aunt Qin froze. Then her sternness vanished and she burst into laughter.
“You stubborn little rascal! Parents are different. The karmic debt between parents and children was established several lifetimes ago. Friendship, meanwhile, is a benevolent bond born of benevolent causes. I was talking about strangers.”
I was about to say more when Aunt Qin threatened to throw me into the river if I kept arguing, so I promptly shut my mouth.
Well, when you live under another’s roof, you have to bow your head.
My mother had taught me that when I was very little!
…
Just as Aunt Qin promised, the journey home went smoothly.
No floating corpses blocked our boat, nor did spirits like water goblins run rampant in the river.
Only the river breeze and bright moon accompanied us.
I had no idea what wondrous method she used, but the little wooden boat traveled upstream by itself without pole or oar! It moved quickly too.
It was incredible.
Even so, the eastern sky was turning pale by the time we reached the little river outside the village.
From far away, I saw my parents, the village chief, and several young men waiting where Aunt Qin and I had launched several hours earlier.
The village chief sat on a rock smoking his long-stemmed pipe. His head kept nodding as he struggled against sleep.
My mother spotted me first. She sprang to her feet and waved.
“Baby! My baby, you’re back!”
Tears streamed down her face, and her voice was hoarse.
My father wrapped one arm around her and waved to us too.
As soon as we came ashore, the village chief hurriedly asked whether everything had gone well.
By then, the fact that we had returned safely already told him that we had succeeded.
Aunt Qin had no interest in speaking to him. She merely announced, “I’m tired. I’m going home to sleep,” then walked away without looking back…
That left me to give my parents, the village chief, and the others a rough account of everything that had happened that night.
When I finished, the village chief gripped my hands in excitement and repeatedly called me the village’s little hero!
I was terribly embarrassed and could only scratch my head with a foolish grin.
“Let’s get him home. The poor boy must be falling asleep on his feet. Hurry and carry him back.”
At my mother’s urging, my father lifted me onto his back.
Perhaps the night’s unrelenting strain finally caught up with me. Nestled against my father’s broad, warm back, I fell asleep.
Fortunately, it was summer vacation, so I could rest all the next day. I slept until two in the afternoon. As soon as I had eaten, I ran to Aunt Qin’s ruined house at the edge of the village.
She was already sitting on the large stone, basking in the sun.
“Aunt Qin, I brought you something to eat.”
“Hee-hee, ha-ha, Little Wu. I don’t eat meals. Lice are all I need.”
As she spoke, she picked several lice from her long hair, tossed them into her mouth, and crunched them between her teeth.
Aunt Qin seemed different from the night before.
When there was nothing to do, she apparently returned to her usual cackling, madcap self. She was no longer the mysterious, powerful, composed expert I had seen the previous night.
I did not know what to do.
I set the food beside her, but she threw it to the stray cats and dogs nearby.
I felt so hurt that tears nearly sprang to my eyes.
But Aunt Qin chuckled and said, “Don’t be sad, Little Wu. I can’t eat ordinary food. I can only eat the lice on my body. I’m not rejecting your kindness on purpose.”
Hearing that, I no longer felt quite so aggrieved. I nodded hard.
I did not know why Aunt Qin behaved so strangely, but I admired her immensely. I assumed there must be a reason beyond the understanding of ordinary people like us.
The days passed one after another…
When summer vacation ended, I entered fourth grade.
Several nearby villages all shared the township elementary school. Our village was some distance away, so I had to leave at six-thirty in the morning. By the time I returned from school, it was nearly seven at night.
Aunt Qin generally slept until almost noon and went back inside shortly after five.
That meant I almost never saw her on school days, leaving me with an empty feeling.
But on weekends and holidays, I always waited outside the ruined house until she emerged. Then I sat with her on the stone and basked in the sun.
Aunt Qin rarely spoke during the day. She simply cackled often, and I laughed along with her.
So the villagers constantly saw the two of us sitting on that stone, looking like a pair of lunatics.
But after the river-log incident, everyone in the village treated Aunt Qin with deep respect.
Whether to her face or behind her back, no one dared call her the “Madwoman” anymore. They always addressed her as the Immortal Lady.
Whenever villagers encountered her cackling along the road, they stopped to greet her. If a household cooked something delicious, they delivered a portion and respectfully placed it on the stone outside her ruined house, even though she never ate any of it.
The village chief even proposed that everyone help repair her home. Naturally, she refused.
During the summer vacation after my sixth-grade year, two more strange incidents occurred in the village.
One of them changed my relationship with Aunt Qin. From that moment onward, I set foot on a wholly different path through life!
It was also when I truly began encountering the hidden and uncanny things of this world in earnest…
The first strange incident was my Second Uncle’s spirit possession by a weasel!
Second Uncle was my father’s younger brother. In standard Mandarin and northern China, people generally called such a relative “Second Uncle,” while our local custom used a term closer to “Second Father.”
And what did we mean by a “yellow cat”?
It was simply our dialect word for a weasel.
In northeastern China, the animal was often called a Weasel Immortal. In Sichuan and Chongqing dialect, we called it a yellow cat or yellow mischief-maker.
Although weasels were most famous in the northeast, where they were counted among the Five Household Immortals, one kind of household familiar, they could be found across most of China. Strange supernatural legends about them existed everywhere.
Of course, legends were only legends. Most country people were not particularly afraid of the creatures.
If a weasel entered someone’s yard to steal chickens, it would be met with a club or hoe. Either it was driven off or beaten to death on the spot.
Second Uncle lived on the western side of the village, not far from our house. Our families visited often and sometimes stayed overnight when there was no work to do.
Land was cheap in the countryside, after all, so most houses were built large.
That day, we had agreed to finish our work and gather at Second Uncle’s house for dinner.
As a child with nothing to do, I arrived half an hour early.
When I entered, Second Uncle was sitting in the main room while Second Aunt bandaged a wound on his hand.
I asked curiously, “Second Uncle, what happened to your hand?”
Half annoyed and half amused, Second Aunt said, “He went to cut fodder for the pigs on the hill and got bitten by a weasel. I told him he was useless. He’s always bragging that he isn’t afraid of wolves or wild dogs, but he couldn’t even catch one weasel.”
“Hmph!”
Second Uncle grumbled unhappily that the weasel had been extraordinarily cunning, slyer than a fox.
The two of them had a loving marriage. Though they bickered, Second Aunt was clearly worried about him.
I pestered him for the whole story until Second Uncle finally explained in frustration.
He had been idle that afternoon and decided to cut some fodder on the hill behind the village for the pigs.
Strangely, the sun seemed to set faster than usual that day.
He had barely cut any grass when darkness began to fall.
Everyone in the village knew it was best not to remain alone in the mountains or woods outside the village after sunset. Strange things could happen!
So Second Uncle decided to cut just two more handfuls before heading home.
As he bent to cut the grass, however, he suddenly sensed that something was wrong!
A thick, rank odor filled his nose. It nearly knocked him unconscious!
Curious, he followed the stench to investigate.
He had taken only a few steps when his foot landed on something soft, startling him badly.
Before he could react, a yellow blur sprang up, landed on his arm, and sank its teeth into him.
Second Uncle cried out and flung it away with all his strength.
When the creature hit the ground, he saw a weasel almost as large as a cat staring craftily back at him.
Second Uncle was shocked and furious. Fighting through the pain in his arm, he cursed and swung the sickle he had used to cut grass.
The weasel nimbly leaped aside and dodged the blade.
Second Uncle had aimed for its waist and belly. The leap carried its body clear, but it moved a fraction too slowly.
Half its tail failed to escape!
The sickle sliced through the air. With a wet sound, the severed half fell to the ground.
When the weasel saw its tail lying there, its expression turned savage. It picked up the severed tail in both forepaws and shrieked furiously at Second Uncle, its voice piercingly sharp.