Chapter 13

Chapter 13

A weasel spirit?!

I immediately remembered the weasel that Second Uncle said had bitten him while he was cutting fodder on the hill behind the village the previous evening. I hurriedly told Aunt Qin about it.

She nodded when I finished.

“Then that must be the culprit. Unlike in the northeast, weasels don’t cause trouble very often here in Sichuan. But any one capable of spirit possession is no harmless creature.”

The way she spoke made me think she knew the northeast quite well.

“Aunt Qin, will that weasel–that weasel spirit, as you call it–come after Second Uncle again?”

“Of course!”

She sneered. “Weasel spirits are extremely vengeful. Your Second Uncle cut off its tail, and you gave it a vicious slap. It will certainly return tonight. Your slap scared it away, but unless we solve the problem for good, your uncle will suffer lasting illness.”

I was a little speechless.

Second Uncle had clearly been the one I slapped.

Could the weasel possessing him feel the pain too?

With tears in her eyes, Second Aunt begged Aunt Qin to help. She was willing to pay any price, whether money or something else.

I tugged at Aunt Qin’s sleeve with an almost wheedling air. “Aunt Qin, please help Second Uncle and his family.”

Smack!

Aunt Qin rapped me on the head and scolded with a laugh, “You little rascal. I came all this way. Do you think I wouldn’t help?”

Rubbing my head, I protested, “You could’ve just said so. Why hit me? Besides, I’m not little anymore. I’m only half a head shorter than you.”

Once she agreed to help, Second Aunt thanked her repeatedly. A weakened Second Uncle even struggled out of bed.

“But let me make this clear: I won’t help for nothing. We’ll discuss what you owe me after the problem is solved. Don’t worry. I won’t ask for anything too difficult.”

With that, Aunt Qin left to continue sleeping. She told me to fetch her that afternoon so she could prepare.

During the day, the sun blazed overhead and yang energy flourished. Naturally, evil entities did not dare emerge.

If the weasel spirit dared descend into the village while the sun was up, it would be nothing but an ordinary animal without a trace of supernatural power. Any dog could chase it off!

Only after sunset and the coming of darkness did the cursed thing acquire eerie abilities such as spirit possession and bewitchment.

Second Uncle was conscious, but he was too weak to leave bed. He reclined while Second Aunt sat beside him and talked.

My parents cooked and helped with the chores.

With nothing to do, I took a pencil and exercise book from my schoolbag and began working on my summer homework!

Yes, in today’s internet slang, I was just that hardcore.

I was going to face a spirit animal that night, yet I still had the presence of mind to do homework.

My parents deliberately prepared an early dinner. After everyone ate and the sun began sinking westward, I fetched Aunt Qin so we could prepare.

Following her instructions, my parents returned home. Staying would only make them a burden.

After all, the weasel spirit was coming to Second Uncle’s house to cause trouble!

“All right, we’ll listen to the Immortal Lady. Baby, let’s go home.”

My mother put an arm around my shoulders and started to leave with my father.

“Wait!” Aunt Qin called.

“I told the two of you to go home. I didn’t say Little Wu could leave. He’ll stay and help me. He is a Featherborn, born with a light bazi. That makes it easier for him to distinguish yin from yang and gives him much greater resistance to a glamour spell than ordinary people.”

A Featherborn meant someone like me, whose bazi was theoretically as light as possible–as light as a feather!

Such people were more likely than others to encounter uncanny things. But with sufficient mental fortitude, we were also better at seeing through their tricks.

Fortune and misfortune went hand in hand. There were advantages and disadvantages.

Aunt Qin had told me this years earlier, when we traveled the Chuan River at night to seal the drowned revenant inside the Hundred-Bone Pagoda.

“What? Little Wu has to stay and fight that weasel…”

My mother began worrying again.

Aunt Qin’s tone was indifferent. “Don’t worry. Even if that creature has cultivated some power, it is far weaker than the transformed drowned revenant from years ago. Little Wu dared face that. Would he be afraid of one furry beast when his own Second Uncle is at stake?”

“The Immortal Lady is right. My boy is brave and careful. What can a weasel spirit possibly do to him? Besides, he saved my brother all by himself last night.”

My father had always possessed a baffling degree of faith in me.

He took my mother home, leaving Aunt Qin and me sitting in the yard.

“Come on. Let’s make some preparations.”

Aunt Qin told me to carry three large stones from outside and place them at different points beside the chicken coop according to her instructions.

Then she gathered several pebbles and flicked them through the air.

Each traced an arc before landing around the three stones I had placed.
At first glance, the arrangement appeared entirely ordinary, as though the stones had been tossed down at random.

But when I concentrated and examined them, I sensed a mysterious pattern in their placement. The longer I looked, the more dizzy and top-heavy I became.

I nearly fell over where I stood!

I quickly averted my eyes and told Aunt Qin how the stones had affected me.

“Hmm? You can actually perceive this bewildering formation, Little Wu? It seems you truly possess some talent for the mystic arts.”

She sounded faintly surprised.

So it was called a bewildering formation?

I scratched my head with an aggrieved expression. “No wonder staring at it made my head spin. You meant to use it on the weasel spirit, Aunt Qin, but I fell for it first.”

Aunt Qin burst out laughing and asked who had told me to stare so intently. But since I had recognized it, she decided to explain a little.

The bewildering formation was a simple application of Qimen Dunjia.

Qimen Dunjia was an extraordinarily ancient and profound art within the esoteric arts.

Its history might stretch as far back as Chinese civilization itself!

It had been known by different names in different eras…

In the ancient pre-Qin period, it was called Yinfu.

During the Han and Wei dynasties, people renamed it Liujia.

Throughout the Sui, Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, it was simply called Dunjia.

Only after the Ming dynasty did esoteric practitioners begin calling the wondrous art Qimen Dunjia!

No matter how the name changed, however, the underlying art remained the same. Most of it had simply been lost across the long course of history.

Aunt Qin said she knew only a few crude, superficial techniques derived from Qimen Dunjia.

Her explanation was so abstruse and mysterious that at twelve or thirteen, I could barely follow it. I thought to myself, “First a bewildering formation, now bewildering talk. Just listening makes my head spin.”

In any case, all I needed to know was that the thing was powerful!

Aunt Qin continued.

“Weasel spirits are vengeful by nature, and judging by this one’s actions, it is especially vicious. It not only possessed a man and ate a live chicken, but brutally killed the watchdog too.”

“Even so, weasels are naturally suspicious and cowardly. If it sees me, it may hesitate and turn away. Then catching it would become a nuisance, and it would remain a threat.”

“If we want to settle this tonight, the best method is for me to remain hidden while you face it alone, Little Wu! Find a way to lure it into the bewildering formation beside the chicken coop. Don’t worry. I’ll be watching from the shadows. At the crucial moment, I’ll strike.”

She spoke at length, her voice crisp and pleasant and her reasoning perfectly clear. She sounded nothing like her usual cackling, madcap self.

Her entire presence inspired awe and admiration in me!

“This is the Aunt Qin I like!”

I nodded repeatedly to show that I understood.

The sun soon set, and night descended.

Darkness covered the land.

The entire village gradually fell silent.

In mountain villages like ours, daylight belonged to humans. Night belonged to every manner of inhuman thing…

Since ancient times, few people wandered through the village after dark unless absolutely necessary. Beyond its borders, the night was forbidden ground for human beings.

People who lived in cities could never imagine it!

Second Uncle lay asleep in the rear bedroom. Perhaps because an evil entity had possessed him and he had eaten a raw chicken, sweat beaded his brow even in sleep. His face was deathly pale and his lips faintly blue.

Second Aunt remained beside him, wiping away the sweat.

“Stay in this room tonight. No matter what you hear outside later, do not come out. Do you understand?”

After giving the warning, Aunt Qin casually scattered several handfuls of mugwort ash beneath the door and windows. Then she led me back to the main room.

We lit no lamp and simply sat in silence amid the darkness.

“Aunt Qin, you said people in the northeast call weasels yellow hides and the powerful ones Weasel Immortals. Could you tell me more about that?” I pleaded.

The country had not yet fully developed in those days. Transportation was inconvenient, and there was far less exchange between north and south than there would be later. Each region seemed mysterious to the other.

Besides, I was a mountain child. The only thing I knew about the distant northeast came from the essay “The Beautiful Lesser Khingan Mountains” in my textbook!

Suspecting that Aunt Qin might have traveled there, I curiously asked about its strange tales.

“You truly are curious about the world, child. Ask someone else and they might refuse to speak of such things. Your Aunt Qin has no taboos, so I’ll tell you.”
Some animals, she explained, became far more intelligent than normal after living a long time or encountering a stroke of fortune. Some even developed an almost human spirituality.

That was what country people meant when they said an animal had cultivated into a spirit!

Domesticated dogs, cattle, and chickens could do so fairly easily, but among wild creatures, five kinds were most prone to it: foxes, weasels, rats, hedgehogs, and snakes.

In the white mountains and black waters of the northeast, those five animals were known as the Five Immortals!

The fox became the Fox Immortal, the weasel the Weasel Immortal, the rat the Gray Immortal, the hedgehog the White Immortal, and the snake the Snake Immortal.

Some of the Five Immortals were good, while others were evil.

The kinder, gentler ones were sometimes willing to accept worship and protect people. Such a being could become a household familiar. In the northeast, it was quite common to summon a household familiar.

Most families in the northeastern countryside were willing to try.

“I see. It sounds incredible! Aunt Qin, you’ve been to the northeast, haven’t you?”

“Mm.”

Aunt Qin gave a single nasal syllable.

It amounted to an admission, but she offered no details.

“I heard it starts snowing there every October, and the ground is still frozen in March or April. The cold is unbearable. It’s completely different from Sichuan. I really want to see it.”

Yearning filled my eyes.

It was not only the northeast. I wanted to visit every place I learned about in language and geography class!

“When I grow up, I’ll travel across the entire country. I’ll see all sorts of distant places.”

I brandished a fist and made my grand declaration.

At the time, I did not know that I would spend my whole life traveling from place to place, wandering through one dangerous secret and conspiracy after another…

In any case, listening to Aunt Qin talk about the northeast that night made the place seem distant and wondrous.

More than two hours passed.

I heard a faint rustling outside.

Aunt Qin gently patted my hand.

Her meaning was clear: the weasel spirit had probably arrived!

Following our plan, I rose and crept outside alone.

But the yard was empty. There was nothing there.

Huh?

Had the weasel spirit decided not to come that night?

Puzzled, I searched carefully in the bright moonlight for a long time. There was nothing on the ground, walls, trees, or beside the chicken coop!

I could only retreat and whisper to Aunt Qin that I had found nothing.

To my surprise, she lit the kerosene lamp, filling the main room with light.

She told me the weasel might not come that night after all. There was no need to remain so vigilant. I should tell Second Aunt that she could go to sleep.

It seemed strange, but I would never contradict Aunt Qin. I turned and walked toward the bedroom.

When I opened the door, Second Aunt was just about to come out.

Without thinking, I asked, “Second Aunt, didn’t Aunt Qin tell you not to come out tonight, no matter what?”

“Oh, right, I forgot. Zhong, could you draw some water from the well for me? Your Second Uncle woke up thirsty and wants a drink, but there’s no water in the house.”

Second Aunt looked as though the instruction had only just occurred to her.

I told her to wait, hoisted a carrying pole and bucket, and headed to the well in the eastern corner of the yard.

As I passed through the main room, I told Aunt Qin where I was going. She did not stop me.

The weasel spirit had not come, and Aunt Qin was there. Naturally, I had nothing to fear.

At the well, I set down the pole and lowered the bucket on its rope. Strangely, the bucket vanished as soon as I dropped it inside!

“Huh? What’s going on?”

Puzzled, I leaned over the rim and peered into the well.

But the stones around its edge were thick with moss and extremely slippery. I lost my footing and plunged straight into the well!

Splash.

I hit the bone-chilling water. Although I was a strong swimmer, there was no way to climb out of a well more than twenty feet deep.

I screamed for help.

But no one answered!

That made no sense. The well was not far from the house.

Aunt Qin was sitting in the main room. She should have heard my shouts. Why did she ignore me?

She would never leave me to die.

I grew colder and weaker. If no one rescued me soon, exhaustion would overcome me and I would die in the well…

Wait!

A realization flashed through my mind.

“No. Something’s wrong. I drew water for Dad while he cooked this afternoon. I remember perfectly: there wasn’t a speck of moss around the rim of Second Uncle’s well. So why was it covered in moss just now? Why did I slip?”

This was wrong!