Chapter 16

Chapter 16

What was a ghost feast?

As the name implied, it was a feast to which ghosts invited you as their guest!

According to legend, certain ancient ghosts took up residence in a graveyard for so long, without ever entering the underworld for rebirth, that they began considering themselves the masters of the place.

On a day they considered festive, they sent subordinate ghosts to find “guests” for a banquet.

Ordinarily, ghosts did not invite the living.

Their guests were strange creatures such as foxes, wild dogs, toads, snakes, rats… and the like.

But there were exceptions!

When a ghost feast was underway, things like sedan chairs and carrying litters might inexplicably appear in the wilderness.

That was why country travelers feared encountering such objects after midnight more than almost anything else.

No similar uncanny rumors had circulated in our area for many years. Almost everyone had forgotten the eerie and terrifying legend.

Had the red sedan chair not repeatedly blocked my path that day, and had my maternal grandfather never told me the story, I would not have known about it either…

But knowing did me no good. It only made me more afraid.

I stared at the red sedan chair ahead, unable to move forward or retreat.

Although dawn was drawing nearer, my surroundings seemed to grow darker, while the thin mist became steadily denser.

The fog obscured my vision until I could no longer see the road a short distance ahead.

“Damn! I’m in real trouble today.”

I knew the situation was bad.

Still, after years beside Aunt Qin, I had picked up a little knowledge.

I quickly bit my middle finger and drew a vertical line of blood at the center of my brow. That would let me see evil entities more clearly.

Their glamour spells would no longer deceive me so thoroughly.

Sure enough, the dense fog that had just surged around me vanished from my sight. Only the natural mist remained, thin enough that it barely obstructed my view.

“If this ghostly sedan insists on blocking the road, I’ll take a side path. I refuse to believe there’s no way around it!”

I turned off the dirt road and climbed onto a narrow ridge between the fields.

I hid the old ducks and eggs in a patch of grass, planning to retrieve them after daylight. My life mattered more than possessions now.

Then I hurried rightward along the ridge. A small wood lay ahead, with a shortcut back to the village!

Before entering the trees, I glanced behind me.

The sedan chair remained at the entrance to the mountain hollow, radiating an eerie, sinister air through the mist.

“Run!”

Without the back basket and bamboo crate, I felt light and moved much faster.

Then a thought struck that sent cold sweat pouring down my body: what if that cursed sedan chair appeared inside the woods?

When misfortune comes, even cold water gets stuck between your teeth. The thing you fear always seems to happen the moment you imagine it.

Deep in the woods, after I had covered roughly half the distance home, the red-painted sedan chair appeared again!

It sat in a clearing ahead, radiating waves of sinister energy.

Even worse, its curtain was open this time!

Moonlight filtering through the branches revealed the black seat inside…

A cold wind swept past.

I shuddered.

That hateful ghostly sedan truly would not leave me alone.

I was about to run again when footsteps suddenly sounded among the trees behind me.

Someone seemed to be walking over dead branches and rotting leaves, producing a series of crisp cracks and crunches.

“Someone’s coming!”

My heart leaped with joy.

Ghosts were incorporeal and drifted lightly when they moved, so naturally their steps made no sound.

Footsteps meant the newcomer had to be human!

The presence of even one other person would immediately cut my fear in half. I was fairly brave to begin with. With company, there would be no need to fear the sedan chair at all.

Then I turned and looked by moonlight.

My heart sank!

The newcomers truly were not ghosts. But… they were four filthy-looking paper effigies!

They were plainly the kind burned before graves as offerings to the dead. Each wore black burial slippers with bulbous toes and paper clothes, some white and some green. Their faces were made of white paper, deathly pale beneath the moon, with two blotches of rouge standing out grotesquely in the dim night.

The four paper figures walked stiffly but quickly.

I froze for only an instant, yet they were already before me.

“Damn it! I’ll fight you!”

I crouched to grab a stone, but my body suddenly went limp and refused to move. My eyelids grew heavy. Strength left me, darkness swallowed my sight, and I lost consciousness.

My final thought was this: wasn’t a Featherborn’s bazi supposed to be special and highly resistant to an evil entity’s entrancement?
How had I fallen so easily?

When consciousness gradually returned, I opened my eyes and found myself lying on a bed.

What was going on? Hadn’t four eerie paper figures knocked me unconscious?

I became instantly alert.

With a jerk, I sat upright.

I was in a large, old-fashioned room that appeared rather luxurious.

The bed beneath me was enormous, with solid wooden posts at all four corners and something like mosquito netting hanging above. This was clearly the home of a wealthy family.

“Strange. Did a passerby rescue me? But where am I? I never knew anyone this rich lived near our village.”

I muttered inwardly and cautiously prepared to leave the bed.

The moment my feet touched the floor and I put on my shoes, the door creaked open.

A boy wearing a coarse, side-fastened jacket entered. He looked about my age, though shorter and less mature.

His face was pale. He carried a brass washbasin filled with water and had a towel draped over one arm.

“Honored guest, you’re awake?” he asked with a smile.

My suspicion deepened. I watched him warily. “Where is this? And who are you?”

The boy set down the basin and placed the towel in the water. “This is Zhao Manor. Our steward was passing through the woods and saw you unconscious on the ground, so he brought you back. As for me, I am a servant of Zhao Manor.”

So that was it!

I nodded, but found the situation strange. What era was this? Who still kept servants?

And his clothes resembled those worn by characters in The Bund, the television series I had watched at Big-Head Liu’s general store, the wealthiest household in our village.

I would enter middle school the following month, so of course I knew The Bund took place during the Republican era, in the old society of seventy or eighty years earlier!

Why was anyone still dressed that way?

I turned toward the window. It was pitch-black outside. Dawn had not arrived.

Then I could not have been unconscious for long.

“Friend, thank you. But I want to go home, so I won’t disturb the adults of the household. After daybreak, I’ll bring my parents back to thank you.”

I stepped around the boy in his Republican-era coarse clothing and hurried toward the door.

I was not stupid!

Of course I sensed that something was wrong, but I did not dare dwell on it. I only wanted to escape and return home as quickly as possible.

To my surprise, the open door slammed shut by itself as I approached, making me jump.

When I turned, the smile had vanished from the young servant’s face. His eyes were icy as he stared fixedly at me, a trace of mockery curling one corner of his mouth.

“Now that you’re here, why rush away? Today is our master’s birthday, and many guests have come. It will be very lively. Since you happen to be here, why not attend the banquet before leaving?”

He enunciated every word. His voice was cold as ice and brooked no refusal.

I said nothing.

Inside my sleeves, my hands clenched into fists, while my body trembled faintly.

I remained silent because I feared that if I opened my mouth, my teeth would chatter audibly.

For only then did I notice that the boy wore black, bulbous-toed burial slippers–the kind placed on a corpse before it was laid in a coffin!

I understood.

I had truly been invited to a ghost feast!

I was inside a haunted mansion!

The pale, sinister servant of Zhao Manor before me could not possibly be alive!

No matter how early I had matured, how clever I was, or how much courage I possessed, I panicked completely.

When I delivered the drowned revenant to the Hundred-Bone Pagoda and later fought the weasel spirit, the mysterious and powerful Aunt Qin had been beside me.

She was the one who truly handled everything.

I had merely helped.

Now Aunt Qin was absent. For the first time, I faced evil entities and ghosts alone.

And there might not be only one. There could be a whole den of them!

This so-called Zhao Manor was certainly a haunted mansion.

“Damn! My luck is truly cursed. I tried to ease my family’s burden by going to market alone for the first time, and I walked straight into something as evil as a ghost feast.”

I wanted to cry.

But I remembered Aunt Qin’s warning: I must never show fear, or I would truly be finished.

So although I was terrified, I nodded and forced two steady words from my mouth.

“All right.”

The smile returned to the servant’s corpse-like face.

“Then wash your face, honored guest. Our master’s birthday banquet will begin shortly.”

With that, he withdrew.