Chapter 6
Chapter 6
The Immortal Lady patiently explained it to my mother.
“As the saying goes, when misfortune reaches its limit, fortune follows; when yin reaches its extreme, yang is born. Little Wu’s bazi is theoretically as light as it can possibly be. But at the very extreme, it gives rise to a trace of weight. That makes him more spiritually sensitive than most people. It is why he and I get along, and also why he can suppress some of the aura of a vicious thing like a vicious water revenant.”
“To be honest, everything in this world comes with karmic debt. Little Wu will face three life tribulations, each more dangerous than the last. We get along well enough, but that alone isn’t yet enough for me to step in and save him from the second. If he comes with me tonight, the karmic debt between us will be established.”
It all sounded terribly complicated and mysterious. My mother looked dazed.
My father spoke up from beside her.
“Ying, do you think I’m not worried? But the Immortal Lady said that if our boy goes with her this once, she’ll help him survive his second life tribulation. She also said nothing will happen as long as she’s there. It’s just that we don’t have any river oarsmen here anymore. She’ll have to steer the boat herself, and she can’t afford to be distracted.”
Although I was only nine and not yet ten, I had matured earlier than most children my age. I more or less understood.
If I helped the Immortal Lady tonight–and helped the village as well–she would save my life in the future!
“Mom, don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy now.”
“All right, then.”
My mother was finally, reluctantly persuaded.
I left the house with the Immortal Lady and my father, and we walked toward the river.
The night wind stirred, setting the grass rustling all around us.
The riverbank was far stranger and eerier at night than during the day.
But from a long way off, we could see a large crowd gathered there. Everyone held a torch and seemed to be surrounding something, which made the place feel a little less desolate.
“Are all these people coming with us?”
I was puzzled. It looked like every adult in the village was there.
The Immortal Lady shook her head. “Of course not. It’ll just be you and me. But if we’re traveling by boat in the dead of night, a red boat is best. As luck would have it, Butcher Chen’s grandfather was a Red-Boat Oarsman. The boat he left behind has been gathering dust in their backyard. When your father and I went to fetch you, I told them to bring it here first.”
I knew what an “oarsman” was, of course. It simply meant someone who made a living on the water.
In some places, the local dialect called them boatmen or riverhands.
Old Li, the fisherman who had helped retrieve Wang Fei’s body during the day, could be considered a river oarsman in the broadest sense.
But all he could do was row up and down the river near the village and catch a few fish. He would never dare travel as far as Lianghe Town, thirty or forty li away.
Not far beyond our village, this river gradually flowed into the Chuan River, where the water ran deep and the current swift!
How could someone who scraped a living from a little river like Old Li dare venture there?
“Immortal Lady, what’s a red boat?” I asked curiously.
It felt as though my life had suddenly veered in a wholly different direction that day. I was beginning to encounter all sorts of things I had never known before.
“From now on, you can call me Aunt Qin. But only you are allowed to call me that.”
The Immortal Lady kept her gaze ahead, her tone mild.
Then she explained what a red boat was…
Red boats went hand in hand with the Yishan Burial Grounds and Hundred-Bone Pagodas I mentioned earlier.
There were so many river-logs in the Chuan River that, from ancient times onward, people had made a profession of retrieving them. Their wages were registered and paid by the government, and they even carried official badges.
The small skiffs used to retrieve river-logs were generally moored below dangerous shoals. Their hulls were painted vermilion. The river oarsmen aboard wrapped red scarves around their heads and wore red clothes. Even the chopsticks they ate with were red!
Red was highly visible, but it was also believed to ward off evil and bolster courage.
That was why these official corpse retrieval boats came to be known as red boats.
And because the destiny of the imperial court stood behind and protected them, the Red-Boat Oarsmen were far tougher than private corpse retrievers, and far more likely to survive.
Legend held that the founder of the red-boat tradition was Zhou Changqi, a local magistrate in Guizhou in the Three Gorges during the Tianqi era of the Ming dynasty.
At first, he used his own salary to build two small wooden boats and stationed them at Zha Shoal. They became the first red boats on the Chuan River.
Zha Shoal lay beneath the city of Guizhou, which he governed. Countless stone ridges ran close and parallel beneath the water, where waves churned and whirlpools abounded. It was extraordinarily dangerous.
Zhou Changqi was later commended by the imperial court, and the stationing of Red-Boat Oarsmen along the Chuan River became an official institution. The practice continued all the way into the Republican era…
By the time Aunt Qin finished speaking, I had followed her to the riverbank.
The villagers automatically parted to either side when they saw her arrive.
I finally saw a small wooden boat resting by the river. It was more than fifteen feet long and three or four feet wide. The entire hull was a strange, dull red, gray with dust and badly worn.
But that made sense. Aunt Qin had said it was left behind by Butcher Chen’s grandfather, so it had probably lain abandoned for decades. The fact that it had not rotted away completely was remarkable enough.
The villagers had dug it out and repaired it. To their surprise, it was still serviceable.
The coffin holding Wang Fei’s body now sat in the center of the little wooden boat. Its lid was closed, with nails driven into all four corners.
That meant I could no longer see how frightening my former playmate looked.
Otherwise, no matter how brave I was, a boy not yet ten might well have wet his pants!
“Immortal Lady, you’re finally here.”
“The Immortal Lady is here.”
The village chief and the others all seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as they wiped the sweat from their brows.
Aunt Qin sneered. “I told you, sealing the coffin with spirit-suppressing nails would keep anything from happening for at least six to ten hours. There are so many grown men here, and you’re still afraid?”
In the past, everyone had ignored the village madwoman. Now, no one dared contradict her. They could only smile awkwardly.
The village chief hurried to say, “Immortal Lady, everything is ready. Do you think it’s time to leave?”
He too was worried by Aunt Qin’s warning. If the yin water energy escaped after daybreak, everyone in the village would suffer bad luck for the next thirty years.
Looking more closely, I noticed two live chickens trussed up aboard the boat. From their fiery red combs, both were fierce-looking roosters.
There were also a number of jars and bottles arranged neatly on board. I had no idea what any of them contained.
“All right. Let’s go.”
At Aunt Qin’s command, the villagers pushed the little red boat into the water.
Splash…
Under the moonlight, a dark red boat carrying a coffin, a woman, and a child slowly slipped into the river.
Seen through the eyes of an onlooker, the scene must have appeared both uncanny and sinister.
Aunt Qin planted a pole in the shallow water near shore and pushed several times. The boat glided into the middle of the river, caught the current, and began drifting downstream toward Lianghe Town.
“Little Wu, don’t look around, don’t touch anything, and don’t speak out of turn. Do whatever Aunt Qin tells you along the way. Mind her, understand?”
My father ran along the bank after the boat for a while, shouting to me.
He was worried too, of course. But with Aunt Qin’s promise and my future at stake, he had no choice but to let me go.
As for me, I was a little scared, but also brimming with curiosity and excitement at the unknown!
The boat moved forward. Beneath the moonlight, the trees on both banks possessed an eerie beauty.
The river’s surface was calm. Every so often, something unseen leaped into the water with a splash.
Wait!
Something suddenly occurred to me, and I asked curiously, “Aunt Qin, I’ll be in fourth grade when school starts, and I’ve learned some math and geography. This little boat isn’t very fast. You told Dad that the Hundred-Bone Pagoda in Lianghe Town is forty or fifty li away. Can we really get there before dawn?”
Aunt Qin stood in the bow without turning around. But I could hear the smile in her voice, along with a hint of pride.
“Other river oarsmen might not manage it, Little Wu, but your Aunt Qin can. Hold on tight. This boat is about to pick up speed.”