Chapter 5

Chapter 5

On the third night, I heard the Mountain God speak for the first time.

It rained heavily that night. The sound of water outside the cave was like the weeping of countless people. Ah Ruo and the others were asleep, so I sat in the stone chamber holding the ledger, reading out the names page by page.

When I reached Xu Sanniang, a string of water droplets suddenly fell from the ceiling, splashing right onto the stone slab in front of me.

It was no coincidence.

Those few drops connected into a perfectly straight line, pointing toward a massive, dark boulder at the far end of the chamber.

I carried my lamp over and realized the rock looked like a face buried deep within the mountain. The forehead, bridge of the nose, and jawline were all blurred, but two deep cracks split the stone exactly where the eyes should be, as if they had been staring at me for many years.

Before I could speak, a sound like muffled thunder rumbled in my ears.

It didn’t come from the sky.

It came from within the stone, from the heart of the mountain, from the very earth beneath my feet.

“I do not take wives.”

The voice was slow and deep, like a massive boulder rolling across my chest.

My entire body froze.

“When they are sent here, I record them.”

“When they cannot return, I keep their names for them.”

“When they seek a path, I open the way.”

I didn’t know if I was driven by fear or fury, but I blurted out, “Then why don’t you just crush them to death?”

The mountain fell silent for a long time.

So long that I thought I had misheard.

Then, the voice spoke again.

“Mountains collapse, they crumble, they swallow people.”

“But if men do not admit their guilt, they will only say the god wants to eat people.”

My throat tightened.

So even a god knew that for some debts, killing wasn’t enough.

The living had to be made to admit that it wasn’t the mountain doing the eating.

I gripped the ledger tightly and looked at those two eye-like cracks in the stone. “Then you called me back because you want me to speak for you?”

A gust of wind suddenly swept into the stone chamber.

The flame in my lamp flared upward, illuminating the entire stone wall. A new row of characters appeared on the wall, as if they had been slowly soaked through by water.

*Debts must be collected.*

I slowly sank to my knees.

“I will collect them.”

From the next day on, I began learning how to navigate the mountains with Ah Ruo and the others. The people of Blackstone Village believed the mountain ate people, but the real man-eaters were the mine shafts and pitfalls they had left behind years ago. Over the years, Ah Ruo and the surviving girls had mapped out the old mountain paths one by one. They knew where the hidden slopes were, where the loose rocks lay, and how to circle around to the back of the Ancestral Hall better than Wu Shoucai did.

I also began picking up the skills my mother had taught me, one by one.

Stilt-walking: first train the legs, then the waist.

Wearing Nuo Masks: first hide the breath, then change the voice.

Making Fire Dragons: the bamboo strips must be light, the spine must be steady, and the belly must be filled with pine resin and tung oil. Only then, when the wind catches it, will the whole dragon seem to come alive.

The cave already held some supplies.

There were the costume trunks my mother had left behind, red silk that other brides had stolen from the village, stilts broken into several pieces, and half-painted Nuo masks. It was like a troupe that had been smashed and scattered before they could finish their performance, suppressed in the mountain for twenty years, just waiting for the night the gong would strike again.

Ah Ruo asked me, “Do you really want to go down the mountain?”

“Not just go down.” I tucked the last bamboo strip into the dragon’s head. “I want to make sure they never dare send anyone into the mountain ever again.”

Ah Ruo was silent for a long while before saying, “Then scaring them won’t be enough.”

She was right.

Blackstone Village didn’t rely on one or two madmen; it relied on the tacit consent of the entire village. Simply making them kneel wasn’t enough. We had to drag the ledger out into the light-every name sold, along with the silver, the dates of their suffering, and the evidence.

I questioned the surviving girls one by one.

Where each came from, who was left in their families, who had sold them, who had escorted them, and who had held them down to force-feed them medicine. Whatever they could remember, I recorded. For what they couldn’t, I slowly pieced it together from their old clothes, embroidery patterns, and accents.

On the seventh day of recording, the young girl Miaomiao suddenly tugged at my sleeve.

She had been rendered mute by fear when she was sold, and she almost never spoke. That day, she wrote three words on the ground with charcoal.

“Chunya is still here.”

I froze.

Miaomiao wrote again: *Ancestral Hall cellar.*

My palms were suddenly slick with sweat.

Blackstone Village hadn’t sent me into the mountain this time because I was the only one left.

They still had another girl in their hands.