Chapter 302
Chapter 302
On the Opera Stage, the human-skin performers flourished swords and spears, their singing by turns ringing, lilting, and mournful. Below the stage, more listeners arrived one after another.
An ordinary passerby probably wouldn’t have seen those listeners.
Some were wandering ghosts from the surrounding area, but most had climbed out of the Zhu Pan River.
They were bluish purple all over and dripping wet. Some even carried swords at their waists. They craned their necks toward the Opera Stage, occasionally swaying their heads along with the music, utterly entranced.
As the human-skin performers sang and danced, Chen Fuying leaned against the doorframe and hummed along.
Her voice was quiet, but I could hear that she had training.
It ran in the family.
I didn’t interrupt her. I simply stood beside her and listened.
Only when the aria ended did Chen Fuying murmur, “That’s my great-grandmother. Beautiful, isn’t she?”
I nodded. “Yes. A beauty without equal.”
Chen Fuying gave a soft laugh. “There’s never been an ugly woman in our family. We have my great-grandmother’s good genes to thank for that.”
Then she added, “She was only twenty-eight when she died. She suffocated. A small incision was made at the back of her head, and her entire skin was removed intact. Then special methods were used to turn it into a Human-Skin Effigy. So, in a sense, the ones we’re watching onstage aren’t really ghosts.”
I was truly stunned.
Human-Skin Effigies?
What sort of methods could produce skins so perfectly intact, and so many of them?
It made me think of Zhao Zixun.
After Chen Ping drove a Coffin Nail between Zhao Zixun’s brows, he gained complete control over him, and Zhao Zixun began killing and skinning people. But surely even his methods had never reached such a horrifying level?
Was there a connection between whoever had made these Human-Skin Effigies and the Coffin Nail between Zhao Zixun’s brows?
I turned sharply toward Chen Fuying. This woman’s arrival had brought me an even greater mystery, yet she also offered a direct route to certain truths.
I had come to the right person.
Sensing my gaze, Chen Fuying smiled. “Another opera is starting. Listen while you can, Xiao Jiu. Before long, you may not be able to hear it even if you want to.”
From eleven until nearly three in the morning, the performances on the Ghost Opera Stage never stopped, and the audience below kept growing.
I didn’t know whether I was imagining it, but even the waves on the Zhu Pan River seemed a little higher than before.
The instant three o’clock arrived, every listener hurried away.
The Human-Skin Effigies on the Ghost Opera Stage vanished, too.
If they had simply been ghosts, I could have understood their disappearing in an instant. But they were Human-Skin Effigies.
An effigy had a physical form.
They had no flesh or blood, only a layer of skin imprisoning a soul. They couldn’t vanish instantaneously.
Where had they gone?
A rooster crowed faintly in the distance. At last, Chen Fuying straightened and turned to me. “Would you like to meet them?”
“Oh? Can I?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows. “Of course!”
I could hardly have wished for anything better.
Chen Fuying turned and led me into the Teahouse. After closing the front door, she took me to the kitchen.
It was a large kitchen, with many people coming and going every day. Beside a stove in one corner, Chen Fuying activated some hidden mechanism, and the stove began to rotate.
I could clearly see steamers still sitting on it. It was obviously used every day.
The stove turned clockwise several times, then began turning counterclockwise. After a click, Chen Fuying gave it a push. The whole stove, together with a section of the floor beneath it, slid aside to reveal an opening.
It was pitch-black inside. Chen Fuying switched on a flashlight and shone it down.
Steps ran along the edge of the opening. Chen Fuying led me down about thirty of them until we stood on a landing. She found another hidden mechanism, and oil lamps lit up one after another along the walls, illuminating a stone door ahead.
A large character meaning “opera” was carved into the door, encircled by a design made half from a curved Red-Tasseled Spear and half from a length of Water Sleeve, the long, flowing sleeve used in opera.
The spearhead lifted the Water Sleeve, while one end of the sleeve wound around the spear’s butt.
Chen Fuying took out a round emblem.
It looked very old. The character for “opera” was engraved on the front, while the back bore “Mei.”
Chen Fuying aligned its back with the dot stroke in the character on the stone door and fitted it into place.
It was a perfect fit.
With a rumble, the stone door slowly slid aside. An icy chill rushed into our faces.
Oil lamps lit up one after another, their dim yellow light casting shifting shadows inside the doorway.
At first glance, my heart clenched, and my skin prickled involuntarily.
Once I steadied myself and saw what was inside, my heart began to throb with pain.
Beyond the stone door lay a vast chamber.
Well over a hundred opera costumes hung at different heights on all four walls. Every one was perfectly preserved, exquisitely embroidered, and clearly worth a fortune.
A high Opera Stage stood in the center. It must have been left unused for many years, for dust covered its surface, but I could still tell how expensive it had been to build.
In the place of honor opposite the stage sat a grand armchair, raised slightly higher than the stage itself.
No. To be precise, it wasn’t an armchair. It was a… Dragon throne!
The throne was broad and imposing, apparently cast from solid gold. Two Golden Dragons coiled around its armrests, baring their fangs and claws. Each held a luminous pearl the size of a fist in its mouth!
On the wall behind the throne hung an imperial robe embroidered with five-clawed Golden Dragons in gold thread!
On either side of the Opera Stage stood a rack as tall as a person. Arranged neatly on the racks were more than a dozen… human skins…
Hooks pierced the backs of their heads, where incisions only a little over ten centimeters long had been made.
Their brows and lips were painted, making their faces look alive. Several were unmistakably the performers I had just seen singing on the Ghost Opera Stage!
Against the wall behind the racks stood several large chests filled with ornaments of every kind. Props such as Red-Tasseled Spears stood to one side.
There was so much that I couldn’t make it all out in the dim light.
For a moment, I almost felt as though I had fallen into a dream.
But I knew this wasn’t a dream.
All of it was real. More than a century ago, Chen Ping had built this private domain for himself.
It held his dreams of emperorship and all the things he loved.
Chen Fuying walked up to one of the Human-Skin Effigies and gazed steadily at her.
Looking closely, I realized that the effigy’s features were almost identical to Chen Fuying’s.
If that Human-Skin Effigy were filled out with flesh and blood and brought back to life, she would be another living, breathing Chen Fuying!
As I watched, Chen Fuying bit her finger. A bead of blood welled up at once.
She touched her bleeding finger between the Human-Skin Effigy’s brows. The blood spread out, then was swiftly absorbed by the skin.
Chen Fuying grew paler and paler. A fine layer of sweat covered her forehead, while an eerie trace of color appeared on the Human-Skin Effigy’s face.
In just a few seconds, Chen Fuying’s formerly voluptuous figure seemed to shrink a size. At the same moment, the Human-Skin Effigy’s chest began to rise and fall ever so slightly…