“So what you’re saying is that Liu Yang Yang and I were exposed from the very beginning. All the disguising and acting we did before were completely useless?”
“Mm.”
“My aba and ama, and little Fu Fu too… they all know I’m an outsider.”
“Children are a little slow, but every adult with normal intelligence knows.”
“So the ritual Ama asked the Gui Gong to perform looked like an offering to an ‘ancestor ghost’ to cure my illness… but what she really wanted was to get her ‘Kan Kan’ back and drive me out of this body?”
Qin Shu fell into thought. No wonder Ama’s attitude had always seemed subtly strange. He was somewhat relieved that he had neither resisted violently nor tried to run away by force, but had remained cautious from the very beginning.
Otherwise, he did not dare imagine what even more terrifying things a mother desperate to recover her child might have done to him.
Pei Zhao glanced at him. “Driving out a ‘Jin Ghost’ like you is how the shamanic healers of Living Water Village treat illness.”
Qin Shu froze for a moment before realization dawned. Then he became even more confused. “But I wasn’t driven out at all. Instead, I somehow grew this incredibly cool beast horn…”
“Mm. Because they got one crucial fact wrong. You are Qin Shu, and this body is also your own. Of course the usual method for expelling a Jin Ghost can’t drive out the true owner of the body.”
Pei Zhao explained calmly before adding, “‘Kan Kan’ has nothing to do with you. He drowned in the sea a long time ago.”
“Wait, something’s wrong. If this really is my own body, then why did a beast horn grow out of my forehead?” Qin Shu abruptly panicked. “Hold on. You’re my classmate, and I’m an ordinary high school student, so I should be completely human, right?”
“…For the moment, you are indeed human. As for why this happened, ask yourself.” Pei Zhao glanced at him and lightly pursed his lips, once again becoming evasive.
Qin Shu had the feeling that if he continued pressing the subject, Pei Zhao might become unhappy. Yet his own tightly wound nerves still refused to relax. After turning the matter over in his mind, he simply moved on to his other questions.
“There are plenty of stranger things too. For example, why did the Gui Gong die so horribly? When all that heavenly thunder started rolling earlier, he looked even more frightened and confused than I was. That’s strange, isn’t it? Did something go wrong with the ritual, or did Ama deliberately trick him? And this was obviously supposed to be an exorcism, so how did he somehow summon you and the eyeball instead?”
Question after question came flying at him. Pei Zhao could not help frowning. “Explaining all of that is too troublesome. I don’t want to.”
He had not spoken this much in one stretch for a very long time. He had already been annoyed to begin with, and now talking so much had tired him out, worsening his mood further.
Qin Shu choked on his response and lowered his head, looking faintly dejected. “Oh.”
“…We can’t leave this ghost domain until the story is complete. Once your memories return, you’ll understand everything yourself, so I won’t need to explain it.” Seeing Qin Shu suddenly look like that, the irritated Pei Zhao paused before reluctantly offering another sentence of explanation.
So Pei Zhao really was remarkably easy to get along with.
And this place really was a ghost domain—an otherworldly space governed by unknown rules.
The corner of Qin Shu’s mouth curved almost imperceptibly. His dejection vanished in an instant, replaced by renewed energy.
The existence of a ghost domain matched the conclusion he and Liu Yang Yang had previously reached.
But relying on only the two of them—one who had just lost his memories and another who had just been struck by heavenly lightning—even if they cautiously spent an entire day investigating Living Water Village, they probably would not have found any obvious method of escaping the ghost domain.
Who would have expected that the bizarre exorcism would go wrong and somehow deliver Pei Zhao to them? Better yet, Pei Zhao was one of their own. Their path ahead had suddenly become much clearer.
“The mountain trail isn’t easy to walk. I’ll go in front and block the wind. You watch the path and navigate, and the eyeball can bring up the rear. How does that sound?”
“Fine.”
“Then let’s go this way first. Follow the patches where the weeds are thinnest and head upward… Here, give me your hand.”
Their figures disappeared one behind the other into the forest, gradually swallowed by damp evergreen vegetation.
Once they escaped the villagers’ prying gazes at the foot of the mountain, Qin Shu felt as though even the pressure in the air had eased. He became increasingly relaxed and enthusiastic.
He kept a firm hold on Pei Zhao’s hand, following his directions through one fork in the path after another. His steps were steady and secure, and not once did he slip or misstep.
The extra bamboo-roasted beef he had eaten at lunch had been enormously useful.
Although his beast horn occasionally scraped against branches and leaves, it was hardly a problem. The pitch-black horn was simply too sharp. Even wild branches nearly as thick as his forearm could be sliced cleanly in two, as smoothly and effortlessly as cutting through a sheet of paper.
Qin Shu secretly tested it several times and was nearly overwhelmed by how cool it was. His confidence in his own combat ability suddenly soared as well. Anyone stupid enough to ram into my horn is going to end up exactly like those branches.
By the time they reached the middle of the mountain, the trail had grown increasingly narrow. Wild grass had almost completely swallowed every trace of human passage, and the terrain beneath their feet had become so complicated that it was nearly impossible to see clearly. Qin Shu therefore suggested that he carry Pei Zhao the rest of the way, which would also save Pei Zhao some energy.
Pei Zhao did not refuse.
“Did I carry you like this before? Hiss… It’s getting cold. Pei Zhao, you really should eat more meat. How can you be this light? Being too light can’t be healthy, can it? Are you even going to pass the physical examination for the college entrance exam?”
“Mm. You carried me before. And at the time, you said exactly the same thing,” Pei Zhao complained gloomily. “Even after losing your memory, you’re still exactly like this.”
“That’s called being consistent with my true feelings. It proves I’m probably a pretty decent person—honest, straightforward, and kind. I must genuinely want what’s best for you.” Qin Shu chuckled and shamelessly praised himself, only to fall slightly silent afterward and sigh.
He wanted his memories back even more now. He wanted to know more about himself and about Pei Zhao. Qin Shu disliked this intense feeling of having no control, as though one strange event after another were pushing him forward while he remained unable to participate in any truly important decision.
The deeper they went into the mountain, the colder it became. Thin patches of ice and old snow clung faintly to branches and treetops. Leaves frozen stiff occasionally brushed Qin Shu’s cheek, giving him the illusion of being cut by knife blades.
“By the way, Pei Zhao, we’ve climbed all this way and I don’t think I’ve seen a single wild animal. Is that normal? Forget birds—I haven’t even seen an insect.”
Even considering the season, a mountain range this large should not have been completely devoid of living creatures.
Yet Qin Shu realized that aside from the sound of their conversation, the noise of the eyeball dragging its corpse along the overgrown trail behind them, the friction of cloth, and the shifting of branches and leaves… there was nothing else to be heard in the mountain.
Whenever Qin Shu stopped, the eyeball stopped as well, and the eerie deathly silence became unmistakable. There was no sound, not even the faintest breath of wind. Even Pei Zhao’s breathing was extraordinarily soft and shallow, leaving their surroundings so quiet that the fall of a needle would have been audible.
“Living Water Village never used to get snow,” Pei Zhao suddenly said.
“Mm. And then?”
“Until several vicious murders occurred one after another in this tiny fishing village. Headless corpses drifted away with the tide, while a scapegoat hanged himself in prison…”
Pei Zhao continued in an unhurried, almost indifferent voice. “The villagers remained silent. Those who knew the truth avoided questioning and allowed the case to become an unresolved miscarriage of justice. The real murderer has never been caught.”
The scapegoat who had been arrested was the most ordinary young man in Living Water Village. His family had no background or influence, and he had been desperately poor since childhood. His aba had accidentally drowned while fishing at sea, his ama had cried herself blind, and his relatives treated him as though he did not exist.
He was completely alone. Even when someone openly and deliberately framed him, there was no one capable of standing behind him and no one willing to speak up on his behalf.
“…Was that young man wrongfully killed, and that’s why it suddenly started snowing in Living Water Village?” Qin Shu struggled to imagine it. He felt as though he had encountered something similar not long ago, but he could not recall any of the specific details.
The strange emptiness caused by his missing memories remained, like a crude obstruction of knowledge and perception thrown between Qin Shu and his own past. Whenever he tried to touch or cross that barrier, every concrete detail was swallowed away, leaving him with nothing but an intense sense of déjà vu.
Elio’s Notes: Obstruction of knowledge and perception renders 知见障, a Buddhist-derived expression referring to mistaken knowledge or views that obstruct true understanding. Here, Qin Shu uses it metaphorically for the barrier preventing him from accessing his memories.
Fortunately, Pei Zhao was with him. Pei Zhao did not hide crucial information and confirmed, “More or less. At first, snow fell in June. Later, the scapegoat’s execution was expedited, and from then on Haicheng’s climate changed completely—from a tropical monsoon climate into a typical temperate one with four distinct seasons.”
Elio’s Notes: Snow falling in June is a famous Chinese literary omen of a grave miscarriage of justice, most strongly associated with the Yuan-dynasty play The Injustice to Dou E, in which midsummer snow vindicates an innocent woman after her wrongful execution.
The climate change had enormous consequences. According to Pei Zhao, Haicheng’s local crops and wildlife had been devastated by the abrupt shift. Huge numbers died over the course of three years, leaving corpses scattered across multiple areas of Haicheng and large stretches of land barren. Only after those three years did people manage, with the help of modern technology, to help the region’s plants and animals adapt to the new temperate climate.
As for why the mountain behind Living Water Village had once again become deathly silent and barren, without even a trace of wildlife… Qin Shu had a theory of his own.
“It sounds like retribution. Everyone was an accomplice, so the entire city suffered punishment along with them,” Qin Shu said thoughtfully. “What about the real murderer’s family? They must have had an even worse time of it. They should have suffered even more retribution, right? I suspect the murderer’s descendants are still in Living Water Village—either Ama’s family or the Gui Gong’s.”
Pei Zhao’s lips curved slightly. The smile was faint, but at least it was genuine. “Of course. You’ll find out soon. Do you see that sealed cave? Go around the pile of rocks ahead from the left. There’s a hidden path that leads directly inside.”
Qin Shu hooked an arm back around Pei Zhao’s thigh and steadied the feather-light person on his back, giving him a small upward bounce before striding quickly around the obstacle. “That cave looks gloomy as hell. What’s inside?”
“The ancestors of ‘Kan Kan,’ the ancestors of the other villagers in Living Water Village, and a first-class jinshi from over a thousand years ago,” Pei Zhao replied. He secretly poked Qin Shu’s beast horn, his gaze drifting away almost unconsciously. “Their remains are all buried inside. Go burn a few sticks of incense and ask the ancestors to return to the mortal world and save you.”
Elio’s Notes: A jinshi was someone who passed the highest level of the imperial civil-service examinations in premodern China, an achievement that could lead to a prestigious government office. A first-class jinshi ranked among the most distinguished successful candidates.
Qin Shu froze. “Those people aren’t my ancestors at all. We aren’t related by blood. I couldn’t convincingly pretend otherwise even if I tried.”
“It doesn’t matter. As long as you can summon the ancestor ghosts, you can personally beat them to death and leave this place.”
Qin Shu froze again. He stopped before the dark, sinister cave entrance, feeling cold air seep from within as he asked stiffly, “…You want me to personally beat a whole group of thousand-year-old ancestral ghosts to death? That’s why you brought me up the mountain?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a weapon. You want me to use my bare hands?”
“Mm. Usually your fists. Just hit them a little harder.”
Qin Shu drew a deep breath. He could already smell faint traces of incense ash from inside the cave, together with the acrid smoke of thoroughly burned paper money and plastic. Apparently, they were not the only recent visitors. Someone else had come up the mountain to worship the ancestors not long ago. Qin Shu reasonably suspected that it had been Ama, who wanted her child—her Kan Kan—back.
And everything currently happening seemed to be proceeding exactly as Ama had eagerly hoped. Even now, surrounded by light snow, boulders, and trees, Qin Shu could still remember the identical, unsettling expressions of approval and expectation on every member of the family’s face.
That made him uneasy, so Qin Shu turned his head again to confirm with Pei Zhao. “If I really punch one of these ghosts as hard as I can, you’re sure the ending won’t be… the ghost floating away while laughing at me and I’m left with a torn ligament?”
The moment he finished speaking, Pei Zhao rather impolitely crooked a finger and tapped the beast horn on Qin Shu’s forehead.
Tok.
The clear little sound echoed repeatedly through the deathly silent mountain.
It sounds a little like someone tapping a wooden fish. Qin Shu suddenly found the comparison so funny that he laughed aloud.
Elio’s Notes: A wooden fish is a hollow wooden percussion instrument used in Buddhist chanting. Its crisp tapping sound helps keep rhythm during recitation.
Pei Zhao immediately slipped down from his back, caught hold of Qin Shu’s sleeve, and stared expressionlessly at him. “Qin Shu. Go inside.”
“Oh.” Qin Shu instantly wiped the smile from his face and swallowed his laughter.
With those cool golden eyes fixed on him and Pei Zhao tugging him into the cave by the sleeve, Qin Shu somehow felt less nervous instead.
Scratch—fssst.
A match flared to life, revealing an entirely different scene within the cave.
The people of Living Water Village did not follow Daoist customs exclusively. Even their ancestral tablets were carved from stone and colored with plant dyes.
There were no tables, chairs, or incense burners inside. Stone ancestral tablets were densely stacked everywhere, each one carved with a different ancestor’s name and dates of birth and death.
The tablets had been painted in various bright colors according to generation and seniority. Following that same generational order, they extended from the lowest point of the cave all the way to its highest reaches, while beneath each stone lay the buried remains of the dead.
A small open patch had been left before the tablets of each generation so their descendants could come and worship them. Paper money and incense sticks, meanwhile, had been prepared collectively by the village and stored inside wooden boxes near the cave entrance.
Whenever someone came to worship their ancestors, they simply took however much they wanted and burned it directly on the earthen ground before the appropriate tablets. There were not many elaborate rules.
Qin Shu opened a wooden box and took out several incense sticks. A cold gust swept through the cave, extinguishing the match.
He instinctively blinked, only to discover that everything remained perfectly clear. Apparently, he did not need nearly as much light as he had thought.
As long as even the faintest light entered through the cave mouth, his naked eyes could make out everything inside the pitch-black cavern. He could even distinguish the colors of the stones with ease.
“My eyesight is actually this good? Is this what Liu Yang Yang meant by Yin-Yang Eyes? That’s incredible… Pei Zhao, your eyes are so beautiful. They look like pieces of gold. How extravagant!”
Qin Shu stared in amazement at Pei Zhao’s eyes gleaming in the darkness, though his hands never stopped moving.
He lit another match and burned several extra sheets of paper money to help ignite the slender incense sticks. At the same time, he could not resist glancing at Pei Zhao several more times before naturally searching for another topic of conversation. “By the way, do you think Liu Yang Yang will be safe acting alone? He’s very strong, but I’m worried he might get caught off guard by some dirty trick. He can be kind of simple-minded.”
“He’ll be safe.”
“Oh… So he’s also part of completing this story? You already arranged everything.”
“Mm. He’s the peddler, and he can only be the peddler—an innocent observer protagonist who accidentally wanders into danger,” Pei Zhao said softly, raising a hand to cover his nose and mouth as though he disliked the incense. “His role is to bring out the absurdity and eeriness of Living Water Village, but he has nothing to do with the locals’ grudges, romances, or feuds. No one has any reason to want him dead.”
Elio’s Notes: Observer protagonist renders the Chinese internet-fiction term 摄像头主角, literally “camera protagonist.” It describes a viewpoint character who mainly witnesses and records the central events rather than driving the story’s main conflict.
Observer protagonist… role setting…
Qin Shu held nine burning incense sticks and bowed solemnly toward the densely packed stone tablets, repeatedly turning those words over in his mind.
Pei Zhao had already made it extremely obvious. With only a little thought, Qin Shu could probably come infinitely close to the truth—they were trapped inside a ghost domain, but they were also trapped inside the world of a story.
Whether that story took the form of a novel, television drama, or movie fundamentally did not matter. Whatever its medium, only once the story reached its ending could everything finally be settled.
“Ancestors, save me. Ancestors, save me…” Qin Shu repeated those simple words nine times.
Still holding the nine incense sticks, he bowed properly nine times. Then he planted all nine sticks into the earth at his feet in one motion and narrowed his eyes, silently observing them.
Less than ten seconds later, all nine incense sticks snapped at once. Their half-burned points of light toppled crookedly into the dirt and disappeared completely within moments.
Nine is traditionally regarded as the ultimate number, symbolizing exalted status and completeness. Offering nine incense sticks to one’s ancestors represented the utmost sincerity and respect. The problem came when a descendant burned what was known as broken-head incense. Even a single incense stick snapping in the middle could be interpreted as a grave insult and an act of extreme disrespect.
And Qin Shu had managed to produce nine broken incense sticks at once, symbolically implying the extinction of every generation of ancestors. The offense was extraordinarily severe, and the consequences were correspondingly disastrous…
Elio’s Notes: Nine carries associations with completeness, supremacy, and exalted status in traditional Chinese symbolism. Broken-head incense refers to incense that breaks while burning and may be interpreted in folk belief as an ominous sign or a rejection of the worshipper’s offering. Nine sticks breaking together is therefore spectacularly inauspicious.
Boom!
BOOM—RUMBLE!
One enormous crash after another rolled through the mountain, even more magnificent than the thunder raging beneath the gloomy sky.
The mysterious cave that had held countless generations of Living Water Village’s ancestral graves simply exploded.
An invisible shock wave tore the roof from the cave. Dim daylight spilled across Qin Shu’s face while every stone ancestral tablet began trembling at once, scraping against the ground with rapid clack-clack-clack sounds like chattering teeth.
Dense swarms of translucent ghosts seeped from the earth and surged outward, overwhelming the cave like a vast, writhing net.
The ancestral ghosts mirrored the shapes of the bones buried below. Most were missing hands, feet, or entire limbs and had long since lost anything resembling a human form. Many ancestors whose remains had lain together for years had fused into one another, producing even more grotesque forms—limbs stuck together in a viscous mass with the cold, translucent texture of some monstrous jellyfish.
Qin Shu’s pupils contracted. His first instinct was to grab Pei Zhao and run, but his unusually calm mind told him that with so many ghostly things closing in from every direction, escape was impossible. He had to face them head-on and kill them.
Then I’ll trust Pei Zhao. If I trust him, I have to trust that I’m strong enough to do this.
Suppressing his revulsion, Qin Shu took several running steps and launched himself into the air. He reached out and seized the sticky net rushing straight toward his face. The slimy, freezing sensation adhered to his palms and immediately began eating into his flesh.
The pain was vicious—sharp enough to split skin and reduce flesh to a bloody mess, like a venomous hornet driving its stinger directly into his soul. Qin Shu made no sound. He let the adrenaline do its work, narrowed his eyes, and rapidly searched for the most important target: the “jinshi ancestor.”
An ancestor given a grand burial as a jinshi would inevitably look different from ordinary villagers. Following that logic, Qin Shu quickly located the most intact ghostly figure. Even the scholar’s headpiece binding its hair remained unmistakably visible.
In the next instant, Qin Shu clenched the struggling, twisting net in his left hand and violently wrenched it toward the ground. He used the momentum to launch his own body upward and, without the slightest hesitation, raised his fist.
Within his focused, calm black eyes, faint traces of dark crimson quietly surfaced, almost impossible to detect. His disheveled hair whipped wildly in the wind, and the pitch-black beast horn on his forehead burst with a cold gleam, radiating a long-suppressed hunger for slaughter and blood.
Not far away, Pei Zhao sat cross-legged beside the eyeball, shoulder to shoulder with it as he looked up at Qin Shu’s back. Resting his chin on one hand, he watched without blinking. His pale fingertips pressed lightly against his cheek, physically forcing down the curve threatening to appear at the corner of his lips.
“Before we get out, I’m going to sneak a little bite. Sister Qian, do you want some?”
“…”
The eyeball did not dare say a word. Obedient and helpless, it wrapped both arms around its knees, buried itself inside the Gui Gong’s corpse, and immediately began playing dead.
“I’m not that stingy. You chose to stay with him back then, which means you already belong to Qin Shu. The bond has been formed, and there’s no escaping it…” Pei Zhao murmured. “That’s simply how overbearing the rules are around a monster like him.”
The eyeball gave no response, but Pei Zhao did not mind. And despite what he had just said, his tone sounded nothing like a complaint.
A moment later, the sinister wind subsided. The sticky net behind Qin Shu shattered inch by inch, transforming into powder resembling incense ash and settling across the ground until the ancestral tablets were completely buried beneath it.
Qin Shu slowly exhaled a long breath. Then he spun around in a hurry to search for Pei Zhao, and the moment he found him, he quickly strode over.
Pei Zhao narrowed his eyes contentedly and glanced at the eyeball, which was practically trembling with anticipation. Having fed his fill, he looked subtly fuller and carried an air of deep satisfaction. Even his voice softened unusually as he patiently said, “What belongs to Qin Shu belongs to me too, so I’ll take care of you. Go on. I’m full.”
In the next instant, the eyeball sprang to its feet and bolted. It swerved around a suddenly bewildered Qin Shu, dragging the heavy corpse behind it as it accelerated into a run. It charged straight into the shattered cave, then dropped stiffly into the vast layer of “incense ash” and rolled around in bliss.
Qin Shu: “…”
“What is it doing?”
“Eating the ghosts’ remains.”
“Oh. Then that’s fine. You scared me to death. I thought it wanted to eat me.”
Still recovering from the fright, Qin Shu sat down. His shoulder and knee instinctively pressed against Pei Zhao, leaving virtually no distance between them.
Pei Zhao was already accustomed to it. He removed his scarf, leaned closer, and carefully wiped the slime from Qin Shu’s face. He was in a good mood now and was therefore willing to do a little extra cleaning.
Qin Shu’s face grew warm. He reached up and touched his slightly damp beast horn, then gave a light cough. “So… is that really it? Did I actually kill those ghosts?”
“You did. You’re very strong.” Pei Zhao caught the other end of his scarf and wrapped it around Qin Shu’s beast horn as well, carefully wiping it clean with a remarkably focused expression.
Something inside Qin Shu began to itch. Even the beast horn, which should not have possessed any sensation at all, seemed to develop an illusory, tingling itch beneath Pei Zhao’s touch. Qin Shu hurriedly drew a deep breath. “Hehe… So what do we do next?”
“Nothing. We’re going home soon. Just wait for the final scream.”
“Mm? Whose scream?”
The moment the words left his mouth, an extremely loud and painfully familiar shout floated toward them from the other side of the cave.
The corner of Qin Shu’s mouth twitched. He looked toward the noise and, even from a distance, immediately spotted Liu Yang Yang’s panicked figure.
“Ah! Huh?! Lord Eyeball, why are you here?! Help! Don’t eat—”
…
…
Qin Shu opened his eyes.
A familiar computer monitor filled his vision.
His own computer monitor.
The movie was over.
Eerie music continued to drift through the room as a long, clearly legible cast list rolled across the screen.
Peddler Liu: Liu Yang Yang
Kan Kan: [?]
Honored Guest: [?]
Kan Kan’s Ama: Wu Li
Kan Kan’s Aba: Fu Mu Hou
Gui Gong: Wuyunga
Gui Gong’s Corpse: Xu Qian
Fu Fu: Fu Fu
Extras: Residents of Living Water Village, Haicheng
…
A chill spread through Qin Shu’s entire body. Everything that had just happened was so deeply uncanny that even his breathing became constricted, heavy, and difficult.
He stared fixedly at the computer screen until the final notes of the music faded and the progress bar reached its absolute end. Only then did he force himself to slowly relax.
“…Zhaozhao, we’re never watching another horror movie again.”
“This one wasn’t very good. The atmosphere was too depressing. That’s what you said.” Pei Zhao looked faintly amused. “You also said the next one should be about a zombie apocalypse.”
“No! Absolutely not! No, no, no!”
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