The moment the coffin reached the entrance to the cave, the drums thundered to life and the braziers flared higher, their flames dancing violently.
Granny A-Shu withdrew into the crowd. With one hand, she dipped her fingers lightly into the wine on the offering table; with the other, she grabbed a handful of snow-white glutinous rice and scattered both outward in time with the rhythm.
Naturally, the Grand Shaman took over the chant from her.
Chen Li Chi picked up the bamboo divination blocks and circled the coffin as he sang, repeatedly hurling the blocks hard against the ground. The two sides of each bamboo piece were different, and after striking the earth, they seemed to rebound naturally into his hand.
“This is the Guide-the-Way Scripture. Listen carefully.” Pei Zhao pulled the bewildered Qin Shu slightly aside. “Listening to scripture chanted by someone with powerful magic will benefit you too.”
Elio’s Notes: The Guide-the-Way Scripture here is a funerary guiding chant used to direct and reassure the dead on their journey toward their ancestors and the underworld. The bamboo divination blocks are cast during the rite to determine whether each stage of that passage has been accepted.
“…Okay.”
The scripture was extremely long. Its primary purpose was to guide a deceased soul, step by step, toward its ancestors, its destination, and its final place of rest.
Granny A-Shu had already sung half of it while leading the coffin procession, yet the remaining half still took a considerable amount of time. Whoever had composed this guide must have cared deeply for the dead. Qin Shu listened closely to Chen Li Chi’s chanting and gradually became absorbed, even learning a surprising amount of strange trivia along the way.
It explained, for example, how a returning soul should avoid malicious ghosts and Jian blocking the road, how to collect the paper money burned for it, how to make offerings to the local Earth God and Mountain God, how to cross mountains and ridges until it reached the Yellow Springs Road, then climb layer after layer of heavenly steps into King Yama’s Hall in the underworld, and even how it should conduct itself once it arrived among the dead.
The deceased did not merely need detailed directions; its fear had to be soothed continuously as well. Every time Chen Li Chi finished one section of the guide, he had to cast the divination blocks again. Only when both landed with the appropriate sides facing upward, indicating that this stage of the journey had been accepted, could he proceed with the next verse.
The drums could not stop, the braziers could not go out, and even the two people carrying the coffin had to remain standing perfectly straight in place until the entire guiding rite was complete.
Everyone else was similarly forbidden from moving about. They could either hum along softly with the chant or remain quietly in place so as not to interfere with those performing the ceremony.
The chanting lasted more than an hour. The heat of the sun grew steadily stronger, and the auspicious hour at noon drew closer and closer. It was an extreme test of both physical endurance and concentration, something no ordinary person could easily perform.
The gray-white eyeball sat on Qin Shu’s shoulder, silently watching the grand ceremony prepared for both itself and Zhang Mei Jiang. Qin Shu had no idea what it was thinking.
But he very much needed to know.
As the Guide-the-Way Scripture neared its end, Qin Shu did not ask Yuanbao to relay his words this time. He simply spoke aloud. “Sister Qian, your bones are in the coffin. Do you want to lie inside and be buried with them?”
The eyeball slowly turned around to look at him. After a moment, it turned back and looked down toward the ground at Qin Shu’s feet.
Qin Shu froze and followed its indication downward. Without warning, a broad patch of the earth before them darkened with moisture, accompanied by a sharp smell of blood.
A line of dark-red writing gradually appeared.
[No need. I cannot reincarnate. I am no longer myself.]
“…Is that because of the secret art? Once your remains are buried together, will your obsession be resolved? Won’t that make the separation between the living and the dead truly permanent?” Qin Shu frowned slightly. “Maybe there’s another way.”
[The bones lying in the coffin are the one she loved. I am no longer myself.]
I am no longer myself.
The sentence had now appeared twice. The dry, level earth beneath them was gradually soaked into blood-colored mud.
Xu Qian—or perhaps the ghost that had once been Xu Qian—refused to enter the coffin. It refused to be carried into the cave and buried, and it refused to join Zhang Mei Jiang’s spirit in eternal rest.
And yet, at the very beginning, that had been the condition on which it had agreed to leave the hospital with Qin Shu. It had been its original wish, its obsession.
Liu Yang Yang already had a bad feeling. Cold sweat rolled down his face as he continuously shot meaningful looks toward Qin Shu, yet he did not dare shift his feet by even an inch.
Chen Li Chi, however, did not appear surprised. By the time he reached the final section of the Guide-the-Way Scripture, nearly all the verses urging the deceased onward and sending the soul away had already been sung, and even the reserve lines were almost exhausted.
Yet the bamboo divination blocks in his hand never again landed with both appropriate sides facing upward. Against absurdly low odds, they repeatedly struck the earth in failure, then bounced back into Chen Li Chi’s hand in time with the drumbeats.
“Do not be afraid, do not be afraid! Swords, blades, bows, and arrows have all been prepared for you. Close your eyes, cover your ears, and continue onward!”
Chen Li Chi’s face was solemn. His back curved like a cooked shrimp as he gritted his teeth, raised both arms, and made one final attempt, slamming the two bamboo blocks onto the ground with all his strength.
Crack!
A crisp breaking sound followed. The bamboo divination blocks had actually split apart.
They lay shattered across the earth, countless fine cracks trembling beneath the vibration of the drums. A moment later, they broke again with a sharp snap, scattering into more tiny fragments than anyone could count.
See Through.
Without the slightest hesitation, Qin Shu immediately narrowed his eyes and focused, forcing himself to count the innumerable fragments before he ran out of time.
The number was almost exactly the same as the number of pieces Xu Qian’s corpse had been dismembered into, except that one piece was missing.
There was no chance this could be some impossible coincidence, and it was obvious what was absent.
The only thing missing was the eyeball on Qin Shu’s shoulder—the one that refused to be buried.
While Qin Shu was “slowing down time” to count the fragments, he could hear several people drawing in sharp breaths, especially the comparatively inexperienced Chen Shui. Liu Bai Long immediately raised a hand and smacked him on the back of the head, barely stopping him from reacting.
But aside from Chen Shui and Liu Bai Long, someone else moved as well.
Liu Bai Long’s husband.
He abandoned the coffin he was supposed to be carrying, bent down, scooped up the shattered pieces of bamboo, stuffed them roughly into his mouth, and swallowed them.
“Liu Yang Yang, don’t let the coffin touch the ground!” Qin Shu sensed something was wrong the very first second he saw the man move and immediately shouted.
Fortunately, Liu Yang Yang had been paying constant attention to Qin Shu. Long familiarity had built an almost reflexive trust between them. Without thinking, he thrust out an arm, stepped toward the side where the weight had shifted, and dropped into a straining horse stance as the enormous wooden coffin and its carrying frame slammed heavily onto his back.
The dull impact and his muffled grunt sounded together. Through clenched teeth, Liu Yang Yang said, “Ha, piece of cake. I’ve got the best foundation from training since childhood in the whole village…”
The most ominous possibility—the coffin crashing onto the ground—had been successfully avoided, but the incident was far from over.
No one dared move recklessly. Everyone waited for the only person with the authority to give instructions.
Chen Li Chi made no attempt to stop the corpse that had swallowed the divination blocks. He did not even spare it more than a glance, clearly having anticipated that something like this might happen.
Liu Bai Long’s husband merely stood there afterward and did nothing else unpredictable. What was more striking was the way his previously honest, simple gaze suddenly turned utterly empty. The deathly aura unique to a corpse spread with the cold wind, making him look like nothing more than a tool discarded immediately after being used.
Liu Bai Long stared at the scene. Her eyelid twitched uncontrollably, and the lively white dragon painted across her face somehow appeared even more vivid, as though swimming and flicking its tail across a sheet of deathly pale human skin.
“Bai Long, no matter what happens, you are not allowed to come closer.”
After deliberately warning her in his hoarse voice, Chen Li Chi turned, struck his own chest hard and, with a pfft, spat a thick mouthful of blood onto the coffin.
Liu Yang Yang was caught in the splash as well, one side of his face speckled with droplets of blood like scattered beads. He stared blankly at the Grand Shaman with faint accusation in his eyes, yet did not dare say anything.
Naturally, Chen Li Chi ignored his suffering completely.
The trembling old man raised his right hand, narrowed his eyes, and leaned close to the coffin. Using his fingers, he carefully spread the blood he had spat across the surface until the thick droplets had been smeared evenly into a thin skin of crimson.
The coffin’s original black-and-red coloring should have looked grand and solemn. With this artificial layer of blood spread across it, however, it acquired an atmosphere several times more sinister.
“Thread the needle, draw the line; karma winds and intertwines. My heart’s blood becomes the thread within my hand—one pull, one draw…”
Chen Li Chi murmured continuously. The words sounded both familiar and unfamiliar to Qin Shu, but this time every syllable seemed many times harder for the old man to utter than before. It was as if something invisible were desperately obstructing him and trying to stop him from completing the incantation.
His lips trembled violently. Thick blue veins bulged at his temples, while beads of bloody sweat soaked into his ornate five-person crown and streamed down his forehead and sideburns. It looked as though he were exerting himself so violently that the flesh of his already fragile body was beginning to split apart.
Seeing this, Granny A-Shu immediately pushed the rice wine from the offering table into the brazier. As the flames surged skyward like a rising phoenix, she did something that stunned everyone watching—she lifted the blazing brazier in both hands, strode forward, raised it high, and forcefully overturned it onto Chen Li Chi’s head.
Sparks and burning fragments scattered everywhere, and the still-bewildered Liu Yang Yang was once again struck by the wave of heat.
Corpse herders were not easy to burn to death, and inside Phoenix Village they did not even need to worry about breathing. Yet when Liu Yang Yang found his face covered in black ash and watched the sparks instantly ruin his clothes, he finally lost control and voiced the same stunned confusion as Qin Shu. “…Huh?”
Qin Shu restrained himself from rushing forward, but Liu Yang Yang was visibly agitated. Fire might not hurt him much, but for Chen Li Chi, it was genuinely dangerous.
The Grand Shaman was not a corpse herder. He was a specialized ritual priest and the only male in Phoenix Village who excelled primarily in magic while severely lacking a powerful physical body.
If the flames were not extinguished soon, Chen Li Chi’s body could very well be destroyed beyond repair.
Granny A-Shu merely shook her head. She reached out and brushed the black ash from Liu Yang Yang’s eyes, silently telling him to remain calm. When Liu Yang Yang looked into those terrifying empty sockets, he froze slightly, then gritted his teeth and continued to endure in silence.
Meanwhile, Chen Li Chi remained beneath the brazier, his entire body engulfed in flames, still desperately struggling to finish the incantation.
He began again from the very beginning. His voice was as rasping as a blunt saw dragged through timber, the elasticity of his vocal cords nearly lost, while his tongue had become clumsy beyond belief. His breathing was chaotic and almost every tone came out wrong, making him resemble a beginner learning to walk as he forced the strange words out one by one.
“Thread. The needle. Draw. The line. Karma. Winds. And binds. One. Pull. One. Draw. One pull, one draw…”
After forcing his way through those words with immense difficulty, his sluggish tongue suddenly seemed to recover its old dexterity, and the chant gradually became smooth and fluid. Then something even more miraculous happened. Qin Shu stared in astonishment as Chen Li Chi’s twisted, hunched spine began to move and straighten little by little within the flames.
Finally, with a sharp crack, the Grand Shaman who had been hunched for decades transformed before everyone’s eyes. His entire back was wrenched impossibly straight, standing tall like an ancient pine, while the pressure radiating from his body surged outward like a rising tide.
For an instant, he seemed to have returned to his twenties. One hand pointed toward the heavens and the other toward the earth. Even his voice became clear and powerful as he straightened his chest and roared, “One pull, one draw! Let demons and monsters fall through the Nine Heavens!”
Rumble—!
Thunder exploded beneath the clear daylight. Purple lightning streaked across the sky, then abruptly seemed to brake in midair and change direction.
Like a long sword wrapped in lightning and crackling arcs of electricity, it aimed directly at the center of the funeral rite and plunged downward. Its righteous force soared into the heavens, unstoppable.
The purple bolt crashed into the blood-covered coffin with a deafening roar. Miraculously, the coffin lid did not break at all; instead, flames ignited beneath the lightning’s baptism, scorching the thin layer of blood until it turned black.
“Kid, hold steady.”
Chen Li Chi spoke in a low voice. At the same time, he brought his hands together, raised them high once more, and slammed both palms repeatedly against the coffin lid in what looked like some strangely postured exorcistic rite.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
Every strike called another bolt of fresh purple lightning from the sky. Deafening thunder rolled through the mountain valley, its echoes lingering for a long time.
Liu Yang Yang, being electrocuted beneath the coffin, grimaced as his entire body shuddered and the muscles in his thighs visibly spasmed. Yet after Chen Li Chi’s command, all he could do was grit his teeth and endure.
At last, the charred skin of blood broke apart, cracking inch by inch beneath Chen Li Chi’s relentless blows. Immediately afterward, dazzling milky-white light burst through the countless black fissures.
Pure, sacred, dreamlike white light.
“The coffin changed color… What is that? It’s all white.” Qin Shu frowned and pulled Pei Zhao several more steps backward.
Thump. Thump—
As he stared at the increasingly clear milky-white coffin, Qin Shu suddenly became aware of his own heartbeat. It was far too heavy and growing faster by the second, while an instinctive revulsion surged inside him. Heat flooded his body, the muscles in his waist and legs tightened, and when confronted with the choice between fight or flight, his instincts were unmistakably choosing “fight.”
Only by holding Pei Zhao’s icy hand could Qin Shu keep his reason barely in control and restrain himself from launching some inexplicable attack.
“Wait a little longer. Let Chen Li Chi finish what he intends to do.” Pei Zhao squeezed his fingers lightly.
“…Okay.”
As they spoke in low voices, thick black smoke began seeping from the cracked surface of the coffin. Yet it was not hot vapor at all, but bitterly cold evil energy, escaping beneath everyone’s gaze and dispersing into the daylight together with the ash of the flames.
By contrast, the aura surrounding the milky-white coffin appeared all the more gentle and beautiful.
But Qin Shu smelled something overwhelming, and it did not come from the gray, sinister air. He was certain the stench was coming from inside the coffin.
It was difficult to describe the mixture of odors—the damp earthiness of wet soil, the rot of a corpse fused with vegetation, the thick metallic stench of decomposing flesh, and the fetid pus-like reek released when scavenging organisms were burned. Altogether, it smelled profoundly and unmistakably evil.
A ferocious hunger exploded inside his head.
But it was not Qin Shu’s hunger. It belonged to a certain headless little eagle.
The fluffy chick thrashed its wings inside Qin Shu’s pocket and used the few short scraps of “human language” it had only just learned to harass him repeatedly.
Want eat. Want eat. Want eat…
Qin Shu’s eyelid twitched. Without saying a word, he grabbed the gray-white eyeball perched on his shoulder and shoved it into his pocket.
The two little monsters were instantly wedged together inside Qin Shu’s pocket, staring helplessly at each other. Coalball immediately fell silent and became as obedient as a quail.
Having perfectly solved the hunger problem, Qin Shu said nothing more and continued staring intently at the coffin.
At that exact moment, Chen Li Chi finally made his last and most insane move.
At some point, countless fine snow-white threads had wrapped themselves around both of his wrists. They resembled shredded silk, fresh and flexible silkworm filament, and writhing newborn maggots all at once, giving off the same milky glow as the coffin.
At a glance, their light was hazy and beautiful, like gentle moonlight hidden inside clouds and mist.
Qin Shu had seen a thread like this the day before, wrapped around Pei Zhao’s wrist—and Pei Zhao had possessed only one.
Chen Li Chi’s wrists, however, were covered in them, countless strands wrapped densely around both arms. Every time he moved even slightly, black-purple arcs of lightning wound around the threads like venomous snakes, transforming the mysterious beauty into something resembling grotesque torture and restraint.
Even though a brazier still sat over his head and his entire body was engulfed in flames, even though his once-grand Hundred-Bird Robe had been completely devoured by fire and he was beginning to give off the faint aroma of roasted flesh… the threads did not break.
Movement had become agonizingly difficult for him, yet he remained unwavering. Slowly extending his battered arms, he wiped away every trace of black ash from the coffin, exposing the soft milky glow beneath it completely, like the smooth white surface of a boiled egg after its shell had been peeled away.
The stench grew stronger. Qin Shu no longer dared breathe through his nose. He leaned toward Pei Zhao’s ear and whispered, “Zhaozhao, I think I know what this is…”
An extremely bad feeling settled over him as he reached into his sleeve. “Back at St. Maria Cathedral, didn’t we see something very similar?”
Pei Zhao nodded lightly, thoughtful. “Insects are always most afraid of fire.”
“Why did Xu Qian’s coffin become like this? Is it because of the secret art? Chen Li Chi said every coffin had to pass his inspection before burial, so he must have known what would happen.” Qin Shu tightened his fingers around Yuanbao’s tiny, faintly heating body. “So what exactly is he planning to do? Burn himself alive together with this filthy thing?”
Chen Li Chi immediately answered Qin Shu’s question through his actions.
The elderly man cast aside the brazier, revealing a face burned beyond recognition, then suddenly leaped upward and shouted in a ringing voice, “Threads of karma, bonds of fate… shackles of karmic sin bind my body; you and I embrace as we descend to the Yellow Springs! Heart-fire scorches my soul—I shall never attain nirvana! When the gods of the Nine Nether arrive, may I never be reborn! A-Shu, bring the wine!”
By the time his roar ended, he had crashed heavily onto the coffin. The dense threads multiplied like wildly spreading noodles, instantly pulling his limbs apart and binding him firmly across the coffin lid.
The milky-white coffin began writhing violently at once, as though something unimaginably filthy and hideous were struggling to break through its shell, but it was already too late.
Liu Yang Yang panted heavily. He could endure almost anything, but when he felt something soft, cold, slick, and writhing against his back, his psychological defenses finally collapsed beneath the fear of the unknown. He burst into profanity. “Fuck! What the hell is this?! Old man, what the fuck are you doing?! I’m terrified of soft-bodied things! Ahhh, I’m going to pass out!”
“Shut up!”
Granny A-Shu roared. She picked up another blazing brazier filled with rice wine and, with a heavy bang, overturned it directly onto Chen Li Chi.
The horrifying flames surged like a dancing dragon, swallowing Chen Li Chi and the coffin together.
Liu Yang Yang’s pupils contracted. He abruptly fell silent, having finally realized something, and for the first time his expression turned so despairing that he looked ready to vomit on the spot.
“Chen Li Chi burned to death,” Pei Zhao suddenly said softly.
At precisely the same moment, the unbearable stench abruptly disappeared.
Qin Shu had been mentally prepared, yet his heart still jolted with shock. He smelled rich wine, roasted flesh, the faint woody fragrance left by smoke and flame, and then, little by little, the damp scent of fresh grass drifted down from the mountains… It had begun to rain.
The drums that had sounded all morning gradually fell silent. Fine raindrops pattered down onto face after stunned face.
Chen Li Chi lay quietly atop the coffin like a blood-red phoenix caught in a spiderweb, burning together with the mutated coffin beneath the thin rain.
He did not struggle. His extended limbs were pulled slightly upward by the threads, resembling two pairs of magnificent wings made from red flame, whipping in the mountain wind.
Silence spread like a plague.