Chapter 2: 1. Master Zhong Kui Kui Marries Off His Sister

1. Master Zhong Kui Kui Marries Off His Sister

Zhou Chang sat quietly on a high-legged stool.

Cold wind kept pouring in through the window opening, striking the side of his neck and lending his pallid skin a faint bluish tinge.

He sat as still as a clay idol, the only movement the frequent turning of his eyes as he surveyed the furnishings of this cramped room.

This was a house built of stacked stones.

A piece of coarse black cloth, with the doorway as its central axis, divided the room into two halves.

Zhou Chang could not see a single thing of what lay on the other side.

He saw that the walls, pieced together from broken stones, were smeared with streaks of a black substance formed from a mix of grease and wood ash.

In the corner of the room, many gaudily painted, vicious-looking clay figurines and masks, bound with red cord, had been set down.

Against the wall facing the doorway sat a coffin with its lid missing.

The thin-shelled coffin was coated with a thin layer of damp earth; where the damp earth had flaked off, the lacquer beneath was still a glossy jet-black, not at all the look of something buried deep underground for many years.

Zhou Chang had been pried out of this very thin-shelled coffin by several men.

One of the old men who had dug him out of the earth was now sitting askew against the coffin, rummaging through the contents of two bamboo cases.

The cold inside the house seeped into the marrow, yet that old man's face was slick with sweat.

From the pile of incense, candles, paper money, bronze seals, ox horns and other odds and ends on the ground, he picked out several bottles and jars and gathered them all into his arms.

Apparently noticing Zhou Chang's gaze upon him, he pushed himself up, looked toward Zhou Chang in the corner, and said with eyes full of affection: "Little grandson, don't fret, don't be scared now. Once Grandpa draws the talisman on your body, you'll be able to move and talk again."

The old man seemed a touch unhinged, speaking in the dialect of the Sichuan region and calling Zhou Chang "little grandson," yet Zhou Chang did not know this old man at all.

He had no idea where he was now or what was happening to him; the only thing he knew for certain was that, from head to toe, the only part of him that could move even slightly was his pair of eyeballs.

Just last night he had driven back to the countryside to keep his grandfather company for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

When he woke from sleep, he found himself shut up inside a dark, moldy, foul-smelling box. Then, as he was hauled out from underground by the old man before him and his accomplices working together, Zhou Chang realized that that dark, airless, stinking box was in fact a coffin.

Zhou Chang had no idea what the situation was now.

But one thing was certain: he had absolutely not been bound and brought here by some passing bandit gang or criminal outfit while he slept last night.

His present condition was very peculiar.

Similar to the feeling of being shut up in the coffin earlier, he now felt as if his soul too had been locked inside this flesh-and-blood coffin of a body.

He could not struggle, so he simply stopped struggling, sat quietly, and watched to see how things would unfold.

The scrawny old man wore a red, black-trimmed, front-buttoned greatcoat, tied at the waist with a length of grass rope. He fetched several stones from elsewhere and stacked them by the doorway into a platform raised above the ground.

Then he produced a bronze mirror, unscrewed the bottles and jars in his arms, and began to smear things onto his face.

Outside, the wind shrieked shrilly; beyond the window opening it was pitch black.

Zhou Chang watched the old man's movements for a while and confirmed that the man was "putting on makeup."

The old man coated his face stark white with flour, drew on eyebrows with a charcoal stick, dabbed rouge on his cheeks with red yeast rice powder, outlined red lips, put on a horsehair wig, and finally pinned a few paper flowers to the wig beside his ears.

In the blink of an eye, a "woman" dressed in red and green stood before Zhou Chang.

The "woman" wore an exaggerated smile, and the bright red front-buttoned jacket made "her" look the very picture of festivity. Yet as the muscles of "her" face twitched, the flour that came drifting down, the paper flowers swaying in the cold wind, and that deathly pale face like something made of paper kept reminding Zhou Chang that this celebratory air was nothing but a fragile veneer, beneath which lay a grim and grisly truth.

Having painted himself into a festive old woman, the old man set down the bronze mirror, closed his eyes, and painted yet another pair of eyes—black and white, sharply defined—onto his eyelids.

He turned his head back, and the painted eyes stared straight at Zhou Chang.

Though the brushwork was utterly clumsy, Zhou Chang felt that this pair of "eyes" was unmistakably alive—the old man fixed those painted eyes on Zhou Chang and stared unblinkingly!

At that moment, someone pulled open the wicker gate from outside.

A long-faced old man with a goatee stepped into the house, hands clasped behind his back.

Behind him followed several young men carrying tools such as a Luoyang shovel, an iron pry, and a hoe.

The men were travel-worn; as they walked inside, a gust of cold, dank wind swept in with them and instantly snuffed out the candle flames flickering on the stone platform.

The black cloth dividing the room in two had a corner lifted by the wind.

Zhou Chang caught a single glimpse of the other side of the cloth: in the thick darkness, there seemed to be a figure in vivid red, seated.

The goateed man reached out and grabbed the wind-lifted cloth, covering the scene on the other side once more. He turned his body sideways and glanced toward Zhou Chang's side.

A dim bluish daylight fell from the doorway onto the goateed man's face, and Zhou Chang saw the lines on his face, which had been relaxed a moment before, suddenly all bunch up tight together.

Zhou Chang had not moved a muscle, yet he gave the goateed man quite a fright.

From the darkness came the sound of the goateed man sucking air through his teeth: "Ah Chang's only been buried seven days—how come digging him up he looks like a different person? Gives me the creeps…"

"Being marked by a ghost and still coming back alive—that alone is enough to make the ancestral grave smoke with green fumes. To save his life, I had no choice but to bury him in this corpse-littered graveyard where the death-energies run wild. A living person buried for seven days is bound to show some changes—that's normal." The old man who had painted himself into a festive matchmaker spoke as he relit the candle.

The matchmaker's bizarre get-up, however, did not startle the goateed man further.

The goateed man looked at Zhou Chang once more, his brows knitted deep, suspicion lurking in his eyes: "When I say he's changed, I don't mean on the surface—I mean down to the bone. Like a ghost turning into a person. You get what I mean?"

"So you're saying my little grandson's turned into a ghost? If he's turned into a ghost and we dug him up, how come we didn't all drop dead on the spot?" The "matchmaker" fixed the painted eyes on his eyelids on the goateed man, and a sinister atmosphere began to spread through the room.

"Ah, no, that's not what I meant…" The goateed man—Sun Yanshun—waved his hands repeatedly and said to the matchmaker—Zhou Sanji, "Forget it, let's not get into that. We're all in the same boat now, stuck here in this stretch of graveyard. Best we don't fall to squabbling. What the situation is right now—shall I explain it to you properly?"

Zhou Sanji nodded, his face dark.

Sun Yanshun squatted down in front of Zhou Sanji and pulled a thread-bound book from the pouch at his waist.

Zhou Chang saw that inside that pouch there were also a compass, hempen rope, and the like.

Sun Yanshun wet his finger with saliva and flipped open the yellowed thread-bound book. Every page of the book was a hodgepodge—some pages bore crookedly drawn maps, others had clippings cut from newspapers pasted on.

He flipped to a certain page and pointed out a pasted-in illustration for Zhou Sanji to look at.

From his elevated position, Zhou Chang could see the contents of the illustration clearly: in a dark, dilapidated, shabby fenced yard, a woman with very long hair covering her face and falling all the way to her waist stood at the door of a thatched hut; at her feet, several dogs with equally long hair stood or lay about.

Though the illustration held little content, the scene the artist had sketched stirred in Zhou Chang a deeply uncanny feeling.

He noticed that along one side of the illustration was a line of decorative lettering: Old Feng's Wife, Li Xiamei—Living People, Keep Away.

Generally speaking, "strangers, keep away" means roughly "unfamiliar persons, do not approach," and "living people, keep away" is even more explicit—this illustration was warning people not to go near this person called "Li Xiamei."

This "Li Xiamei" was very dangerous.

Zhou Sanji stared hard at the picture, then suddenly said a jingle even Zhou Chang found familiar: "Stomach hurts, look for Old Feng, Old Feng's not home, look for his mother and three kids..." Li Xiamei's husband—is that the 'Old Feng' I'm talking about?"

"Yes." Sun Yanshun replied. His expression grave, he held up three fingers and waved them in front of everyone, then said, "This Old Feng family has lived at least three hundred years.

And this 'Li Xiamei' person is said to be especially fond of raising dogs, feeding them human hearts, livers, and guts, which made her dogs extremely vicious, devouring anyone they saw...

Now we don't know whether we happened to wander into her place, or her place happened to bump into us.

Since we've run into each other, we have to think of a way to get past this hurdle."

The moment he said this, the few young men behind him went pale with fright.

Hearing Sun Yanshun's words, Zhou Chang felt no fear in his heart, only growing curiosity about what would happen next—something that had lived three hundred years, could it still be human?

The old goat-bearded man's words were bizarre and outlandish, like sleep-talking.

Could everything happening now be nothing but a dream?

But if it were a dream, how could the dream be this real?

And, according to that old man, he'd been buried in the mud for seven days... now dug out from beneath the mud, what state was he in?

What was he now?

Zhou Sanji stared at the 'Li Xiamei' on the picture without a word. After a long while, just as Sun Yanshun was getting a little impatient, he blurted out: "The 'Old Feng family' is said to be the ones who specifically guard the 'Ghost Secret Cache.' Ordinary people generally don't provoke them.

I haven't done anything either—how did this 'Li Xiamei' suddenly come after us?"

"I haven't done anything either, and here it comes." Sun Yanshun spread his hands and said.

The three men behind him lowered their eyes, silent.

Only the various tools in their hands now looked especially conspicuous.

Zhou Chang thought of the compass and hemp rope Sun Yanshun carried with him, and a sudden realization struck him—perhaps Sun Yanshun's group had come specifically to dig up the treasure guarded by the Old Feng family.

Seeing Zhou Sanji say nothing, Sun Yanshun turned to examine the furnishings around the room. A smile crossed his face, and he said to Zhou Sanji: "You're an Old Duan Gong with real skill. You must have already thought of a way, right?"

"I have." Zhou Sanji listened to the wind outside the door growing more and more urgent. He stood up, brush in one hand, cinnabar jar in the other, walked up to Zhou Chang, dipped the brush in cinnabar ink, and began sketching strokes across Zhou Chang's chest and back. "I plan to invite 'Master Zhong Kui Kui' to look after us. As long as that Li Xiamei hasn't yet raised her banner and become a 'Common God,' as long as she's still a 'Thought Demon,' Master Zhong Kui Kui should be able to suppress her!

Borrow Master Zhong Kui Kui's power to lead us out of here!"

Hearing Zhou Sanji say he would 'invite Master Zhong Kui Kui,' Sun Yanshun knit his brow and said: "Although you have real skill, wanting to borrow Master Zhong Kui Kui's power—I'm afraid you're not quite qualified, are you?

How do you plan to bring Master Zhong Kui Kui over?"

"Put on a 'Master Zhong Kui Kui Marries Off His Sister' play!

Master Zhong Kui Kui's own sister is getting married—he'll have to glance this way and do us a favor, won't he?"

"Make Achang the brother-in-law?" Sun Yanshun asked.

"Right!" Zhou Sanji answered.

Sun Yanshun took a deep breath, pointed toward the other side of the room separated by the black cloth, his voice trembling: "You mean to make that thing—whether human or ghost—Master Zhong Kui Kui's sister?

Will Master Zhong Kui Kui agree?!"

He suddenly lowered his voice: "That thing was dug out of Achang's coffin!"