A cold moon, blurred and mournful; spirit money flew across the whole sky.
This is what is called scattering road money.
It is a funeral custom in Shenzhou. When a coffin is carried out for burial, every time the procession passes a crossroads, someone of high standing in the household must scatter spirit money.
The first purpose is to light the way for the dead — “the dead journey west; spirit money paves the road.”
The second is to draw away the lonely souls and wild ghosts around them, so they do not pester the procession.
Wu Laosi had used the underworld crossing. His soul had already left his body, and his flesh was like a door flung wide open, one that would draw in those lonely souls and wild ghosts and other unclean things.
Legend held that lonely souls and wild ghosts, never admitted into the Netherworld, were not free at all. They were tormented on one side by the attachments and obsessions of their living memories, and on the other by a terrible loneliness and cold.
And when day came and the sunlight struck them, their souls would scatter and their spirits disperse.
Put simply, it was like being set down on some planet where the day was a hell of molten lava and the night froze the breath into ice — cold enough to freeze a soul solid.
So one can imagine how strong the pull of a warm living body was on such things.
Sha Lifei had drifted through the jianghu, and in his poorer, more miserable days he had gone to the great households to help arrange weddings and funerals, so he knew this whole routine well.
“Forgive us, forgive us — do not disturb, do not disturb!”
Speaking these placating words, he flung the spirit money with all his strength.
Rustle!
The spirit money whirled up, spinning swiftly in the yin wind that came blowing in, tumbling up and down, and then all settled back into stillness.
Li Yan sniffed. “They've gone!”
As the yin wind scattered, the oil lamps, which had been flickering unsteadily, also settled back into calm.
Seeing this, Sha Lifei let out a breath of relief.
What was a little spirit money, after all?
Wu Laosi had said three jin would do, and he had bought a full eight jin. So long as the job got done, scattering a few extra handfuls was no problem.
Of course, that was the gentle way of it.
If scattering spirit money could not coax them off, then Li Yan would have to use his blade.
After that, a few more lonely souls and wild ghosts came by.
Naturally, Li Yan caught them and gave warning before they got anywhere near.
Just then, another smell came from the riverbank in the distance.
Cold, and rank with a fishy stench.
Li Yan shot to his feet, the Guanshan blade in hand, and put himself in front of Sha Lifei, hanging the tassel strung with the Three Powers Demon-Suppressing Coins from it as he did.
Sha Lifei asked doubtfully, “What is it?”
As he spoke, he craned his neck for a look.
In the moonlight along the bank, a snake as thick as a rice bowl slowly swam ashore and coiled itself into a snake array, hissing, its tongue flickering.
“Don't look at its eyes!”
Li Yan gave the instruction in a low voice and tightened his grip on the Guanshan blade.
The blade tassel, still a moment before, began to sway gently, cold sha qi spilling out in every direction.
Seeming to sense the threat of the Three Powers Demon-Suppressing Coins, the snake came no further, but lingered there with flickering tongue, hesitant.
Still, Li Yan did not let down his guard in the least.
Wang Daoxuan had once told him that lonely souls and wild ghosts were the most pitiable things between heaven and earth. With so little strength, even to possess some ordinary commoner traveling a night road, they needed a lucky coincidence and had to work like the devil for it.
Sometimes people only had to spit and curse a few words, and the things would be scared off.
A single handful of road money was enough to make them leave.
More fortunately, because of the She Ling spirit soldiers of Xianyang, anything with real power did not dare come near. And with the City God Temple bestowing food and floating river lanterns every year to deliver souls, the water ghosts drowned in the nearby river rarely made trouble either.
For a technique like this, where the soul leaves the body and the flesh is left temporarily empty, setting aside vicious ghosts, what it feared most was those creatures with real cultivation.
Once a person was possessed, his behavior became like an animal's.
When such creatures' cultivation was still low, they often occupied a human body to cultivate, and sometimes even practiced on corpses, burrowing into coffins in graveyards and coiling up atop the dead.
Sometimes when people opened a coffin and found a snake coiled or a fox lying upon the corpse, it was one of these little things at its practice.
At last the snake sensed the danger. With a twist of its body, it slipped into the river.
Li Yan did not pursue it. Guarding the rite mattered more.
And so the zi hour passed in peace.
Li Yan let out a breath and looked at the six Southern Dipper lamps.
Once the zi hour was over, possession would become much harder.
This underworld crossing should succeed.
He only did not know where that evil cultivator was hiding.
…………
Elsewhere, at the Iron Saber Gang headquarters in Xianyang.
Torches blazed everywhere, and moans and screams filled the air.
Zheng Heibei's face was dark as he watched his men rushing about.
Zhou Peide was in prison, the White Ape Gang had been surrounded and crushed, Yuan Qu had fled, and the Zhou family now faced a great calamity, so he had stayed at the Zhou residence to discuss a plan with the others.
He had never expected the gang to be attacked as well.
“Boss, it's people from the Taixing Coach House!”
A subordinate whose hands and feet had all been broken said through gritted teeth, “I know that head driver. Most days he's such a limp, meek fellow — he wouldn't dare break wind in front of me. Who'd have thought…”
“Thought what!”
Behind Zheng Heibei, a middle-aged man in a green robe snapped, “I told you long ago: there are people you don't provoke, especially others of the jianghu.”
“You had to go squeezing the Taixing Coach House too. They're ruthless men even in Chang'an. They simply didn't want to bother with you, and you went and decided you'd grown horns!” The speaker was named Liu Jincheng, one of the Eight Great Vajras, and also the chief escort of Xianyang's Changshun Escort Agency, sent along on orders to look into the matter.
He had traveled far and wide, was worldly and knew what was what, and had warned Zheng Heibei and Yuan Qu again and again, but neither had bothered to listen.
With the Zhou family in such a state now, he could not help but feel an ill temper flare in his chest.
Zheng Heibei had a stubborn temper by nature, and he knew these martial brothers of his looked down on him. Hearing the mockery, he snorted coldly.
“Brother Liu, my men are not yours to discipline!”
“Hahaha… beyond saving!”
Liu Jincheng was so angry he laughed, and turned on his heel to leave.
Zheng Heibei had spoken in the heat of anger, and regretted it as soon as the words were out. Watching Liu Jincheng walk off, his eyes shifted between dark and light.
He had not taken part directly in the child-stealing, but he had helped from the sidelines.
It was only that Yuan Qu had fled and Zhou Peide knew nothing of the inside story, so the yamen had not come for him. But some things, in the end, could not stay wrapped in paper.
More importantly, there was Zhou Pan!
If even nephews and juniors could be sacrificed, how much more a man who did the dirty work.
And his manner toward me tonight — so unusually kind…
At that thought, an inexplicable fear rose in Zheng Heibei's heart, but his face showed something else entirely. Full of fury, he said in a loud, impassioned voice, “Rest easy, brothers. I'll see to your medical costs to the very end!”
“Men, take them all to the Anren Hall Medical Clinic.”
“Just rest and heal, brothers. This debt will certainly be repaid!”
“The boss is a righteous man!”
The Iron Saber Gang men were overcome with gratitude at once.
Zheng Heibei nodded, gave his men careful instructions, then turned and went into the room. He pushed aside the bookshelf and opened the hidden compartment in the floor.
When he opened the small chest inside, he felt as if struck by lightning.
The chest had been packed full of gold bars — the savings he had put together over the years. If trouble ever came, at worst he could recruit men and buy horses and take to the hills as a bandit.
And now it was empty.
“You Laosi!”
How could Zheng Heibei fail to guess who had done it?
Though rage burned in him, he knew this was no place to linger. He slipped into the passage beneath the room, came out in a small courtyard near the Iron Saber Gang, changed his clothes, and vanished into the darkness…
An hour later, the deputy gang leader saw that the candles had burned dry and Zheng Heibei still had not come out. Thinking it strange, he hurried in to look.
Soon a furious shout came from the room:
“Son of a bitch — the boss has run off!”
…………
Unnoticed, the yin hour arrived.
Autumn had come, the nights long and the days growing shorter. The fish-belly white had not yet appeared at the horizon, but the big rooster tethered to the tree was already pacing back and forth, and then it stretched out its neck and crowed loudly.
Sha Lifei and Li Yan quickly looked at the copper bell in the tree.
Wu Laosi had said that when the rooster crowed he would wake, and if the bell had not been rung, then the spell had failed, and they must burn him and the coffin together at once.
But the bell never stirred.
Just as the two of them were worrying, the hemp rope sticking out of the earth suddenly pulled taut, dragging the bell in the tree so it swung left and right, jingling.
“Quick, move!”
Li Yan and Sha Lifei set their shovels to work at once, digging away the loose earth on the surface, then together heaved the coffin lid up.
The moment the lid came open, Li Yan's expression changed.
He caught a thick smell of yin qi, pure and cold.
He did not even need his divine powers — with the naked eye he could see that all four inner walls of the coffin were coated with a layer of white frost, cold air spilling out.
Frost covered Wu Laosi as well, and his skin was frozen to a ghastly blue-white. At their calls, he slowly opened his eyes.
His gaze was somewhat vacant and lost, as though he had just woken from a dream.
Of course, once he saw the two of them, he quickly came round.
With Li Yan and Sha Lifei supporting him, Wu Laosi rose with difficulty, then pointed southwest, his voice unusually hoarse.
“The man is over there, in an old tomb a hundred li away!”
“And there are quite a few children too. If you want to save them, you must hurry!”
Hardly had the words left his mouth when he seemed to sense something. Struggling up, he pushed Li Yan and Sha Lifei away, then knelt respectfully, facing south, and said in a trembling voice,
“This junior, Wu Laosi, knows his fault and willingly accepts his punishment…”
Before he finished speaking, his body slumped to one side and his breath stopped.
“Senior!”
Li Yan was overcome with grief, and also somewhat shocked.
Wang Daoxuan had once told him that divine powers were not omnipotent: some fearsome things could only be sensed by one whose cultivation was high enough.
And just now, he had smelled nothing at all!
“Brother Yan, look, quick!”
Following Wu Laosi's earlier instructions, Sha Lifei gently lifted his shirt.
On his back, the nether warrant and chain patterns formed by those various bruises had vanished without a trace!
The sight made the hair on both their necks stand up.
Li Yan clenched his teeth. “We go ahead with the plan.”
“You go report to the City God Temple, and see Senior's remains properly collected and buried. I'll go keep watch first, in case that demonic man slips away!”
With that, the two of them together lifted Wu Laosi into the coffin. Then Li Yan swung onto his horse, flicked the reins, and charged off into the vast darkness…
Chapter 69