The voice issuing from Ding Ling's mouth was grim and filled with resentment.
It was not her natural voice.
The opera tone sang waveringly, and the dressing mirror before Ding Ling suddenly trembled!
The assorted objects piled on the opera trunk bounced and rattled along with it!
Stains of blood surged out layer by layer from the edge of the dressing mirror, washing across the mirror's surface!
In the scarlet, blurred mirror, Ding Ling's figure was no longer visible.
Only silk threads like qin strings drifted through the mirror, and upon reaching the center of the mirror's surface, they suddenly snapped taut!
"Gui silk!"
Zhou Yang immediately identified what the thread represented!
The next moment, three vertical bloody streaks suddenly appeared on Ding Ling's face—
Those three streaks corresponded exactly to the three vertical qin strings in the mirror!
The shallow streaks on her face began to deepen in short order, bright red beads of blood seeping from the wounds; if this continued, perhaps it would not be long before her face was sliced open by the three qin strings in the mirror!
In the blood-stained mirror,
Behind the three qin strings appeared a woman in white with disheveled hair.
It gently caressed its full head of black hair, its knuckled, deathly white palm pinching a horn comb, combing through the hair strand by strand, combing out bloody streaks from between the hair, staining the horn comb and dyeing the white robe red.
Outside the mirror, Ding Ling made the same motions, combing her hair.
The wavering opera tone continued to sing: "Pity me… my three hun fade and scatter, my seven po grieve and lament, my one ling drifts and floats—all scattered on the wind—scattered on the wind…"
Ding Ling's hands were covered in blood.
Both hands with which she combed her hair were also covered in fine cuts.
Her long hair, as if it had become those terrifying qin strings, had cut her palms.
In the mirror, the qin strings continued to increase!
The bone-chilling, yin-cold aura seemed to flow into Zhou Yang's soul along with the desolate, mournful opera tone.
His soul seemed to have frozen over, and even his thoughts no longer turned nimbly.
Clinging to the last breath in his heart, he silently repeated a few lines over and over: "A commander must first settle his mind. If Mount Tai collapses before him and his countenance does not change, if elk and deer rise to his left and his eyes do not blink, then he may manage advantages and disadvantages, then he may face the enemy."
"A commander must first settle his mind…"
These few lines came from Su Xun's "Discourse on the Art of the Mind" in classical Chinese, and Zhou Yang had them memorized through and through.
Ever since arriving in Guancun, whenever he was overcome with panic and unable to settle his heart, he would recite these lines.
From these lines of classical prose, he seemed able to find a way to "settle his mind."
As he silently recited these lines again and again, the power that had frozen his soul also dissipated.
He tried to take over Ding Ling's body and interrupt her continued hair-combing—
But something that had previously been easy was now a thousand times difficult!
Between Ding Ling's body and him seemed to lie an invisible membrane; each time his mind and spirit tried to take over Ding Ling's body, they struck that supple membrane and were bounced back to where they started!
The connection between Zhou Yang and Ding Ling seemed to be growing weak.
"Why?!
"This life of hers now is one I loaned her on credit!
"I am her creditor!
"Besides me, no one else may dare take her away—"
Zhou Yang hardened his heart; he had no other choice but to frantically scour his own consciousness, tracing from his consciousness the original connection between himself and Ding Ling, this retribution body—
the connection established by that extremely poor-quality iron-shard knife!
He finally traced the connection between himself and Ding Ling.
In a daze, Zhou Yang seemed to perceive a door.
That door, which should have been open, was now more than half closed.
The remaining crack in the door was still slowly closing tight.
Zhou Yang stared at that door.
At that moment there were no extraneous thoughts in his consciousness; he only bore all his conviction and suddenly charged forth!
"Thud!"
In a daze, Zhou Yang seemed to hear the muffled sound of himself striking the door.
As if nothing had happened at all.
That hazy perception at once receded from his consciousness—
He suddenly opened his eyes and saw the dressing mirror, all the assorted objects on the opera trunk shaking unceasingly!
"Benefactor…"
At this moment, Ding Ling's bewildered, nervous voice entered Zhou Yang's consciousness.
Her voice greatly settled Zhou Yang's heart!
Zhou Yang had successfully taken over Ding Ling's body!
—Ding Ling's consciousness had already been bewitched by a ghost; had Zhou Yang not taken over her body just now and faced the ghost in the mirror for her, she could not have regained her senses and called out to Zhou Yang on her own!
Even so, the situation was still extremely urgent, critical as could be.
The Ding Ling body taken over by Zhou Yang no longer sang those mournful, grim opera lyrics in her mouth.
But her full head of hair still echoed the opera tone in the mirror, constantly singing:
"Drifting, scattering the lone soul, like willow catkins, like mist…
"The road to the netherworld, snow covers the bones, blood-soaked silk wraps frozen flesh!
"This life's unfulfilled love—becomes the cuckoo crying blood before the grave…
"If fate binds us in the next life—cannot mend the broken mirror, the waning-moon scene…"
The singing was like disordered strands of hair.
Within it there was no longer only a woman's voice, but also mixed in the voices of men, elders, and children!
Zhou Yang now looked again into the mirror:
Beneath the mirror's surface covered with bloodstains, the qin strings were woven into a net like hair.
In every mesh of this net stood a different person.
They stood densely in the mirror, male and female, old and young.
The white-robed female ghost who first appeared in the mirror was now nowhere to be seen.
The throats of all these men and women, old and young, had been cut open by the qin strings, and their voices flowed along their blood over the qin strings, flowing into the strands of Ding Ling's hair!
In the mirror, there was not only one gui.
All these old and young men and women now before Zhou Yang's eyes were gui!
All were ghosts!
That blood-stained net of qin strings seemed to have netted Ding Ling's body as well, making Zhou Yang feel that moving was increasingly difficult.
A chill rose in his heart, but as his thoughts turned, the Knife-Credit Ledger could still turn its pages normally before his eyes.
The personal record of Ding Ling recorded on the second page of the old book had now changed again:
Retribution body: Ding Ling.
Right Thought: 6 (herself 1 + knife-credit man 5)
—Ding Ling's Right Thought, which had fallen into negative numbers, had once again turned positive.
Zhou Yang's Right Thought had temporarily not decreased.
The ghosts in the mirror could not for the time being exert influence on Zhou Yang, whose Right Thought reached "5"!
This was a welcome change!
It was also Zhou Yang's sole advantage at present!
Now that he had seen the ghosts in the mirror clearly, he set about ending the singing that continually issued from the mirror, bringing this mirror-combing ritual to an end!
Chang Dafeng had not taught Ding Ling how to end this ritual.
Perhaps after the ghosts were summoned through the mirror, the ritual would be considered complete only when the person combing her hair before the mirror died.
Ding Ling was a sacrifice Chang Dafeng had long prepared.
But Zhou Yang could not sit by and watch the ghost kill Ding Ling just like that!
He had a method worth a try!
—Smash this dressing mirror, not see the ghost in the mirror, and would it not all be neatly settled?
With Ding Ling's own consciousness, she could not, while under the influence of the ghost in the mirror, still independently control her body—she had previously been completely immobile!
But Zhou Yang was different from her!
He could for now still control Ding Ling's fleshly body!
Zhou Yang took a deep breath, reached out and snatched up a horsewhip leaning crookedly against the opera trunk, and at the same time asked the retribution body: "Ding Ling, do you remember any opera excerpt for cursing at people?
"A line or two will do, the more unpleasant the better.
"Sing it for me!"
"An opera for cursing at people?" Ding Ling had regained her senses; hearing Zhou Yang's question, she suppressed her nervousness, and after a thought, indeed came up with a passage—
On Zhou Yang's side, he "heard" the opera sound transmitted from her consciousness.
He was stunned for a moment, then, taking up the horsewhip in imitation, sang the opera while sweeping the horsewhip in his hand toward the dressing mirror that kept shaking on the opera trunk: "I wield my steel whip and strike you—I'll beat you to death, you living turtle—"}
Chapter 11