"No."
Ding Ling sniffed hard, then answered Zhou Yang in her mind.
"The ghost you saw in that stone house was dressed as a huadan, complete with headdress and ornaments, and her clothes were brightly colored," Zhou Yang said, weighing his words. "Yet Li Yichun, the first person who claimed to have seen a ghost—
"In his description, the ghost was a female ghost in red with long hair.
"Later, he claimed his eyes had merely played tricks on him, and he was also the first to react and run. The possibility that he never encountered a ghost from start to finish is quite high, but we can't rule out the possibility that the ghost looks different in everyone's eyes.
"Still, be careful around him."
"I'll listen to you!" Ding Ling agreed immediately.
"Troupe Leader! Troupe Leader!" Li Yichun, sprawled on the ground, looked up to see Chang Dafeng walking over from the main hall.
Like a drowning man clutching at a straw, he scrambled and crawled toward Chang Dafeng, seizing the man's lower leg in a tight embrace, weeping bitterly. "Troupe Leader, I saw a ghost!
"I saw a ghost in the woods!"
Chang Dafeng had already learned the situation from Ding Ling. Hearing Li Yichun's terror-stricken wails, he nodded repeatedly. "I know everything.
"No one could have guessed that a stone house built by the local villagers would be out in the wild woods. To encounter a ghost and manage to flee back is already a great blessing.
"Now that you're back with the opera troupe, you're safe. Don't think about anything else."
"Brother Gao went into that stone house like he'd lost his soul," Li Yichun trembled as he spoke. "Right now, whenever I close my eyes, I see that female ghost in red with long hair!"
Hidden in the dark, Zhou Yang felt a sudden surge of vigilance upon hearing these words!
Li Yichun had clearly claimed earlier that the long-haired female ghost in red was merely an illusion.
If it had truly been nothing more than a fleeting illusion in a moment of trance, why would it leave such a profound impression on him?
So much so that his blurted description of the ghost was precisely that of a female ghost in red with long hair!
"That female ghost in red... chased me all through the woods!
"Every time I turned my head, it was right behind me!
"It's right there! Right there!"
Li Yichun whipped his head around, staring fixedly at a spot in the courtyard.
Following his gaze, everyone looked toward that corner of the courtyard wall, but saw only darkness cloaking the clutter piled there.
The silhouettes formed by that clutter, upon a second thought, made one feel as though a long-haired ghost truly stood there, beneath whose black hair a ghastly white face with bloodshot whites of eyes stared unblinkingly at everyone present!
A bone-chilling dread burrowed into their chests, swirling up their backs!
"Did you smell anything strange?"
Chang Dafeng frowned at Li Yichun sitting on the ground and asked.
He too had sensed something amiss.
"A smell?" Li Yichun's eyes looked dazed. "I didn't smell anything."
Then, remembering something, he immediately said to Chang Dafeng, "Brother Gao smelled it! He said right then that he smelled some kind of odor, and then he turned around and ducked right into the stone house!"
Without anyone prompting him, he recounted what he had witnessed at the time.
This only further confirmed the truth of what Ding Ling had said.
Once Li Yichun spoke those words, Chang Dafeng's expression relaxed.
Troupe Leader Chang squatted down in front of Li Yichun, a smile surfacing on his face. "You're just frightened right now. That female ghost in red is just something you imagined; she doesn't exist at all.
"Don't dwell on it anymore.
"If you dwell on it too hard, you might actually summon it."
"I really saw that ghost in red! It's been following me the whole time!
"It's right there! There! There!" Li Yichun screamed, pointing his finger repeatedly in several directions.
Following his finger, everyone turned to look, but saw only murky darkness.
It seemed as though there truly was a ghost there, yet also as though there was nothing at all.
Veins throbbed at Chang Dafeng's temples. Unable to hold back any longer, he set down his pipe, grabbed Li Yichun by the collar, hauled him close, and swung his right arm in wide arcs, delivering several heavy slaps across Li Yichun's face—*crack, crack, crack*—instantly swelling his cheeks high!
Then Troupe Leader Chang barked at Li Yichun: "Is there still a ghost? Is there still a ghost?!
"Are those eyes of yours still seeing ghosts?!"
After a few slaps, the haze cleared from Li Yichun's eyes on the spot.
Facing the troupe leader's furious glare, he timorously lowered his gaze. "No more ghosts... My eyes were playing tricks on me... Troupe Leader."
"Hmph!"
Chang Dafeng grunted coldly, released Li Yichun's collar, stood up abruptly, and swept his gaze across the surroundings. The chilly severity in his eyes forced everyone to bow their heads.
After a moment of silence in the courtyard, he ordered: "Tidy up and prepare for 'Inviting the Ghost to Select the Play'!
"I told you long ago about the taboos of the ritual!
"If anyone lacks common sense and talks nonsense during Inviting the Ghost to Select the Play—there'll be no need for ghosts to claim you. I'll throw you out of the courtyard myself and hand you over to the villagers roaming below the slope!"
"Yes..."
"We'll definitely do it right."
"We'll listen to you."
A scattering of responses came from the crowd.
Chang Dafeng then looked at Ding Ling and said, "Ding Ling, skin that roe deer in the woodshed.
"Hang the hide and intestines before the door to air-dry—those two things are yours to use for 'Opening Door.'
"Rub salt on the rest of the meat and store it properly. Tonight, after Inviting the Ghost to Select the Play, we'll boil a pot for everyone to eat."
Hearing this, both Ding Ling and Zhou Yang felt a stir in their hearts.
The "Opening Door" Chang Dafeng spoke of was naturally the first door in the *Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts*:
Opening Door: Investiture of the Prime Ministers of the Six States, Disembowelment and Spilling Intestines.
...
Before "Inviting the Ghost to Select the Play."
The members of the troupe were busy with their respective tasks.
Standing in a corner of the courtyard, Ding Ling hoisted the roe deer onto a wooden rack, secured it, and picked up the skinning knife sharpened by the washbasin, plunging the blade into the inner side of the roe deer's hind leg.
*Shhh—*
The skinning knife glided effortlessly beneath the deer hide, steadily separating skin from flesh.
Meanwhile, Ding Ling pulled backward with her other hand, rolling the inner hide—streaked with blood filaments and membrane—outward.
The skinning knife in her hand navigated around the roe deer's hooves one after another, until the entire hide, hooves attached, peeled away like a rolled pelt.
Hide side outward, fur inward, and apart from the original wounds on the roe deer itself, the entire skin was virtually undamaged.
Zhou Yang silently watched Ding Ling skin and butcher the entire roe deer.
A chill seeped into his heart, stirring an eerie empathy.
—At the Opening Rite in Guancun, would he too be treated like this by the villagers, having a human skin stripped from him so they could face each other stripped bare?
Ding Ling was truly a "practiced butcher." In the brief time Zhou Yang's thoughts turned, she had already rubbed the venison with salt to cure it, rinsed the viscera clean, stretched the roe deer hide, and hung it under the eaves alongside a set of intestines.
"What a fine skin. It's almost a shame to use it for the false abdomen in 'Disembowelment and Spilling Intestines.'
"I only need a piece about this big to sew a false abdomen..." Ding Ling looked up at the stretched roe deer hide under the eaves. She planned to use only a third of it to sew the "false abdomen."
The first door of the *Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts*, "Opening Door," required the practitioner to stuff intestines with ashes carrying the aura of suppression sorcery, then sew them inside a false abdomen.
Using this false abdomen as their own belly, they would then perform disembowelment and spill the intestines to entice ghosts and spirits.
The original draft recorded that pigskin was required to make the false abdomen.
Since pigskin could not be found at present, Chang Dafeng had ordered Ding Ling to use roe deer hide instead. Presumably, as long as the ritual was the same, making the false abdomen was not strictly confined to the material of the leather.
According to Zhou Yang's careful study, this method of making up gods and painting ghosts was fundamentally rooted in "suppression sorcery."
So-called "suppression sorcery," also known as *yasheng shu*, was an evil art of cursing others and bringing disaster upon them through specific medium objects.
To open each door in the method of making up gods and painting ghosts, one had to take an object bearing another person's name, dab it with the practitioner's blood, and bury it in a specific direction along with the person's undergarments.
This was an obvious hallmark of suppression sorcery.
Previously, Zhou Yang had been uncertain about the choice of target for suppression—whose name among those around them should be written on the slip of paper to achieve the best suppression effect?
Now that Chang Dafeng was about to perform "Opening Door" for Ding Ling, he would likely instruct Ding Ling in the key knacks of it.
"Chang Dafeng granted you this entire roe deer hide, along with the intestines, for the 'Opening Door ritual.'
"Naturally, you may dispose of them as you wish without being so frugal—at the moment, managing to 'open the door' is what's most crucial. Don't lose the greater picture for small gains. Besides, what would you do with the rest of the dried hide?" Zhou Yang cautioned Ding Ling.
Ding Ling smiled sheepishly. "I could use the hide to stitch a hat and some shoes, so my face and feet won't freeze in the winter.
"But you're right, sir. I'll make sure to save plenty of hide for the false abdomen."
"Sewing a false abdomen doesn't require much fuss over the suppleness of the leather.
"To make a hat and shoes, wouldn't the hide need proper tanning?" Zhou Yang asked casually.
Ding Ling answered just as casually, "Yes, but it's not much trouble.
"There's oil on hand, plus the roe deer's liver and brain. It can be tanned with the liver and brain grease."
Hearing that, Zhou Yang fell silent all at once.
Liver and brain grease.
These items were also what had to be used in Guancun's Opening Rite.
Only, in Guancun's Opening Rite, what was being tanned was human skin...
After that, Ding Ling picked out some offal, combined it with the wild herbs Qian Heng had dug up, sliced some seasoning into the pot, and cooked a pot of wild herb and offal soup, waiting for tonight's "Inviting the Ghost to Select the Play" to conclude before serving it as dinner for the opera troupe.
Chapter 23