Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister

"Can you still smell that corpse stench?" "It's heavier. The ghost must be very close to us." "How close?" "Maybe right at the bottom of the slope in front of the courtyard?" After exchanging these brief thoughts with Zhou Yang in her mind, Ding Ling looked up at the people gathered in the courtyard. "My thumb! My thumb!" Clutching his blood-drenched hand, Qian Heng rolled across the ground, howling in agony. Li Yichun's right thumb was also a mangled mess of flesh and blood. Clutching his wounded hand, his face deathly pale, he shivered uncontrollably and muttered, "The ghost is coming... the ghost is coming... You wouldn't let it pick the play, and now we're all done for— "We're all finished, it's over!" He kept murmuring to himself. Gradually, these whispers overtook Qian Heng's howls of pain. Listening to Li Yichun's manic muttering, Qian Heng forgot his rolling and wailing. Sucking in ragged breaths, he was dragged by Li Yichun's words right back into a state of chilling dread. Scrambling up from the dirt, Qian Heng quietly crept toward the doorway of the main hall. In the pitch-black night, it felt as though ghosts lurked in every corner of the courtyard. Only by hiding inside the house could Qian Heng feel a slight shred of safety. Chang Dafeng glanced sideways at Li Yichun and gave a scornful sneer. "If we'd gone along with the ghost's wishes tonight and picked *Three Defeats of the White Bone Demon*, that's when we'd really be finished! "Come the main performance in three days, none of us would stand a chance of surviving! "Refusing to pick what the ghost wanted was our only way out! "Just look at what cowards you are!" "Even so, you shouldn't have picked *Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister*! Anything would've been better than this play!" Li Yichun sprang to his feet, shrieking shrilly. "In this troupe, I'm the only one who sings the dan role! "If you pick *Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister*, who's going to be the sister in the sedan chair that Zhong Kui escorts?! "Who else could it be but me?! "Zhong Kui's sister is nothing more than an ordinary mortal! "This was supposed to be a ghost-and-god play! You lot get to dress up as great gods and lesser demons to frighten off real ghosts, while you make me play a mere mortal! Aren't you just finding a sly way to send me to my death?!" Li Yichun spoke with startling fluency and clear logic. Hearing his outburst, even Ding Ling could not help looking at him in surprise. "Who said you were going to play Zhong Kui's sister?" Chang Dafeng retorted without even raising his head, shutting down Li Yichun's impassioned tirade with a single sentence. The words Li Yichun had prepared lodged in his throat, dissolving into a few senseless, sputtering noises. Yet hearing Chang Dafeng's words, Zhou Yang's heart sank. If Li Yichun—who was the dan performer—was not going to play Zhong Kui's sister, then who would take the role was all too predictable. Did Chang Dafeng intend for Ding Ling to play the sister?! That role in the play was merely a mortal. The ghost-and-god play in three days was meant to have them all disguise themselves as deities and ghosts to frighten the ghosts of Daliang Village; only by intimidating the real ghosts could they escape with their lives! Under such circumstances, any mortal in the play would almost certainly become the ghosts' primary target! Ding Ling could not be allowed to play Zhong Kui's sister! If Chang Dafeng really planned it that way, they would rather break away from the troupe and seek another path to survival than stay here as a sacrifice for the rest! That was what Zhou Yang thought, and that was what he conveyed to Ding Ling. "All right. "I'll listen to you, sir! "There's nothing here for me to cling to anyway." Ding Ling replied mentally. Yet despite what she said, Zhou Yang could feel the faint reluctance lingering in her thoughts. The troupe had never treated her well. Still, in such a perilous world, for a young girl of her age to belong to a troupe and earn enough to stay fed—how could that not be considered a blessing? Just as the two settled the matter, Chang Dafeng spoke again: "I will play Zhong Kui's sister! "Qian Heng, you'll play the Sword Ghost among Zhong Kui's five ghostly attendants. "Li Yichun, you will carry the umbrella for Zhong Kui as the Umbrella Ghost among the five ghostly attendants." At that point, Chang Dafeng paused, suddenly turning his gaze upon Ding Ling with a dark chuckle. Qian Heng and Li Yichun both turned their eyes toward Ding Ling as well. In the play *Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister*, who would play Zhong Kui? With only one person present left unassigned, the answer was already obvious. "Ding Ling, you will play Zhong Kui!" Chang Dafeng declared. "Why her?!" Qian Heng and Li Yichun blurted in unison. In this play, Zhong Kui had the most prominent role and the fiercest baleful aura. The actor who played Zhong Kui naturally stood the highest chance of surviving. The role of Zhong Kui was also the linchpin that held the entire play together, the absolute lead. Why should Ding Ling, someone who had never even been formally apprenticed to learn the craft, get to play Zhong Kui? If she botched the performance and brought the entire play crashing down, wouldn't everyone be dragged down to destruction with her? More to the point—she was a woman! How could a woman ever play Zhong Kui?! Such were the doubts churning through Qian Heng and Li Yichun's minds! "Because she learned real skill from my hands and received genuine craft!" Chang Dafeng barked. "Once tonight passes, when she dresses as Zhong Kui, I can immediately have her channel the divine as Zhong Kui! "Is that reason enough for you?" Qian Heng and Li Yichun looked enlightened, yet lingering dissatisfaction remained on their faces. In particular, Qian Heng shrank against the main hall's doorway and offered an ingratiating smile. "But wouldn't it be even better if you played Zhong Kui yourself? "What little Ding Ling knows is just newly learned tricks, flaunting a petty axe before the master carpenter. "You're the true master here!" "Then should I have you play Zhong Kui's sister?" Chang Dafeng shot back, cutting Qian Heng off with a string of cold sneers. "All you want is for Ding Ling to play the sister to Old Lord Zhong Kui, so you can borrow my light and escape with your lives. "Ding Ling alone would die, and since it wouldn't be either of you, you'd consider it no great loss. "But this play requires harmony between the two. If I played Zhong Kui and Ding Ling played his sister, the moment the main performance began, she would have no theatrical identity to shield her. As a mortal, she'd inevitably be slaughtered and devoured by the ghosts! Once the partner who responds to my role is gone, how am I supposed to keep the performance going? "More than that, with me playing Zhong Kui's sister, on stage it's Zhong Kui stiffening the sister's spine, but off stage it's really me anchoring Ding Ling's nerve! Only with the two of us working together will the performance hold! "Do you two have a better arrangement?!" Hearing this, the two could say nothing more and hurriedly nodded in agreement. Chang Dafeng seemed to have laid out the reasoning thoroughly. Yet watching from the sidelines, an even greater doubt arose in Zhou Yang's mind: *Why?* *Why would someone like Chang Dafeng sacrifice himself for others?* *The logic of the stage and reality may sound solid, but by playing Zhong Kui's sister, Chang Dafeng will receive no protection from a theatrical god-or-ghost persona either. Since when has he ever cared about the bigger picture or prioritized others, completely selfless and entirely devoted to helping everyone else?* Above all, Chang Dafeng had deliberately steered them toward choosing this play from the start. From the very beginning, his goal had been to make the troupe perform *Zhong Kui Marries Off His Sister*! Judging by his past actions, he was certainly no benevolent philanthropist looking out for others; he had long since proven himself willing to use others as scapegoats to pave his own way forward! If so, what was he truly plotting? What hidden secret lay within the role of Zhong Kui's sister? For some reason, Zhou Yang recalled the bloated corpse figure that had flashed behind Chang Dafeng earlier. The answer to that secret likely had to be sought within the *Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts*. "The corpse stench is very close..." While Zhou Yang was still pondering, Ding Ling suddenly turned to look toward the courtyard gate. Her brows furrowed tightly, her nostrils twitching. "It seems to be right behind the gate... "Sir, the corpse stench has reached the other side of the gate. "The ghost is here!" Before Ding Ling's words had fully settled, Zhou Yang was gripped with sudden dread! At that very moment, everyone present smelled the cloying stench of rot. One after another, they turned their eyes toward the two black-lacquered wooden doors. Beneath the pitch-black sky, those two pitch-black doors seemed like a vicious ghost suddenly throwing wide its cavernous black maw, eager to devour every living soul in the courtyard down to the bone! A chilling cold seeped through the crack between the doors, diffusing throughout the courtyard! At the same time, three knocking sounds rang out in measured succession! The interval between each knock was perfectly uniform. Stiff, mechanical, and devoid of life. *Thump! Thump! Thump!* After the three knocks, dead silence fell outside the gate.