In Daliangzi Village, all the ordinary fixtures of daily life remained arranged as before.
At the well at the head of the village, the well rope was wound several times around the windlass. A bucket rested beside it, still half-filled with well water.
A flatbed cart sat parked in the middle of the road, stacked with several bundles of dry firewood, yet nowhere was there any sign of the person who had pushed it.
The entire village was devoid of human presence.
Though it still appeared at a glance to be a "living" village, in truth it was already dead.
Inside every cottage that looked inhabited lay corpse after corpse.
The stench of decay radiating from the corpses soaked into the air, imbuing every fixture, every blade of grass, and every tree with the smell of death.
Though the weather was bitterly cold, the villagers' bodies had rotted rapidly within just a day or two. The only reason for this was the mischief worked by the opera ghost's rhythm.
Guiding Ding Ling, Zhou Yang carefully skirted the dwellings to avoid disturbing the dead within and inviting disaster.
The two took considerable pains before finally arriving at an expanse of gray-brick houses in the northwestern part of Daliangzi Village.
Behind three scholar trees, beneath a brick-carved gate tower, two black-lacquered wooden doors remained tightly shut. The iron studs across the doors were rusted, and a layer of green moss covered the front steps, upon which faint shoe prints could be seen.
Ding Ling stepped forward and tried pushing the doors, naturally failing to budge them. "This door is bolted from the inside..."
She retreated below the steps, looking once more at the moss on them and the wild weeds clinging to the base of the wall.
The outward appearance of this house clearly showed it had gone uninhabited for a long time.
Because no one had lived here for so long, deep moss coated the front steps, and weeds grew thick against the walls.
From most dwellings in the village, the stench of decay drifted out, yet as they drew near these tiled-roof houses, the foul rot smelled much fainter to Zhou Yang and Ding Ling—further confirming Ding Ling's assessment that the place was deserted.
Zhou Yang and Ding Ling had searched Daliangzi Village for a long time before locating a spot like this: isolated from neighboring dwellings, with no inhabitants inside.
Such a residence had long been abandoned by the villagers. With no dead villagers inside, hardly any of the opera ghost's rhythm would linger here.
Moreover, it was extremely far from where the opera troupe was located. If Chang Dafeng wanted to find them here, it would cost him considerable effort and stir up plenty of complications.
Using this place as a foothold was indeed quite suitable for the two of them.
"Find a lower spot to scale the wall into the courtyard and see how things look inside," Zhou Yang said.
The courtyard walls around these houses were built very tall, and Ding Ling was encumbered by her full stage costume. She could only search for a lower section so that, combined with Ghost Breath, she could vault over the top.
Ding Ling agreed, found a slightly lower section, and opened the Ghost's Mouth in her palm, scrambling up the wall in a few swift bounds.
After observing the conditions within the courtyard from atop the wall, she jumped down. The uppers of her high-topped, black-soled boots plunged straight into a pile of withered leaves, crunching softly underfoot.
No sooner had Ding Ling found her footing than she glanced sideways to see an old parasol tree leaning against the courtyard wall, thrusting straight toward the heavens. Its boughs were bare; at this time of year, not a single leaf remained upon it.
A stray bough branching off it pressed down upon the ridgepole of one tiled-roof cottage, collapsing it right down the middle. With the ridgepole fallen in, the entire roof had warped out of shape, the lower ends of the gray tiles curling upward like the flared neck ruff of an enraged rooster.
More than half of the roof had caved in, leaving it exposed to the elements.
Treading on a carpet of leaves that had accumulated over who knew how many years, Ding Ling rounded the corner of the house and saw several more rooms enclosed by the tall courtyard walls, cramped tightly together, with only the central lightwell catching a faint bit of skylight.
A musty mildew smell drifted from the rooms.
"There really is no stench of corpses in this compound after all. That's a good thing," Ding Ling murmured to Zhou Yang as she approached a room whose door stood half-open.
Since they were already here, they naturally had to look around.
As she spoke, Ding Ling pushed the half-open door a bit wider. The pivot creaked in the silence with a jarring groan that set one's hair on end.
A sliver of daylight spilled through the widening gap into the room.
Weeds choked the interior as well. An alcove bed set beside the window had collapsed amid the overgrown grass, while tables and cabinets leaned haphazardly. Looking through Ding Ling's eyes, Zhou Yang suddenly spotted a dark, looming figure.
A jolt went through him. "Someone's there!"
"Where?!" Ding Ling's eyes, having just darted elsewhere, snapped right back.
Sharing a mind with Zhou Yang, she instantly looked where he had seen the figure, and behind a toppled, slanted wardrobe, she caught sight of that dark "person."
That "person" appeared to have its back turned to the doorway, head bowed and back hunched, facing a dressing mirror.
—Only then did Ding Ling make out the dark, blackened dressing mirror.
Her throat tight, she reached out and pushed open the other leaf of the door, allowing more daylight to flood into the murky room.
The daylight illuminated the dressing mirror as well.
Coated in dust and spiderwebs, the mirror reflected the person facing it as well as Ding Ling peering in from the doorway. The reflection was hazy, and the person's face was impossible to see clearly.
The person remained standing in place, utterly motionless.
Yet as the doors swung wide, a gust of wind swept into the room.
The light breeze swept over the figure, toppling it flat onto the ground.
It fell as if made of paper.
—It was a paper effigy.
Reassured by Zhou Yang, Ding Ling plucked up her courage and walked over, taking in the full appearance of the paper effigy.
Most of its outer paper had rotted away, kept in shape only by the sorghum stalks within.
Yet the clothes on its body were not made of paper.
"This is a python robe, with a jade belt and official boots..." Ding Ling recognized the outfit at a glance. "This paper effigy is playing a civil official of high status...
"There's a hole torn in the belly of the python robe..."
Seeing that hole in the robe, Ding Ling hesitated, her gaze wavering as though a thought had struck her.
Following Ding Ling's gaze, Zhou Yang naturally saw it as well: in the abdomen of the python robe, where the gold threads had faded and the brocade had rotted, was a slit that looked as though it had been carved by a knife.
The fabric around the tear seemed to have been soaked in some fluid, showing a much darker, pitch-black hue.
"Could this paper effigy be dressed as Gongsun Yan from Investiture of the Prime Ministers of the Six States, performing Disembowelment and Spilling Intestines?" Zhou Yang's thoughts matched Ding Ling's.
The two of them had just experienced the entire process of practicing the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts and creating the Opening Door curse, so the aria "Disembowelment and Spilling Intestines" from Investiture of the Prime Ministers of the Six States was etched deeply in their memories.
Seeing this eerie paper effigy that appeared to have died of disembowelment, they naturally drew the connection.
"How could this be...
"How could there be such a coincidence?"
Ding Ling denied it instinctively.
Clouds of suspicion gathered in Zhou Yang's mind. Offering neither affirmation nor denial, he merely said, "Let's check the other rooms.
"A paper effigy dressed in a python robe opera costume... something is off about this place. Stay alert."
"Right!" Ding Ling rose, hunched her back, and slipped lightly out of the room.
She looked left and right, noticing nothing amiss, and darted like smoke into the room opposite, where a gaping hole punctured the roof.
Inside, broken tiles and fallen leaves littered the floor, with wild grass sprouting everywhere.
A cooking stove unburied by weeds and rubble stood out conspicuously in this dilapidated room.
A large wok for cooking over firewood still rested on the stove.
The bottom of the wok had already rusted through. Peering through the hole, one could see a dark, crumpled bundle stuffed into the pitch-black firebox underneath.
Ding Ling picked up a wooden stick and hooked out the bundle stuffed in the firebox. One glance, and her expression froze—
The object impaled on the stick was clearly a human head made of paper!
Firewood ash smudged the paper face, but the two eyes painted in bright red pigment had survived to this day, allowing Zhou Yang and Ding Ling to recognize what it was at a single glance!
Ding Ling hastily cast the paper head aside and fled the room as though escaping for her life.
Looking around once more, she felt that this seemingly run-down, abandoned compound had become thoroughly eerie.
In the corners shielded by gray-brick walls where sunlight could not reach, ghostlike things seemed to be stirring!
Putting herself on higher guard, she entered the room in front of the woodshed.
The moment she pushed the door open, she saw a headless paper effigy standing by the doorway. Her hair stood on end with fright, and she swung the wooden stick in her hand straight at it!
"Hold on!"
Zhou Yang spoke up to stop her.
Once Ding Ling's nerves had steadied, Zhou Yang scrutinized the paper effigy, noting that it too wore an opera costume, dressed as a character from the stage:
"It seems this is the 'owner' of the paper head stuffed in the firebox.
"Nothing much could be told from the paper head just now.
"But the clothes on this paper effigy—don't they strike you as strange, Ding Ling?
"Wearing the Nine Palaces Eight Trigrams robe inside out, a silk cord of resurrection grass tied at the waist, cloud-treading boots upon its feet, a tiger-slaying ruler hanging from its belt... Though the gold-crested cord-bound cap on its head is nowhere to be seen, this makeup and stage attire... isn't this 'Shen Gongbao with Neck Wrenched and Throat Torn'?"
Ding Ling knitted her brows, her small face tense as she whispered, "I know, Teacher.
"'Shen Gongbao with Neck Wrenched and Throat Torn' is also the aria needed when crafting the Death Door warding spirit in the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts...
"This house... the opera ghost in Daliangzi Village... it feels as though it was targeting us all along!"
"Not us," Zhou Yang corrected her. "Before you and me, Chang Dafeng was the primary practitioner of the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts.
"If trouble had already started and a ghost was haunting this village from the beginning...
"Then when this opera ghost invited your troupe here, it was really after Chang Dafeng all along. You were merely an afterthought thrown into the bargain."
"Th-then do we keep searching?" Ding Ling asked.
Zhou Yang hesitated briefly before speaking with renewed conviction. "Keep searching!
"Neither inside nor outside these houses have we sensed the presence of any ghost rhythm.
"That means it is safe for the moment.
"If we don't take this chance to investigate our surroundings, I'm afraid we won't get another opportunity later."
"All right!"
Ding Ling agreed briskly.
Taking advantage of the lull, the two hurriedly searched every remaining room in the front courtyard.
In the remaining three rooms, Ding Ling discovered Lady White Bone corresponding to the impersonated character of the Rest Door, and Plague King Zhao Gongming corresponding to the impersonated character of the Alarm Door. Only in the very last room was there no paper effigy dressed in opera costume and masquerading as a stage character.
This final room was the central hall of the front courtyard.
Chapter 42