The Road into the Village

*Thud!* The calf of Zhou Yang's left leg banged hard against the edge of the bed frame. The dull ache made him yank his leg back sharply, and he sat bolt upright. He opened his eyes wide and looked around, terror still lingering in his gaze. Everything before him was pitch-black. Waves of burning incense drifted through the air. Only after his eyes adjusted to the dark for a moment did he gradually make out what was in front of him. —He was sitting on the bed in his home in Guancun. A coarse-cloth quilt covered his legs, and beneath his backside lay a slightly warm straw mat. The smell of incense wafted steadily from the bedpost at the left side of the foot of the bed. Understanding immediately, Zhou Yang tossed back the quilt and crawled to the foot of the bed, where he saw one corner of the straw mat rolled back to reveal the wooden planks beneath. On the boards rested a small clay stove. A bundle of incense sticks was stuck in the stove, burned down to uneven lengths. Beside the clay stove, a hemp rope was tied to the bedpost. The other end of the rope had already burned through from the incense embers, and the severed length was wrapped around the very leg Zhou Yang had just banged against the bed frame. This arrangement was exceedingly bizarre. An onlooker unfamiliar with the reasons behind it might even think some eerie secret was hidden here. In truth, the explanation was quite simple—Zhou Yang had deliberately wound a hemp rope around the bedpost and tied it to his leg so that his left leg hung partially suspended in the air. Then he set an incense burner at the foot of the bed and lit sticks of incense specifically so the burning embers would singe through the rope. After a set amount of time, the rope would burn through, and his leg would drop against the edge of the bed frame. That way, the physical pain would jolt him awake from the Knife-Credit Ledger. This arrangement was, in fact, a crude timer Zhou Yang had rigged up. Zhou Yang picked up the clay stove, slipped his feet into his straw sandals, and got out of bed. Placing the stove in a corner of the room, he stood and glanced toward the window opening. Outside, a dim blue light glowed; it was roughly the fourth or fifth watch of the night. Not much time remained before he had to get up and go to work. Yet events in Daliangzi Village weighed heavily on his mind. Hesitant, he flipped the Knife-Credit Ledger open to the page with Ding Ling's personal record. Looking over Ding Ling's record, he saw no abnormal changes whatsoever. Yet when he had broken away from Daliangzi Village just now, the opera ghost had materialized in the courtyard right at that moment—and in that critical juncture, he had abandoned Ding Ling and returned alone. Ding Ling was still weak; could she escape with her life on her own? Judging from the situation in the courtyard back then, the ghost rhythm had thickened to an absolute peak in an instant—a clear sign that the opera ghost had truly descended. Facing a genuine ghost, even with Ghost Breath and the warding spirit to protect her, her chances of escaping were slim... Zhou Yang's thoughts twisted into a tangled knot. Restless and uneasy, he paced back and forth across the room. Suddenly, as if remembering something, he stopped dead in his tracks: *Before my consciousness returned to Guancun, I distinctly heard the thud of something heavy hitting the ground.* *Thinking back carefully, it sounded like two feet landing after someone leaped over the wall into the courtyard.* *Right then, the opera ghost, having already noticed Ding Ling and me, suddenly snapped its head back...* *Could it be that whoever leaped over the wall into the courtyard drew the opera ghost's attention? Who could that person be? Hardly any living souls remain in the village... Could Troupe Leader Chang have come over too?* *If Troupe Leader Chang really did show up, that would actually be a good thing for Ding Ling. If the sky collapses, Troupe Leader Chang is the taller of the two; since he drew the opera ghost, he ought to be the one to bear the brunt of its attack first.* *And under those circumstances, Ding Ling was still maintaining Ghost Breath.* *Is it possible that she could escape disaster once again with that?* Zhou Yang settled his mind a bit, then sighed softly. He knew well enough that all these thoughts were just wishful thinking at work. Just a single wisp of the opera ghost's rhythm attached to the dead Gao Hongbo had inflicted heavy casualties on the opera troupe, and even Chang Dafeng had barely held his own. If the opera ghost had truly descended in person upon that small courtyard, could Chang Dafeng really withstand it, even if he did arrive? "Guancun is exceedingly peculiar, a village where the Great Zhao selects its officials. "The flow of time here does not align with Daliang Village at all; there is simply no pattern to speak of. "Under such conditions, even if I were to return to Daliang Village right this instant, how could I guarantee I would arrive at that exact moment when the opera ghost appeared and help Ding Ling out of danger? Am I really that much stronger than her? "In truth, it is already too late..." Zhou Yang looked down at the book in his hands, his eyes dimming. In the brief span of his daze, the daylight outside the window opening grew paler, and roosters began to crow. Following the rooster's crow, Huang Shaodiao knocked on Zhou Yang's door. *Bang! Bang! Bang!* Merely hearing those knocks, one would surely assume the person outside was anxious, perhaps even manic, behaving with brute force and ferocity. Yet alongside the pounding, Huang Shaodiao's voice calling out to Zhou Yang was so tender—so tender it made his hair stand on end, sending a wave of cold sweat prickling across the back of his neck: "Son, what you wanted, Mother brought back for you. "Shall Mother carry it into your room?" *Things?* *What things?* Zhou Yang thought to himself. His face remained calm, but his voice sounded quite hurried: "Wait! "Mother, I'm not dressed yet. "Wait until I've put on my clothes, and I'll open the door for you!" During his time in Guancun, he rarely undressed for bed, and now he needed only to throw on his outer robe to be fully dressed. The reason he still spoke like this to the ghost outside the door was to subtly establish boundaries with it. At the very least, it would keep it from barging into his room at will. "Mother gave birth to you. What part of you hasn't Mother seen?" Huang Shaodiao said with a chuckle. Listening to her voice, Zhou Yang felt as if he could see her beaming smile through the door. Yet in the end, she did not push the door open and come right in. She waited outside for a while, and Zhou Yang shuffled over in his straw sandals to open the door for her. *Creak—* The instant the wooden door opened, Huang Shaodiao's bloated frame was already squeezing through the doorway. In its left hand, it carried a wooden bucket that reeked of a sweet, metallic stench. Zhou Yang glanced at the wooden bucket and caught sight of the gory mess inside. He paused for a moment before understanding dawned—he remembered what he had asked Huang Shaodiao for. Before entering Daliang Village this time, he had asked Huang Shaodiao to bring him some pig entrails from the butcher shop. He intended to use them to begin studying the *Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts*. The bloody mess in the bucket was precisely the pig entrails he had requested. Holding the bucket, Huang Shaodiao made a full circle around the room, inspecting every corner, before coming to a halt in front of Zhou Yang. On its fat, pale face, a pair of eyes with far more whites than pupils stared dead at him. Its gaze was like a heavy club brought crashing down onto his head. "You burned incense... "What were you doing burning incense in your room?" "Yesterday I officially started learning blacksmithing from Master Afu and worked up a heavy sweat. I burned incense to mask the smell of sweat." Zhou Yang had prepared his response long beforehand. He tugged at the hem of his robe, and Huang Shaodiao indeed leaned forward to sniff. Smelling the thick scent of incense clinging to him, it nodded half in belief and half in doubt. Huang Shaodiao glanced down at the bucket in its hand, and its face once again broke into a broad smile. "The stomach, intestines, and blood you wanted... Mother went to the butcher shop and got them for you. "No pigs have been delivered from the outside for several days, so the butcher shop stopped selling these things long ago, and every household has just been eating through their stockpiles. "It was quite a stroke of luck when Mother went over today; it happened to be right when they were delivering pigs from outside." "Thank you, Mother." Zhou Yang took the wooden bucket Huang Shaodiao held out to him. His mind turned over, but keeping his expression normal, he asked as if casually, "I keep hearing about pigs being sent in from outside, yet I rarely see anyone from the village going out. "The road into the village from outside... is it very hard to travel?" The instant the question left his mouth, Zhou Yang's heart thumped with dread! He had not yet shifted out of the state of mind he had been in while in Daliang Village. Facing Huang Shaodiao now, though he knew full well in his heart that it was a ghost, he had unconsciously treated it as a person. His words had completely lost their necessary caution! Hearing this, Huang Shaodiao jerked its head up. From its dark pupils, tiny as the tips of needles, two hooks seemed to reach out, poised to yank free the secrets hidden deep in Zhou Yang's heart: "You want to go outside? My son... "Mother can help you, my precious darling!"