The Sun-Shading Paper

Hummm… Handprint after handprint spread outward, layer by layer, with Ding Ling at the center. Under the handprint ripples, the darkness that had trapped Ding Ling suddenly began to turn illusory, and in an instant it actually took on the texture of a paper-pasted backdrop! In a flash, these patches of darkness were crushed to pieces by the handprint ripples! Only then did Zhou Yang see clearly that Ding Ling and the corpse that had been set ablaze by the ghost fire were no more than two or three steps apart! Behind that corpse—blackened all over, with only its face utterly unharmed—the dead villagers of Daliang Village stood with hands resting on one another's shoulders in a long serpent formation; this long array wound back around, enclosing Chang Dafeng, Ding Ling, and the Daole warding spirit at the center, layer upon layer, inside and out. Every corpse wore that woman's face, white tinged with red. Countless faces whirled about, calling out again and again: “Ding Niang'er, Ding Niang'er…” At this moment, as if sensing that Ding Ling and the others had broken free of their control, they abruptly froze their faces, and their pairs of eyes—black and white in stark contrast, like ink dots on white paper—stared fixedly at Ding Ling and her group! Zhou Yang suddenly felt a chill pierce through his heart and soul! “Come back, come back—” The dead stretched out their hands one after another, grabbing at Ding Ling and her group! The illusory, eerie ghost rhythm bore down on Ding Ling again, and the several handprints that Zhou Yang had maintained with his Right Thought along the outer edge of the ripple cycle around her were instantly eroded back by the ghost rhythm, turning as flimsy as paper paste! “Releasing ripples with just my Right Thought alone, there is simply no way to withstand ghost rhythm corrosion of this degree! “The only way is to try merging my Right Thought with Ding Ling's!” Abilities of the kind like Ghost Breath and supernatural ripples were all closely bound to Right Thought. Now that Zhou Yang had lodged his consciousness in Ding Ling's body, wielding such abilities met with no obstruction at all. He could even merge his Right Thought with Ding Ling's, and with the Right Thought that, once the two were combined, broke past its finite limit, further amplify these two abilities! Just then, Chang Dafeng, not far off, suddenly let out a sigh. Something stirred in Zhou Yang's heart— and then he heard Chang Dafeng recite his spoken lines in a coy, delicate operatic voice: “Lend a hand, senior apprentice!” Senior apprentice? What senior apprentice? “Sir, the troupe leader's ghost is about to come out!” Zhou Yang was still puzzled when he heard Ding Ling say nervously. “He calls the ghost who worked the 'Daole' trade in life his 'senior apprentice'!” Ding Ling's mind abruptly steadied! The Daole warding spirit, now fallen to the very back—the yellow paper stuck over its head abruptly began to quiver! That yellow paper rustled and shook, stirring up layer upon layer of ripples, and the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth painted on it were shaken off the paper's surface one after another! A purple-black liquid bearing the corpse stench seeped onto the paper's surface, forming blurred lines upon it. Those lines joined together, faintly forming a human face! As Zhou Yang stared at the blurred human face seeped onto the yellow paper by the foul corpse water, his heart quailing in shock, he suddenly thought—the yellow paper covering the straw effigy's face, wasn't it that 'sun-shading paper' laid over a dead person's face while the body lay in state at home? It is said that after a person dies, the face must not be exposed to sunlight, and must avoid the breath of the living. If the face is exposed to sunlight, the soul cannot rest, and it may be impossible to enter the cycle of reincarnation. And if it comes into contact with the breath of the living, there is even a chance of corpse transformation. That is why a yellow paper is laid over the face to cover it. The yellow paper on that straw effigy's face was exactly the same as a dead person's sun-shading paper. It was just that Chang Dafeng had painted a set of facial features on that paper, and so Zhou Yang had momentarily overlooked this detail. And this rite of covering a dead person's face with a sun-shading paper fell within the scope of a 'Daole's' work! The purple-black corpse water kept spreading over the yellow paper, and the blurred human face formed by the corpse water marks kept shifting along with it. That blurred human face on the paper, in the space of an instant, as though switching slides, abruptly changed into another—an opera facial makeup of Zhong Kui appeared on the paper's surface! Beside the Zhong Kui opera facial makeup, the corpse water marks were still reassembling, forming a face much like Chang Dafeng's! A cold, rotten odor then issued from that straw effigy, seeping into the two faces on the yellow paper. The two faces that had seemed only painted on the yellow paper suddenly sprouted clusters of flesh buds and grew skin, and in an instant became two real human faces! That cold, rotten odor that reached Zhou Yang's nostrils was actually a kind of ghost rhythm. In an instant, it brought the two faces drawn in corpse water closer to reality! “Ding Niang'er, Ding Niang'er…” All the corpses surrounding Ding Ling and Chang Dafeng now stretched out their hands in unison toward that straw effigy inhabited by the 'Daole'! Reaching toward the yellow paper covering the straw effigy's head! They were within arm's reach of the straw effigy, and so almost in an instant, many of the corpses' hands touched the yellow paper on the straw effigy's face! The next instant! Those corpses bawled and wept, dropping to their knees on the ground one after another, kowtowing ceaselessly to that straw effigy, wailing in mourning: “Father, Mother—you left too soon!” “Father, Mother!” “Take your child along with you too!” The mourners who wailed and begged their dead parents to take them along too—on their faces, too, there now appeared a sun-shading paper. Beneath the sun-shading paper, that set of features—white tinged with red, pretty and charming—began to rot. “Go!” Chang Dafeng called out to Ding Ling, his voice weak and lacking in strength. He snatched the gauze ball lantern from that straw effigy's hands, then raised his foot and kicked aside a corpse kneeling in the path ahead; that dead thing, a yellow paper stuck to its face, lay sprawled on the ground like mud, and did not hinder Chang Dafeng in the slightest. On the dirt road, the ground was covered all over with such kneeling corpses. Chang Dafeng walked at the front, his figure still as though seated in a carriage, swaying and jolting along with the carriage's motion. He draped that red bridal veil over his face once more. Ding Ling followed behind him, likewise holding the Zhong Kui traveling posture. At present Ding Ling was still in the state of 'Opera Spirit-Communion', the thin female warding spirit impersonating Judge Zhong Kui to shield her. If she broke the Zhong Kui traveling posture, the Opera Spirit-Communion state would dissolve at once. But Chang Dafeng was playing Zhong Mei, and whether or not he was in the Opera Spirit-Communion state, he had only the Bloated Aspect warding spirit shielding him in its true form—he could not summon the slightest protection of a divine posture. At this point, he no longer needed at all to keep up Zhong Mei's carriage-riding gait; that way he could move faster. A crescent moon hung in the black sky, clear and cold. Beneath the black sky, Chang Dafeng, playing the bride dan, walked on tiptoe, swaying with each step. He walked hurriedly. As if this bride beneath the red veil were eager to marry herself off. Zhou Yang walked on in silence along with Ding Ling. Watching the bride dan ahead walk far off—already out of the village and gradually nearing the riverbank beyond the village—he suddenly asked Ding Ling: “Chang Dafeng… “In the opera troupe, did he play the dan role much?” Ding Ling, too, seemed to realize something at this moment. She thought for a moment before saying: “Never once saw the troupe leader sing a dan role before. “Li Yichun was the opera troupe's dan role; the troupe leader specialized in major jing roles—all those jing roles that Gao Hongbo couldn't perform, he performed them.” “Has Chang Dafeng ever taken a wife?” Zhou Yang asked again. “He has always been on his own,” Ding Ling replied. Zhou Yang said no more. This Chang Dafeng—perhaps there was some story to him. The gauze ball lantern could light only an area of one zhang around the two of them; the distance beyond was still all darkness. From the darkness came the sound of river water gurgling and flowing. Hearing this sound, Zhou Yang seemed to catch the briny, fishy smell of the river water. Suddenly, a cold, rotten odor instantly overwhelmed the faint smell of the river wind, blowing in from behind! —This odor was in fact the ghost rhythm of that 'ghost Daole'! No sooner had this thought formed in Zhou Yang's mind than he 'sensed' a yellowish shadow whoosh past the edge of his vision; immediately after, he heard Chang Dafeng, walking ahead, cry out in alarm: “Senior apprentice!” Following Ding Ling, he looked intently ahead, and saw a yellow paper fluttering in the wind ahead of Chang Dafeng! On the sun-shading paper, corpse water gradually spread and dyed out a human face. “Senior apprentice!” Chang Dafeng lifted a corner of the red bridal veil, raising his eyes to look at that face, sprouting clusters of flesh, on the yellow paper. His voice, as he called out, was full of joy.