Chang Dafeng could feel that on that face, a pair of eyes ringed with clusters of granulated flesh were fixed on him without blinking!
His heart skipped half a beat.
He pressed on and conjured a second and a third face!
Thunder God, Black Tiger Xuantan, Botong, Nielong... one opera face after another flashed across Chang Dafeng's face like a revolving lantern, and the opera ghost kept singing the matching aria for each one, its ghost rhythm growing ever more violent!
That ghost rhythm had already torn free of the ghost Daole's grip and was spreading over Chang Dafeng.
Chang Dafeng's opera costume was gradually becoming like paper clothes.
But watching the ghost Daole fall further and further behind his singing, he saw that the third face on the yellow paper was now exactly like his senior apprentice's looks. This face, which had been gazing at him all along, was being squeezed by the other two faces to the edge of the yellow paper!
It was about to be pushed off the sun-shading paper!
Once his senior apprentice's face left the sun-shading paper, it would mean his soul had broken free and been reborn!
With that thought fixed in his mind, Chang Dafeng's eyes brimmed with tears. He jerked his head aside, and the ferocious, hideous makeup on his face suddenly turned into the face of a dan role, fair and flushed with red.
He too kept his eyes fixed on his senior apprentice's face as it was gradually squeezed off the yellow paper, and chanted in song: "Ever since I followed the Great King on his campaigns east and west, enduring wind and frost, toil and hardship, year after year..."
His voice had scarcely risen when the tears fell.
In his memory, whenever he came to this opera, his senior apprentice would always follow behind and sing in harmony with him.
Layer upon layer of operatic song rose around Chang Dafeng's ears, answering him in harmony:
"This time I have drawn you into danger, and made you suffer such fright..."
"Senior apprentice!" Chang Dafeng lifted his eyes in joyful surprise. He wanted to focus his gaze and see clearly what lay ahead, but his eyes were blurred with tears.
Wave after wave of operatic song spread through his heart like a tide, dousing his brimming joy:
"My lady!
"My cause is lost—
"As I see it, today is the day you and I must part..."
"Senior apprentice!" Alarm rose in Chang Dafeng's heart. He blinked hard, squeezing the tears from his eyes, and looked to the opposite side again.
On the yellow paper, two faces still stood side by side.
The ghost Daole wore his senior apprentice's face, and the opera ghost was red-lipped and white-toothed.
Both pairs of eyes fixed on Chang Dafeng, cold and grim.
"Senior apprentice!"
Chang Dafeng was desperate to step forward and lift that yellow paper, to see whether the Ding Ling beneath it had become his senior apprentice.
But the opera ghost's ghost rhythm had eaten into him: his clothes were like paper, and the flesh beneath them had turned as fragile as paper too. Now, in his haste, one movement tore his clothes to shreds, split open his flesh, and tripped him to the ground.
Blood soaked through his paper clothes, and the bridgehead was thick with the reek of blood!
Chang Dafeng lay in a pool of blood, craning his neck to look to the opposite side.
Heaven have mercy—just then a gust of wind lifted the sun-shading paper from Ding Ling's face.
The face he saw was still Ding Ling's face!
It had nothing to do with his senior apprentice!
All hope died in Chang Dafeng.
His brow struck the wooden bridge heavily, and for a long while there was no sound from him, as though he were dead.
A long while later.
Zhou Yang and Ding Ling finally heard his murmur.
He seemed to be singing an opera, a song, and yet also to be reciting some verse or poem.
The first few lines were indistinct, and Zhou Yang could not make them out clearly; he understood only the latter half:
"His royal spirit spent, how should this humble concubine live on..."
After finishing the line, Chang Dafeng slowly raised his head and met Ding Ling's eyes through the yellow paper.
On his rotted face appeared a horrifying smile:
"Why is it that you were born a girl, and I was reborn in a man's body...
"Why is it that you struggle so hard to live, while I have to send you to your death...
"Enough, enough.
"Let me do one good deed as well..."
Chang Dafeng slowly lowered his head and slumped down at the bridgehead, and there was no sound from him anymore.
From his last words, Zhou Yang judged that he had already set his heart on dying, and meant to give Ding Ling a hand before he died.
Yet now he made no move at all, which left Zhou Yang unavoidably puzzled.
Time waits for no one.
Right now the ghost Daole and the opera ghost were still locked together, using Ding Ling's body as their battlefield.
Because the two ghosts were fighting each other and neither had time to work any harm, Ding Ling, caught in the gap between them, could for the moment keep her life—but this could not last.
Just now, by singing opera and making songs, Chang Dafeng had thoroughly provoked the opera ghost's ghost rhythm. Before long, it would be able to drive the ghost Daole away completely!
When the two ghosts decided which was the stronger, it would be the moment Ding Ling's life ended!
Zhou Yang racked his brains for a plan.
Just then a powerful stench of rot rose from Chang Dafeng's body, enough to make anyone who smelled it gag!
Chang Dafeng, sprawled on the ground, gave off the aura of death all over his body.
In that brief span of time, he had already lost his life!
Zhou Yang, smelling this corpse stench, suddenly had a thought:
"To make the ghost Daole work for you, you have to offer up a part of your own body as a sacrifice.
"So now, could Chang Dafeng have sacrificed his whole life to the ghost Daole?
"To help Ding Ling this once, in this way?"
Even as he thought this, the sun-shading paper covering Ding Ling's face suddenly began to rustle and shake!
The sun-shading paper was as crisp and stiff as if it had been ironed!
The cold, rotten stench, which had already faded, abruptly grew thick again!
—Just as Zhou Yang had guessed, Chang Dafeng had given the rest of his remaining life to the ghost Daole, setting the ghost Daole to do one last thing for him!
And this last thing was—
"Swish!"
The sun-shading paper stuck to Ding Ling's forehead, which no outside force could possibly tear away, left her in an instant!
What left Ding Ling along with the "ghost Daole" was the ghost rhythm of both ghosts!
The opera ghost's ghost rhythm, brimming over, was swept up by a rustling yin wind and, in an instant, spread across the entire surface of that sun-shading paper!
Just now it had pinned down the ghost Daole; now the ghost Daole had been given a sacrifice of human life, and in turn held it in check!
It forced the opera ghost to gather up all its ghost rhythm and pit it against the ghost Daole!
"The man in her heart's sweet place..."
On the paper, the opera ghost's face, fair and flushed with red, sang its song, plaintive and full of grievance.
The ghost Daole's face was stiff, and it made not a sound!
Under the dim night, the far side of the wooden bridge was no longer the same scene as this one.
At the bridgehead on the far side, there was no sign of Ding Ling or Chang Dafeng at all.
Apart from the identical cold night, the far side was completely different from this one.
—The road from Daliangzi Village to the outside world had been opened!
"Go!"
Leaving the two ghosts to fight it out on a single sheet of paper, Zhou Yang barked out, and at once took control of Ding Ling's body, opening the Ghost Breath and the ripples fully, running for the far end of the bridge without daring to slacken for a moment!
All the way, he went as fast as the wind!
But he himself still felt it was too slow!
The ghost rhythm chased after him like a wolf, as though if he hesitated or stopped even for an instant, that great bloody maw behind him would chew him to pieces and leave nothing of him at all!
Fortunately, there was no real danger along the way.
With Ding Ling, he stepped off the bridgehead in a single stride, and the corpse stench drifting in the air instantly became very faint.
A gust of wind blew past.
At the bridgehead, apart from the fishy smell of the river wind, there was no longer the slightest trace of the corpse stench that made the heart quail.
Heaven and earth were quiet, and now and then a chill insect chirped.
The night here, though, was not as dead and lifeless as the night in Daliangzi Village.
"We've escaped!" Zhou Yang said to Ding Ling excitedly.
Ding Ling gave a soft smile.
Zhou Yang suspected nothing.
He had only just brought Ding Ling off the bridge, and still did not know whether the ghost behind them would cross the bridgehead and pursue them beyond Daliangzi Village, so he drew another breath, swung his legs, and raced madly toward the river flat.
At that moment Zhou Yang had only one thought: "Get away from this ghostly place—the farther the better!"
Zhou Yang went faster and faster, farther and farther.
He ran onward with all his heart, when all at once a dark figure emerged behind him, carrying a folding stool, also hurrying along, and soon passed him.
The man's back was hunched, a creel tied at his waist, a fishing rod on his back—he looked like an angler.
On such a pitch-dark night, wasn't an angler afraid of running into a ghost, fishing outside?
Doubt stirred in Zhou Yang.
Yet the ripples spreading out from his body had not picked up the slightest trace of ghost rhythm.
"Fellow villager, are you heading home?"
Weighing his words, Zhou Yang called out to the angler ahead.
"Off to watch the opera."
The angler, already five or seven paces ahead, answered without turning his head and kept walking.
Opera?
Where was there a stage around here?
Who would set up a stage on a river flat?
An ominous feeling rose in Zhou Yang's heart again. He drew a deep breath, caught up to the angler, and went on to ask, "I don't see any stage around here. Where are you going to watch the opera?"
"Up ahead, just up ahead."
The angler pointed ahead with his hand, his feet still moving.
Following the direction of his finger, Zhou Yang saw only a stretch of pitch-black.
Zhou Yang sighed and slowly came to a halt.
He saw the angler, with the fishing rod on his back, walk into the darkness—then come hurrying back out of the blackness ahead toward him.
The angler walked toward him with his head down, saying as he went, "Up ahead, just up ahead."
The direction the man was pointing to was exactly where Zhou Yang and Ding Ling were standing!
In the darkness, women's voices rose one after another, asking the way:
"I don't see any stage around here. Where are you going to watch the opera?"
All the voices asking the way were the same voice.
They were all Ding Ling's voice.
But what answered that voice was a multitude of voices, men and women, old and young:
"Up ahead, just up ahead."
"Right here, this is the place!"
"Come here to watch the opera!"
"Sing, sing!"
"..."
In a daze, Zhou Yang and Ding Ling were standing on the highest point of the river flat.
All around them the place was already packed with people.
The opera fans, each wearing a fair, red-tinged face, looked up at Ding Ling standing on the high ground.
They clapped in unison, urging the good show to begin at once.
Chapter 62