“I don't want much.” ‘Ding Ling’ smiled with her lips pressed together, and in that smile lurked something sinister and sly, like a wolf sizing up a sheep. “I want that method—the one where the play mounts the body and reaches the gods.
“Other than that, I want nothing.”
At these words, Chang Dafeng immediately put on a look of ‘just as I thought.’
Without hesitation he nodded. “These people follow me everywhere performing open-air opera—half of it because they must make a living, and half because they're after this very method, the play mounting the body to reach the gods.
“Now that we've run into a ghost, in a situation like this, even if you hadn't spoken up, I'd still have taught it to you.”
Zhou Yang did not believe a single word of it.
Ever since Chang Dafeng had picked Ding Ling for the midnight hair-combing ghost sighting, he had already meant to use her as something to be thrown away.
This too was recorded in the Knife-Credit Ledger.
What Troupe Master Chang was doing now was only hinting to Ding Ling that they were still grasshoppers on one rope—that he, Chang Dafeng, for the sake of the great matter ahead, would certainly not favor one and slight another.
He was using this to win Ding Ling's trust.
Unfortunately, Zhou Yang was not Ding Ling.
By nature, he would not trust a single person here.
Still, from Chang Dafeng's manner, the method of ‘the play mounting the body to reach the gods’ definitely existed, and that did make Zhou Yang breathe a little easier.
“You do the job first. Do it well, and I'll pass the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts on to you.” With a few sentences, Chang Dafeng showed his fox's tail. “These people have studied for half a year and none of them amount to anything.
“From what I see of your temperament, you're certain to master the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts.”
The Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts?
Zhou Yang noted the name. Facing Chang Dafeng's exceptionally kindly expression, he shook his head. “Even a prisoner bound for beheading is given a full meal before he sets out.
“This time, doing this job and meeting the ghost, I may well be ‘setting out’ myself.
“Before I go, teach me the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts first.
“Spare me having to turn back after I've set out, to pester you day after day, asking you for the thing.”
Chang Dafeng's brows knit tight.
That assumed kindness could not be held in place a moment longer.
A trace of ferocity showed through beneath the skin of his face.
This odd-job hand in the troupe—he had watched her every move in the past.
She was nothing but a woman with a little cleverness, a little ruthlessness and a little toughness. Say what you liked, she was a woman who could neither upset the rules nor amount to anything proper!
But what had gotten into her now?
What on earth had gotten into her?!
She was even making him find her hard to deal with!
Even his ‘Ghost Eye-Dotting’ could not subdue her!
That Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts was his heart and liver, his very blood. He had never truly passed it to any disciple here—was he to teach it to this odd-job woman just like that?
At this point, Ding Ling—whom Zhou Yang possessed—seemed to remember something, and spoke again. “Don't think you can fob me off with fake tricks.
“And don't put me off with talk of how one must first train for however many years before one can formally practice such a method.
“True transmission is a single sentence; false transmission is ten thousand volumes of scripture.
“I have my own way of seeing whether the method you tell me is true or false.”
As he spoke, Zhou Yang had already opened the Knife-Credit Ledger he carried.
The second page of the book recorded Ding Ling's personal history.
Once she learned that Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts, the page would surely show it.
“You—a woman—” Chang Dafeng's eyes gradually reddened at Zhou Yang's words, and along with that reddening, a gloomy and fearsome aura poured out of him.
As he shrieked at Zhou Yang, that aura almost condensed into something solid. “Are you rebelling?!”
In a daze, Zhou Yang seemed to see Chang Dafeng opposite him no longer in human form, but as a ghost in blood-smeared opera makeup!
His heart clenched in spite of himself.
Yet apart from tension, there was still not much fear in him.
He had first taken this troupe master for a man who had trained martial skill into his body, and so had a pair of unusually bright eyes that could cow others by presence alone.
But never had Zhou Yang seen anyone train their eyes until a single glare could make a man hallucinate!
This must be an ability the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts had given Chang Dafeng!
Looking again at the others, every face was stark white and every forehead sweating; Little Stone, the youngest, had already wet his pants from fright. They had not even met Chang Dafeng's glare straight on, and were frightened to such a state—while Zhou Yang himself, apart from a tightness in his chest, had no other reaction.
Zhou Yang thought a moment and worked out the key to it.
His Right Thought was strong.
He had first assumed that a Right Thought of only 5 was a very low, weak level among ordinary people.
But set against the seasoned men of the world around him, who had traveled north and south, he found that a Right Thought of ‘5’ already made one outstanding among them.
From this it seemed that a Right Thought of ‘9’ was the limit a normal person could reach.
Once past ‘9’, one might be crossing a watershed. Normal people and ‘abnormal people’ divided there.
Now, the reason he could withstand the pressure of Chang Dafeng's gaze alone was not only the endowment of his own Right Thought of ‘5,’ but also Ding Ling's ‘2’ points of Right Thought.
Right Thought ‘7’ against a secret technique wielded by an old hand of the world—and there was still pressure.
He had to get the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts!
Chang Dafeng now rose to his feet and swept his gaze over the others.
All fell silent as winter cicadas, not daring to meet his eyes.
Even those among them who, after hearing ‘Ding Ling's’ speech, had turned over other thoughts and begun to suspect that the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts they had learned was no true transmission—
Now, under Chang Dafeng's gaze, none dared step forward to question a single word.
At the troupe master's one sentence—“All of you, out first!”—
They all obediently left the room.
In an instant, only Chang Dafeng and Ding Ling—‘two people’—were left in the room.
Staring at Ding Ling, whose face had not changed, Chang Dafeng smiled grimly. He turned to the corner, untied the key ring at his waist, opened a locked wooden chest, and from a pile of draped opera costumes dug out a smaller box.
He walked up to Ding Ling and slid the box open.
It revealed something inside, smooth and round as wax.
Zhou Yang looked closely and saw that the thing in the box, palm-length and in shape and color just like a white candle, was in fact a piece of bone.
Where had this bone come from? Zhou Yang had no way of knowing.
He saw Chang Dafeng set that bone—deliberately made to look like a candle, with even a wick thread protruding from one end—down heavily on the wooden chest between himself and Ding Ling.
He turned and blew out the oil lamp.
In the dark rose the troupe master's dry, cold voice. “Making up gods to cast curses, painting ghosts to walk the dark—this skill of mine is not the proper path. Though mastered well it can indeed protect you and frighten ghosts, it is also very hard to learn.
“Most people, halfway through learning it, meet disaster and lose their lives.
“And besides, this true transmission—how many men would break their skulls fighting for it and never learn a hair's breadth of it? Why would I teach such a good thing to someone for nothing?
“Try it. See whether you have the fate for it.
“See whether there is a ‘god’ in your soul.
“If there is a ‘god’ in your soul, then stare at this ‘ghost candle’ and light it!
“And don't think I'm fooling you—my eyes can light this candle.”
As he spoke, Chang Dafeng looked once at the bone shaped like a candle, and the wick of this ‘ghost candle’ at once caught with a faint green flame!
Chang Dafeng treasured the ghost candle greatly. He let it burn only for a breath, then drew a breath at the pale green ghost fire—
As a formless, immaterial ‘smoke’ that Zhou Yang could nonetheless sense went into Chang Dafeng's throat, the ghost candle went out.
“If your eyes can light this ghost candle, I won't say another word. I'll pass the Draft on Making Up Gods and Painting Ghosts on to you complete and unaltered.
“I'll take you as my adopted son!
“When I die, there'll be no need for a male heir to smash the basin and bowl; you alone will lead the rites and hold the coffin, and the whole troupe will bear your surname from then on!
“But if you cannot light this candle… heh heh, then go find somewhere cool to park yourself.
“Midnight hair-combing, you go. Ghost-meeting business, you do it. In future, when we meet a ghost, you'll still be the first to go and die… You don't want to? That's not up to you!”
Chapter 7