The original suspicion seemed to find further proof upon seeing that bowl on the ground before Li Sanjiang, for within it was not only water, but two floating leaves of agastache.
If Li Sanjiang had merely wanted a drink for himself, there was a table right beside him where he could have set it; he wouldn't have left it down on the dirt.
This looked far more like a gesture of deference:
*Rest yourself, sip some tea, and as for everything else—raise your hand in mercy and leave it alone.*
Curious, Li Zhuiyuan stepped closer, thinking to himself: *Could Great-Grandpa be pretending to sleep?*
Yet the question remained: if Great-Grandpa truly intended to keep his hands off this affair, why had he come to sit the rites in the first place?
If it was only for the cash gift, why drag Liu Jinxia and Grandpa Shan into it as well?
To come away in such a miserable state just for a sum of money was something a man like Grandpa Shan, who lived from hand to mouth, might accept. But Liu Jinxia's family was quite well-off—why would she ever agree?
This contradiction in behavioral logic gave Li Zhuiyuan his very first tremor of doubt regarding his established impression of his great-grandfather.
"Li Sanjiang! Li Sanjiang!"
From behind came Grandpa Shan's furious roar. His mouth was smeared with blood, and in his palm lay a handful of loosened old teeth, his features contorted in savage rage to the absolute limit.
"Holy mother of...!"
Shaken awake, Li Sanjiang jolted so violently that he nearly tumbled from his chair. Groggy and dazed, he looked around until his gaze settled upon Grandpa Shan's face.
"Hey, how'd you turn yourself into such a ghastly sight?"
"Li Sanjiang, you beast! You absolute beast!"
Grandpa Shan's chest heaved with fury. He had been made to act like a dog, pissed his pants, and had an entire row of teeth knocked right out, only to turn around and find this bastard Li Sanjiang fast asleep, crusted sleep even oozing from his eyes. He came within a breath of choking on his own rage and expiring on the spot.
Li Sanjiang then looked toward Liu Jinxia. Seeing her face swollen like a pair of pleated meat buns, his mouth twitched, and he nearly burst out laughing.
"Blind Liu, what on earth happened to you?"
Liu Jinxia closed her eyes and held her tongue. Speaking right now made her jaws throb with pain.
She was furious too, but being from the same village, she had long since sensed Li Sanjiang's true "abilities." Unfair as it felt, she knew it made complete sense.
"Wait, where are the three from the Niu family? Where'd they go?"
Now Li Sanjiang grew anxious. Where were the hosts?
Grandpa Shan was forced to rein in his temper. He wanted to grit his teeth, but having none left to grit, he could only bite down on his lip.
"A little past eight, Blind Liu told me the weather was turning cold. Only then did I realize a draft had hit where I sat. Old Lady Niu has come back."
"What? It's been half a year! How could her soul return now?"
"She isn't a ghost. She's a dead-flipper!"
"A dead-flipper? Who are you trying to fool! Someone dead and buried for six months, turning into a dead-flipper?"
"She is a dead-flipper! Water oozed from the soles of her shoes, leaving wet tracks as she walked. I traded blows with her, and she reeked of that same watery corpse stench unique to dead-flippers! My eyes aren't blind, and my nose still works. I've fished corpses out of water my entire life—I could never mistake a dead-flipper!"
"And then?"
"And then..."
"Why stop there? You couldn't handle her?"
"If only I were ten years younger..."
Grandpa Shan trailed off, unable to bring himself to say the rest. He had failed to beat Old Lady Niu and had fallen into her trap instead. It was utterly humiliating.
For the first time, he finally began to concede to his age.
Tonight, had it not been for Blind Liu's warning, he might have succumbed on the spot, bypassing the need for a "fight" altogether.
"I asked, where are the Niu family?" Li Sanjiang pressed once more. This was no longer a question of money. If sitting the rites ended with all three members of the host family dead and done for, their reputation across the surrounding ten miles and eight villages would be utterly ruined. Who would ever hire them to sit the rites again?
Runsheng spoke up. "Niu Lian is digging a hole over by her mother's grave."
"Then why didn't you go save her?"
Runsheng glanced toward Li Zhuiyuan, who stood nearby. "There wasn't time. I brought Little Yuan back here first to wake you all."
"Move! To the graveyard!" Li Sanjiang slapped the bench, then turned his gaze on Grandpa Shan and Liu Jinxia. "You two... stay here and rest."
That look in his eyes practically screamed: *How could you two be so utterly useless?*
Grandpa Shan's chest began to heave violently once more, his barely settled emotions provoked all over again.
Liu Jinxia looked calm, even casting a slightly contemptuous sidelong glance at Grandpa Shan. *You've partnered with him for so many years, taking the brunt of the blows up front and suffering in silence all this time, yet you still haven't learned your lesson. Serves you right.*
Li Sanjiang led Runsheng and Li Zhuiyuan toward the grave mounds, running at full tilt. Just as they reached the edge of the fields, a voice drifted through the night air:
"Mother, I'm hungry! Mother, I'm starving! Mother, is dinner ready yet?"
A figure clad in mourning hemp came sprinting out from ahead. It was Niu Rui. His arms were outstretched as though seeking his mother's embrace. A man past fifty years of age, yet in this moment looking astonishingly childlike and pure.
"Catch him!"
Li Sanjiang directed Runsheng—he went left, Runsheng went right, cutting off Niu Rui's escape before pouncing forward together, finally pinning Niu Rui to the earth beneath them.
"Let me go! Let me go! I want to find my mother! I want to find my mother!"
Niu Rui thrashed wildly, yet could not break free.
"Mother! It's Fuhou! Mother, it's Fuhou!"
No sooner had Niu Rui been subdued than Niu Fu's figure appeared in the distance. He was spinning in circles on the spot while wailing bitterly, his voice shrill and full of sorrow, far more impassioned than during the daytime funeral.
Li Sanjiang, keeping Niu Rui pinned, yelled to Runsheng, "Go! Grab Niu Fu!"
"Grandpa, can you manage?" Runsheng asked, looking at Niu Rui still struggling frantically beneath them.
"I'm fine, I've still got plenty of strength." Though nursing an injury, Li Sanjiang was entirely confident in holding down a slight old man. Having carried corpses all his life, he knew human joints inside out and understood precisely how to lock a body down.
"All right!"
Runsheng released Niu Rui, lunged toward Niu Fu, and tackled him to the ground in a single diving leap.
"Little Yuanhou, look around for rope! Straw will do if you can't find any!"
"Understood, Great-Grandpa."
"Ooooh, Mother! My dear, sweet mother! Ooooh, my own flesh and blood, Mother! Aaaagh..."
Along the ridge across the field, the figure of a woman appeared. Her hair was wild and tangled, her body coated in blood and muck, and her hands were in a gruesome state—the flesh seemingly stripped away, hanging from the bones like ragged strips of cloth.
Around her body, somehow, was wrapped a mass of what looked like waterweeds, trailing far behind her across the dirt.
She stumbled forward sluggishly, weaving as she moved straight toward the drainage ditch ahead.
It was Niu Lian!
She had not been buried alive after all, but had escaped. Yet looking at her now, it seemed she truly had been put into the ground, only to claw her own way out before suffocating.
Seeing this, Li Sanjiang shouted to Li Zhuiyuan, "Little Yuanhou, hurry and find rope or straw!"
Yet while the sight before his eyes remained unchanged, the words that reached Li Zhuiyuan's ears were: *"Little Yuanhou, quick, catch her! Don't let her fall into the ditch!"*
Li Zhuiyuan blinked. He looked at Great-Grandpa and Runsheng, each pinning down a member of the Niu family in two separate spots, and then looked at Niu Lian in the distance.
He did not obey "Great-Grandpa's" command to seize Niu Lian. Instead, he bolted toward the shed. There was rope there, and Grandpa Shan and Liu Jinxia were there as well; though injured, they could still help bind someone.
The reason he refrained from grabbing Niu Lian was simple. It was not because he was young and small; in truth, Niu Lian looked so frail she might blow away in the wind, and a child clutching the trailing weeds around her could easily hold her back.
Rather, the three of them had set out together, only to be pulled apart one by one in an instant. Li Zhuiyuan felt an instinctive dread—it was as though this had been calculated in advance, with the three Niu siblings stepping forward one after another, waiting to be captured.
Yet having run only a short distance, Li Zhuiyuan stopped in his tracks. He suddenly realized: even though he hadn't gone after Niu Lian, hadn't he still run off on his own?
A gust of sinister wind blew past. Li Zhuiyuan turned around. Behind him in the distance lay only the pitch-black fields. Where was there any sign of Great-Grandpa or Runsheng?
Just then, the clatter of a wooden fish sounded beside his ear, mingled with a chaotic din of chanting, like the funeral performance troupe putting on their monk routine during the daytime rites.
All around him, figures clad in Taoist robes appeared, clutching various ritual instruments and circling him round and round.
The sensation was as if his ears and eyes had been stuffed with refuse, grating on his nerves while steadily severing his perception of the outside world.
Li Zhuiyuan raised his right arm and bit down brutally on his forearm. He held nothing back, and deep teeth marks with oozing beads of blood appeared on the skin, yet the sensation of pain was vanishingly faint.
There was no other choice. Li Zhuiyuan spread his palm flat. He never imagined that the method he had just taught Runsheng would so quickly need to be turned upon himself.
Yet before the slap could strike his own face, a man's voice came from behind.
"Sigh, you fell for her trick after all."
Li Zhuiyuan turned his head to see Uncle Qin standing there. His presence instantly brought an overwhelming sense of security.
Uncle Qin placed a hand on Li Zhuiyuan's shoulder. "She is a dead-flipper born of cat and human, a corpse demon. She excels most at leading the minds of mortals astray."
"Uncle, hurry and save my great-grandpa and the others!"
"Mm, don't worry. It's already taken care of."
Uncle Qin raised his right hand. Gripped within it was a black cat.
Half its tail was missing, one eye was blinded, and one leg was crippled. Though vast swathes of rot covered its body, it was still thrashing, still alive.
Was this the animal corpse that had become a dead-flipper alongside Old Lady Niu?
"Uncle, you've already subdued it?"
"Not entirely." The corners of Uncle Qin's mouth curled into a smile. "This thing, like your great-grandpa, was badly injured to begin with. Now the cat and the woman have separated. I've only caught the cat. All that remains is to seek out the human half, bring them together, and destroy them, and this corpse demon will be resolved."
"Then what about Great-Grandpa and the others...?"
"A few afflicted mortals from the Niu family can't threaten your great-grandpa. Let's find Old Lady Niu first. Settle her, and this whole business will be over. Come, she's in the old house on the west side of the village."
Clutching the struggling cat in his right hand, Uncle Qin took Li Zhuiyuan's hand with his left and led him westward.
"Uncle, didn't you say you wouldn't lift a finger to right a spilled soy sauce bottle?"
"Midnight has passed. Your great-grandpa's rites are concluded, so stepping in now has nothing to do with him. I merely happened to be passing by, saw a corpse demon harming mortals, and decided to deal with it on a whim."
"Oh, I see. Uncle, you're truly formidable."
"Heh, this is nothing. The truly formidable things, you've never seen. A corpse demon is merely a minor player. Back before the liberation, the great dead-flippers that roamed the rivers and lakes—those were the real terrors. Those were genuinely frightening."
"If a corpse demon isn't considered powerful, then tell me, Uncle, what other great dead-flippers are out there?"
"Countless. Figures of noble birth who held great power in ancient times, who were drowned in rivers to meet their end, would transform into general dead-flippers. They often possessed the might to command the drowned spirits and vengeful specters of the rivers, controlling ghost thralls.
"Then there are regions practicing water burial. What should have gathered only in small basins might break from its original bindings as rivers shifted courses over time, flowing into other regions. Coffins bearing corpses, nursing boundless malice, give rise to entities akin to corpse kings.
"Whenever such an entity emerges, natural disasters invariably follow in its wake.
"The hardest to deal with are practitioners of the occult arts who took to the crooked path, using their own bodies as vessels, preserving and cultivating themselves to attain transcendence through a bizarre kind of martial release into immortality. Such dead-flippers retain the Taoist spells and divine abilities they had in life. Though not the strongest or most overbearing, they are the hardest to put down, because they know every trick the living use against them."
Li Zhuiyuan looked up, his expression innocent and inquisitive. "Uncle, if those dead-flippers were so powerful, yet we see none of them now, who was it that destroyed them?"
Uncle Qin replied, "They were all destroyed by the righteous path."
Li Zhuiyuan silently pulled his hand from Uncle Qin's grasp and halted.
Uncle Qin noticed, stopped, and looked back at the boy.
Li Zhuiyuan did not look at Uncle Qin. His gaze met only the mutilated, rotting black cat held in the man's grip.
The cat's eyes burned with eerie green light, occasionally flashing with bloody glints, saturated with venomous resentment.
"Xiao Yuan, why aren't you walking?" Uncle Qin asked.
Li Zhuiyuan noticed that as Uncle Qin spoke, the cat's torn lips moved in unison.
"Xiao Yuan, what's wrong with you?"
Uncle Qin bent down, gazing at Li Zhuiyuan, while his right arm reached around the boy's back as if to pull him into a reassuring embrace.
Li Zhuiyuan immediately felt a pair of furry claws brush against the nape of his neck. He twisted aside at once, opening distance between himself and Uncle Qin.
"Xiao Yuan, what on earth has gotten into you!"
Uncle Qin's tone grew harsh, and the crimson glow within the cat's eyes overwhelmed the green.
"Xiao Yuan, be good and come with me. We will settle this together. Only then can your great-grandpa and the others be completely out of danger!"
This time, Uncle Qin's lips barely parted, while the cat's mouth opened and snapped shut incessantly.
The sight reminded Li Zhuiyuan of an unusual performance he had once watched during a school anniversary celebration in the capital. A performer stood on stage holding a puppet; as the man spoke, the puppet's mouth kept opening and closing, making it appear as though the puppet were carrying on the conversation itself.
Except before him now, things appeared to be in reverse.
Gradually, Uncle Qin fell silent, and the cat went still as well. They seemed to realize that the child had seen right through them.
A grotesque grin crept across Uncle Qin's face, and the cat's mouth split wide, fresh blood dripping steadily from the corners of its lips.
In the next instant, everything in Li Zhuiyuan's vision was washed in blood. Whether he looked at the two before him or in any other direction, a film of bloody grime coated the world.
Li Zhuiyuan stood where he was, fists clenched tight. He was afraid, but he did not run about in panic, nor did he scream or shout.
Among the descriptions of corpse demons and other dead-flippers capable of beguiling the human mind in the *Jianghu Zhiguai Lu*, the sentence repeated most often was that a corpse retriever must remain calm and never allow himself to be led by the nose.
The more you panicked, the more openings you gave them to exploit.
Furthermore, one must never close one's eyes at such a moment. Shutting your eyes was an act of cowardice and surrender, equivalent to relinquishing all control.
Cold sweat beaded continuously across Li Zhuiyuan's forehead. He swallowed repeatedly, his breathing growing rapid, feeling as though he were standing atop a blazing furnace, being roasted alive.
Yet in that moment, the dream he had experienced the night he performed the fortune-transferring ritual with Great-Grandpa resurfaced in his mind—the image of himself standing upon the bed at home, surrounded by an endless sea of corpses.
Everything in life was a matter of comparison. When you were certain all of this was false, and when you could use the genuine horrors of that dream to steel your resolve, the spectacle before you suddenly lost much of its terror.
The cat's grin slowly faded. Uncle Qin staggered two steps backward, his entire body rotting away at terrifying speed. Within a few blinks of an eye, he was reduced to nothing more than a puddle of foul water.
In a flash, the surrounding illusions melted into nothingness. The evening breeze brought fresh, cool air, and Li Zhuiyuan's body went slack as he began gasping for breath in great gulps.
The black cat had regained its freedom. Hobbling on its mutilated limbs, it hopped and dragged itself before Li Zhuiyuan, tilting its head up to look at him.
Li Zhuiyuan looked down, returning its gaze.
Boy and cat lapsed into a silent, locked stare.
It was Li Zhuiyuan who finally broke the quiet.
"What... do you actually want?"
Li Sanjiang's logic of behavior had already perplexed him, but the chain of actions taken by this corpse demon left him all the more baffled.
Was it seeking revenge?
The black cat seemed to let out a sigh. It looked utterly exhausted. It opened its mouth, evidently wanting to speak, yet could produce no sound—likely because Uncle Qin was no longer there to serve as its voice.
It waved a paw toward Li Zhuiyuan, then dragged its mangled body westward along the narrow path.
Li Zhuiyuan stayed where he was, making no move to follow.
After walking a short distance, the black cat stopped, turned, and looked back at Li Zhuiyuan, its feline eyes glinting with mockery.
Yet Li Zhuiyuan still did not budge. He possessed a fierce thirst for knowledge, but no reckless curiosity in moments of uncertainty, nor any superfluous impulse of unthinking kindness.
"Meow!"
The black cat let out a screech that sounded like the wailing of an infant. It was furious, but this time its rage was aimed at Li Zhuiyuan—bereft of lethality, overflowing only with helpless, impotent frustration.
"You want me to follow you?"
The black cat nodded.
"I have no reason to follow you."
The black cat raised a paw and gave a forward pushing motion.
The first time, Li Zhuiyuan did not understand. But after it pushed several more times, comprehension dawned.
It was referring to the moment during the birthday banquet on the ground floor, when, at the final critical juncture, Old Lady Niu had shoved him away so he would wake.
Back then, her back turned to the jiangshi, she had said:
*"Little child, Grandma will send you off first."*
Though in the end Old Lady Niu had not died then—she was still alive—Li Zhuiyuan did not believe that scene, that action, or the goodwill finally extended by that strangely tempered old woman had been an act.
He could tell whether someone was acting, because he was often...
*Damn it!*
Li Zhuiyuan squatted down, lowered his head, and buried it in his hands.
He truly loathed these thoughts that popped up unbidden. They constantly invalidated his current identity, steadily stripping away the human ties around him step by step.
If he allowed this to continue unchecked, he would become utterly repulsed by any behavior that wasn't rationally optimal. Kinship, friendship, and all the warmth of human society would reduce to foolish wastes of time. He would turn cold, like that massive, blinking mainframe processor in the school computer lab.
In the end... he would become his mother.
He would despise such a self, just as his mother despised herself.
He suddenly began to understand a little of why his mother had taken him to see child psychologists time and time again when he was young. She had recognized that her son had inherited the exact same affliction.
The black cat seemed to sense an opportunity. Green light flickered in its eyes. Its earlier beguilement had been withstood by this boy, but looking at his current reaction, had an even better chance presented itself?
Yet in the end, it did not strike. Not out of kindness, but out of fear—it sensed that attempting to beguile this boy now would unleash consequences too dreadful to fathom.
Li Zhuiyuan kept muttering his family relations under his breath, repeatedly telling himself—even hypnotizing himself—who he was and what bonds he possessed.
Only this time, Qin Liang's name was occasionally interspersed among them.
Li Zhuiyuan rubbed his face vigorously, as if physically pressing his sense of identity and belonging back into his skin. He stood up, took a deep breath, and looked at the black cat again. In his eyes, the cat saw only the warmth and innocence belonging to a young boy.
The black cat's eyes widened. In that moment, it could hardly tell which of them was the true corpse demon.
"Do you need my help with something? Then lead the way. Take me to the old lady."
The cat nodded and walked forward once more. This time, the boy followed behind.
As they crossed a small drainage ditch, the black cat vanished without a single warning sign.
Li Zhuiyuan knew this ditch. When he had come here during the day, he had washed his hands in it. In order to keep Uncle Qin around, he had even planned to sit on the stones ahead for a picnic.
Three concrete slabs were laid across the ditch for pedestrians to cross. Li Zhuiyuan walked onto the slabs and looked all around, but could find no trace of the black cat.
Yet if it wanted to lead him somewhere, it had no reason to vanish halfway.
Li Zhuiyuan looked down toward the gap between the concrete slabs beneath his feet. It was wide, about half a hand's breadth across.
Below, water flowed steadily.
Just then, the surface bulged, and an old woman's face slowly drifted up, locking eyes with Li Zhuiyuan through the gap in the concrete slabs.
She was hiding right here.
Even though he was prepared, the manner of her emergence still sent a chill down his spine. Yet suppressing the discomfort in his gut, he forced a slight smile toward the face below.
*Splish, splash...*
The water continued to flow, and the old woman's face drifted along with the current. Once clear of the concrete slabs, a louder splash resounded.
She stood upright within the ditch. The ditch was deep and she was short; she wasn't walking along the bottom, but floating upright in the water.
Only the part from her shoulders up remained above the surface.
She looked nothing like she had at the birthday banquet. Back then, though she had been skin and bones, she still looked like a living human.
Now, her clothes were reduced to meager rags, and vast areas of her flesh had rotted away. One could even see countless holes left by burrowing worms and gnawing rats.
It seemed as though a slightly stronger rush of current through the ditch would batter her completely to pieces.
This was her true form. Lacking the shelter of a coffin when buried, she had ended up like this.
She drifted through the water, while Li Zhuiyuan walked along the bank beside her.
Now that she had a body, she could speak.
If one only listened to the words, the scene might have seemed tender and heartwarming—an old grandmother conversing with her grandson on a summer night.
Yet paired with the reality of what was happening, it was enough to make anyone's scalp prickle with dread.
"When she was very small, she was trafficked into the Niu family as a child bride. She didn't even have a surname of her own.
"Her husband died early. She raised the children all by herself. During the hardest of times, not a single one of her children starved to death, nor did any succumb to illness.
"When her children grew up and had families of their own, she raised their children, and went on to raise their grandchildren as well.
"Back then, she could still do chores, watch the young ones, cook the meals, and work the fields. She was content. She felt she was still useful—useful to her children.
"She was just that kind of person. She had no surname as a child, and having lived a lifetime into old age, she never possessed even a single moment that belonged to herself. She was like the wheel of a handcart, turning and turning without end.
"When the road was smooth, it rolled a little easier and faster; when the road was rough, bumping and stumbling along... it made it through all the same.
"She never complained. She believed that was simply how a person's life was supposed to be.
"Later on, she grew old. She could no longer watch the children, work the fields, or even light the stove. Her children and grandchildren all decided she was useless, a burden.
"Yet she had a knack for living. Even though she never went to her children begging for relief, even though she drank cold water and ate sour scraps, she remained like a gecko in a wall crevice, stubbornly alive.
"She liked sunning herself. Sitting out in the courtyard, she would bask in the sun for half the day.
"That day, she saw me—an old, ugly, crippled cat.
"Even when her own life was so bitterly hard, she took me in. Whatever she ate, I ate.
"She would hold me while sunbathing and talk to me, telling me about her youth, about the father of her children—a man whose face she had already forgotten.
"She would recount fond memories of the three children when they were small. How the eldest son said he would make sure she enjoyed her twilight years, that she would never have to lift a finger, with meals brought straight to her bed;
"How the second son said he would buy cloth to make her new clothes for every season, so she'd never have to wear patched hand-me-downs again;
"How the youngest daughter said she would buy her a piece of gold jewelry like the other women in the village had, so she could wear it every day.
"Every time she spoke of these things, she was so happy. But as a cat, even I knew that the children and grandchildren she had raised had not visited her in a very long time.
"Later, she fell ill.
"Yet this broken wooden wheel of hers refused to fall apart, no matter how many cracks ran through it.
"People from the village committee came. Seeing her in that state, they summoned her three children and demanded they support their mother.
"Her three children already resented her for living so long, refusing to die and draining the family's fortune. How could they possibly want to care for her?
"Yes, they blamed every failure and shortcoming in their own children's lives entirely on her, as though all their misfortunes and uselessness were caused by her existence.
"Yet the village kept a close eye, and they refused even to put on a show.
"So they simply came to a tacit understanding: they locked her in the old house.
"Look.
"It's the one right ahead."
Following the ditch, Li Zhuiyuan had walked a considerable distance. Ahead stood a single-story house with three bays. The rooms on the left and right had already collapsed, with only the central one barely standing.
The door had long since rotted, and the door-god talismans pasted upon it were blackened with grime.
Old Lady Niu climbed out of the ditch, dripping wet. Standing before the door, she did not rush to push it open, but looked around with an expression full of wistful memory.
"Every day they would come to deliver food, putting on a show for the villagers. But they entered with empty bowls. No matter how bitterly she begged, she couldn't get a single grain of rice or a drop of water from them.
"Her two sons each had their excuses, saying their own children wouldn't allow it, saying that if not for her, they would have had glorious futures.
"Facing their mother, who was starving to death with more breath leaving her than entering, the two sons acted as though they were the ones who had suffered the greatest injustice under heaven, while she was the wicked sinner steeped in guilt.
"Yet she was simply too resilient. She drank morning dew, ate moss, ate the bugs crawling into the room, ate anything she could scrounge up within those walls. Whether it was edible or not, if she could swallow it, she shoved it into her mouth.
"She truly had a knack for living, clinging stubbornly to that thread of breath like a tough weed.
"Even I pitied her watching it. What was more pitiful was that even then, when she finally caught a bug after so much effort, she remembered to give half to me. She was still thinking of feeding me, no matter how dire her own plight.
"Just as she had painstakingly fed and raised those three children all those years ago.
"Heheheh... Heheheheheh..."
Old Lady Niu began to laugh. On the gouged patches of her face where snakes, insects, and rats had gnawed, fine downy fur began to sprout.
In this moment, that feline face of the old woman seemed far less terrifying.
For it concealed an ugliness that ran far deeper.
Li Zhuiyuan suddenly asked, "You ate her flesh?"
The Cat-Faced Old Woman nodded. "I ate it."
*Creak...*
The house door swung open on its own with a piercing screech of friction.
As the door opened, the sounds that had seemingly been sealed within spilled forth.
The three Niu siblings were kneeling prostrate beside the bed, white cords tied around their heads, black mourning cloth wrapped around their waists, dressed in hemp robes, weeping in mourning.
Everything seemed identical to the rites performed during the day.
Li Zhuiyuan felt a flicker of confusion. If the three siblings were here, what was it that Great-Grandpa and Runsheng were pinning down?
Yet recalling the corpse demon's capabilities, Li Zhuiyuan came to understand. Perhaps the lucidity he believed he possessed... had never been entirely real. It was like waking from one dream only to step into another rather than returning to reality.
The clearest sign was... Uncle Qin had not been seen again since he vanished.
The Uncle Qin earlier had been conjured by the corpse demon reading his mind.
It had even read the *Jianghu Zhiguai Lu* from his memory—and read it back to him aloud.
Old Lady Niu pointed at Niu Fu. "When he was young, he was sickly. It was she who carried him through wind and rain to beg the doctor for treatment. When there was no money for medicine, she kowtowed to the doctor, washed clothes, and chopped firewood for his household."
Next, Old Lady Niu pointed at Niu Rui. "When he was young, he fought in a brawl and beat someone to death. It was she who went to plead with that person's elderly parents, promising to care for them in their old age and see to their burials, just to get a letter of forgiveness. In the end, she truly served those parents dutifully until their passing."
Finally, Old Lady Niu pointed at Niu Lian. "When the family property was divided, she wept, claiming she was a child of the family too and couldn't be treated unfairly. She promised that if her brothers refused to care for her mother in old age, she would take her into her own home. So she divided the household's meager belongings into three equal shares and took hers."
With that, Old Lady Niu turned her head to look at Li Zhuiyuan, smiling faintly. "Do you know what this Niu Lian did? Because the old woman was simply too resilient, Niu Lian felt that keeping up the charade day after day was too much trouble.
"That night, when it was Niu Lian's turn to 'deliver food,' she dragged her mother down from the bed and threw her into the ditch out front. The next day, she claimed her mother had slipped and fallen into the ditch while walking.
"In truth, she was already on the verge of starving to death by then, unable even to speak.
"Yet in the end, she was still cast into the water... and drowned.
"She drifted and drifted in the water, and just as you did earlier, I followed along the bank, walking and walking.
"Finally, I leapt onto her body and began to eat her flesh. There was hardly any flesh left on her; I couldn't chew it, it was all bone.
"Yet I just wanted to bite her, I just wanted to eat her! I was furious! Why was she so utterly foolish? How could there be someone so stupid in this world!"
"And then, the two of you died together?"
"Yes. Even I never imagined it would turn out like this. We died, yet we... lived again, turning into this monstrosity—neither human, nor ghost, nor beast.
"I think perhaps the heavens themselves couldn't bear to watch someone so thoroughly stupid."
Li Zhuiyuan finally asked the question he had wanted to ask all along: "What is it that you truly want to do?"
The Cat-Faced Old Woman's expression turned ferocious. "I want revenge! I want to avenge her! What right do these three white-eyed wolves have to go on living their comfortable lives!"
"Yet you clearly possess the power to take revenge now. Why haven't you acted?"
Hearing this, the Cat-Faced Old Woman looked at Li Zhuiyuan with a trace of perplexity. "The words you spoke to me that day at the birthday banquet—I assumed you said them just to flatter me and save your skin. Were those your genuine thoughts?"
"Should I not have had such thoughts?"
"Your kind of people would never permit foreign evil to harm living mortals, no matter how... monstrously guilty those mortals might be.
"That is your righteous path. Violating it invites karmic backlash.
"Did your great-grandpa never teach you that?"
*Great-Grandpa teach me?*
Li Zhuiyuan pondered. Yet that night, Great-Grandpa had personally brought him along to lure Little Oriole into Big Beard's house.
And when it was done, Great-Grandpa had stood with his left hand on his hip and a cigarette in his right, cheerfully remarking that they'd be able to attend a feast in a few days.
Could Great-Grandpa's path be different from the rest?
"No, we're talking about you right now. You stirred up so much trouble—why haven't you taken your revenge?"
The Cat-Faced Old Woman's face began to contort. Sharp crunching and snapping noises echoed from within her body, and dead earthworms and rats slid continuously from her form, piling into a foul heap on the ground.
Then, in a voice choked with grievance and indignation, she practically roared:
"I want revenge! I crave revenge even in my dreams! But do you know what infuriates me most?
"She and I are one. We are one body.
"Though I hold the reins and she is gone, her instincts still linger within me.
"I can feel it—the moment I kill any one of these three, her instincts will awaken to shackle me, and I will never have another chance to lay a hand on the other two!"
"So, you want to kill all three?"
"Of course! I refuse to spare a single one of them! I won't choose one out of three—I want every last one of them to suffer the retribution they deserve!"
Li Zhuiyuan said, "Then don't kill them. Don't kill a single one."
"What?"
Hearing this, Old Lady Niu seized Li Zhuiyuan's shoulders with both hands, nearly lunging her teeth toward his neck, snarling viciously:
"Little child, do you have any idea what you're saying?"
"Because you don't need to kill anyone at all, and she won't be able to shackle you."
"What do you mean?"
Li Zhuiyuan looked at the Cat-Faced Old Woman inches from his face and smiled faintly.
"Cripple one, disable one, and drive one mad.
"Then let them watch how the fine children they raised by their own example attend to them and care for them in their old age.
"To people like them, that is the finest... retribution."
Chapter 15