After finishing his offerings to the mountain god, Qi Wu hurried over to huddle with the others.
Drenched from head to toe, the men shivered as the cold wind blew over them.
"If this keeps up, we'll fall sick."
The old hunter walked over to a corner and carried out an armful of firewood. Grinning with his prominent buckteeth, he said, "We hunters sometimes take shelter from the rain here, so we left firewood behind in advance for days like today."
Qi Wu was overjoyed. "Then thank you very much!"
The old hunter waved it off. "It's nothing. Life in the mountains is all about helping one another out. Once the rain stops tomorrow, we'll just gather some more firewood and replace it."
Working nimbly, the men stacked firewood over the scorch marks on the floor. Qi Wu took out a fire talisman, lit a branch, thrust it into the dry wood, and blew and fanned gently until the kindling slowly caught fire.
Watching the rising flames and feeling their warmth, someone breathed a long sigh of relief.
"Finally feeling alive again."
"Brother Qi, do you want a yellow millet cake or a white rice cake?"
"How about one of each?"
One of them distributed their dry rations, and after receiving theirs, the men set them by the fire to toast.
Once the aroma began to rise, A'yue pulled out a jar of pickled vegetables and offered it around to spread on the cakes. Taking a bite, their mouths were filled with salty, savory goodness.
"A'yue's pickled vegetables are really something else. If you ask me, A'yue, you ought to open a pickle shop. Why bother traveling with us merchants?"
A'yue smiled and said nothing.
Recalling what had happened earlier, Qi Wu asked, "Old Sun, why did you ask A'yue earlier if someone pushed him?"
This was the first time Qi Wu and his group had entered these mountains; they wanted to cross the mountain range to sell their goods in Qinghuai Commandery on the other side. They had searched for a long time before finally hiring a local veteran hunter as their guide.
The old hunter's expression grew solemn. "Have you ever heard of a chang ghost?"
Qi Wu and the others turned grim. Traveling far and wide, they naturally knew a thing or two about supernatural matters. One of them spoke up loudly, "You mean the chang ghost that acts as an accomplice to a tiger?"
The old hunter nodded and lowered his voice. "This mountain is called Mount Song. About ten years ago, a hunter entered the mountain to hunt and disappeared, leaving behind only a single shoe. Back then, people began saying a tiger demon had arrived in the mountain and eaten him.
"At first, folks refused to believe it, thinking they had lived here for generations—how could a tiger demon suddenly appear?
"But as time went on, someone said that while out hunting, his hounds began barking wildly in one direction. Looking that way, he was scared stiff.
"It was an enormous striped tiger, a full four meters long! With a single leap, the tiger pounced on his hounds. The hunter turned tail and ran for his life, and luckily the beast didn't pursue him!
"People also noticed that folks were disappearing from time to time, so they reported the situation to Qinghuai Commandery. When the magistrates learned of it, they told us to go to Yanjiang Commandery instead, saying Mount Song was closer to Yanjiang and that since we only sold our game to Yanjiang, it fell under their jurisdiction.
"When we went to Yanjiang Commandery, the magistrates there said Mount Song belonged to Qinghuai Commandery and that Qinghuai should deal with it.
"After passing the buck back and forth a few times, each side sent two cultivators to Mount Song to search for traces of the tiger demon. They searched for ten straight days without finding so much as a single tiger hair. Those cultivators felt we had made fools of them, wasting so much of their time. We explained that the tiger demon was probably hiding from them intentionally, not daring to show itself, but they wouldn't listen and flounced off in annoyance.
"We went back to the magistrates, but they ignored us completely.
"Left with no choice, most people abandoned Mount Song to seek a living elsewhere. Only a few of us old fogies remained, knowing nothing else besides hunting.
"Later, we discovered that while hunting, we would run into those missing travelers. These travelers would appear and vanish like ghosts, vanishing from sight one moment and suddenly reappearing the next to give you a shove.
"Sometimes when I guided people into the mountains, those travelers would pretend to bump into us by chance, suggesting we were heading the same way and asking if we could let them come along. How could I dare agree? I'd hurry everyone away immediately!
"The older generation used to say that there is a creature in this world called a chang ghost. When a tiger demon kills someone, that person turns into a chang ghost, serving the tiger demon by finding prey and luring people to a specific spot so they, too, are killed and turned into new chang ghosts.
"Still, dealing with a chang ghost isn't hard—as long as you refuse its requests, it won't be able to do anything to you."
Qi Wu realized what had happened. He had wondered earlier why such an expansive mountain forest had so few hunters; they had searched for ages just to find a few households, and those few even lived together.
It turned out they had been driven to this by a tiger demon.
Noticing A'yue hesitating, Qi Wu asked, "A'yue, if you have a question, go ahead and ask."
A'yue had originally felt too embarrassed to ask, but since the boss had spoken, he didn't hold back anymore.
"I only have one question: are there female chang ghosts? Are they good-looking? Do they use seduction? Do they drain a man's yang energy? Is it possible for me to start a forbidden romance with one, escaping the tiger demon's pursuit together and wandering the world hand in hand?"
With every question A'yue posed, a question mark seemed to pop up over everyone's head, the old hunter being no exception.
Seeing their reaction, A'yue scratched his head bashfully. "That's how storybooks always write it—stories like *A Chinese Ghost Story* and eternal romance between ghosts and mortals, you know."
Qi Wu fell silent for a moment, then patted A'yue on the shoulder. "Read fewer books."
Qi Wu then turned back to Old Sun and asked, "Then Old Sun, why didn't you report this to the Five Great Immortal Sects? The Five Great Immortal Sects uphold the righteous path; they certainly wouldn't just sit by and do nothing."
"The Five Great Immortal Sects?" The old hunter looked utterly blank, having never heard the title.
"The five great righteous sects, including the Dao Seeking Sect and the Hanging Temple. They're also the five most powerful sects on the entire continent."
"I think I might've heard the name before," the old hunter said uncertainly. He couldn't remember where—maybe in a teahouse at the foot of the mountain, maybe from travelers passing through, maybe when he was young, or maybe in his old age.
He simply couldn't recall.
In truth, common folk knew very little about immortal cultivators, treating such tales merely as novel gossip and amusement.
Not to mention that oral tales distorted all too easily; by the time they reached ordinary people's ears, they often diverged drastically from the truth and couldn't be trusted.
For instance, Qi Wu had once heard that the Dao Seeking Sect was named because the immortal path is boundless and one must seek the Dao from Heaven; cultivating immortality is cultivating the mind, requiring one to constantly ask oneself what path they pursue—righteous or demonic—and never lose their original heart.
Once, Qi Wu had met a disciple of the Dao Seeking Sect, seemingly named Dai Bufan. When Qi Wu asked him why the Dao Seeking Sect was called the Dao Seeking Sect, Dai Bufan's answer remained vivid in his memory even now:
"Oh, you're asking about that? Then we have to talk about our Dao Seeking Sect's founding ancestor, Daoist Xiantian. To find a geomantic treasure land, our founder paid a fortune to hire people from the Heavenly Strategy Sect for positioning and calculations. In the end, they found an immortal land where the geomantic energies of all eight directions converged, and stated that if the sect wished to prosper eternally, it had to be founded at a specific time and a specific place.
"As it turned out, our founder had an awful sense of direction. Even though clear markers had been made, he still got lost. He had no choice but to ask an old farmer by the roadside for directions. Only then did he find the sect's location in time without missing the auspicious hour.
"To express his gratitude to the old farmer, the founder named the sect the Dao Seeking Sect."
Chapter 42