Common folk loved a spectacle, whether it was attending a temple fair or watching someone lose their head. The provincial graduate and his friends had gone to see it once too, but they arrived too late. Even standing on tiptoe and craning their necks, all they could see were heads. They could not make out what was happening at the execution ground at all.
During the Ming dynasty, the execution ground had been at West Market, inside the inner city. After the Manchus entered Beijing, the inner city became the "single-colored heaven" garrisoned by the Eight Banners, and the execution ground was moved to Caishikou in the outer city.
The purpose of placing an execution ground somewhere crowded was to let more people witness it and serve as a deterrent. However, people at the time believed in "using form to mend form"—eat what part you wished to strengthen. Quite a few people brought gleaming silver and waited to buy the blood of condemned criminals from the executioner, taking it home as a medicinal catalyst.
Not being able to see the spectacle did not stop them from hearing about it. It was there that the provincial graduate heard passersby discussing the legend of the Drum Demon.
The provincial graduate deliberately wrote the character for "drum" beside the character for "gu." "These two characters sound the same, but they mean different things. A drum is the thing that goes boom boom."
Yet when he heard the passersby say it back then, the first thing that came to mind was the gu of Yunnan. Zhili's soul-stealing sorcery differed from that of other regions: a strange insect had appeared, supposedly from neighboring Shanxi, capable of biting people to death. Drawings of the insect, made by anonymous individuals, were posted in many public places. Citizens