Casting Holy Cups

The next day, by the Pear Blossom River.

The sky was still pitch-black when Zhou Sheng got up and went to the riverbank to practice his voice.

Though Master had given him a sound beating last night, he was happy inside. It was not that he absolutely needed praise; he simply hoped Master could let go a little.

He could always sense that Master seemed to live under a crushing weight. At times, he even seemed like a living corpse.

Only when teaching opera did Master occasionally show a faint trace of his former spirit, but it vanished in a flash.

After practicing his voice, Zhou Sheng did not hurry away. Instead, he took some joss paper and burned it by the river.

This was for the Ghost Messengers who had escorted him back.

"Gentlemen, thank you for seeing me safely home. Please take this little bit of money and buy yourselves some wine. It is but a small token of my gratitude."

Zhou Sheng recited their names and native places, continuously scattering joss paper into the flames.

The firelight flickered. Before the sun had risen over the mountains, it was especially conspicuous against the pitch-black banks of the Pear Blossom River.

Few people came to this river after dark, because someone had drowned here before.

Among the common folk, those who drowned were called Water Ghosts. Such ghosts could not be reincarnated and had to first find a Substitute Ghost.

Thus, whenever someone drowned in the water, the locals would throw a clay figurine into the spot where they had fallen in, using it to deceive the Water Ghost.

There truly had been Water Ghosts in the Pear Blossom River.

When he was fourteen, he had gone swimming in the river to cool off and once felt as though a hand had seized his foot and was dragging him down.

Yet by then, he had already studied Yin Opera for nine years. Like a newborn calf unafraid of tigers, he dove straight into the river and, guided by the Book of Luo, dug up the corpse that had already turned to white bones.

Then he carried the corpse on his back and swam ashore, leaving it beneath the sun to bake for an entire day.

That night, he dreamed of someone who looked as though they had been roasted alive. With hair hanging wildly loose, the figure came begging him, kneeling and pleading without end.

Later, Zhou Sheng burned the corpse in a single fire, and nothing ever happened again.

The Pear Blossom River had remained peaceful ever since.

The joss paper was nearly burned through. Zhou Sheng clapped his hands and prepared to leave, but at that moment, gust after gust of wind blew in, sweeping up the paper from his brazier.

Ashes danced, and fire serpents coiled through the air.

Zhou Sheng's gaze sharpened, surprise appearing in his eyes.

This was no ordinary wind. It was a reverse-spinning Yin wind.

Master had taught him that, without opening one's Wise Eye, there was still a way to determine whether ghosts were present.

If the Yin wind spun in its normal direction, it was a natural phenomenon. If it spun in reverse, then eight or nine times out of ten, some ghostly thing was causing trouble.

"Is this... here to snatch my joss paper?"

A strange look flashed through Zhou Sheng's eyes. Snatching joss paper burned for Ghost Messengers from the hands of a Ghost Opera Performer?

What wandering ghost was so tired of living?

He snorted coldly, and in the next instant, thunder burst from his tongue.

"Hah!!!"

A voice freshly exercised was at its clearest and most resounding. This Yan Man's Roar had already captured three parts of Marquis Huan Zhang Fei's divine bearing, like a wrathful Vajra glaring wide-eyed and bellowing thunder!

In an instant, the Yin wind that had been spinning the joss paper backward was violently scattered. Ashes fluttered down like snowflakes.

At the same time, an eerie sound came from the river.

With a tearing hiss, like the crisp sound of silk being ripped apart.

Then streaks of blood-red surfaced upon the river. Not far away, a figure slowly floated up, looking terribly bloated.

The sky was dim at this hour, with only scattered traces of light. An ordinary person naturally would not have been able to see clearly, but Zhou Sheng's eye technique was exceptional, and he saw the other party at once.

That was a person!

More precisely, it was a corpse that had been soaked for who knew how long.

The corpse had rotted and swollen. Its skin was an unnatural orange-yellow, and its abdomen bulged high, like a woman ten months pregnant.

Its black hair, like waterweed, seemed to have caught on something and torn open its scalp, blood mixed with black corpse-fluid flowing out.

The sight was bloody and nauseating. An ordinary person would likely have been so frightened that their legs went weak and they could not stand steadily.

Even Zhou Sheng, who had prepared himself mentally, could not help feeling a chill run through him, along with a faint urge to vomit.

One Yan Man's Roar had actually blasted out a floating corpse.

Most importantly, the floating corpse was slowly drifting toward him with the current.

In the main hall, before Patriarch's statue.

Yu Zhensheng respectfully offered three sticks of incense, then placed some fruit as an offering.

"May Patriarch bless that child. He has high aptitude, a good heart, and a clever mind. In the future, he will surely revive our Yin Opera lineage!"

"But when he was young, he died and came back to life. His Yang energy was greatly damaged, and his life force was depleted. He is exceptionally prone to attracting Unclean things. All these years, I have used medicine to nurse his body back to health. And because this child has fought so hard and endured hardship, he actually cultivated Dao cultivation. Only then did things improve somewhat..."

If Zhou Sheng had been here at this moment, he would certainly have been shocked.

He thought he had hidden it well, never knowing that Yu Zhensheng had seen at a glance back then that he had died and returned to life.

The body of a dead man, the life of a living man.

A child who should never have lived had somehow survived.

That was why Yu Zhensheng had refused Zhou Sheng's request to take him as a disciple without hesitation. He had not wanted to invite trouble upon himself.

But the child's wild-grass resilience, stubbornness, and tenacity still moved him in the end.

"The Ghost Opera of the Ghost Festival is a path where nine deaths await every life. He has not yet completed his apprenticeship, and now he has been swept into the whirlpool. This disciple, Yu Zhensheng, boldly asks that you accept this child as your godson and keep him safe."

There was a folk custom of having frail and sickly children acknowledge the Gods and Buddhas in a temple as godparents, so that they might protect the child and let them grow up safely.

In some places, children were even made to acknowledge ancient trees as godfathers or godmothers.

But for the Ghost Opera Performer lineage, this method had to be used with caution. Ghost Opera Performers kept company with Ghosts and Gods year-round and attracted far too much trouble. Rashly establishing kinship could instead anger the other party.

Thus, after praying, Yu Zhensheng knelt and began Casting Holy Cups.

He would first ask whether Great Emperor Huaguang agreed.

Casting Holy Cups, also known as Casting Jiaobei, was a means for humans to communicate with gods. If the result was one Yang and one Yin—one flat side and one convex side—it meant the god had agreed, and was called a Holy Cup.

If the result was two Yang sides, it meant the god had not yet made up their mind and could be consulted again. This was called a Laughing Cup.

If the result was two Yin sides, it meant refusal, or that the god was angered. This was called a Yin Cup.

Pa!

As the Holy Cups struck the ground, Yu Zhensheng's expression changed slightly.

The cup blocks on the ground were all convex-side up. A Yin Cup—refusal.

He picked up the cup blocks and cast them again.

To ensure caution and accuracy, Casting Holy Cups generally required three consecutive Holy Cups.

The second time was another Yin Cup.

The third time was still a Yin Cup!

Yu Zhensheng fell silent for a moment, then continued Casting Holy Cups.

Yin Cup, Yin Cup, Yin Cup, still Yin Cup...

He cast nine Yin Cups in a row!

Yu Zhensheng's brow furrowed tightly, as though he still wanted to say something. But at that moment, someone suddenly knocked on the main gate.

"Knock, knock, knock!"

The knocking was urgent, like the beat of drums.

Truth be told, when Zhou Sheng saw the corpse drifting toward him, a chill ran down his spine as well.

It was not fear. It was purely disgust.

Only after it drifted closer did he realize that the corpse was not a woman ten months pregnant, but a man.

The reason its stomach bulged so high was, in the terms of his past life on Earth, that bacteria had multiplied massively after death and produced large amounts of putrefaction gas, which had accumulated in the abdominal cavity and caused it to swell.

Like a balloon stretched to its limit, ready to explode at any moment.

Watching the corpse drift closer and closer, Zhou Sheng hesitated before deciding to go back and get his gear first.

The Opera Box was not with him now. Without a handy weapon, his combat strength would inevitably be affected.

As he turned to leave, a question arose in his heart.

The Pear Blossom River had never had such a thing before. Could something have happened in Qinggu County while he had been away handling business?

National Day. Wishing the motherland a happy birthday!