Superstition

Hearing Li Huowang's words, Bai Lingmiao's eyes widened. "Yes, yes! My grandpa told me too—don't run outside the village. The people outside are wicked to the bone. If they catch a child, they'll skin them, drape them in dog hide, and train them like dogs. Since children are clever, they can use that dog that understands human speech to perform acrobatics in the streets. That child would be miserable, because their body would stick to the dog hide, and they'd never grow up again."

Li Huowang shook his head with a slight frown. "No, I'm not talking about those stories old women use to scare their grandsons. I mean things like Lord You."

"Like Lord You? Let me think..." Bai Lingmiao frowned slightly and began to ponder. "The stories my grandpa usually tells are all a mess, but most of them are about Long Worms in the mountains eating people. Things like Lord You are really rare."

"Then who told your grandfather the story of Lord You?"

Bai Lingmiao opened her eyes wide innocently. "Why, my grandpa's grandpa told him, of course. Then my grandpa told me, and someday I'll tell my grandchildren."

Li Huowang scratched his head. So the story had been passed down through the family. It seemed he had miscalculated.

"Senior Brother Li, I know one." A weak young man leaning against the wall and listening in suddenly spoke up.

His joints were deformed, one shoulder higher than the other, and his whole body twisted out of shape. Even in the Material Room, he counted as particularly "striking-looking."

"Senior Brother Li, my surname is Zhao. I'm fifth in my family, so just call me Zhao Wu."

It did not matter who told it. Li Huowang walked up to him and said, "Fine. Go on."

Zhao Wu glanced around and deliberately lowered his voice. "That kind of evil thing you mentioned—I heard the older generation talk about one. It was called Grand Maternal Grandmother."

"Grand Maternal Grandmother? What did she look like?" Li Huowang rapidly searched through his mind, but found no related images. Judging from the name alone gave him no clues either.

"Shh~ Senior Brother Li, don't be so loud. Keep it down. This thing is terribly uncanny. I heard that Grand Maternal Grandmother can hear you. If you talk about her too often, they'll come looking for you!"

"Oh?" Li Huowang perked up at that.

"I heard my maternal cousin-uncle say that she looks different to everyone. Some see a long-eared spirit creature, while others see an elder of their own family who has passed away. But the one thing they have in common is that anyone who stays beside them for a while will become Grand Maternal Grandmother too!"

Li Huowang stroked his chin thoughtfully. "This place really is strange. It has every kind of inexplicable thing. All right, anything else?"

"Yes, yes, there are Husband and Wife Fish too. Those things are uncanny as well."

From Zhao Wu, Li Huowang learned quite a few bizarre terms, all of which would become ingredients in the elixir for becoming immortal.

"You really do know a lot. Thanks. This information helps me." If he mentioned only highly poisonous elixir ingredients, Danyangzi might notice. But if he mixed in things even Danyangzi could not identify, it would sound far more believable.

What he wanted was for it to be incomprehensible. As long as something could not be understood, it would seem profound.

Hearing Li Huowang say that, Zhao Wu smiled happily. "I heard all this from my maternal cousin-uncle. He's a traveling peddler. He's been everywhere, so he knows a lot."

"All right, it'll be time soon. I'm going back. Wait quietly for my news." Li Huowang took a deep breath, stood up, and headed outside.

He had barely taken two steps when a towering figure at least six feet three inches tall blocked his way. "I-I-I..."

Li Huowang recognized the bald man before him. Everyone in the Material Room called him Fool, the cross-eyed, drooling kind.

Calling him completely foolish was not necessarily accurate. He merely stuttered, reacted slowly, and had low intelligence. "I... I... I... know too!"

Li Huowang sighed, patted his shiny bald head, then turned and walked toward the door.

Early the next morning, Danyangzi summoned Li Huowang to his quarters. "I've practiced the inner and outer Grand and Lesser Circulation cultivation method well enough. Tell me the elixir to take alongside the method."

"Yes, Master." Li Huowang walked up to the Stone Slab and put on another show of examining it. "Mm... two Grand Maternal Grandmother hearts, refine their essence? Master, what does this mean?"

With an ever-shifting expression, Danyangzi paced back and forth through the room, muttering to himself. "So that's how it is? The path to immortality actually requires such sinister yin things?"

"Master, what is Grand Maternal Grandmother?"

"Don't worry about it. Keep going."

"One Husband and Wife Fish, take its gills, soak them in two taels of arsenic..."

The things he had learned from Zhao Wu, combined with Li Huowang's modern knowledge and the energy from an entire sleepless night, were kneaded together in his mouth into a complete method for becoming immortal.

After Li Huowang finished reciting everything he had made up, he saw that Danyangzi was extremely excited, muttering something under his breath.

But once he made out the words clearly, he was instantly dumbfounded.

"Yes, that's right. Arsenic tends toward coldness, so it must be balanced by something hot and dry like Husband and Wife Fish. Wonderful! And using Grand Maternal Grandmother in an elixir—how had I never thought of that before? If people can be used in elixirs, why can't these sinister things be used in elixirs too?" The man had actually begun imagining the balance of the elixir's medicinal properties.

Li Huowang realized that Danyangzi was very clever when he was clever, but truly ignorant when he was ignorant. He trusted no one, only the set of ideas he had constructed in his own heart.

If there was one word for it, it was superstition. In a world without gods or ghosts, believing blindly in gods and ghosts represented ignorance. But in a world with gods and ghosts, blind belief was still ignorance—it was merely the object of belief that differed.

Just then, Danyangzi reached his right hand into his sleeve and drew out a notched copper Dao Bell, the sort of bell Li Huowang had seen in zombie movies used to control zombies.

As Danyangzi began shaking it hard, a piercing ring instantly erupted. Li Huowang felt as though his head were splitting apart, and instinctively clutched his head as he gritted his teeth.

This bizarre copper bell's ringing did not merely affect his hearing—it affected his vision as well.

Everything around him began to twist and distort, the entire world shaking violently as though an earthquake had struck.

What's going on? What is Danyangzi playing at? Did I slip up somewhere? Has he discovered me?

As Li Huowang thought this, he saw the corner of the table, the edge of Danyangzi's Daoist Robe, even one side of the Heavenly Book beside him. Throughout the room, every edge and angle he could see seemed to come alive, slowly gathering before Danyangzi as they twisted.

It was difficult to describe what this mass formed from the corners and edges of objects looked like, but one thing was certain: it was alive.

Li Huowang thought he was seeing things and shook his head hard. Yet it would have been better if he had not—when he did, that thing actually became two, swaying along with him.