Unexpected

The clouds in the sky looked as if they had been scorched by fire, and the dogs in the village kept barking wildly. Dogs only acted like that when they saw something unclean.

Zhao Qian had even lost her feng shui compass. Hugging her luggage, she crouched on the ground, completely at a loss.

Zhao He stood with his hands on his hips, staring fixedly at Siqiao. Perhaps he thought his yang energy could intimidate the ghosts beneath the water.

I took out my phone and checked the time. It was already six o'clock. Given the situation, leaving the village tonight was impossible, and gloom filled my heart.

Only Yu Xiaoxue had a big enough brain—or perhaps no brain at all. She picked up a sweet potato and ate it raw, saying "sweet" as she chewed. Even I wanted to whip her, so Zhao Qian and Zhao He, her older brother, needed no explanation.

"Now that everyone in the village is dead, where did all the corpses go?" Zhao Qian suddenly asked me.

"I don't know. I never saw them. I didn't see a single corpse," I answered.

Yu Xiaoxue froze for a moment, as if she had remembered her father's death. Looking somewhat sorrowful, she stopped chewing the sweet potato.

"You said the ghost baby killed your brother, so where did this ghost baby come from?" Zhao Qian asked curiously again. She had already returned to her usual capable self, as if the girl who had been crying tears and snot earlier that day had never been her.

Her question reminded me of Zhang Yidan's corpse, so I said, "We'll talk about that later. We can't leave the village tonight. I'll go bury my brother first."

I couldn't bear to see my childhood companion lying exposed in the wilderness.

"Brother, let's go help him." Zhao Qian nodded and pulled her brother along to lend a hand.

The graveyard was utterly silent. There were not even any rats or other animals. I lowered my head for a look, and my expression abruptly changed.

A mound had already been raised where Zhang Yidan had been lying, and a gravestone stood atop it.

My heart began pounding wildly. There was no one else left in Little Yi Village. Who had buried Zhang Yidan?

"Brother Tian, what should we do? Could someone who knew him have happened to pass by and helped him...?" Yu Xiaoxue's expression also looked awful.

"Impossible. Even if it were someone who knew him, no one would be kind enough to bury a wrongfully dead man. Go look at the gravestone." I walked over and stared at it. In an instant, half my heart turned cold: seal script.

"'The son of the south, virtuous and yielding; his writing rivaled the stars, yet he bent to none. In life he harbored no attachments; in death he left no name. Signed: Li Poxiao.'" Zhao Qian struggled to read the words on the gravestone, and her face went pale as well.

The stone gravestone had been carved with a sharp instrument. The marks were not deep, and after three or four months, they would probably be buried by wind and sand.

Zhao He scratched his head. He couldn't understand such profound writing, but after hearing Zhao Qian read the words, he laughed. "Heh, looks like there really are living Lei Fengs in this world. And a cultured one at that. This epitaph is great. Respect."

I shook my head. How could it be that simple?

"Dig it open." After thinking it over, I took out a hoe and decided to excavate the grave.

"You can't be serious... Isn't that disrespectful? Digging up a grave is a bit too much." Zhao Qian immediately objected. She was a feng shui master, not a corpse thief. The Zhao Family did not do such things.

Yu Xiaoxue didn't approve of me digging either and hurriedly waved her hands. "Brother Tian, can't we leave Brother Dan alone?"

"Did you forget? His soul is gone. What are we disturbing?" I insisted and began digging.

The other three had nothing to say. Zhao He didn't dare lend a hand, so I had to do it myself.

After slowly digging away most of the earth, I grew flustered as if someone had poured a basin of cold water over me. Zhang Yidan wasn't in the grave at all!

I feared someone had stolen his corpse and might even have damaged his remains. But there was nothing to be done about that now. Night was almost upon us, and all kinds of ghosts might soon emerge from the graveyard. I immediately sped up, and after a few more strokes, I reached the bottom and unearthed some objects.

It was Zhang Yidan's upper garment.

But the clothes had clearly been stripped off him. The cuts made by scissors were still there, yet the corpse had truly vanished.

Zhao Qian and Yu Xiaoxue stood with their mouths wide open, while Zhao He froze in place, his ox-like eyes bulging.

"Someone stole his corpse. Li Poxiao—what an upright corpse thief!" Anger slowly rose in my heart. The man was dead, yet Li Poxiao had still come to steal his corpse. He'd better not let me run into him.

"Let's go into the village. It's too exposed here. There isn't even a wall to block the wind." I calmed myself as I spoke, considering that a resentful corpse like Zhou Xuan might appear as well.

The Zhao siblings no longer dared object to me. We decided to find somewhere to rest first. Today had truly exhausted us. Anyone with even a little physical strength would be struggling, let alone the two women.

When Zhao He passed Siqiao, he scattered paper money and lit incense, not daring to look beneath the bridge.

I had passed this place several times over the past two days and hadn't found it frightening, so I looked beneath the bridge. Just as I was about to turn back, a dark object floated over from the river.

"Huo Dadong?" I stared in uncertainty. Was that Huo Dadong's corpse?

Zhao Qian's face went pale, and she looked into the river as well. Sure enough, it was Huo Dadong's corpse.

Huo Dadong's head and face were tilted upward, making him easy to recognize.

"Zhao He, go pull him out!" I ordered. He had saved Zhang Kaifu before, and I had discovered that he was a better swimmer than me. More importantly, his yang energy was strong enough to keep ordinary ghosts from getting close. My yin energy was heavy, so if I went into the water, I feared an evil ghost would drag me under.

Zhao He's face immediately turned bitter as yellow lotus. "Brother... this... isn't this a bad idea? He's already dead, and there are so many ghosts on the river. What if something happens to me when I go down?"

My expression darkened at once when I saw him refusing to cooperate. "What? Your yang energy is the strongest here. It isn't even dark yet. Do you want me or your sister to go down instead?"

"Brother... Big Brother Tian must have his reasons. Be careful. I'll set up an incense altar behind you and drive away the evil when you come back up..." Seeing the change in my expression, Zhao Qian hurriedly tugged at Zhao He's hand.

"Then... then all right. I'll go pull him out. If... if something happens to me, Brother Tian, please look after things and send my sister back to the city. We're from the Zhao Family in the county..." Zhao He looked as though his parents had died, his words full of pleading. He wore the expression of a man marching bravely to his death. Zhao Qian was the Zhao Family's beloved jewel, cherished by the elders, and she couldn't come to harm.

Zhao Qian's eyes instantly reddened. She wiped away her tears with her sleeve and looked at her brother, unable to say a word. After a long while, she gazed at me imploringly. "This..."

"Why are you wasting time? Captain Huo isn't dead yet. If you keep delaying, he will be." I glared at the siblings, half amused and half exasperated. They apparently thought Huo Dadong was dead.

In fact, Huo Dadong had a remarkably tough life. If he had merely fallen from the cliff onto the ground, he would certainly have died. But the river had saved him. Before he fell, only his soul had been hooked away. After he entered the river, his primal instinct to survive was aroused. He paddled by instinct and somehow floated here on his back.

Huo Dadong couldn't see the ghosts, and his yang energy was still quite strong. Although his face was covered in heavy black qi, as if the river ghosts had set their sights on him, the fact that filthy things were still watching him meant he wasn't dead.

Only then did Zhao He relax. After burning incense and scattering paper, he waited until Huo Dadong passed the bridge before jumping into the water. But Huo Dadong immediately began struggling violently, stubbornly trying to escape Zhao He's rescue.

Zhao He was frightened at first, but when he saw that Huo Dadong was merely thrashing on instinct rather than trying to drag him under, he immediately relaxed. He struck Huo Dadong twice across the face and knocked him unconscious.

It was fortunate that Zhao He had all those muscles. He could actually support the dazed Huo Dadong. If it had been me, I probably would have sunk while hugging him.

Once we reached the bank, Zhao Qian immediately set up an altar and performed a ritual, dispersing the surrounding ghosts.

"Can you summon souls?" I asked Zhao Qian.

Zhao Qian nodded.

"This is downstream, flowing toward a dead town. If my guess is right, the souls detained by the yin soldiers are being drawn into this river. When night falls and the yin energy grows heavy, the souls will soon pass through here. Captain Huo only lost one wisp of his soul, and his body is here, so summoning it back shouldn't be difficult." After connecting the ghosts beneath Siqiao with what I was seeing, it wasn't hard to figure out the river's purpose. It was a river for transporting souls.

We ate a little roasted sweet potato. Once night fell, even the dogs stopped barking, and the entire village fell silent.

Zhao Qian found a wallet on Huo Dadong and obtained his birthday from his identity card. She didn't have his Four Pillars, but that didn't trouble her. After all, his true body was right here.

"Soul, depart and return! The high hall still stands; soul, depart and return! A young child remains at home; soul, depart and return! A grieving wife awaits in anguish..."

Zhao Qian loudly recited the soul-summoning incantation, waving a peachwood sword and bell to summon the soul. Zhao He held up a folding umbrella, waiting for the soul to arrive at any moment.

Yu Xiaoxue and I both had Ghost-Passing Talismans, so we could see the ghosts whose heads kept emerging from the river one after another. The moment Huo Dadong appeared, we said in unison, "He's here."

To distinguish Huo Dadong's ghost, Zhao Qian and Zhao He wiped their eyes with the tears of an ox that had been used to burn talismans. It wasn't strange that they could see him, but when they heard Yu Xiaoxue and me speak in unison, they froze. If it had only been me, that would have been fine—but how could Yu Xiaoxue see him too? Could she be a hidden master?

She didn't look like one... She had nearly cried over two sugarcane stalks earlier that day...

Still, Zhao Qian was a professional, and she immediately called out, "Huo Dadong, son of the south, born in 1970, your allotted years are not yet exhausted, your fleshly body has not yet perished. Your true self is here—why have you not swiftly returned to your body?"

At the call, a wisp of Huo Dadong's soul tried to rush up. Zhao He joyfully opened the folding umbrella. As long as Huo Dadong reached the bridge, he would catch the soul inside it!

But before it had even escaped the water, it was dragged back down!

Two yin soldiers had forcibly pulled it back to its original position, continuing to escort it across the river.

The soul couldn't reach the bank, leaving Zhao Qian and Zhao He utterly stunned. They could clearly see what those two yin soldiers looked like.

I was somewhat surprised as well. It seemed a little violence was unavoidable. I immediately reached into my trouser pocket, preparing to release the little ghost, even if it meant losing some blood.

But just as I was about to act, a black figure had silently appeared behind me from the direction of Little Yi Village.

At this distance, surely you weren't asleep, my wife-sister!?

"Yo, you're summoning souls?" the person greeted us in a voice like a drake's.