The Sacrifice

Zheng Wuyou took a deep breath. The watch on Sun Wu's wrist had stopped forever at the moment the incident happened that morning.

That man in the sweatshirt had never imagined he'd become a sacrifice after his death.

Zheng Wuyou nodded with her eyes closed, signaling Wen Dian to do as the old man had said.

They would carry on the dead man's will.

But the living... still needed to live.

Wen Dian suppressed the turmoil inside him. With a jumble of emotions, he and the middle-aged man lifted Sun Wu out of the cart.

Sun Wu's body had already stiffened, its shape matching the cart.

Even after they lifted it out, it remained in that same position.

Wen Dian gently placed Sun Wu's body on the round platform, muttering that they were a bunch of animals.

The middle-aged man took a curved knife from the cart. He held it in his hand and brought it down before Wen Dian.

Up and down went his arm.

With a wet squelch, Sun Wu's head fell, and scraps scattered across the ground.

Some of the blurred, soft matter splattered onto Wen Dian's beloved Toothless Pajamas, but he stood frozen, unable to react.

Only when Zheng Wuyou quickly pulled him back to her side did he snap out of it.

The middle-aged man placed Sun Wu's head on the south side of the platform, facing the crowd.

Then he arranged the limbs at the east and west points.

With only the torso left, the middle-aged man looked at Wen Dian, signaling that he needed help.

The old man coughed and rapped his cane against Wen Dian's back as he stood there dazed.

Zheng Wuyou took another deep breath. The metallic tang of blood hung in the air.

She steeled herself and went over to the middle-aged man.

Together, she and the middle-aged man lifted Sun Wu's torso onto the center of the platform.

They leaned it against the pillar.

When Zheng Wuyou returned to the others, she looked down and saw her hands covered in sticky, scarlet fluid. She wanted to wipe them on herself, but didn't know where.

For the first time, the old man nodded in satisfaction.

At some point, his face, lined with the marks of time, had been painted in a riot of colors. He held a colorful banner in his right hand and leaned on his cane with his left.

He swung his limbs wildly.

He chanted scriptures they couldn't understand.

As he danced, the platform began to turn slowly.

Like a mixer, it gradually swallowed the corpse.

The pillar rotated inside it, and the inscriptions on it turned down into the earth.

They heard the sound of hard things grinding against each other and breaking.

Fluid sprayed from the sunken center onto the pillar, darkening the recessed lettering even further.

Hu Yu turned her face away, unable to watch.

The sounds in her ears felt like punishment, each one stabbing into her heart.

"What a spineless thing." The old woman couldn't stand such melodrama. She looked toward the platform, but her words were still sharp.

"What are you standing there gawking for? Your job is to smear the sacrifice over every gravestone halfway up the mountain." The old man ignored the paint drying and wrinkling on his face.

With trembling hands, he held out a basin of sticky, bloody pulp.

The stench of blood flooded Hu Yu's nostrils. Unable to hold it in, she turned aside and vomited her lunch.

"You...!" Wen Dian furiously tried to knock over the basin of blood and mud in front of him, but Zheng Wuyou stopped him in time.

Now wasn't the time to play the hero.

When you were under someone else's roof, you either tore it off—

or accepted being kept under their thumb.

Zheng Wuyou reluctantly took the blood and mud. She plunged her right hand into the strange-feeling sludge, grabbed a handful, and smeared it onto the nearest gravestone.

Seeing them get to work, and with the day growing late, the old man left them a firebrand and walked out of the cemetery with the old woman, grumbling all the way.

The middle-aged man pushed the wooden cart and headed unsteadily toward the village.

Dusk settled. The whole world seemed veiled in a gray-blue filter.

Only the firebrand's orange glow lit a patch of the mountainside.

Zheng Wuyou looked toward the mountainside, where candlelight was gradually appearing. She hoped the others could rescue the First Wife before they made it back.

"I've had it! What kind of damn village is this?" Wen Dian had no choice but to dip his hand into the blood and mud and smear it on the gravestone in front of him.

He had already lost count of how many gravestones he'd covered.

And when he thought that this was Sun Wu's flesh...

He found it even harder to stomach.

"Ahhh! Forget that woman, I'm about to lose it!" Hu Yu anxiously wanted to grab her hair, but her hands were covered in fluid.

All she could do was stamp her feet in frustration.

If she'd known this was what they'd find at the cemetery, she might as well have gone to Old Zhu's family to rescue the First Wife and meet those weirdly shaped ghosts!

"These two tasks are connected." Zheng Wuyou straightened up. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed several pieces of Yellow Paper lying in the rutted mud. They hadn't been there before.

The wind was unusually strong at dusk on the mountainside.

It swept over the Yellow Paper, making it rustle.

Zheng Wuyou froze...

That was the sound of leaves from last night...

She didn't remember scattering Yellow Paper for the ancestral rites.

So where had it come from?

"Don't wander too far. Once we're done smearing it, we leave!" Zheng Wuyou unconsciously picked up her pace.

She didn't even care whether the blood and mud splashed onto her clothes.

The three of them sped up. Wen Dian was the first to smear the last bit of blood and mud onto a gravestone at the edge.

He let go and tossed the basin onto the ground in disgust.

He felt sick.

The basin hit the mud with a dull thud.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew out their only source of light behind him.

Standing there, he swallowed and nervously turned around, searching the gray-blue darkness for the other two figures.

"...Hey, you're still there, right?" Wen Dian tried to raise his voice, but the howling wind swallowed it up.

Suddenly, a hand landed on his shoulder. His legs nearly gave way.

"Go!" Zheng Wuyou swept past him, unable to understand why Hu Yu would still think of scaring him in a situation like this.

Hu Yu popped out from behind him with a smug look and followed Zheng Wuyou toward the village.

"Wait for me!" Seeing them, Wen Dian breathed a sigh of relief and hurried after the two women.

"Ah! Help me!" Hu Yu's scream suddenly rang out across the mountainside.

Standing two meters from Hu Yu, Wen Dian saw her suddenly fall to the ground, then struggle to get back up.

He rolled his eyes, showing that he wouldn't fall for it again!

"Quit messing with me. Only an idiot would fall for the same trick twice." Wen Dian walked right past her and followed Zheng Wuyou.

"Don't go! Don't go! I've been grabbed! Ah..."

This time, it wasn't a trick!

Zheng Wuyou sensed something was wrong and whipped around. That desperate voice was definitely real!

But behind her, there was no sign of anyone except Wen Dian and a dense cluster of upright black gravestones.

"Hu Yu!" Wen Dian realized he might have made the wrong choice!

He quickly shouted toward the mountainside.

"Help..."

A faint voice was caught up in the howling wind, but Zheng Wuyou's sharp ears still picked out its direction.

"This way!"

Before the two of them could make it back to the cluster of gravestones, strange noises came from behind them.

One after another, they heard the sound of something breaking through the earth.

They were done for!

Turn back, and there was a chance to save her.

Or abandon her... and save themselves?