Strange Things Keep Happening

"Don't listen, don't look, keep moving!" Jiang Yue snapped in a low voice.

"Second Brother, he's calling my name, calling me San Gou!" San Gou was known for being wild and bold, but even his voice now carried a hint of unease.

He grabbed Jiang Yue, refusing to let him go any further.

"Second Brother, it's Tangtou, Tangtou is calling me!" San Gou grew even more panicked.

"Who's Tangtou?"

"The son of Tang Youqing from the village. A few years back, a Black Bear dragged him off and gnawed off half his head."

With San Gou's reminder, Jiang Yue suddenly recalled it.

He rarely returned to the village, but he'd heard of this gruesome tale. According to the villagers who found the body, the child died horribly, missing most of his skull when buried.

At that thought, a chill ran through Jiang Yue's entire body.

Without a word, Jiang Yue hoisted San Gou up and tried to leave. But San Gou wouldn't cooperate, flailing wildly, covering his ears with his hands, kicking his legs, and shouting hoarsely.

"I didn't see your head, I didn't! Tangtou, your head was chewed off by the Black Bear."

At San Gou's age, if he was dead set on struggling, Jiang Yue couldn't really carry him. He had to put him down, and the Yellow Paper was already burned out, but luckily he still had half a pack of cigarettes in his pocket.

He pulled out three, lit them with difficulty, and bowed three times toward the empty air.

"Every grievance has its debtor, don't seek the innocent. The living and Spirits have their separate paths, each walks their own way..."

For a case like San Gou's, either a Spirit had strayed onto the Living Path, or a living person had blundered onto the Spirit Path.

Before the three cigarettes had even burned halfway, San Gou gradually calmed down. Though fear still lingered in his eyes, it was within normal bounds.

Following San Gou's still-shaken gaze, Jiang Yue used his hoe to push aside the grass, revealing a Mass Grave.

In front of a small grave mound, something alive was burrowing. Drawing closer, it turned out to be a Yellow Weasel. Beside the mound, an Earthen Stele lay tilted, faintly bearing the character "Tang."

"Tangtou is buried here?" Jiang Yue asked.

San Gou shook his head, uncertain: "He was the same age as me, we used to play together as kids. The year he was taken, he was only seven. When he was buried, I was at Aunt's place in town, I don't know where he's laid to rest."

That Yellow Weasel was eerily strange. Seeing people, it didn't flee but instead turned back, rolling its eyes to size up the two brothers, almost as if nodding in greeting.

"Let's go." Jiang Yue felt everything today was off, and didn't want to stay a second longer.

The rest of the way down the mountain, San Gou, usually so chatty, was silent and brooding.

Only at the foot of the mountain did San Gou mutter: "Second Brother, do you believe me? Just now, it was Tangtou calling me. He was even waving at me with half a head, asking if I'd seen his other half!"

Jiang Yue wanted to scold him, but after organizing his words for a long time, they all felt hollow.

"San Gou, it's the End of Qingming, Wandering Ghosts have no homes to return to. Maybe Tangtou was lonely, no one swept his grave on Qingming Festival, so he just said hello."

Jiang Yue wanted to slap himself after saying that—how was that supposed to comfort a kid?

But to his surprise, San Gou's face lit up with a grin: "Second Brother, you're the only one who believes me. If I told Aunt or Eldest Sister, they'd slap me silly."

Well then.

This kid's brain wasn't wired like a normal child's—did he even look like he needed comforting? Those empty platitudes probably wouldn't work on him anyway.

With the two of them talking and joking, the oppressive atmosphere lightened considerably.

Jiang Yue was about to speak when he suddenly yanked San Gou aside.

Almost as San Gou stumbled forward, a Large White Cat shot out from the grass where he'd been standing. Even in broad daylight, its two green eyes were so eerie they could make anyone's hair stand on end.

But the cat's sudden lunge wasn't aimed at them.

At the other end of the grass, a large snake had coiled itself without anyone noticing, its triangular head raised high, tongue flicking rapidly at the cat, clearly in a state of combat readiness.

It was a Fer-de-lance Viper, locally called a Tortoise Shell Flower—highly venomous and extremely aggressive!

Before the Nine Li Pavilion, a White Cat fought a Viper.

Another spine-chilling, bizarre scene.

From a purely biological standpoint, a cat-snake fight wasn't that unusual.

But in a place as steeped in superstition as Nine Li Pavilion, with a Large White Cat and a green viper, if a yin-yang master saw this, it would be a huge deal.

As the saying goes:

White Tiger fighting Azure Dragon, it'll poke a hole right through heaven and earth!

San Gou, fearless as ever, had been startled by Tangtou earlier but was quick to forget. Now he watched the dragon-tiger duel with great interest.

This time, Jiang Yue didn't indulge him. He dragged San Gou away.

Seeing Second Brother's face so grim it was almost frightening, San Gou seemed to catch on and stopped resisting. Though reluctant, he followed Jiang Yue back.

But he kept turning his head back, that eager look of a bystander gawking at the drama—how was this the same kid who'd just been scared?

"Second Brother! Wait."

After walking a hundred meters or so, San Gou had another episode.

"What's wrong with you now? This isn't Mount Dajin, don't stir up any more trouble."

San Gou's mouth hung open as he stared blankly at the Nine Li Pavilion they'd left behind.

"Second Brother, look—is the main beam of Nine Li Pavilion broken?" San Gou, usually so boisterous, this time had not a trace of his usual grin.

Nine Li Pavilion was a wing-shaped structure, high in the middle and low on both sides. The main beam in the center was like a human spine, with the rafters on either side like ribs.

A broken main beam meant the backbone of the building had snapped.

Jiang Yue looked over. The pavilion, designed to mimic a Vermilion Bird spreading its wings in flight, now seemed to sag at the top. Its soaring posture was clearly not as graceful as before; it looked more like a sickly Vermilion Bird.

From a distance, a faint mass of green-black qi hovered above Nine Li Pavilion, flickering in and out of sight like a lid shrouding the structure.

If one were to stretch a bit and let imagination run wild, that mass of green-black qi resembled a heavy hammer suspended high above the pavilion!

"What's going on? Strange things happen every year, but today there are too many?"

Nine Li Pavilion had weathered storms for so many years, standing firm all along.

Out of nowhere, how did the main beam break?

Though Jiang Yue didn't fully believe in yin-yang geomancy, his family's heritage instilled in him a genuine reverence for nature's mandate and the patterns of heaven and earth.

One thing after another, coming in quick succession.

Clearly, something was very wrong!

His birth mother entering his dreams, the photo frame falling, the Flowery Skirt Woman's Shadow, Spirit Money catching fire easily, Tangtou searching for his head, dragon and tiger clashing, the Vermilion Bird's broken spine...

Even encountering just one of these under normal circumstances would be utterly horrifying.

Although Qingming was indeed a special day, within just a few hours, it was like a TV series—episode after episode playing nonstop, without even a commercial break.

To say it was all coincidence was completely unconvincing.

Along the way, seeing Second Brother lost in thought, San Gou seemed half-understanding.

"Second Brother, are you worried about Tangtou's matter? The elders said that if you run into something unclean, burning paper, lighting incense, and bowing three times covers the rites. Tangtou was good to me in life; he wouldn't haunt me in death."

San Gou's thinking was simple. In his worldview, he didn't understand dragon-tiger clashes or Vermilion Bird broken spines.

He only saw Tangtou's incident as an isolated event.

Growing up in the mountains, who hadn't encountered a few eerie things? Besides, the local folk rhyme said: End of Qingming, wandering ghosts have no home to return to. This rhyme had been passed down for generations, and San Gou had heard it since childhood, already mentally prepared.

So, though the matter was strange, San Gou treated it as a standalone event and didn't think much of it. Besides, at his age, he lacked the capacity for deeper thought.

In other words, San Gou vaguely understood the "forms" but couldn't analyze the "trends."

If the earlier events were just individual "forms"—isolated incidents—then the dragon-tiger clash and the Vermilion Bird's broken spine hinted at some kind of underlying trend.

Of course, this was just Jiang Yue's instinctive hunch based on his family's teachings.

A hunch was a hunch. When it came to the grand trends of heaven and earth, an individual's power was like a single grain in a vast ocean—unlikely to make much difference.

Seeing that Second Brother didn't reply, San Gou wasn't annoyed. He muttered on: "Second Brother, was that snake just now a Green Tortoise Shell Flower? Must have weighed over ten catties, right? If we caught it and threw it in a big pot for a stew, it'd be delicious."

San Gou was a mountain village kid, with the ruggedness of mountain folk in his bones.

Traditional mountain people lived by only two survival logics: either conquer nature or be conquered by it.

Catching a snake for a stew was just an ordinary part of their simple, unadorned daily life.