When the flames died down, I thought I'd see Zheng Motian going off to be reincarnated. It wasn't a very strong "thought." I still wondered whether that ghost would really let the people he'd killed—the ghosts trapped here—go.
When white light replaced the flames, I narrowed my eyes and saw a figure in the light, overcome with excitement.
Zheng Motian stood in a sea of white light. The road, the mountains, the car—all were gone. Only his lonely ghost remained.
As if he'd received some kind of summons, he rushed straight ahead.
Though the entire area was filled with brilliant white light, a closer look revealed subtle differences.
The light was shining from ahead. Its source lay in the direction Zheng Motian was running.
I followed behind him, warily surveying my surroundings.
Aside from Zheng Motian, there wasn't a trace of yin energy in the area. Even the immense yin energy that had filled the place before was gone. But if this was the Yellow Springs Road, a path to the underworld, it didn't quite seem right. The Yellow Springs Roads I'd seen before were all very traditional. At the very least, there had been a road—a real road. And the souls Greenleaf and the others had guided onward had simply vanished before my eyes. No road had appeared from the heavens.
This white light was more like the road to heaven in Western movies and TV shows. In China, ghost officials guided the dead into the underworld to be reincarnated. In the West, there was Heaven and Hell, while various smaller religions had their own worlds of the dead.
By now, though, I knew that those "superstitions" weren't all false, nor were they all true. At least, the supernatural circles of the East and West and of different countries