"Yeah, but that wasn't all!" Old Man Yao's voice suddenly grew urgent. "We put him on someone's back, but the moment I laid a hand on him, I knew something was wrong. The man was too light—frighteningly light. He looked like a sturdy fellow, but he weighed about as much as a kid who hadn't grown up yet."
"Other than the scrapes, he barely had any injuries. He was breathing, sure, but we couldn't wake him. There wasn't much else we could do, so we carried him back to the village."
"Then, just after dark that night, he woke up and started shouting. You have no idea—several of us couldn't hold him down. He was yelling things we couldn't understand, telling us not to get in his way, that he had to go with those people! That if he was late, he wouldn't be able to go!"
"Where did he want to go?" Jiang Cheng knew they had reached the crucial part.
"To heaven. To become an immortal."
"An immortal?"
Old Man Yao's expression turned grave as he put away his tobacco pipe. "That's what he said. He kept shouting that he'd already climbed the ladder to heaven, that he was getting higher and higher and was almost there. Then he missed a step and fell."
"Just as we were at a loss, there was a commotion outside. Someone was banging a gong with all their might. It's an old folk remedy passed down from our ancestors—they say it can scare off evil spirits."
"As soon as I heard the gong, I knew something was wrong. I figured something had happened again, so we all ran to the ancestral hall. The village chief and a few elders who had a say in village affairs were there, discussing what to do."