In the year he died, Meng Fang made a deal with the deity who governed contracts. A new Poplar Blossom Town was built atop the sea of blood and mountain of corpses that had been the old Poplar Blossom Town.
The remains of those who had died horribly were piled up in the corners of the town, while tens of thousands of straw effigies were placed throughout it for the unjustly slain ghosts to possess.
Some of those straw effigies were human-shaped, while others resembled tigers. Different colors marked different identities: scholars, commoners, wealthy households, beggars...
Meng Fang did not know why such complex distinctions had been created among the straw effigies, but he did not dare question the deity's decision.
Through the deity's divine power, every straw effigy was given new memories. They forgot their past deaths in the flames of war and believed they had followed Meng Fang here to escape the conflict.
The wronged souls who had regained bodies became the residents of the new Poplar Blossom Town, treating it as a paradise untouched by the ravages of war.
Grateful for Meng Fang's guidance, they honored him as the head of the town and called him "Master Meng."
Meng Fang still remembered everything from before and after his death. As time passed, those memories only grew clearer, bringing him ever more guilt and pain.
This was the price he had paid for praying to the deity. He bore it in silence and treated it as a form of atonement.
In life, he had failed to protect his land. In the end, in order to resist the enemy invaders, he had brought disaster upon countless common folk and torn innumerable families apart. After death, he was finally able to break free of his duty of loyalty to his