Peach Haven Village (22)

The sixth day, 8:00 a.m.

A large crowd of villagers had gathered outside Third Lady Temple. No one knew where they had gotten the news, but word had spread that the ritual had been sabotaged. They swarmed the temple entrance, and when they happened to see White Cloud Daoist, Blind Wang, and the village chief there, they became even more convinced the rumors were true. They surrounded the three men, demanding to know what had happened.

Ding Shi came down the mountain just then. Seeing such a large crowd outside the temple, he did not pay much attention to them. He first returned to the village chief's house to bathe and eat breakfast. Aunt Li happened to come by and pulled the village chief's daughter-in-law aside to whisper. Ding Shi pricked up his ears and caught enough to learn that news of the problem with the ritual had already spread throughout the village.

After eating his fill, Ding Shi arrived at Third Lady Temple to find that the village chief had already persuaded most of the people to leave. Only several highly respected village elders remained, along with Haitang and Zhang San.

Haitang unlocked the temple doors with a key and entered with Zhang San first, while the others waited at the entrance. Haitang and Zhang San lit incense together, bowed three times before Third Lady's statue, and placed the incense in the burner, completing their daily task. Only then did the village chief and the others enter the temple.

Ding Shi had assumed that Zhang San, that player, had been messing around and caused the ritual to go wrong. To his surprise, after some questioning, Ding Shi himself became a suspect and was summoned into the temple by the village chief.

White Cloud Daoist and the others sat in a row on benches against the wall, looking rather imposing. Zhang San and Haitang stood off to one side. Haitang kept her head lowered, staring at the tips of her shoes, while Zhang San glared angrily at Ding Shi as he entered.

The village chief did not bother with pleasantries and went straight to the point. "Little Ding, when did you see Third Lady's tears?"

Ding Shi replied, "Village chief, I already told you. I lied. I never saw any tears."

The village chief said solemnly, "Little Ding, this concerns the lives and deaths of hundreds of people in Peach Haven Village. You must tell the truth."

Ding Shi did not answer at once. He was sizing up the situation when Blind Zhao stood and walked over to him. "It was my fault. I shouldn't have told him there was a great treasure inside Third Lady's coffin."

Ding Shi nodded and pointed at Blind Zhao. "He admitted it."

Everyone was speechless.

The village chief coughed and had Blind Zhao sit down first. Then he asked, "Little Ding, did you enter Third Lady Temple after nine at night?"

Ding Shi asked, "Village chief, what do you mean?"

The village chief said, "During the seven days before the ritual, no one may enter Third Lady Temple outside the temple's opening hours. The doors open around eight in the morning and close around nine at night. If you entered Third Lady Temple after nine, you may have offended Third Lady."

Ding Shi's face was full of confusion. How had he offended her? Bumped into her? Had she seen him and been scared to death?

White Cloud Daoist spoke up. His tone remained as gentle and refined as ever as he explained the situation.

White Cloud Daoist's master, the great expert who had sealed Third Lady, had separated Third Lady's soul from her body. Third Lady's soul resided in the statue at Third Lady Temple and received offerings of incense every day, which dispelled the baleful aura within her soul.

When Third Lady's soul was filled with extremely strong negative emotions, also known as resentment, the statue of Third Lady would shed tears. A resentful Third Lady could not become a deity, and the ritual would fail.

None of that was the main issue. The main issue was that once the ritual failed, the resentful Third Lady would become an evil ghost dwelling in Peach Haven Village.

There was now a fairly serious problem: even White Cloud Daoist could not be sure whether the ritual had already failed.

That required an explanation of the ritual's complete procedure.

At midnight on the seventh day, the groom, Zhang San, would set out from the village entrance. Accompanied by relatives and friends beating gongs and drums and carrying a bridal sedan chair, he would make his way to Haitang's home. At seven in the morning, the two would head to Third Lady Temple, bow to Heaven and Earth, and complete the wedding ceremony. The groom and bride would then serve tea to the actors playing Third Lady's parents and receive a red envelope.

Next, the villagers participating in the ritual would take turns offering incense to Third Lady.

At noon, more than thirty tables of banquet dishes would be set out. One table would be placed inside Third Lady Temple as the main table. The groom would toast every table. At around two in the afternoon, the banquet would end, and the village elders would carry the bride onto the sedan chair. With music and fanfare, they would escort the bride and groom to the village entrance.

The basic ceremony ended there. Put simply, it was a reenactment of a rural wedding. The ritual's final step would be performed by Blind Zhao. He would copy out a memorial text identical to the ones used for the past hundred years, kneel before Third Lady's statue and read it aloud, then burn it so that the memorial could reach the Heavenly Court.

If the ritual succeeded, everything would proceed smoothly. The question was, what happened if it failed? No one knew, because nothing had occurred over the past ninety-nine years. Perhaps because of Third Lady, ever since Third Lady Temple was built and the first ritual was held, Peach Haven Village had enjoyed favorable weather and abundant harvests. It had repeatedly avoided the chaos of war, few children died young, and it had more long-lived elders than other villages.

Take the present day, for example. Peach Haven Village not only grew rice but also tobacco leaves, and the villagers' average income was far higher than that of other villages.

Therefore, the villagers of Peach Haven Village believed that Third Lady protected their village, so they naturally took the ritual even more seriously.

Although White Cloud Daoist possessed some Daoist abilities, he was more of a theorist. He did not know how to determine whether the ritual had succeeded or failed. His idea was therefore to trace things back to their source, find every possible reason for failure, and make amends.

Third Lady's tears represented an abundance of negative emotion. There were many kinds of negative emotions, such as anger. If she saw someone in the village being bullied but could not help them, that might make her angry. To resolve that anger, they would need to find the bully and have them confess their wrongdoing to Third Lady and ask for her forgiveness.

Or jealousy. Perhaps Third Lady would be jealous of a girl prettier than herself. Smearing the girl's face black would probably be enough to fool her.

As soon as Ding Shi finished listening to White Cloud Daoist, he looked at Zhang San and Haitang. "Did you two sleep together?" If he remembered correctly, the village chief had told them they could not share a room.

Haitang was startled. She crouched down, buried her face in her knees, and began to cry quietly.

Zhang San was furious. He strode up to Ding Shi and demanded, "What the hell is it to you?"

Ding Shi said, "The village chief told you not to share a room. If you did, Third Lady would be unhappy."

The village chief corrected him. "Little Ding, that's not it. I told them not to share a room because Haitang is only eighteen and still an unmarried young girl. I was worried that... you understand, right? That was my requirement, not a requirement of the ritual. In fact, in the past, we used real newlywed couples to play those roles."

Ding Shi froze. When Blind Zhao said there was a problem with the ritual, Ding Shi had guessed that one of the players had been messing around, and that person was naturally Zhang San. When their identities had been assigned on the first day, Haitang had clearly liked Zhang San. Zhang San was obviously no gentleman either. Living with such a pretty young girl as Haitang for six days, it would have been strange if he had no thoughts at all.

But now the village chief had told Ding Shi that whether they shared a room had nothing to do with whether Third Lady shed tears. That meant the only suspect left was himself, the one who had seen the weeping Third Lady.

That actually seemed plausible. Could his sneaking into Third Lady Temple at night really have offended Third Lady? Or did the wooden statue of Third Lady know that he had lifted the lid of her coffin at White Cloud Temple?

Ding Shi asked, "Could it be that the flashlight shone into her eyes and hurt them, so she shed a few tears?"

The elders all looked at Ding Shi with displeasure. White Cloud Daoist came to his rescue. "If that is all it was, offer incense to Third Lady and apologize. I believe she will forgive you."