The Grain-Collecting Ghost

The ninth day of the ninth month, the day of the autumn levy.

At the entrance to Li Family Village, Qingwu County, Great Qian.

The farmers queuing to pay their grain tax formed a line like a winding, withered vine. Dressed in padded clothes and carrying grain sacks on their shoulders, they grumbled amid the clang of a brass gong. The air reeked of muddy earth, old rice, and sour sweat.

On a crooked old locust tree nearby, mangled corpses hung upside down in dense rows, like racks of pork ribs that had been gnawed on.

Beneath the tree, an old Daoist in yellow robes performed a ritual at an altar, scattering paper money with his left hand and shaking a spirit bell with his right. "Heaven trembles, earth trembles, this tree is bound to the Yama Stake. Let no living soul answer here, do not answer..."

Xie An sat in a carriage beside the old locust tree, watching the spectacle.

He wore a blue cloud-brocade robe, with a jade Buddha pendant hanging from his gold-embroidered belt. A mutton-fat jade hairpin secured his topknot, and a string of gleaming red sandalwood prayer beads circled his right wrist.

Incense burned inside the carriage, but it could not mask the stench of corpses. The smell made Xie An's stomach churn.

"What a chaotic age, where human lives are worth no more than weeds."

Five days ago, he had still been a seasoned office slacker coasting through his working life. After waking from a nap, he had become a boy in Qingwu County who shared his name, Xie An.

Fortunately, his father, Xie Zhengtang, was a local salt merchant with businesses in all sorts of trades. Xie An could only continue coasting along, waiting to inherit the family business.

His only real duty was inspecting the various properties on his father's behalf.

Li Family Village was inhabited entirely by the Xie Household's tenant farmers, who paid a thousand taels in rent each year.

Recently, for some unknown reason, large numbers of tenants had fled the village.

Though oppressive government was fiercer than a tiger, and the authorities required tenant farmers to pay grain taxes, no tenant had ever fled Li Family Village before.

Xie An had come today to find out why.

"Young master!"

A martial artist in a black brocade robe, a broad saber at his waist, pushed through the crowd and hurried to the carriage to report. "I've learned everything. The bodies hanging from the tree were tenants who fled the village. The village steward, Li Degui, tracked them down and hanged them. He hired that old Daoist to perform the ritual."

Those corpses clearly had bite marks... Were they really hanged?

Xie An's brows knitted tightly. "Zhao Hu, did you find out why the tenants fled?"

Zhao Hu said, "The old Daoist said a grain collector came into the village every night to collect taxes. The tenants couldn't survive anymore, so they fled. But that tax clerk said he only came once a year."

Xie An glanced at the tax clerk in dark official clothing nearby.

The clerk happened to turn toward him and greeted him with a smile. "So the eldest young master Xie has come to inspect the village. Refugees are running rampant outside the city. It isn't safe. You should return early, young master."

Xie An nodded with a grunt of acknowledgment, then instructed Zhao Hu, "Go into the village and ask Li Degui."

Once they entered the village, Xie An surveyed his surroundings through the side window.

Yellow lanterns bearing the words "Dragon King's Blessing" hung over every doorway. Children chased one another through the alleys, laughing and playing, while peddlers called out their wares.

The scents of wine, meat, and fried pastries drifted through the air.

When they reached a courtyard with blue-brick walls and black roof tiles, a middle-aged man in a lantern-robe came out to greet them with clasped hands. "Your humble servant, Li Degui. I've been awaiting you for some time, young master."

Holding his hand warmer, Xie An jumped down from the carriage and strode into the courtyard. "Why have so many tenants been fleeing the village lately?"

Li Degui said, "The tenants claimed a grain collector came to their doors every night to collect taxes, leaving them unable to survive. But I could see they were just trying to force the master to reduce their rent. Such petty tricks-how could they fool me? Only after I beat a few to death and hung them at the village entrance as a warning did the tenants learn to behave."

That matched the old Daoist's story... Xie An did not believe it entirely. "Where are the accounts?"

"All the accounts have been prepared in the study."

Once they entered the study, Li Degui served tea and refreshments, pouring out flattering remarks.

Xie An sat down and examined the accounts, questioning Li Degui thoroughly whenever anything puzzled him.

If he let the servants think he was easy to fool, they would inevitably conceal things and deceive him. If he was strict and meticulous, they would behave far better.

According to the accounts, every household should have had grain to spare.

Why had the tenants fled?

Xie An kept feeling that something was strange.

When he finally looked up, the sky had darkened, and snow had begun to fall.

Li Degui said ingratiatingly, "It's getting dark. Why not spend the night in my humble home, young master? Tomorrow, I'll take you from house to house to question the tenants."

Watching the darkening sky, Xie An felt an inexplicable unease. He handed his hand warmer to Li Degui. "There's no need to stay overnight. Fill this with hot water for me."

"Of course!" Li Degui accepted the hand warmer with both hands and hurried to the kitchen, returning after filling it with hot water.

Xie An took the hand warmer and was about to leave when a piercing brass gong rang out.

"Clang, clang, clang... Grain collection! Pay your taxes..."

At first, Xie An paid it little mind. As he walked out of the study, he asked Li Degui, who followed behind him, "Steward Li, didn't the tenants just pay their autumn taxes today? Why is someone collecting taxes again?"

No answer came from behind him.

Puzzled, Xie An looked back, and his brows instantly knitted.

Li Degui, who had been perfectly fine a moment ago, suddenly stood rooted to the spot, motionless, as though possessed.

Xie An called again, "Steward Li?"

Li Degui remained standing there in a daze, seemingly oblivious.

Xie An sniffed and caught a faint whiff of decay.

He immediately went on alert. "Zhao Hu! See what's wrong with Li Degui."

"Yes, young master!"

Zhao Hu hurried over to Li Degui and called, "Steward Li." When there was no response, he reached out and patted his shoulder. With a sudden thud, Li Degui's entire body toppled stiffly to the ground.

The back of his head struck the corner of a brick, leaving a dent. Yet no blood flowed-only a foul stench emerged.

Zhao Hu immediately checked Li Degui's breathing, then tore open his clothes to examine him. Finally, he jerked his head up. "Young master. Li Degui is covered in corpse spots. He's been dead for seven days!"

Xie An sucked in a sharp breath.

A bone-piercing chill flooded him from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.

Dead for seven days?

But just now... Li Degui had been speaking to me perfectly normally.

Hadn't the taxes just been collected today? Who was collecting taxes outside now?

He suddenly recalled what the old Daoist and Li Degui had said earlier: the tenants had fled because a grain collector came to their doors every night...

Had the tenants been telling the truth?

Tax collection was not like ordinary extortionate levies. Every payment had to be recorded and reported to the central Ministry of Revenue for verification.

What grain collector would dare demand taxes every night?

"Clang, clang, clang... Grain collection! Pay your taxes..."

The harsh, shrill clang of the brass gong continued. It sounded like someone laughing, yet also like someone crying. Rather than a festive tune, it resembled a funeral dirge played all the way to the graveside.

And the gong was drawing closer and closer to the Li residence.

In an instant, the temperature around them plummeted. The cold kept burrowing into Xie An's bones.

Xie An frowned and glanced down at the hand warmer in his arms.

The hand warmer... had gone completely cold!

It had just been filled with hot water...

"Clang, clang, clang... Grain collection! Pay your taxes..."

The gong and the calls for grain crept closer to the courtyard gate. When they reached it... they abruptly stopped!

Then-

"Tap, tap!"

Two slow, mechanical, halting knocks sounded at the gate.

Zhao Hu stood in front of Xie An with his saber held crosswise, staring fixedly at the gate.

A faint, cold tingling slowly crawled up Xie An's spine.

Just then-

"Thump!"

The third knock suddenly grew heavier!

It was as though a dull, tremendous force had struck the gate, carrying a strange rhythm that was mechanical and slow, yet unmistakable.

Xie An instinctively felt... whatever was knocking was not human!

Immediately afterward, the firmly secured bolt began sliding sideways, inch by inch, with a scraping hiss... though nothing was touching it.

A smell mingling sandalwood and rotten fruit poured through the crack in the gate.

Click.

A deathly pale hand slowly squeezed through the gap.

The hand had no fingernails. Like a piece of wax swollen in water and then dried out, it pushed the gate open little by little.

Clack!

Then a "person" appeared outside.

It was the tax clerk who had greeted Xie An earlier that day. Dressed in dark blue official clothing, he held a ledger in his left hand and a weasel-hair brush in his right. A blackened brass gong and mallet hung at his waist. His pale skin clung in wrinkles to his skull, his eyes were sunken like a dried corpse's, and he gave off a corpse stench like rotten fruit.

That tax clerk had been dead all along too?

Then what kind of taxes had he been collecting during the day...?

Every hair on Xie An's body stood on end, and a sheen of fine sweat broke out across his forehead.

"Grain collection! Pay your taxes... Straw markers mark the due, red ink strikes the ledger through. Those with money, weigh out silver. Those without... fill the granary with your remaining years. The Underworld Ledger allows no credit, hee-hee..." Standing outside the gate, the clerk spoke in a hoarse, sobbing voice and looked at Zhao Hu in the courtyard. "Have you paid your grave tax?"

Zhao Hu did not answer.

The clerk asked several more times. When Zhao Hu still gave no answer, he opened a mouth split all the way to his ears, revealing two rows of dense, crocodile-like fangs. Foul saliva dripped from their tips onto the ground with a steady patter.

The clerk moved to enter, but the yellow lantern bearing the words "Dragon King's Blessing" above the gate shone on him, making his body sizzle like beans in a frying pan. Finally, he gritted his teeth and reluctantly drew back, remaining outside.

Then the clerk turned toward Xie An. "Grain collection! Pay your taxes-straw markers mark the due, red ink strikes the ledger through. Those with money, weigh out silver. Those without... fill the granary with your remaining years. The Underworld Ledger allows no credit, hee-hee... Have you paid your grave tax?"

Xie An abruptly remembered the old Daoist's final words that morning: let no living soul answer here, do not answer...

At the time, Xie An had assumed they were merely a ritual chant. Now, remembering them... sent a chill down his back!

Besides, there had always been a folk taboo: "When a ghost asks, do not answer."

Previously, Xie An had thought such things were nothing but strange tales and had paid them little heed. Now that he had actually encountered one, how could he dare answer?

The clerk asked several more times. Hearing no reply, he turned away in fury, took the brass gong and mallet from his waist, and struck it as he went knocking from door to door.

"Clang, clang, clang...

Grain collection! Pay your taxes-straw markers mark the due, red ink strikes the ledger through. Those with money, weigh out silver. Those without... fill the granary with your remaining years. The Underworld Ledger allows no credit, hee-hee... Have you paid your grave tax?"

"...Hee-hee... Have you paid your grave tax?"

As the gong and the calls receded into the distance, peace returned to the courtyard. The smell of rotten fruit hanging around them gradually faded.

Xie An's legs went weak. Only then did he realize his inner clothes were soaked in sweat.

That tax clerk just now... definitely wasn't human.

What on earth had happened... to Li Family Village?

Everything had been fine during the day, but once night fell... it was like another world.

Gulp.

Beside him, Zhao Hu swallowed, his voice trembling. "Young master, I'm afraid we've run into one of those ghostly things from folk tales... That was fucking terrifying. Should we wait until tomorrow to leave?"

Clutching the stone-cold hand warmer, Xie An gradually regained his composure. "Li Family Village is even more frightening by day than by night. We're not waiting. Take down that yellow lantern above the gate and hang it on the carriage. We're leaving tonight."

"Yes."

Zhao Hu had served as the Xie Household's chief enforcer for many years and was a Bone Tempering martial artist. With a few bounding steps, he took down the lantern above the gate and hung it on the carriage outside. "Young master, get in quickly."

Xie An dared not linger either. He hurried over and leaped into the carriage.

"Hyah!"

Zhao Hu flicked the reins, driving the horse swiftly toward the village entrance.

Sitting inside the carriage, Xie An was still shaken. He could not help lifting the side-window curtain to look outside. The sky had gone completely dark, and rotting corpses lay scattered across the empty streets.

The children he had seen chasing one another earlier now lay stiff on the ground, giving off a stench.

The traveling peddler who had been calling out his wares lay slumped over his stall, dead for days.

Even the old Daoist who had performed the ritual at the village entrance had become a dried corpse wrapped in yellow robes!

A gray, withered gloom filled the entire village. The stench of rotting corpses hit him in the face, turning his stomach.

The villagers who had been so lively during the day... not one of them was alive. They were all corpses that had died long ago.

Only... he did not see the grain-collecting tax clerk's corpse at the village entrance!

"Zhao Hu, faster! Go faster!"

How could Zhao Hu dare linger? He drove the horse at a flying gallop.

Only when the carriage burst out of the village and reached the main road did Xie An relax a little. Looking back from afar, he saw a layer of dark red mist shrouding the sky above all of Li Family Village.

Li Family Village was far too sinister.

Xie An pressed a hand to his chest, trying to calm his heart as it pounded like a drum.

The sudden turn of events had sharply awakened the vigilance buried deep within him.

In this world, the court was rotten, natural disasters struck frequently, man-made calamities never ceased, locusts and plagues ravaged the land, the people could barely survive, and resentment rose to the heavens...

All that would have been bad enough, but now there were sinister happenings like those in Li Family Village.

"I thought this was just an ordinary martial-arts world ruled by a dynasty... I thought having a decent family fortune would let me coast through life. Now it seems... this world holds terrible horrors!"

With demons and ghosts around, no amount of money would help.

"I finally got a chance to transmigrate. I can't die again."

At that thought, Xie An squeezed his eyes shut.

When he opened them again, a red mirror appeared before him, visible only to him. Several lines of text surfaced on it:

[Ten-Thousand Questions Martial Arts Model Lv1: Awaiting activation]

[Host: Xie An]

[Sex: Male]

[Age: 16]

[Identity: Eldest legitimate son of Xie Zhengtang, salt merchant of Qingwu County]

[Vitality: 0.8 (baseline for an adult man: 1)]

[Spirit: 0.9 (baseline for an adult man: 1)]

[Martial arts realm: None]

[Talent: None]

The mirror had appeared as soon as he transmigrated.

It just needed to be activated.

At a glance, it seemed to be an AI model much like certain chatbots from his previous life. Except this Ten Thousand Questions was a model dedicated to martial arts.

Xie An looked out at the dark mass of mountains, his brow tightly furrowed.

"The imperial court is rotten, the world rotten to the core. Desiccated corpses hang from locust trees, and grain-collecting ghosts come at night... Can this martial arts grand model help me survive and make a life for myself?"