Fifth Uncle was alone in the plantation. All the other guards had taken their Hunting Dogs to prepare for the wild boars crossing the river. Only Fifth Uncle stood here.
This was Fifth Uncle's Rubber Plantation.
The spot where Fifth Uncle stood was a forbidden area he had set aside.
He allowed no one but himself to come here, which meant Spider, scorpions, and centipedes swarmed the place. Fifth Uncle was not angered by these venomous creatures. He used a knife to chop up the wild boar entrails in the bucket beside him, then tossed them onto the ground.
Drawing out those venomous creatures.
Spider and scorpions clustered in dense masses, fighting over the entrails. Fifth Uncle stood to one side, as though something inside his body was about to emerge.
Mushrooms of every kind covered the place: large, small, gray, white, and multicolored. They grew unchecked, nourished by the rain, sprouting from the earth like Niu dung.
Fifth Uncle was not smoking a Cigar, yet the smoke he exhaled was as colorful as the surrounding miasma.
After he breathed it out, his silhouette seemed like some kind of wild beast amid a dreamlike haze, changing in ways that could not be seen.
Inhuman.
One mottled python after another slithered out of the mist. Then a huge dog covered in human-faced sores ran out as well. They disgorged great quantities of flesh and blood, then swallowed the venomous creatures here, completing the first feast of Incense Offerings.
Completing the first offering of flesh and blood.
Chewing sounds rose from the mist, but Fifth Uncle remained expressionless. He was not the one devouring the flesh and blood. He simply looked down at the scene before him, long accustomed to it.
Years of planning were nearly ready to bear fruit.
Fifth Uncle