Six-Year Tribulation

The matter of Ma Laosan's wife was settled. The next day, someone discovered her body where Dad had dumped it in the hills behind the village. But it no longer looked as hideous as it had the night before. The fangs were gone, along with the sharp nails. It was just an ordinary corpse again, and Ma Laosan buried her once more.

The commotion at our house that night had been tremendous, with ghostly wails and all sorts of strange noises in the middle of the night. Yet not a single person dared come out to look, mainly because the sounds were so terrifying. Even Ma Laosan, who suspected his wife might have come looking for us that night, didn't dare ask at our house. The matter was simply left at that.

Three days later, I woke up, but I ran a high fever for several days afterward. I was so feverish that I barely knew what was happening, giving Mom, Dad, and Grandpa quite a scare.

During the fever, a beautiful white fox kept appearing in my mind. It lay there quietly, with eight white tails, occasionally opening its eyes. It looked terribly weak.

Because of my high fever, Grandpa made a special trip to the hospital in town to ask Granny Liu what was wrong with me.

Granny Liu simply reassured Grandpa that he needn't worry. She said the Immortal inside me had already been very weak and was recuperating within my body. This time, the Immortal had suddenly manifested to save me, damaging its vital essence. The Immortal and I were one body, two souls, so when its vital essence was damaged, I would grow weak as well. I would be fine in a few days.

Grandpa returned home, half convinced. To his surprise, things went exactly as Granny Liu had said. After several days of high fever, I returned to normal.

After I recovered this time, for some reason, my dependence on blood was no longer as strong as before. I could eat other things too. Everyone at home was delighted and felt that something good had come out of the disaster.

When I was first born, I had been a dreadful sight: a fox's face, white fur all over my body, and little pointed teeth in my mouth. Now that I was over three, all those features had disappeared. Only my need to drink blood remained, and even that had improved considerably.

My parents and Grandpa didn't ask much of me. They only hoped I could grow up healthy and stay alive. But a heavy weight hung over all their hearts. Both Wu Banxian back then and Granny Liu afterward had said I was a Tribulation-Bound Person. Every three years, a tribulation would come, and either I would die or someone else would. It was like an inescapable curse, haunting everyone in the family.

I should mention that after the incident with Ma Laosan's wife, the Yellow Weasels and foxes still often came to our house in the middle of the night to bring wild game. They just didn't come as frequently as before, perhaps because my craving for blood was no longer so strong.

After I turned three, everything gradually settled down, and I grew up healthy, just like an ordinary child.

But the villagers still saw me as a freak. None of the children wanted to play with me, which left me terribly lonely.

Three more years passed in the blink of an eye. I was six now, a sensible child who often helped my family with the housework.

This made everyone at home believe I had become a normal child, because by the time I was nearly six, I had stopped drinking blood altogether and ate regular meals just like the rest of the family.

Sometimes, when my parents went out to work in the fields, they took me along. They didn't feel comfortable leaving me at home alone.

Whenever that happened, a group of foxes and Yellow Weasels would appear from who knew where and gather around me.

In our area, Yellow Weasels and foxes were considered spiritually aware creatures. Most people both respected and feared them, keeping well out of their way whenever they saw them.

I, however, wasn't afraid of them at all. I even felt a natural closeness to them. The Yellow Weasels and foxes weren't afraid of me either. They all lay down around me in a circle, letting me stroke them and play with them however I pleased without running away. Even if I hurt them, they didn't dare bare their teeth at me. Only when they saw my parents returning would they retreat into the distance.

Those Yellow Weasels and foxes were pretty much my best childhood playmates.

Although everything about me had seemed normal over those three years, Grandpa still worried about my once-every-three-years tribulation.

The day before my sixth birthday, Grandpa went to Thirty-Li Hamlet himself to find Granny Liu. He intended to invite her over to help me survive my six-year tribulation.

In fact, Granny Liu had stayed in touch with our family all those years. Every holiday, my parents took gifts to her house and visited her.

After all, she had lost an eye saving our family.

Granny Liu had no surviving children, and her husband had died long ago. She lived alone.

She had actually had children before, more than one, but all of them had died before reaching the age of three.

Because Granny Liu had saved our whole family, Grandpa told my parents to care for her as devotedly as they would their own mother.

With my sixth birthday coming the next day, Grandpa was worried that something beyond our ability to handle might happen again. So he went to invite Granny Liu over, hoping to prepare in advance.

But no sooner had Grandpa left than trouble struck at home.

It began with the Zhang Family, a wealthy household in the village. There were five brothers in the family, and the youngest had reached marriageable age. He planned to build a new house and take a wife, so he seized the private plot where we grew vegetables without even saying a word to us. When Dad heard about it, he went to reason with the youngest Zhang brother. Their argument quickly turned into a fight. Although the youngest brother was young and strong, he was no match for Dad. Grandpa had served in the army in his youth and trained in martial arts, and he had taught Dad a little as well.

After getting the worst of the fight, the youngest Zhang brother brought his brothers over that very afternoon to make trouble for Dad. A fight broke out right in our courtyard.

As the saying went, two fists were no match for four hands, let alone all five brothers attacking together. Dad was soon knocked to the ground. The youngest Zhang brother beat him the most viciously, swinging a shovel so hard it nearly broke.

Mom tried to stop them, but she was shoved to the ground too and could only cry helplessly.

At six years old, seeing Dad being beaten made me lose my head. I charged straight over, wrapped my arms around the youngest Zhang brother's thigh, and bit him.

The youngest Zhang brother screamed in pain, cursed me as a freak, and slapped me to the ground.

As I lay on the ground, my face burning with pain, I suddenly saw several weasels and foxes appear on our courtyard wall. Every pair of eyes was fixed on the youngest Zhang brother, filled with venomous hatred.

The same thing had happened the last time, when Ma Laosan's wife hit me.

Dad, whose head was covered in blood from the beating, flew into a rage when he saw me get hit. Like a madman, he struggled to his feet, rushed into the house, and came out with Grandpa's big broadsword...