Chapter 10

She was so sleepy and exhausted that she could not remember whether she had fainted from fright or drifted off in utter fatigue. When she woke with a start, daylight already filled the sky.

Wei Xun and Thirteenth Son were huddled under the veranda, chatting in low voices. The donkey was wandering about the courtyard for exercise. Everything looked perfectly normal, as though the strange disturbances of last night had been nothing but a bizarre dream.

Thirteenth Son was complaining, "Do this first. Once the dagger smells of fish, how are you going to slice pears with it?"

Wei Xun replied impatiently, "Just bite into it. Why do you need pear slices?"

Thirteenth Son complained again, "I only asked because Eldest Brother's blade is so quick. You're eager enough to prepare sliced raw fish for Ninth Lady, but the moment I want something vegetarian, I'm a nuisance."

Baozhu stared blankly for a while, her eyes still heavy with sleep, then lowered her head and counted the arrows left in her quiver. Sure enough, six were missing. She bent down, picked up a broken roof tile from the corner, and hurled it hard at Wei Xun's back.

Without even turning his head, he reached back and caught the tile with swift, nimble ease, then casually tossed it into the courtyard.

"Ninth Lady is awake."

Thirteenth Son called to her, "There's sliced raw fish for breakfast. Come quickly!"

Baozhu smoothed her hair and brushed the straw from her clothes, then trudged listlessly out of the main hall onto the surrounding veranda. Wei Xun was sitting there, concentrating intently on slicing fish.

She could not make out exactly how his hands moved. All she saw were snow-white slices of fish flying from beneath them, translucent and gleaming, thinner than paper, light enough to stir in the breeze.

"Were you dead asleep last night? There was all that commotion, and you never made a sound. Were you too scared to move, or were you deliberately trying to frighten me?" Her anger had yet to subside.

Only after he had finished preparing an entire side of the fish did Wei Xun wipe his hands and pull a wooden board from beneath the veranda. Three feathered arrows were sticking out of it.

"I was up on the beam. I wasn't trying to frighten you. I was simply curious who was behind the tricks."

Baozhu was startled. Recalling the details of the previous night, she felt a nameless terror and asked in a trembling voice, "If you were on the beam, who was sleeping in the coffin?!"

"You can go and see for yourself, Ninth Lady."

He hardly needed to tell her. Baozhu hurried back into the main hall and examined the eastern side closely. The money pouch lay coiled inside the coffin, wrapped in one of Wei Xun's blue robes. The room was so broad that candlelight could not reach its far end, leaving everything indistinct in the shadows. Baozhu also thought the coffin unlucky; unless she went close enough to inspect it, she would never see through this simple deception.

But when had he disguised the pouch as himself, and how had he climbed soundlessly onto a beam more than twenty feet above the floor?

Unable to make sense of it, Baozhu demanded angrily, "What exactly were you doing up on that beam?!"

"Climb high and you can see far. From there, I could look down on everything happening in the courtyard and the room. The moment the other fellow moved, I could give him a fright. Who knew you were so fierce and brave that there was no need for me to lift a finger?"

He pointed at the board and said admiringly, "Good thing I blocked them. Having you punch three holes through me would have been unpleasant."

Baozhu turned on Thirteenth Son next. "If he was on the beam, then you were the one playing ghost in the courtyard?"

Thirteenth Son waved both hands wildly, hastily denying it. "I only got back this morning. It had nothing to do with me!"

Baozhu asked in bewilderment, "Then who was it? Was the place really haunted?"

Wei Xun did not answer. Instead, he pointed at the fish. "No hurry. Eat while it's fresh."

Baozhu suspended her questioning and sat down with a belly full of doubts, for she truly was ravenous.

Fresh fish cut into thin strips or slices and eaten raw was called "kuai." At a banquet, it was an unremarkable dish, merely a cold platter to make up the numbers, but here it rivaled delicacies from mountains and seas. Though they had neither orange juice nor plum sauce for dipping, Wei Xun had gathered a handful of some unnamed wild herb and crushed it into a seasoning to cut the richness and fishiness. The fish was wonderfully smooth and tender, filling her mouth with sweet freshness.

As she ate, she asked, "Did you go out early to buy fish?"

Thirteenth Son answered before Wei Xun could. "After I came back, Senior Brother caught it fresh from the river. In weather this hot, raw fish has to be eaten straight out of the water, or it can upset your stomach."

Suddenly remembering something, Wei Xun joked, "Don't say I didn't warn you. This fish bears the imperial surname."

Baozhu was enjoying her meal too much to care about that. She promptly said, "Haven't you heard the story of Censor Lou eating fish?"

Back when Emperor Zetian ruled, her devotion to Buddhism had led her to issue a ban on slaughter, forbidding the common people to eat meat. Lou Shide went to Guanzhong on official business, and a servant brought him a dish of mutton at mealtime. Lou Shide asked, "The sovereign strictly forbids slaughter. How can there be mutton?" The servant said, "This sheep was killed by a jackal." Lou Shide praised it. "What a considerate jackal." So he ate the mutton. The servant then brought him a plate of sliced raw fish. Lou Shide asked again, and the servant replied, "This fish was also killed by a jackal." Lou Shide scolded him. "You fool! How could a jackal kill a fish? You should have said an otter killed it."

This widely circulated tale was a famous joke about how those below found ways around the rules imposed from above. Baozhu deliberately recounted it, then added, "If anyone asks, Lynx caught today's fish. What a considerate Lynx!"

The instant she said this, Wei Xun stiffened. Thirteenth Son burst into helpless laughter, clutching his belly. He fell backward on the spot and rolled right off the veranda.

Baozhu was baffled. "The story is funny, but surely it doesn't warrant all that?" She looked at Wei Xun, but he turned his head away, showing a rare trace of embarrassment.

Only after Thirteenth Son had laughed his fill, wiped the tears from his face, and scrambled back up onto the veranda did he explain. "It's not Censor Lou who's funny. It's what you said, Ninth Lady. Eldest Brother's childhood name is Lynx. So it really is 'fish caught by Lynx,' isn't it?"

Hearing this, Baozhu was mortified. To think she had unknowingly called him by his childhood name to his face! Her peach-soft cheeks flushed, and she lowered her head in embarrassment. Then she privately reflected that his steps were light and nimble, and he could move soundlessly among the beams. No wonder he had been given that name.

Once, Tibet had sent a litter of lynxes as tribute, and she had received one. The animal resembled a cat, with a tuft of upright black fur on each ear tip. It was majestic and alert, yet fluffy and wonderfully docile. When she hunted, she would lay a blanket over her horse's rump and have it sit there, accompanying her and pouncing on prey with greater ferocity than a hunting dog. She had adored it, sharing her carriage when she went out and her bed when she slept, and affectionately called it "Lynx." What an unexpected coincidence!

The atmosphere grew awkward, and neither of them felt comfortable speaking first. They ate in silence for a while. Watching his knife work flow like drifting clouds and running water, Baozhu found it a pleasure to behold. Hoping to change the subject, she asked, "What is your dagger called?"

Wei Xun kept his head lowered over the fish and said quietly, "A dagger."

"It looks like an antique."

Thirteenth Son boasted, "It is an antique. Master dug it out of an ancient tomb from the Spring and Autumn or Warring States period and gave it to Eldest Brother, whose martial skills are the best."

Baozhu said in surprise, "There's a bronze-script inscription on the blade. If it's ancient, then it's a fine weapon with a history. Using it as a table knife is putting a great talent to petty work."

Wei Xun said casually, "I can't read ancient characters, and Master never explained. Since he gave it to me, I use it like any ordinary dagger."

Baozhu sighed. "If it were a longsword, all the grandees would be fighting over such a treasure. A pity it's only a dagger."

Wei Xun said, "When it was unearthed, it was a short sword rusted into an iron rod. Master said it was too short to serve as a ceremonial sword and too long to hide inside one's robes as a concealed weapon. Neither civil nor martial, utterly useless. So he ground three inches off it."

Baozhu felt considerable regret at this. To think the leader of those Tomb-Robbing bandits was so narrow-minded and extreme that he would casually mutilate a treasure instead of cherishing it. In that respect, he rather resembled the person she remembered.

"I think this character is probably 'fish.' Could this dagger be..."

Wei Xun smiled and interrupted her speculation. "Then isn't it just right for slicing fish?"

After breakfast, Baozhu was still thinking about the arrows she had shot into the courtyard. Taking advantage of the bright daylight, she searched the weeds for a while, but found only the two that had missed. The third was gone, leaving just a small patch of blood on the ground.

Wei Xun said, "Your aim is good, but your arm strength is lacking. Unless you hit a vital spot, you'll only inflict a flesh wound."

Baozhu was a little dispirited to hear him pinpoint the problem. "I used to kill gazelles and wild boars within fifty paces without difficulty. After this ordeal, I've lost a great deal of strength." She considered for a moment, then said gravely, "A real ghost wouldn't bleed."

Wei Xun nodded. "Someone was playing ghost last night. The skull on the spirit screen and the skeletal corpse slumped over the window were all there to frighten people."

Baozhu said indignantly, "They nearly scared my soul out of me."

By now it was broad daylight, and Thirteenth Son had returned. She felt that yang energy had overcome yin, and with her courage somewhat restored, she wanted to explore the haunted mansion again.

Seen in sunlight, the skulls were yellowed and cracked, anonymous remains scavenged from some unknown mass grave. They had deliberately been placed at corners, on wall tops, and in other spots that invited the imagination to run wild. The skulls certainly had not jumped up there themselves.

The bloodstained clothing on the skeletal remains looked even more striking in sunlight. But on reflection, old bloodstains should long since have turned dark brown, not remained so vividly red.

"This actually... isn't blood, is it?"

Wei Xun looked and said, "It was dyed with madder."

Remembering the terrors of last night, Baozhu saw again in her mind the vivid blood-red stains beneath the dim candlelight. She remained silent for a long time. She recalled the night she had fallen gravely ill and vomited blood. That blood, too, had been as bright as this madder dye.

A question slowly surfaced: had it really been blood?

She could not sleep deeply if there was light, and everyone who attended her knew it. Even for a short afternoon nap, the maids would draw every curtain in the hall, and after dusk they dared not use particularly bright palace lamps. Beneath the dim candlelight, she had vomited a crimson liquid, fishy and sweet, into a silver spittoon. A maid had immediately cried out in alarm and sent someone to fetch the imperial physicians.

Had the spittoon changed color? Her belly had hurt so badly that she had lain down as soon as she finished vomiting, without looking. Wei Xun had said he had tested for poison in her mouth, yet found no sign of poisoning. Perhaps it had merely been the color of the pomegranate drink she had taken before bed? Like these "bloodstained clothes" dyed red with madder, horrifying at first glance, but actually something else entirely.

Such a small misunderstanding could have been exposed simply by lighting the palace lamps and examining it closely. Even if the maids knew no better, the imperial physicians could not have mistaken it. How, then, could she have "died of poisoning after vomiting blood"?

A faint, twisting pain slowly rose from her abdomen and spread into her chest. Baozhu dared not think any further. She had fled Chang'an like someone covering her ears while stealing a bell, not because she was helpless, but because she feared the truth-more than she feared ghosts.

Baozhu forced herself to rally and return to the present. "It seems the person behind these tricks isn't very clever, and rather careless too. I wonder whether he found Wealthy Landowner Fang's treasure."

Wei Xun said, "It seems not. Otherwise, he wouldn't have dug three feet into the ground."

Viewed in daylight, the courtyard of the Fang Family Mansion had lost its ghostly air. Weeds grew in patches, and although someone had deliberately concealed the places where the earth had been dug up and searched, to an expert like Wei Xun the disturbed soil was as obvious as lice on a bald man's head. He pointed out each spot to her. Wealthy households commonly buried money on their estates. Wealthy Master Fang had even boasted of having treasure at home while he was alive, making it all the more tempting to thieves.

The bones used to frighten people in the mansion might have been dragged from a neglected grave by the thief, or belonged to someone he had murdered. Bent in two over the windowsill with its backside sticking up, the skeleton seemed pitiful. The two fellow disciples dug a pit in the courtyard and buried it together with the skulls.

Baozhu frowned. "The strangest thing is that storeroom deep inside the mansion. Who locked it? If someone coveted the treasure, why didn't he search inside? The lock is covered in dust. Why don't we look while it's still light?"

Wei Xun paused, and his smile faded. "There really are ghosts in that room. You'd better not go."

His words surprised not only Baozhu but Thirteenth Son as well. His senior brother was rebellious by nature. Not only did he disbelieve in ghosts and spirits, he took a particular interest whenever he heard of such things, insisting on experiencing them himself to satisfy his curiosity. Such caution was thoroughly unlike him.

Though Baozhu feared ghosts, the sun was now blazing overhead, and she did not believe any malevolent spirit would dare appear in daylight. Her domineering streak surfaced, and she ordered him to open the locked storeroom so she could see for herself.

With her pressing him as though hounding him to his death, Wei Xun sighed softly, drew his dagger, and flicked its tip at the lock, slicing it apart.

The three entered through the door. Baozhu saw heaps of miscellaneous clutter inside, all rotten and moldy. Never mind treasure-there was not a single usable household object. But when she looked up, she saw dozens of hemp ropes and torn strips of cloth hanging from the six intersecting roof beams, swaying in the breeze and filling the room with a sinister chill.

She cried, "Ah!" and suddenly understood. These were all ropes used for hanging oneself. The bodies were long gone, but she could still imagine the harrowing sight of dozens of people hanging themselves together, their corpses swaying in the wind. Her hair stood on end, and her whole body turned cold. Step by step, she backed out of the doorway. Wei Xun closed the doors.

Baozhu sat on the steps for a long while before recovering. Seeing the sympathetic, "I told you not to go in" expression on Wei Xun's face, she asked, "Did you already know what was inside?"

Wei Xun answered, "I glanced in. I didn't see clearly, but I could more or less guess."

Distraught, she murmured, "How... how could so many people hang themselves together..."

"They must have faced a situation in which none of them could survive. Perhaps it happened when marauding soldiers passed through years ago. Had it been famine, they would have left bones scattered across the ground-an even more inhuman tragedy."

"If later people collected the bodies, why didn't they take the hanging ropes too?"

"Corpses left to rot breed pestilence, and the stench is unbearable. They had to be cleared away. As for the ropes... people say the souls of those who hang themselves remain in the ropes. Terribly unlucky things. There was nothing valuable left inside anyway, so they simply locked the doors and pretended the storeroom didn't exist."

She had never imagined that the most terrifying part of this ill-fated mansion had nothing to do with ghosts, but was instead a tragedy that had taken place in the human world.

After the storeroom doors were closed, Thirteenth Son stood outside and recited a few lines of scripture to release the souls, asking the roomful of hanged ghosts to hurry on to their next lives. These wronged souls had been powerless to resist their fate while alive, and were probably just as ineffectual in death, unable even to stop a thief from digging up their own courtyard.

By now, the truth was all but plain. Someone wanted to find the treasure hidden in Wealthy Master Fang's home and had used the tragedies that genuinely occurred there to spread rumors and play ghost, keeping anyone else from moving in. The traveling merchants who had once stopped here for the night had most likely been frightened to death by this trickster.

Returning to the main hall, Baozhu located the patch of dried blood in the courtyard, then parted the weeds and searched until she reached a collapsed section of wall. Bloodstains and scrape marks remained at its base. The man had clearly climbed over here to escape.

Standing by the broken wall and gazing out for a while, Baozhu hesitated. Under normal circumstances, she need only inform the local authorities. But now she did not even have a proper identity. What standing did she have to report a crime? After such a fright, must she simply pretend to be deaf and dumb and leave?

While she was wavering, Wei Xun and Thirteenth Son had already prepared the donkey and their luggage for departure. Baozhu could not help reproaching him. "You should have followed that man when he ran away last night. At least you could have beaten him up to vent our anger."

Wei Xun did not argue. He merely said, "That was my fault." Then he told Thirteenth Son, "You two go ahead and wait in the county town of Xinfeng County. I'll be back shortly."

Baozhu sensed something amiss. "Where are you going? What are you doing?"

Wei Xun said offhandedly, "A little errand."

Baozhu stared at him blankly. "The man's gone, and the tea's gone cold. Surely you aren't thinking of chasing him now?"

Wei Xun smiled. "Making amends for my mistake. Besides, he can't be left alone."

As he spoke, he took out something wrapped in a tattered cloth and handed it to Baozhu. She accepted it and looked inside. It was a pointed knife, honed to a dazzling shine.

"He dropped it outside the wall when he fled last night."

The weapon had a blade a foot long and two inches wide at the base, with a keenly sharpened point. The handle, however, was crudely made, wrapped in dirty, tattered cloth to prevent slipping. Breaking into a private home armed with a knife was an entirely different matter from a "haunted mansion."

"If I had a hundred guards with me, I could guarantee we'd find a deer wounded by an arrow. Where are you going to find an injured man?"

Wei Xun answered, "A wounded deer has neither name nor surname, but a man has a home to return to. If we know who he is, it won't take much effort. Smell this knife."

Baozhu frowned. Though thoroughly disgusted, she could not overcome her curiosity and gave it a cautious sniff. A powerful fishy stench rushed into her nose. This was a fish-gutting knife.

She exclaimed, "Ah!"