A towering chain of snowy peaks stretched between heaven and earth, its summits piercing the clouds. On either side lay vast, dense forests and wilderness, rarely touched by human feet.
This place was called Two-World Ridge, the most remote frontier of the Great Jin Dynasty, which had endured for nearly a thousand years in the southern Central Plains...
Two-World Ridge divided two worlds; in the Wild Spirit Land, no human life stirred. Since ancient times, the Wild Spirit Land beyond Two-World Ridge had been forbidden ground for humanity! No commoner who strayed into it ever returned alive!
What lay in the Wild Spirit Land? How vast was it? No one had ever been able to say... Only the impoverished people living along its outskirts passed down tales from generation to generation...
Within it lurked man-eating demons and savage beasts! There were mists and swamps that swallowed people, mountain ghosts and wandering spirits, and countless horrors and strange terrors...
It was a realm of ghosts upon the mortal earth! Only the intimidating might of immortals from the upper realm kept those demons and monsters from crossing Two-World Mountain!
No one knew what that ghostly realm was like! But the mortal world was bitter...
A half-grown boy in ragged clothes, looking like a beggar, was leading an equally ragged old man with a bamboo pole. The two trudged along a rugged mountain path, shuffling forward one step at a time.
Lü Bufan wiped the sweat running down his face, his sleeve mixing it with the grime and leaving a black smear across his skin.
The old man let the boy lead him like a walking corpse, his clouded eyes looking as though they had been blind for years.
The boy's stomach began to rumble. Swaying, he sat down on the ground and said to the old man behind him, "Other people stumble across benefactors. Failing that, they can at least pick up a wife or a silver ingot... Even a copper coin would do! How come I picked up a living ancestor I have to wait on? We had a perfectly good Land God Temple to stay in back in Iron Bridge Town. Why come here and make all this trouble? Master... Are you hungry?"
"Get lost..."
"Oh! So you're not hungry..."
The boy sighed and slowly fished a blackened piece of dry flatbread from inside his clothes. All sorts of unidentifiable wild greens were mixed into it, and his sweat had soaked it until it gave off a sour, spoiled smell.
Yet as he looked at this last scrap of food... That sour smell seemed wonderfully fragrant!
He had just brought the flatbread to his mouth when he heard his master's stomach rumble like thunder...
"Fine, fine! I'll give you half..." Though he said half, his hands broke off well over half the bread, which he then eagerly placed in his master's hand.
But the filthy old wretch merely held it under his nose and sniffed... "Stinks! Feed it to a pig..."
"I'm a pig! Happy now? If you won't eat it, I will!"
The boy snatched the bread back resentfully and swallowed it in a few bites. Then he stood up and looked around. "Wait here. I'll go find some wild fruit or something. If it's sour, you're not allowed to get angry!"
The old beggar said nothing... The boy took a few steps, then turned back to warn him, "Don't go wandering off! We're nearly at Two-World Ridge. One wrong move and you could lose your life!"
The old beggar turned toward the boy, then pointed at his own clouded eyes. "Half-blind! Can't go anywhere..."
"True, you've got nowhere to go anyway... I really don't know why you insisted on coming to this damned place! There's nobody to tell fortunes for, and you can't beg a meal either. There isn't even a village..." Muttering, the boy ducked into the forest to search for wild fruit.
"Caw... Caw..." Suddenly, a crow, an uncommon sight in this forest, landed on a branch beside the path. Its dark red eyes stared fixedly at the old beggar sitting blankly by the roadside, giving it an eerie air.
The old beggar slowly turned his head. His gray, clouded eyes swept over the crow, and a mocking smile curled at his lips... "I'm already in this sorry state, and you've still come to laugh at me? Get lost..."
An inexplicable chill spread outward, like an icy wind blowing up from a deep ravine. The crow seemed startled and flapped into the air... It flew all the way out of the valley, cawing loudly, as though mocking the old beggar's misery and wretched state.
About the time it took to drink a cup of tea later, the bushes nearby parted, and the boy came running back excitedly, wiping sweat and bits of grass from his face. In his hands, he held a banana leaf wrapped around a pile of wild apricots.
"You've got me to thank for this! There's a wild apricot tree beside the stream over there. I fought a few monkeys and picked some apricots to bring back! They're not too sour. Try them..."
The old beggar opened his mouth and groped for the apricots, then lifted his backside and shifted several feet to one side... Puzzled, the boy asked, "What are you hiding from?"
The old beggar stuffed an apricot into his mouth and mumbled, "Monkeys..."
"What? Hiding from monkeys? They were just a few half-grown little brats. I chased them off with stones ages ago... How could they be a match for me, Lü Bufan? Heh heh... Ow! Who threw a stone at me?"
Clutching the back of his head, Lü Bufan jumped up. He turned to look and saw a dozen or so large monkeys with yellow fur and blue faces clinging to the tree beside him.
The sturdy-looking one at their head seemed to be the monkey king, and it was baring its teeth at him!
The seven or eight monkeys beside the monkey king were actually clutching stones in their paws and eyeing Lü Bufan with ill intent... Three or four half-grown youngsters clung to the backs of several female monkeys farther behind, screeching at Lü Bufan on the ground!
"You little bastards actually went home and tattled?" Clutching his aching head, Lü Bufan stamped his feet in fury at the monkeys in the tree. "Fine! So you think you can hit me? Just wait. Grandpa here will show you what's what..."
Lü Bufan reached down to pick up a stone. The moment the monkey king saw him, it bared its teeth and let out a shrill cry... At once, the seven or eight sturdy adult monkeys began pelting Lü Bufan with stones from above!
The stones came clattering down. Their aim might have been poor, but they still made Lü Bufan suffer!
Sheltered in the tree and exceptionally nimble, the monkeys thwarted every one of Lü Bufan's desperate, death-defying counterattacks... In the end, all he could do was scramble about, dodging in utter disgrace!
Fortunately, the monkeys had nothing at their waists but furry little peckers, not pockets, so they had brought few stones. Otherwise, Lü Bufan would have seriously wondered whether these vicious monkeys would stone him to death in the forest.
The monkeys won a sweeping victory, pelting Lü Bufan until he cried for his father and mother, his face bruised and swollen. By the end, he only dared hold up a few banana leaves as a feeble shield.
Seeing that it had gained the upper hand, the monkey king gave several delighted, triumphant shrieks... Then, as a final insult, it even performed the special feat of dangling one-handed from the treetop and pissing in Lü Bufan's direction!
Then, under the admiring gazes of the other monkeys, the monkey king vanished into the forest with a victor's pride.
Lü Bufan wiped away his nosebleed and limped over to the old beggar, who was hiding to one side and eating the last apricot. He flopped onto the grass with a thud... "Master! You've got no loyalty... You didn't even come help..."
The old beggar stretched his neck and swallowed the last pitted apricot. Rolling his eyes, he said, "What's loyalty? Can you drink it like wine?"
Lü Bufan rolled his eyes at this master he had picked up and said resentfully, "You looked rich back then. Who knew all you did was get drunk in brothels! Once you'd drunk away all your gold and silver, you started running up tabs... Then they threw you out and nearly beat you to death! Tell me, did you drink your brains away too?"
"No ties, no cares, no heart, no feeling... Even my eyes are nearly blind! What can I do besides drink?" The old beggar rolled his eyes and pointed down the path ahead... "Keep going. We just need to find a little village, and we can rest our feet there!"
Lü Bufan asked doubtfully, "You've been here before? There's actually a village in this damned place? This is Two-World Mountain! Who'd dare live here? I thought you'd gone mad, so I brought you here to wander around a bit... What village is it? Is there money there? What are we going to eat and drink?"
The old beggar impatiently jabbed Lü Bufan with the bamboo pole and bared his teeth. "You're the mad one! Your whole family's mad!"
Lü Bufan curled his lip and scoffed. "I'm the only one in my family! If I went mad like you, then my whole family really would be mad..."
"Enough nonsense! Move... Everyone in that village is an idiot. Easy to swindle money out of them!"