As though something had suddenly occurred to him, he hurried to charge his phone.
Ding-dong!
The battery level was climbing rapidly...
In just over ten minutes, the phone had charged to eighty percent.
But it still had no signal.
Cui Jiuyang thought, Sticking my head out means facing the blade, but staying home means starving to death. Might as well go outside and look.
It's broad daylight now. Those things in the fog should have left, right?
He stepped out of the room into the courtyard. Nothing happened.
Until... he stepped through the courtyard's vermilion gate.
Everything changed.
He looked ahead.
The village's neat rows of large, tile-roofed houses were gone, replaced by low, old mud houses that rose and fell with the terrain.
He looked back.
His family's redbrick house had become an old mud house, its earthen surface crumbling, with several strings of dried red chilies hanging beneath the eaves.
The cement-rendered courtyard wall had become an earthen wall barely taller than a person, just high enough to block the view of passersby.
Where's our big tile-roofed house?
Cui Jiuyang thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
He rubbed them, but nothing before him changed back.
Not daring to wander, Cui Jiuyang decided to inspect the old courtyard behind him.
A young man came out of the courtyard toward him. His face was dark, and he wore a coarse cloth jacket with knotted buttons and patches upon patches, along with indigo trousers with a baggy crotch. Narrow cloth strips wound from his ankles to the bends of his calves, and he walked over barefoot.
Cui Jiuyang found him vaguely familiar, but could not remember where they had met.
At the sight of Cui Jiuyang, delight spread across the young man's face. "You're finally here!"
The way this man spoke was truly authentic.
Not "tunnel" authentic, as in old Beijing's tunnel warfare-it was pure Southwestern Shandong dialect, utterly untainted by Mandarin.
Cui Jiuyang only occasionally heard such pure Southwestern Shandong dialect from elderly farmers selling vegetables at the big market.
As he spoke, the young man approached and reached for Cui Jiuyang's hand.
Cui Jiuyang backed away three steps, extending his arm in a downward pressing gesture. "Hey, stay back!"
The young man stopped and watched Cui Jiuyang with a smile.
Only after retreating those three steps did Cui Jiuyang realize that it was not just the houses-the entire village had changed.
It looked like a period drama on television, rustic and earthy, without a trace of modernization.
As far as he could see, dirt lanes crisscrossed the village, muddy water running through a scene of age and decay.
After pondering for a moment, Cui Jiuyang asked, "Who are you? Where is this?"
The young man laughed. "My name's Cui Chengshou! I'm your Great-Grandfather. This is your home, Jiuyang!"
Someone about your own age suddenly appeared, called you by name, and claimed to be your great-grandfather...
Especially when a voice in the earlier fog had said exactly the same thing.
People really did laugh when they were speechless.
Cui Jiuyang gave a laugh. "Right, Great-Grandfather. What wisdom do you have for me?"
Still grinning, Cui Chengshou pointed at him. "You little brat. You still don't believe me."
He reached inside his collar and pulled out a cord with a clear, emerald-green jade pendant hanging from it.
He held up the pendant. "Where's yours? I made up my mind to pass this down. You wastrels didn't sell it off later, did you?"
Utterly bewildered, Cui Jiuyang pulled an identical jade pendant from around his own neck.
Placed together, the two pendants were exactly alike.
Their color, translucency, and even the tiny marks left by the carving were identical in every respect.
No two pieces of jade were alike under heaven.
There could never be two perfectly identical pieces of jade in this world.
Even a forgery could not reproduce the same mineral staining and translucency.
When his father had given him this pendant, he had said it was handed down from their ancestors.
So that was actually true?!
Everything Cui Jiuyang had encountered that day was so bizarre that he could not make sense of what was going on.
He gave Cui Chengshou a sidelong look. "Great-Grandfather?"
Cui Chengshou's face bloomed into a smile as he drew out his reply. "Yeees~~~ My dear great-grandson!"
Seeing his face crinkle into a chrysanthemum of a smile, Cui Jiuyang felt an inexplicable anger flare inside him. The same stubborn streak that had made him quit his job without another lined up and return home surged up again.
Nothing went right at work!
I came home to lie flat and got trapped in that ghost-wall fog!
Those things in the fog nearly scared me half to death, and once it cleared, I'd traveled back who knows how many decades or centuries!
Now someone pops up with my lineage's heirloom jade pendant and claims he's my great-grandfather!
What is this?
Are demons and monsters toying with me?
Or has my great-grandfather come back from the dead?
Let's talk reason today-even if you are my great-grandfather!
Did I fail to burn paper offerings for you at Qingming, or neglect to offer incense at the Winter Clothes Festival?
Why have you come out to scare me?!
All the pent-up emotion he had been carrying since failing to turn on the gas that morning erupted into boundless rage.
Cui Jiuyang drove a fist into Cui Chengshou's face. "Get back in your grave!"
The young man yelped three times on the spot, blood streaming from his nose. He wiped at it, smearing half his face with blood.
"You rotten brat, daring to hit your Great-Grandfather!" He lunged forward, and the two tangled in a rolling cloud of dust.
Several minutes later, both were pinching their noses and tilting their heads back, trying to stop their nosebleeds.
"I really am your Great-Grandfather. The supreme spell that summoned you here is the Heaven and Earth Creation Art! I summoned you from the future for a chance to become an immortal." With his nose pinched, Cui Chengshou's voice came out high and squeaky.
"Then why the fuck did you scare me in that fog?!" With his face tilted up, the sunlight stabbed at Cui Jiuyang's eyes. Having vented his anger, he had more or less accepted everything, and now complained to his young great-grandfather beside him.
Cui Chengshou shook his head in puzzlement. "Fog? What fog? I didn't scare you.
"This was my first time using the spell. According to the Heaven and Earth Creation Art, you should have arrived here in your sleep. What's so frightening about a dream?
"Also, my mother is your great-great-grandmother. Show a little respect."
Cui Jiuyang was utterly lost. Hadn't he brought on that fog?
I was supposed to arrive here in my sleep?
Recalling that strange fog and the terrifying things within it, he realized that "in his sleep" had not specified whether it would be a pleasant dream or a nightmare.
So I had a nightmare, then got summoned here?
Cui Jiuyang could not figure it out, but all he wanted was to go home. There was no electricity or internet here-what was the point of staying?
"What exactly did you bring me here for?" he asked his Great-Grandfather irritably.
Cui Chengshou cautiously released his nose. Finding that the bleeding had stopped, he said, "Nothing else. I need your help-we're sending off a Drought Ghost!"
That was exactly the answer he had heard in the dream.
"Then why did it have to be me?" Cui Jiuyang asked.
Cui Chengshou swept a broad hand through the air. "Across five hundred years of the Cui Family, past and future, only the two of us have an extreme yang fate. Bringing anyone else wouldn't work!"
Chapter 4: Robbery
Extreme yang fate?
A Drought Ghost?
Cui Jiuyang asked, "What the hell is a Drought Ghost?"
Cui Chengshou led Cui Jiuyang toward the house. "A Drought Ghost is one hell of a nasty thing."
"A Drought Ghost is the most vicious kind of wandering, homeless spirit."
"If someone with an extreme yang fate dies of hunger or thirst by the roadside and becomes a wandering spirit, they're especially likely to become a Drought Ghost."
"We both have that fate, so eat when you should and drink when you should. Don't starve to death by the roadside and make trouble for the world."
"Just explain it. Why drag me into this? I'm not even married yet. Talking about me dying by the roadside-do you realize you're cursing yourself to have your line die out?"
"...You have a point. I'll continue."
"Once a Drought Ghost takes shape, it inevitably brings drought to hundreds of miles around. The Wild Seven Paths Travelogue records a drought that lasted seventeen straight years in Ganshui County in the northwest. Everyone in the county fled the famine. Only when an ox-nosed Daoist from Dragon-Tiger Mountain arrived and sent the Drought Ghost away did the first rain in seventeen years fall."
"That's pretty interesting, Great-Grandfather. This story sounds like Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio."
"What story? This really happened!"
"Then what should we do?"
"It's simple. Perform rites to deliver its soul."
Sitting in the courtyard, Cui Chengshou took out a pipe, packed it with tobacco, and began puffing away.
Before you continue