The moon hung overhead, lighting the courtyard as though a layer of frost covered the ground, making everything clearly visible.
The older sister stepped out of the house too, escaping the awkwardness of sitting without an oil lamp. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Just then, someone called out from the gate, rescuing her completely.
"Sis, did you cook for Mr. Cui?"
"Jinbo, why do you only have buns at home? You haven't even got any vegetables."
"Ah, sorry you had to see this, Mr. Cui. My wife passed away a few years back, and there's no one to keep house. When it's just me, anything will do."
So this woman was Li Jinbo's older sister. No wonder she had been so informal.
Seeing Li Jinbo return, she hurried home, saying she still had livestock to feed.
Li Jinbo invited Cui Jiuyang to sit down. The two settled onto little folding stools in the moonlight and began chatting.
Cui Jiuyang asked, "How did it go? Did that fellow Jincai find his father?"
Li Jinbo waved a hand. "No. He wanted to go deeper into the mountains behind the village, but I finally talked him into coming back. You can't go there after dark."
Cui Jiuyang nodded, then asked, "Jinbo, Jincai... are you two...?"
"Everyone in our village is surnamed Li," Li Jinbo said. "We all use the same generation names, so we call each other brothers. We are related, though some more closely than others."
"You all keep saying you can't go into the mountains behind the village... what's wrong with them?"
Li Jinbo let out a heavy sigh. "That's a long story."
"Our village has a rule: no one's allowed into those mountains."
"In the old days, it was because beyond them lay miles of old mountain forest. Wolves roamed there, and people had been attacked."
"Later... the county gathered hunters and formed a wolf-hunting team. They drove all the wolves deep into the mountains. That must have been when my father was young."
"Once the wolves were gone, people wanted to go gather herbs, cut firewood, and so on. But someone was always getting lost."
"The village would gather people to search. Most could be found, but there were always a few who never came back."
"So going into those mountains was forbidden again."
"People in the village say there's a demon back there that eats people."
Cui Jiuyang feigned curiosity. "A demon? There are really demons in this world?"
Li Jinbo slapped his thigh. "There are! Absolutely.
"Mr. Cui, you wouldn't know this, but a couple of years ago, Magistrate Chen gathered men and killed a Pig Demon that had been wreaking havoc in the county.
"I was in town at the time. I saw it clear as day. That Pig Demon revealed his true form, as big as a house, and charged wildly through the streets!
"The officers of the Apprehension Squad fired their guns, but the bullets struck the Pig Demon, threw off trails of sparks, and bounced away. They couldn't penetrate him at all.
"In the end, a Daoist priest Magistrate Chen had invited used Talisman Water to break the Pig Demon's enchanted armor. Only then could they shoot him dead!"
Oh... a rampaging Pig Demon, a county magistrate, a Daoist priest, Talisman Water.
Cui Jiuyang committed those details to memory, then asked, "What sort of demon is in your mountains?"
Li Jinbo shook his head. "Some villagers say it's a fox demon, others say a wolf demon. It's all wild rumors. No one's ever seen it."
"I reported it to the county ages ago, asking officers from the Apprehension Squad to come with Talisman Water that could dispel evil. If there really was a demon, they could get rid of it for us."
"Magistrate Chen approved it too, but we waited and waited, and the Apprehension Squad never came."
"And now Jincai's father has gone missing."
Chapter 62: Into the Mountains
Once they finished talking, the two went to bed.
But Cui Jiuyang did not sleep very soundly that night.
It wasn't just Li Jinbo's thunderous snoring disturbing him.
There was a strange sensation too. In his dreams, he kept vaguely sensing some unknown presence on West Mountain, something inexplicably connected to him.
That mysterious connection was extremely faint, yet it felt like a feather tickling his palm, an itch that was barely there.
Early the next morning, Cui Jiuyang, with dark circles under his eyes, ate a couple of sorghum buns with Li Jinbo, then went to find Li Jincai.
"Jincai! Jincai! Mr. Cui's coming into the mountains with us today to see if we can find your father!" Li Jinbo called as he entered Jincai's courtyard.
Li Jincai said nothing. He sat in the courtyard with a whetstone propped over a basin, scraping his billhook back and forth across it.
Li Jinbo understood at once. He was planning to go deeper into the mountains and was sharpening his billhook to clear a path.
"Jincai, bring some food," Li Jinbo said. "We're not turning back all day. We won't come down until we find your father."
Only then did Li Jincai look up. "Brother Jinbo, give me a moment. I still have two salted fish at home. I'll fry them and bring them along."
Today they had a destination and would head straight into the mountains behind the village. There was no need to search every hillside, so they did not trouble everyone else to join them.
Jincai led the way, with Li Jinbo and Cui Jiuyang following. Carrying their provisions and salted fish, the three headed up West Mountain.
The previous afternoon, the light had been dim, and Cui Jiuyang had been surrounded by people, so he had not taken a proper look at the village.
Walking through it today, he felt something was off. This village was... far too poor.
After arriving a hundred years in the past, Cui Jiuyang had been busy all over his village and its surroundings with Great-Grandfather. Their village was poor and shabby too, but not as poor as Heyang Village.
Or rather, there were hardly any prosperous villages anywhere in the country at this time, but Li Jinbo's Heyang Village still seemed excessively poor.
The houses were visibly old. There were barely any decent new homes in the entire village, and the old ones did not seem to have been repaired either. Broken roof tiles, cracked walls, half-missing doorframes... every kind of damage was there.
If he hadn't seen villagers coming and going, he would have thought it was a ruined, deserted village!
That was rather strange.
But Cui Jiuyang had only just arrived and had known Li Jinbo and Li Jincai for two days. He felt awkward asking something like, "Why are you all so poor?"
He could only keep it in mind and ask casually once they knew each other better.
Halfway up the mountain, Cui Jiuyang performed another divination on his fingers and got the same result as before.
It seemed he really would have to venture into the mountains where Li Jinbo said a demon lurked.
The little path halfway up West Mountain curved northward. All the mountains beyond it counted as the mountains behind the village.
Cui Jiuyang followed Jinbo and Jincai around a rock face, and the landscape changed abruptly. Gone were the terraced fields, crops, rocky paths, weeds, and other signs of human presence.
Instead, one mountain rose beyond another, each covered in ancient forest full of towering trees... with no end in sight.
"Brother Jinbo, this forest goes pretty deep," Cui Jiuyang said. "How big is it?"
Li Jinbo pointed emphatically north. "Mr. Cui, look at the horizon. Can you see that line of mountains over there? That blue-black line!"
Cui Jiuyang followed his finger and strained his eyes into the distance. At last, against the hazy white horizon, he spotted a faint, undulating black line.
"You see it, right? Cross that ridge and you're in Yinshan County... that's where this old forest ends," Li Jinbo said.
Whoa... that's over two hundred li...
And you call this the mountains behind the village?
In the era I came from, a forest this big would be designated a forest fire prevention zone. Anyone going in would have their lighter confiscated.
Feeling uneasy, Cui Jiuyang said, "Let's hope Jincai's father didn't go too deep."
Jincai replied, "How far could he go while herding sheep? I reckon he went in, walked in circles, and got confused. Just like Third Uncle a while back. He hadn't gone far, but he couldn't find his way out."
Behind them, Li Jinbo muttered, "Third Uncle was found. What about Li Fengkang, who never came back the year before last, or Li Dechun the year before that... why don't you mention them?"
Li Jincai was concentrating on finding footprints on the ground or spotting stray sheep droppings, and did not hear what Li Jinbo said.
Cui Jiuyang heard every word. People from Heyang Village went missing in these mountains every so often...
That was definitely not normal.
The demon Li Jinbo had mentioned might really exist.
Even if it wasn't a demon, something else had to be going on!
He slipped a hand into his sleeve and squeezed the paper talismans inside to reassure himself.
Li Jincai found scattered sheep droppings in the grass and called the other two over. "It was dark last night, so we didn't search the grass carefully. There are sheep pellets here. My father really did go into these mountains."
Li Jinbo hurried over and crouched down. Parting the grass, he picked up a pellet and crumbled it between his fingers. Bits of grass were clearly visible inside, and it was still slightly moist. "These were dropped in the last day or two. Not many people in our village keep sheep. It really must have been your father. He actually went in?!"
"Oh, that old man! Was he bewitched? At his age, doesn't he know how many people have gone missing back here?"
"How could he go in!"
Li Jincai kept his head down and said nothing.
Although both had come to search these mountains, they had still clung to a sliver of hope that Old Li had gone somewhere else instead.
Now the sheep droppings lay before them. Clearly, the old man had gone in.
Their hearts sank again. Of all the places he could have gone, why did it have to be here?
Cui Jiuyang could naturally tell how they felt, so he reassured them. "Trust me. My family's divination art has been passed down since my great-grandfather's generation. Old Li is alive and well. He's in no danger at all."
Hearing this, Jincai's expression brightened a little.
He stood and looked toward the dense forest. "As long as we find my father, I'll pay Mr. Cui's divination fee even if I have to sell everything I own."
People in this era had little education and were generally superstitious. Never mind Cui Jiuyang's genuine divination skills-even a charlatan could have run circles around them.
Hearing that, Cui Jiuyang politely replied, "A token payment will do. Eight or ten copper coins would be plenty. But... you must treat me to a bowl of mutton soup. Sheep that walk these mountains every day must taste wonderful!"
He said this to lighten the mood and ease their worries.
Sure enough, at this half-serious banter, Li Jincai smiled a little.
Li Jinbo went further, immediately laying claim to the sheep intestines and saying they were his favorite.
Now that they had a direction, there was no reason to hesitate. The three briefly put their things in order, then plunged into the dense forest that stretched three hundred li deep.
Only after entering did they realize just how difficult it was to move through an ancient forest without paths.
Overhead, old trees blotted out the sky. Once inside, they could no longer see it at all. Though it was broad daylight, the forest was as dark as late afternoon just before sunset.
The undergrowth reached chest height, and long, barbed bristle vines wound around the shrubs. One careless move would leave a bloody scratch across exposed skin on an arm or neck.
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