Amid the curling smoke, Cui Jiuyang could not make out his expression.
"Once we send off the Drought Ghost, with all the merit I've accumulated over the years, my cultivation will reach fruition, and I'll attain the mysterious firmament qi-venerable dharma body. Then... what of Dragon-Tiger Mountain? A little hillock where no one has ascended to immortality in a thousand years-they'll have to bow their heads before me!"
Cui Chengshou's face remained shrouded in smoke as he spoke, hiding his expression, but his tone was unmistakably arrogant, even a little fanatical.
Had he not possessed the miraculous ability to summon him from a hundred years in the future, Cui Jiuyang would certainly have taken him for a superstitious lunatic based on those words alone.
All he wanted was to go home, back to a hundred years in the future. Hoping to get this business over with quickly, he flattered Great-Grandfather with a sarcastic edge. "Exactly, Great-Grandfather. Their stuff is all Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, while this dharma body of yours sounds straight out of The Legend of the Swordsmen of Mount Shu. They're not even in the same league."
Cui Chengshou did not know what The Legend of the Swordsmen of Mount Shu was, but that did not stop him from recognizing his great-grandson's flattery. The tone was a little odd, but he enjoyed it nevertheless.
He laughed and tapped out his pipe bowl. "Since last year, we've had thirteen months of drought here. No snow in winter, no sign of spring rain, and now summer's more than halfway gone without so much as half a raindrop."
"Look over there." He pointed toward the distant fields. "The crops have all withered in neat rows. Carrying water to irrigate the fields could work a man to death. And besides... the river's already dried up. There's barely enough water in the wells for people and livestock to drink. Where else could we fetch water?"
Cui Jiuyang nodded. "Tell me, Great-Grandfather. What exactly do we need to do?"
Cui Chengshou mulled it over for a while, then clenched his fist as though making up his mind. "First, we find the Great Locust Tree and ask for its belt."
Cui Jiuyang's eyes widened. He had heard every word clearly, but put together, they made no sense. "What do you mean?"
Cui Chengshou looked at him, puzzled by his reaction. He raised a hand and calculated on his fingers. After finding his answer, he questioned him instead. "What? You don't know the Great Locust Tree? By my reckoning, it still has another four hundred years or so to live. You ought to know it."
Realization dawned on Cui Jiuyang. "Oh, you mean the Great Locust Tree... the one at the village entrance. But how does a tree have a belt?"
Cui Chengshou said, "You'll find out tonight."
When the moon rose above the branches, the two of them carried a wooden chest to the Great Locust Tree at the village entrance.
The Great Locust Tree had stood there for many years. At present, it took three people joining arms to encircle its trunk, and its crown could shade more than a dozen people as they cooled off and chatted.
A hundred years later, in Cui Jiuyang's time, three people could no longer reach around it, and two Jiefang trucks could park beneath its shade without any trouble.
It had long been a tradition for the villagers to tie red cloth strips to the Great Locust Tree's branches during festivals, then respectfully kowtow and pray for favorable weather and everyone's safety.
By the time the entire village had tied their strips and kowtowed, the old locust tree would be covered in red cloth.
Whenever the wind came, its branches swayed and the red strips fluttered-a wonderfully festive sight.
At night, however, unless a crowd had gathered there to chat, people generally would not linger beneath it alone or in pairs.
Legend had it that locust trees drew close to yin, and ancient locust trees several centuries old often became gateways through which the underworld's officers entered the mortal world.
With such tales circulating, playing beneath the Great Locust Tree with only a few people around inevitably sent a chill down one's back.
Cui Jiuyang first took eight nails from the chest and drove them into the ground around the Great Locust Tree at eight compass points. Then he took out a ball of red thread and connected the nails into an octagon, enclosing the tree like an eight-trigram diagram.
Cui Chengshou took out a thin ox-tail whip and stood beside the Great Locust Tree, muttering under his breath.
The moon shone bright that night, with few stars in the sky. The soft whisper of the wind masked Cui Chengshou's murmured conversation with the Great Locust Tree.
Cui Jiuyang took a folded piece of red cloth from the chest and spread it out.
Two corners of the square cloth had loops attached, which he slipped over his shoulders.
Then he grasped the other two corners and stretched out both arms, opening the red cloth before his chest to form a "Sky-Catching Cloth."
"A Sky-Catching Cloth can catch treasures that mustn't touch the ground. Ours is ordinary red cloth coated with cinnabar, alum, and ox tears. That's enough to catch this old locust's tree treasure. If fine materials like fire-washing silk and longevity gauze were woven into it, it could probably even catch the ginseng fruits from Journey to the West," Cui Chengshou had said when he dug the cloth out at home.
Cui Chengshou muttered beside the Great Locust Tree for a long time, while Cui Jiuyang held the Sky-Catching Cloth open and waited with unwavering concentration. Yet the Great Locust Tree merely rustled in the night breeze, giving no other response.
Cui Chengshou abruptly flew into a rage. Without another word, he lashed the Great Locust Tree hard with his thin ox-tail whip.
"I offered you face, but you wouldn't take it! You insist on making me tear that face right off!" he snarled as he whipped the Great Locust Tree.
Strangely enough, although it was plainly a tree, bright red liquid like blood seeped from the welts the whip left in its bark.
Cui Jiuyang kept his head raised, watching the treetop, but not even a leaf fell.
He was curious about how Great-Grandfather would deal with the old locust tree, yet feared missing the "belt" and delaying his return home. He could only steal an occasional glance, then quickly turn his gaze back.
After whipping it for a while without any effect, Cui Chengshou seemed to become truly furious.
He tucked the whip into his belt and fished a paper packet from the chest they had carried over.
He opened the packet. In the moonlight, it was filled with glittering, transparent grains.
"Bring a bowl and collect this sap."
After saying this, Cui Chengshou turned and saw Cui Jiuyang still holding the Sky-Catching Cloth open. He gave a savage grin. "Stop waiting over there. This stubborn old bastard won't give us its belt. I'll have to give it a proper taste of what's coming!"
Cui Jiuyang's neck ached from looking up, and he had long since wanted to stop waiting. At those words, he hurried to the chest and found an old porcelain bowl with a chipped rim.
The bark had split, and blood-colored sap flowed everywhere from the wounds left by the whip. It took Cui Jiuyang hardly any time to collect a bowlful.
Oddly enough, although the sap looked disgusting, like blood, it gave off an extraordinary fragrance!
First came the rich scent of locust blossoms, followed by the fresh grassy scent unique to plants.
When he inhaled deeply, his entire nasal cavity, all the way down to his lungs, seemed filled with sweetness.
He handed the bowl to Cui Chengshou.
Cui Chengshou poured all the crystalline grains from the paper packet into the bowl.
The grains soaked up the sap like sponges absorbing water, and before long, they had become translucent red spheres.
Chapter 5: Getting to Work
"Are you giving it to me or not?" Cui Chengshou asked the Great Locust Tree, holding the large bowl brimming with blood-red spheres.
The Great Locust Tree remained motionless.
"Are you fucking deaf?"
The wind rustled through the leaves.
Cui Jiuyang said quietly, "Great-Grandfather, the Great Locust Tree's a block of wood. It's bound to be a little slow on the uptake. Give it some time."
Cui Chengshou turned and cast a disdainful glance at his great-grandson. "What do you know? A locust tree becomes a spirit after three hundred years, then takes human form after another three hundred. This one's nearly six hundred years old. It's far cleverer than you."
Seeing that the Great Locust Tree still gave no response, he turned away and placed a blood-red bead at each of the eight corners of the red-thread octagon he had laid out earlier.
"These things are called Curse-Blood Beads. Some years ago, a wicked sorcerer came to challenge me in a magical duel. I wounded all three of his ethereal souls and seven corporeal souls. He dropped dead before he got five li beyond the village entrance. I found these on his corpse."
"Once they're stained with blood, whether from an immortal, a monster, a stupid pig, or a foolish dog, they form a slight connection with its divine soul."
"Every time I crush one underfoot, it'll be like slashing your divine soul with a knife. But pain in the divine soul hurts so badly you'll wish you were dead! The more I crush, the worse the damage to your divine soul. Let's see whether you still care about taking human form!"
With that, he crushed the Curse-Blood Bead at the Qian Trigram position beneath his foot.
The Great Locust Tree, which had previously endured his whipping and curses without a reaction... visibly shuddered.
A few leaves drifted down.
Seeing that it worked, Cui Chengshou burst into laughter.
Most of the villagers had fled the drought and famine anyway, so he did not have to worry about being seen.
His laughter echoed through the night. "Well? Having your divine soul tormented doesn't feel so good, does it? Let's try another!"
Before his words had faded, he moved like a phantom and crushed the Curse-Blood Bead at the Xun Trigram position.
The Great Locust Tree shuddered again.
Standing nearby, Cui Jiuyang found it a little hard to watch.
He found that strange himself. In the past, when villagers felled trees and burned land clear, or even stripped whole stretches of mountainside of trees, he had never felt such pity.
Yet ever since Great-Grandfather had told him that the Great Locust Tree was nearly ready to take human form, watching it suffer had stirred a trace of sympathy in him.
At the thought of sympathizing with a tree, Cui Jiuyang smiled and shook his head.
Meanwhile, Cui Chengshou had already crushed the fourth Curse-Blood Bead.
The Great Locust Tree trembled violently. A series of sharp cracks rang out from within, and a fissure split its trunk.
A three-inch-tall green figure flashed out of the fissure and charged straight outward.
Cui Chengshou chuckled. "Rise!"
The eight-trigram diagram formed by the red thread glimmered, becoming an eight-sided cage of red light.
The tiny green figure struck the wall of light, sending up a wisp of scorched smoke.
Cui Jiuyang could almost hear flesh sizzling.
"Trying to run? Unless you hand over your belt, this won't end well for you today!" Cui Chengshou made as if to crush another Curse-Blood Bead.
The green figure finally gave in. It dropped to its knees with a thump, glanced at Cui Jiuyang and then at Cui Chengshou, and kowtowed repeatedly.
But Cui Chengshou gritted his teeth, ignored its pleas, and crushed another blood-red bead.
Only after the three-inch green figure had rolled over three times in agony did he wave his hand and let it return to the fissure in the tree.
Cui Jiuyang had already taken the hint and opened the Sky-Catching Cloth.
A ring about two feet across, woven from green branches, fell from the leaves at the treetop and landed squarely in the Sky-Catching Cloth.
With a cold sneer, Cui Chengshou waved away the eight-trigram formation and collected the Curse-Blood Beads into his sleeve one by one.
"If you'd done that sooner, why would you have needed a taste of my methods? We're neighbors, after all. You really were being unreasonable."
The Great Locust Tree gave no reply. Its leaves still rustled in the night breeze as it silently accepted everything.
As they left, Cui Chengshou strode straight ahead.
Following behind, Cui Jiuyang glanced back at the Great Locust Tree. A green light flickered within the split in its trunk, as though that green figure had stolen another look at the two of them.
Back home, Cui Chengshou did not even glance at the belt the Great Locust Tree had surrendered. He merely told Cui Jiuyang to remember to put it on when he got up the next morning, then went to bed.
Cui Jiuyang went to sleep in a daze as well. The next day, he fastened the ring the locust tree had surrendered around his trousers as a belt. It fit perfectly.
He stood and took a few steps, feeling as light as a swallow from head to toe, with an indescribable sense of ease.
He bounced around the room a few times, savoring its miraculous effects, when Cui Chengshou's voice sounded from the doorway. "The locust tree's treasure lets you bridge yin and yang. Right now, half your divine soul is on the road between yin and yang, which is why you feel as if your bones don't weigh even two ounces."
Cui Jiuyang jumped at his voice, and his explanation frightened him even more. "The road between yin and yang? I'm not in any danger, am I?"
Cui Chengshou gestured for him to follow. "What danger could there be with me around? We're heading up the mountain in a bit, though. If you see things you've never seen before, just don't start shrieking."
Cui Jiuyang followed, hopping every three steps. "What are we going up the mountain for?"
Before you continue