Cui Chengshou did not look back. "Dig something up."
Only after they climbed the mountain did Cui Jiuyang gain a clearer understanding of the drought.
At this time of summer, the mountain paths should have been lined with lush greenery. But now?
The sun hung high. From the summit to the foot of the mountain, all the grass had thin stalks and sparse leaves. The trees were half dead beneath the blazing sun, their scattered leaves swaying in the thick air. Their rough bark made him feel inexplicably thirsty just looking at it.
With an iron pickaxe and an iron shovel, the two of them reached a mountain hollow. Cui Chengshou studied the shapes of the rocks for a long while before finally stopping beneath a rock face beside a large boulder.
"Dig!" With that, he swung his pickaxe into the rock face.
The face consisted of gravel and yellow earth. Though hard, it had endured a long drought, and each stroke of the pickaxe brought a large chunk tumbling down.
Before long, a hole taller than a person and two meters deep had appeared in the rock face.
"Shovel the dirt and stones I dug out over to the side." Cui Chengshou was already drenched in sweat. He tossed the pickaxe onto the ground, sat on its handle, took out his pipe, and began puffing away.
When had Cui Jiuyang ever done farmwork? Even when he had helped in the fields as a child, he had only lent a hand with little chores, never heavy labor like wielding a shovel or swinging a pickaxe.
After just ten minutes of shoveling, he was dripping with sweat. "Great-Grandfather, what exactly are we doing?"
Cui Chengshou squinted at him through the smoke. "You're this tired even with Old Huai's belt on? Life must be good in the future. No need to farm anymore?"
Cui Jiuyang replied, "That's right, no need to farm. Speaking of which, you brought me here from a hundred-odd years in the future, but you haven't even asked what it's like. Aren't you curious?"
Cui Chengshou exhaled a long stream of smoke. "Knowing five hundred years into the past and five hundred years into the future-that's just hot air. Casting a divination to read someone's fate is one thing. Know too much about what comes later, and Heaven will punish you."
Before long, Cui Jiuyang finished clearing the dirt, and Cui Chengshou finished his pipe.
Inside the hole, now more than two meters deep, a skeleton lay exposed.
Chapter 6: Dense fog
These were not human bones.
To Cui Jiuyang, they looked a little like a dog's bones...
But that would have been one enormous dog.
The hole was large enough for a person to walk into, yet it exposed only half the skeleton.
The skull and half the ribs of its upper body were visible, while the rest remained buried in the earth.
On closer inspection, that dog's skull was larger than a human head, and its fangs were thicker than a thumb.
"What is this...?" Cui Jiuyang turned to look at his great-grandfather.
Gripping the pickaxe, Cui Chengshou swung it into the hole again. "A fox."
Cui Jiuyang's eyes widened. "Foxes get this big?"
Cui Chengshou took off his cotton vest, revealing dark, muscular flesh hardened by years of farmwork, and wiped the sweat from his neck. "They do once they become spirits."
Cui Jiuyang said nothing more and quietly resumed shoveling.
At last, the entire skeleton saw daylight again.
Cui Jiuyang estimated that the fox had been at least three meters long, with thick, heavy bones throughout its body.
Who knew how long it had been buried? Even now, when the shovel accidentally struck it, the bones rang with a metallic clang.
But its long spine had snapped in the middle, several ribs had shattered into pieces, and its tail had vanished without a trace. Clearly, it had died from injuries.
Cui Chengshou did not remove the skeleton from the earth. Instead, he took a small ritual cauldron from the cloth bag he carried.
The little cauldron was bronze, with sharply defined edges, and stood no more than seven inches tall. Mottled, dark green verdigris covered its surface, and a yellow paper talisman sealed its mouth.
Its three legs were carved into horned dragons with curled claws. Indistinct fine patterns seeped through the gaps between their scales, while raised bronze studs covered the outer walls. Each stud resembled a beast's eye, giving off an eerie air.
He peeled away the talisman, and the little cauldron dropped from Cui Chengshou's hand into the hole. A plume of bluish smoke immediately rose and wrapped around the animal bones.
The stench of scorched leather began spreading through the cave. Amid the swirling smoke, nothing was visible.
When the bluish smoke drew back into the little cauldron as though running in reverse, all that remained of the skeleton was... a drumstick.
Watching this wondrous feat, Cui Jiuyang could not resist stepping forward to pick up the drumstick and examine it.
Beside him, Cui Chengshou made no move to stop him. He simply picked up the little cauldron, sealed it again with the talisman, and put it back into his cloth bag.
The moment the drumstick entered his hand, it felt warm and smooth as jade, with a substantial weight. Examining it closely, Cui Jiuyang discovered that although it still looked like white bone, its texture was actually closer to porcelain.
"That's a Ghost-Driving Mallet. This fox had some strange powers when it was alive. Normally, only a Tiger Demon can subdue Chang Ghosts and make them its accomplices in evil. I don't know how it cultivated, but it managed to take in several Chang Ghosts too. Subduing it took quite a bit of effort."
"Still, this saves us the trouble of finding tiger bones specifically to refine a Ghost-Driving Mallet. This fox works too."
"Tiger bones aren't hard to find around here, but people have soaked them all in wine jars. That strips away their blazing yang nature and costs them ninety-nine percent of their ghost-driving power."
In a few brief words, Cui Chengshou explained what the drumstick did. He hardly seemed to care, treating it as nothing more than a little toy he had made for his grandson.
"Now, of the three things needed to open the ritual altar, all we're missing is the Soul-Guiding Bell..." Looking at Cui Jiuyang with the Huai Bao Belt around his waist and the bone Ghost-Driving Mallet in his hand, his great-grandfather stroked his chin in thought.
The Soul-Guiding Bell was simple enough, really... only...
After turning it over in his mind, Cui Chengshou led the way to the ancestral graveyard.
Cui Jiuyang knew this place well. He came every year to offer incense to his ancestors. Only, on his previous visits, Cui Chengshou had been one of those buried here. Now he stood beside him.
There were no graves belonging to his father's or grandfather's generations yet. Even Cui Chengshou's generation had only two graves there, those of his eldest and second-eldest brothers. Both had died in middle age, and grass already covered their burial mounds.
Judging by Cui Chengshou's current age, Cui Jiuyang reckoned his grandfather would not be born for another two or three years.
When they reached the ancestral graveyard, Cui Chengshou did not go in. He merely pointed from a distance at the old pine in its center. "See that old pine? There's a bronze bell hanging from its second branch. Take it down, and we'll go home."
Cui Jiuyang was rather curious about that old pine...
In his memory, there had been no old pine in the ancestral graveyard. That meant someone had cut it down sometime over the following century.
By the customs back home, no one would cut down the pines or cypresses in a graveyard.
Pines were pillars holding up the sky; cypresses were walls shielding against the wind. The pines and cypresses in a graveyard sheltered a quiet space for the ancestors. Even the most unfilial descendants would not cut them down to sell for money.
Had the tree died naturally, then?
That was possible, but not very likely.
If it had died, they would surely have hauled the old tree away and planted a new one in its place.
Yet Cui Jiuyang had no memory of this pine at all, which meant that probably was not what had happened.
He was puzzled, but he had never been one to ask too many questions. He entered the graveyard and walked beneath the tree.
Looking up, he saw that a bell was indeed hanging from the second-lowest branch.
About the size of a fist, the bell was made of red copper, its whole surface glowing red. In the sunlight, it looked as though it were on fire.
The branch was not very high. Cui Jiuyang thought he could reach it just by rising onto his toes.
On his first attempt, he failed to get a firm grip, but struck the bell and made it ring.
Dong...
The sound was not crisp. It was the heavy resonance of bronze, deep and far-reaching.
His second attempt went even worse than the first. He did not touch it at all.
Cui Jiuyang hitched up his trousers, intending to jump and take the bell down in one go.
Then he realized the dense fog had returned.
Without any warning.
Thick fog engulfed the entire graveyard, and visibility dropped rapidly. When he first noticed it, he could still make out a burial mound five meters away. Three seconds later, when he looked up, he could barely see even the red copper bell.
Yet the ringing continued.
It did not come from overhead.
It came from every direction.
Cui Jiuyang pressed his back against the pine and shouted, "Great-Grandfather! Great-Grandfather! What's happening?"
Outside the graveyard, Cui Chengshou gave no reply.
What was happening?
Was I alone in the fog again?
This fog came far too strangely.
He wanted to feel his way out and find a path, but feared he would never find his way back to this pine.
"Don't take down that Soul-Guiding Bell!"
Someone spoke in the fog.
Cui Jiuyang no longer dared to answer.
He remembered now. Last time, he had not been alone in the fog.
There had also been those... faces.
Those faces packed tightly against the window.
And now, he had no house or window to keep those faces out.
He did not dare move a muscle.
"Don't take away the Soul-Guiding Bell!"
In the fog, the speaker repeated the warning.
"Jiuyang, be careful."
"You can't trust him..."
The voice brimmed with urgency.
Cui Jiuyang's mind was a tangled mess.
Who couldn't I trust?
Great-Grandfather?
Cui Jiuyang had no idea what the voice in the dense fog meant.
Before you continue