He hurriedly asked, "Who shouldn't I trust? Cui Chengshou? And who are you?"
"I am... Cui Cheng..."
The voice in the mist had only spoken the name Cui Cheng when a flash of lightning tore through the dense fog.
"Jiuyang, are you all right? Ah, my fault! How could I have forgotten to tell you to take off the Huai Bao Belt?"
Chapter 7: Be careful
Cui Jiuyang darted several steps backward, looking at Cui Chengshou before him.
Cui Chengshou held a freshly snapped peach branch, its broken end still tinged with tender green. Slightly out of breath, he stared at him with wide eyes.
"What? What did you just say?" As Cui Jiuyang spoke, he glanced at the bell overhead. It still hung safely from the branch.
Cui Chengshou casually tossed the peach branch onto the ground. "You slipped onto the Underworld Road just now. This is a graveyard, thick with yin energy, and with that Huai Bao Belt on you, it's easy to stumble onto the Underworld Road. Luckily, I noticed in time, or some wandering ghost would have led you away."
Some wandering ghost?
He said his surname was Cui... and he even shared your generational name...
But Cui Jiuyang did not voice his suspicions, because the voice in the dense fog had told him to be careful...
Things were getting tangled.
Cui Jiuyang stole a couple of glances at Cui Chengshou and saw Great-Grandfather standing there with his arms folded, doing nothing, merely staring at the bronze bell, lost in some unknown thought.
He asked, "Great-Grandfather, why didn't you come in and get the bell yourself? Why insist on making me do it?"
Cui Chengshou seemed to have been pondering something. Interrupted by Cui Jiuyang, he faltered. "Well, I thought you were taller than me and could reach it."
Cui Jiuyang reflected that this was indeed true. Though Great-Grandfather was sturdy, perhaps poor nutrition in this era had left him a full head shorter than himself.
He picked up the peach branch Cui Chengshou had discarded, walked beneath the pine tree, and raised it against the hemp cord holding the bell. Then he flicked his wrist, winding the cord three times around the branch.
He gave it a hard downward tug, and the hemp cord, long robbed of its strength by wind and rain, snapped.
As the bronze bell fell, an idea struck Cui Jiuyang. He flicked it in midair with the peach branch, sending it spinning diagonally toward Cui Chengshou with a clang.
"Great-Grandfather, catch! Don't let it break."
Cui Chengshou reached out and caught the bronze bell against his chest. "Ha, it's got some heft."
Cui Jiuyang opened the cloth sack on the ground. Cui Chengshou carefully took a sheet of yellow paper from inside, crumpled it into a ball, and wedged it around the clapper before putting the bell into the sack.
Following behind Cui Chengshou, Cui Jiuyang watched Great-Grandfather carefully but found nothing amiss.
Who exactly did that voice in the dense fog want me to be wary of?
Other than Great-Grandfather, I haven't dealt with anyone here.
Could it really have been a wandering ghost trying to deceive me?
But why does that dense fog keep appearing?
Great-Grandfather said he knew nothing about the fog last time.
This time, Great-Grandfather dispersed it with a peach branch...
If the same being created both banks of fog, then... who were the voices speaking each time?
Preoccupied, Cui Jiuyang unconsciously slowed his steps.
The first time the fog appeared, there were two voices.
The first voice urged me to hurry and take part in something momentous.
The second told me not to leave the house, not to trust the first voice.
And the second voice said he was Cui Chengshou... Great-Grandfather.
When I came here and met Great-Grandfather, he denied knowing about the fog. In other words, he also denied being either of the voices in that first fog.
Then why did that voice impersonate Great-Grandfather?
The second time the fog appeared, there was only one voice.
He told me to be careful, not to trust... "him."
And said his name was Cui Cheng-something.
Leaving aside who this "him" I shouldn't trust might be...
Who was the voice himself?
Was he dead, or still alive?
Was he someone already dead in this time a hundred years ago-like those two graves whose occupants also shared the generational name "Cheng"?
Or someone who died sometime in the following hundred years?
If he's alive... what kind of powers must he have to draw me into the dense fog right under Great-Grandfather's nose, when Great-Grandfather is so skilled in the mystic arts?
It was all a tangled mush.
But there was one conclusion he could draw, however hazy...
Great-Grandfather did not seem quite so trustworthy.
After all... neither the fog nor the land beneath my feet now is where I'm supposed to be.
At least, neither is home.
With these thoughts weighing on him, Cui Jiuyang naturally slowed down. Cui Chengshou strode ahead, and before long, a gap opened between them.
"Jiuyang, why are you walking so slowly?"
The question startled Cui Jiuyang out of his thoughts.
"It's nothing, Great-Grandfather. I got a bit scared back there. Why was the Underworld Road so shrouded in fog that I couldn't see anything?"
"You're just an ordinary person with a Yin-Yang Tree Treasure tied around your waist. You fell in, but you still have mortal eyes. Without opening your Dao Eye, you couldn't see anything."
"But I heard someone speaking in there."
"Just a wandering ghost trying to lure you in. Nothing worth listening to."
"He said his name was Cui Cheng..."
Cui Jiuyang tried a little trick, deliberately letting his voice trail off indistinctly without clearly saying the final syllable.
There was still some distance between them, but Cui Chengshou shifted his feet and appeared before Cui Jiuyang like a phantom.
"What did you say his name was?" There was already urgency in his voice.
Seeing his reaction, Cui Jiuyang reached a firm conclusion. Whatever Cui Cheng-something's full name was, his words could not simply have been a wandering ghost's lure, as Great-Grandfather had claimed...
In other words...
"Don't trust him. Be careful." The voice in the fog was growing more credible.
And Great-Grandfather before him was not as candid as he appeared.
Did he summon me from a hundred years in the future just to get rid of the Drought Ghost?
Deep doubts about the Drought Ghost had already taken root in Cui Jiuyang's mind.
"He didn't finish before you arrived."
"Then it's nothing. That's how stray ghosts deceive people, by pretending to be family first."
Cui Chengshou showed nothing out of the ordinary. Back home, he called Cui Jiuyang over to help, killed a rooster to take its head and pointed beak, and slaughtered a black dog, saving a basin of Black Dog Blood.
By then it was late. Great-grandfather and great-grandson stewed the chicken and cooked the dog, eating until every ditch and trench in their bellies was filled to the brim.
The summer night was unbearably hot, and with worries on his mind, Cui Jiuyang naturally tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
His mind was filled with those two banks of dense fog and the face at the window. The skeleton from earlier that day kept flashing before him as well, while the faint, elusive ringing of a bronze bell seemed to hover beside his ears.
Thinking of how they would truly be sending off the Drought Ghost the next day, he felt a little nervous.
Whatever Great-Grandfather intends to do, tomorrow will reveal the truth.
Surely he wouldn't hurt me?
That jade token handed down through the family can't possibly be fake...
Then what exactly is he hiding from me?
Who was that voice...?
With all these wild thoughts crowding his head, he drifted off at some unknown point.
In his sleep, he felt someone patting his face.
Dazed, he tried to open his eyes, but his thin eyelids seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. He could not lift them at all.
A delicate fragrance curled around his nose, teasing his heart with an itch. Eyes still closed, Cui Jiuyang stood up and followed the fragrance outside.
There was little furniture in the old house and nothing much in his way. He simply pushed open the door and walked out.
Behind him, Cui Chengshou slept soundly, seemingly unaware of anything.
The moon stood high in the sky, its light cascading over the earth like water.
As Cui Jiuyang stepped across the bright ground, ripples seemed to rise beneath his feet. With his eyes closed, he followed the thread of fragrance at his nose all the way to the Great Locust Tree at the village entrance.
A tall old man with snow-white hair and beard sat beneath the tree, playing with the Great Locust Tree's three-inch-tall green tree spirit in his palm.
Chapter 8: Great-Grandfather
The old man glanced at Cui Jiuyang, who stood motionless.
He set the tree spirit on the ground and waved a hand. It darted into the Great Locust Tree, then quietly poked its head back out to watch curiously.
The old man walked up to Cui Jiuyang, took out a jade token, and waved it before his eyes.
"Foolish child, wake up!"
A thunderclap seemed to explode beside Cui Jiuyang's ears as he lingered in his hazy dream. He dropped onto his backside, his eyes snapping open.
Before you continue