Infant spirits

They had to wait until nightfall to act.

Dismount Ridge was too far from Crouching Dragon Township to make a round trip worthwhile, so they stayed nearby during the day.

As it happened, an official road crossed Dismount Ridge and led to the township, and a tea stall along it served sorghum noodles and bamboo-skewered roast meat.

The three ate there at noon, then ate there again that evening.

The bamboo-skewered roast meat was good stuff: chicken threaded onto slender bamboo sticks and roasted, needing no seasoning beyond a sprinkle of salt to smell delicious.

The three enjoyed their meal. Wang Qilin sighed appreciatively. "Who would have thought there'd be food this good out in the countryside?"

Du Cao looked at the thin bamboo sticks. "It's tasty, all right, but this stall owner is far too stingy. These meat skewers have been reused, haven't they? They probably still have the previous customers' saliva on them."

Xu Da grinned smugly. "That's why I snapped all my bamboo sticks after lunch. Ha! Well? Aren't I clever?"

"You certainly are a clever little fellow," Wang Qilin praised him. "But if you hadn't snapped them, you might have gotten your own saliva. Since you snapped every stick you used, now you can only get someone else's."

At once, the clever little fellow had a great many questions.

In the third month, spring waters ran level along the Xiang River; a full moon and gentle breeze suited a journey by night.

It was the fourteenth day of the lunar month. The moon was bright, its light white.

The clear moonlight spread across the ground like a layer of snow, yet seemed to be swallowed when it fell into the mountain woods.

Beneath the night sky, Dismount Ridge stretched in an unbroken mass of blackness, like Zhu Jiuyin crouching at the North Pole in the primordial age, without day or night.

A few wavering lights shone in the Zhong clan's village, so dim that they looked like ghost fires hidden on the mountain.

Rather than bringing any sense of brightness, the sight made people uneasy.

The three walked along a country path. Rain had fallen two days earlier, and their boots made squelching sounds against the mud.

The sounds were somewhat confused. More than six feet were treading the ground!

Wang Qilin listened carefully and felt as though someone else was following behind them.

He could not help wanting to turn around, but Du Cao's voice came from ahead. "When traveling at night, just keep walking your own path."

The three reached the foot of the mountain and stood in the shadows, looking up at the stone houses scattered across the slope.

At last, a child's piercing wail rang out.

Then the night wind carried down a young woman's scream. "Help! Little Stone's encountered a ghost! Little Stone's encountered a ghost!"

An elderly person shouted, "Get the clan chief! No, get Second Master!"

Several more lights soon appeared in the Zhong village as people lit torches and came outside carrying oil lamps.

For a time, shadows thronged everywhere.

The strange thing was this.

Every household in the village clearly kept dogs, yet there was no barking.

Du Cao pointed to a corner at the foot of the mountain. "The Zhong clan's jail is over there. Follow me!"

Though called an earthen jail, it was actually a dungeon deep underground.

Hearing the commotion from the mountain, a man pushed open the dungeon door and hurried up the slope.

The dungeon was crude. The steps led down into a basement divided in two by wooden bars. One section connected to the exit and held a table and chairs for the guard to live there, while the other held prisoners. Zhong Erniu and an old man in ragged clothes huddled in separate corners.

Zhong Erniu froze when he saw Du Cao enter, then fell to his knees and kowtowed. "Your honorable lordship! Your honorable lordship!"

An iron chain locked the bars, and Du Cao failed to cut it through with a single saber stroke.

Xu Da stepped forward and started kicking, breaking all the arm-thick wooden bars.

Wang Qilin marveled inwardly. What a beast!

The uproar on the mountain continued, with more children crying out this time. Only after they climbed the mountain did they hear dogs as well, though these were not fierce barks but low whimpers-

These dogs were afraid of something.

Du Cao said to Zhong Erniu, "Take me to your home to see your wife first."

The tenant farmers lived at the outermost edge of the lower compound, so if outside enemies attacked the village, they would be the first to suffer.

Zhong Erniu rushed toward a thatched house with a courtyard wall made of piled stones. Its wooden door was shut tight. He knocked and called, "Open up! Mother, open the door!"

There was no sound from inside.

Xu Da said, "Let me open it for you!"

Zhong Erniu hurriedly shook his head. "Please, sir, have mercy. Spare our door."

Just then, the door creaked open, and a gaunt old woman with disheveled hair cried out in surprise, "Niuzi, how did you get out?"

Zhong Erniu asked, "Mother, where's Cui'er?"

The old woman looked panicked and helpless. Zhong Erniu said, "Don't be afraid, mother. I've brought officers from the Heaven-Listening Bureau. They'll definitely be able to save Cui'er."

"You-this, this... but, but the ancestral rules..." His words did not reassure the old woman; instead, she grew even more frightened.

Du Cao pushed past her and walked toward a shed on the western side of the courtyard. A goat was tethered inside, and a filthy, foul-smelling woman clung to its leg with a teat in her mouth, sucking desperately.

He frowned at the sight. "Didn't I give you a talisman? Didn't you put it on her?"

"I did, I did," the old woman stammered. "My daughter-in-law was normal yesterday and earlier today, but after noon, the evil took hold of her again."

Xu Da said confidently, "By my calculations, you put the talisman on her at noon yesterday?"

The old woman looked at him in awe. "Master, your calculations are truly accurate."

Du Cao glanced at the young woman biting tightly onto the goat's teat, then turned back. "An infant spirit has latched onto her. I'll drive it away first."

As he spoke, he took off his clothes. In the poor light of the night, Wang Qilin dimly saw something flash behind Du Cao and vanish. Then the young woman slumped to the ground.

After putting his clothes back on, Du Cao asked, "Has your daughter-in-law ever aborted a baby?"

Zhong Erniu picked up his wife and shook his head. "No."

Du Cao asked, "Then before the ghost latched onto her, did she go anywhere unusual or touch anything unusual?"

The old woman said, "No. Cui'er only stayed at home and did the housework..."

"Cui'er became like this after going to the upper compound to get embroidery thread," Zhong Erniu cried.

The old woman said, "Don't talk nonsense! Who hasn't been to the upper compound? How is that an unusual place?"

Zhong Erniu insisted, "According to the ancestral rules, people from the lower compound can't enter the upper compound during the seven days after the clan chief dies. We've never gone into the upper compound at this particular time. Cui'er hasn't been married into the family long and didn't know the rule. Then she went into the upper compound at this particular time, and then this happened!"

"There's a ghost in the upper compound!"

Before long, the young woman woke, then smiled vacantly. "So many babies, so many babies. Erniu, I'm going to be a mother. I have so many babies..."

Du Cao said, "To the upper compound!"

The checkpoint between the upper and lower compounds was still guarded at night. Seeing the three approach, a man called loudly, "Who goes-"

"Get lost!"

"You've got some nerve! You-"

"The Heaven-Listening Bureau is investigating a case. All uninvolved persons are to stand aside."

Du Cao took out a wooden token the size of a child's palm.

In the flickering firelight, a blood-red glow danced across the token.

The burly man trembled inwardly and hurriedly pulled open the wooden gate.

Anyone who obstructed a Heaven-Listening Bureau investigation would be treated as an evil entity.

When it came to evil entities, the New Han Dynasty always executed first and reported afterward!

With Du Cao leading, the three headed straight for the ancestral hall.

The Zhong clan's ancestral hall was a large stone building. Directly ahead upon opening the doors stood a stone Buddha two people tall. According to custom, ancestral tablets should have been arranged beneath the Buddha, but this hall was unusual: before the Buddha stood an incense burner and offerings, with no ancestral tablets.

Instead, a large red-lacquered coffin rested on benches inside, with an exquisitely crafted paper bridge set between the entrance and the coffin.

This was called an ascension bridge, linking two ends: the coffin in the world of the living at one end, and the Yellow Springs of the underworld at the other.

When an ascension bridge was erected after someone died, an underworld officer would cross it from the underworld to take away the departed soul.

At the end of the ascension bridge was the head of the coffin. Between them sat a bronze bell of ancient design and a subdued, austere air.

This was a soul-summoning bell. When the soul returned on the seventh day after death, the bell could summon the deceased's soul back across the ascension bridge for another look at the world of the living.

A young woman with a slightly swollen belly was tending the ever-burning lamp. The three suddenly pushing through the doors startled her. "Who are you? This is a restricted place of the Zhong family. Outsiders may not enter without permission!"

Xu Da said, "Then treat us as insiders. Wouldn't that mean we could enter without permission?"