Imprinting

The Zhou family's chilling laughter filled the air.

Zhou Yang pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and tensed every muscle, forcing himself not to tremble!

But his very soul was shaking uncontrollably!

For a moment, he almost thought he had broken character and the family had discovered what made him different from "them"!

As a general, one must first govern the mind. Only when Mount Tai collapses before him without changing his expression, and deer leap up to his left without making him blink, can he weigh gain and loss and face the enemy...

Fortunately, the lines of classical prose Zhou Yang often used to suppress his fear flashed through his mind like a conditioned reflex.

The passage was like a commercial inserted at the most tense moment of a horror movie. Though jarringly out of place, it dispelled some of the viewer's fear and gave the tension a brief reprieve.

It allowed Zhou Yang to catch his breath.

He gathered his thoughts and quickly found a way to respond.

Zhou Yang mustered his courage and glanced sideways at the laughing family members.

Then he spoke. "You called me to get up. Didn't I get up?

"I don't want breakfast today. What's wrong with that?

"Actually, I don't understand-are we really a family? Are you really my own mother? Otherwise, why are you so good to Baigou and Heigou, while all you do to me is beat me, scold me, and curse me to die?

"What kind of mother curses her own child to die, to die young, every single day?!"

Zhou Yang fired the questions back in rapid succession.

He had spent years frequenting forums and message boards, trading barbs with sarcastic posters on a certain Q&A site and veteran message-board users, and had gained plenty of experience in verbal sparring.

The key to winning an argument wasn't reasoning with the other person or "debating scripture."

It was "don't answer their questions."

And while refusing to answer, you had to fire off a string of questions of your own, forcing the other person to answer them instead.

That way, you could quickly draw them into your rhythm.

But such counterquestions shouldn't be aimless. They still needed substance and had to strike at the heart of the matter.

After living in Guan Village for some time, Zhou Yang had vaguely sensed that the "Guan villagers" also needed to maintain a persona on the surface. Though they were no longer human, they still had to act like people.

Though Huang Shaozi, Zhou Laogou, and their family seemed more like a group cobbled together from different places, even in this family full of holes, parents, children, and brothers all had to play their respective roles.

Now, Zhou Yang had confronted his mother from the perspective of a child unwanted by his parents.

His heart pounded as soon as the questions left his mouth.

But he could only force himself to stay calm and look Huang Shaozi in the eye.

The vivid expression on Huang Shaozi's deathly pale, slick face went blank in an instant.

It wasn't just her. All three Zhou family members had gone blank-faced, their eyes fixed on Zhou Yang, but there was no spark of life in those pitch-black pupils.

Silence fell all around.

Zhou Yang's words seemed to be beyond their ability to comprehend.

They stood frozen, like puppets that had lost their souls.

"So that's how it is..." After a long while, Huang Shaozi murmured. She looked at Zhou Yang, and a loving, gentle expression suddenly appeared on her face.

Yet the expression made Zhou Yang's heart tremble!

Huang Shaozi's expression was extraordinarily gentle, but drool kept running from the corners of her mouth!

Paying no mind to the saliva dripping from her mouth, she smiled and said to Zhou Yang, "You're right, A-Yang. Mother shouldn't have cursed you to die...

"What mother doesn't love her child?

"Mother loves you, and you must know to repay her kindness. When you get the chance, you must be properly filial to Mother..."

The hairs on Zhou Yang's body stood on end!

What did he have to offer these ghosts as an act of filial piety?

Nothing but this living human body they drooled over!

But he lowered his head anyway, making an effort to soften his voice. "Mother loves me, and I'll be filial to you in the future."

He had to get through the immediate crisis first. What came later would have to wait.

"Good boy, good boy..." Huang Shaozi's plump, pale hand patted Zhou Yang's shoulder, and a greasy, stale smell wafted from the shiny skin on the back of her hand.

Goosebumps rose on Zhou Yang's arms.

He nodded and said, "Then, Mother, Father, I'm off to work."

Huang Shaozi and Zhou Laogou each nodded.

"You'd better keep your word, Third Brother." At that moment, Zhou Yang's second brother in this family, Zhou Heigou, suddenly spoke up. His lips curled and his eyebrows drooped as he gave a sinister smile.

Zhou Yang looked at him but said nothing, lowering his head as he left the courtyard.

That sinister gaze followed Zhou Yang the whole way.

Only when he turned out of the lane and onto the main road did the prickling sensation at his back suddenly vanish.

Along both sides of the main road, the gates to the houses gradually opened.

The villagers of Guan Village came out to go about their business.

In moments, figures appeared all over the mist-shrouded road.

As if by agreement, the villagers had followed Zhou Yang's lead, coming out and going about their business after he left home.

Some worked, some wandered, and some repaired courtyard walls washed down by the rain.

The same scene repeated itself every day as Zhou Yang went to and from work.

Every villager was an eye Guan Village had placed outside. Guan Village relied on those eyes to find the "abnormal people" hiding among them.

Compared with a village full of ghosts pretending to be human, a normal person like Zhou Yang was naturally no longer normal.

"Second Grandpa, it's me, Zhou Yang. Have you eaten?"

"Fixing the wall, Uncle Li? It's me, Zhou Yang."

"Remember me? I'm Zhou Yang."

Smiling and nodding repeatedly, Zhou Yang greeted the villagers he met along the way.

He had to give his name first when greeting them.

Though he saw these people every day, after a night had passed, they no longer recognized his face.

He had to volunteer his name before the villagers could connect his face to it. Otherwise, he might be taken for a "stranger," with unpredictable consequences.

That was what he had learned from the final images left by the dying in Guan Village.

At last, Zhou Yang entered a deserted lane.

In the empty lane, he had a moment to catch his breath and no longer had to deal with the villagers.

Zhou Heigou seems hostile toward me.

As Zhou Yang gradually calmed down, his turbulent thoughts receded, and one perfectly clear thought suddenly sprang up in his mind.

He recalled his recent encounters with the Zhou family's second brother, Zhou Heigou, and continued reasoning:

Whether it's Huang Shaozi, Zhou Laogou, or Zhou Baigou, none of them actually bears me any hostility.

Just as a tiger eats meat when it's hungry, the aggression they sometimes show me comes only from a ghost's natural desire to kill.

But Zhou Heigou is different from those ghosts.

He always jumps out to pick on me at crucial moments.

At first, I thought picking fights was a prominent part of the personality he played as a ghost pretending to be human. But if that were his personality, it definitely shouldn't be directed at me alone.

Yet that's exactly what's happening.

So there's a good chance he bears me ill will.

Ghosts don't bear humans ill will-when they kill you, it has nothing to do with you.

Only people have grudges and entanglements with one another.

Then could Zhou Heigou be human?

Could Zhou Heigou actually be a living person hiding right beside me?!

Zhou Yang was startled by the conclusion he had reached!

He pondered it and decided to wait and see, then sound Zhou Heigou out when he found an opportunity.

Putting the matter of Zhou Heigou aside for now, Zhou Yang reached behind his waist and pulled out the Knife Credit Ledger.

He had also spent all of last night busy over on the Karmic Retribution Body's side. There should have been some changes in the Knife Credit Ledger.

Just as Zhou Yang had thought-

On the first page of the Knife Credit Ledger, Zhou Yang's Mindfulness had not changed.

But his "Good Karma" was no longer zero. It had become "three."

At the upper right corner of his "Abilities" field, the word "Imprinting" had also turned vermilion.

When Zhou Yang focused his gaze on "Imprinting," the small vermilion letters seemed to catch fire, burning through the paper and revealing the Karmic Retribution Body Ding Ling's personal record on the next page-

Karmic Retribution Body: Ding Ling.

Mindfulness: 3.

Identity: cook and general hand for the Lampstand Opera Troupe.

Abilities: practiced butcher, skilled cook, self-taught folk opera performer.

Unlike Zhou Yang's unchanged Mindfulness, Ding Ling's had increased by one strand.

He and Ding Ling had gone through "grooming before the mirror" together and faced the ghost in the mirror. Ding Ling's Mindfulness had grown, while his own had not changed at all.

Mindfulness came from a person's spirit. At the time, his mind had been attached to Ding Ling, and he had faced danger alongside her. There was no reason her Mindfulness should have grown while his own failed to advance at all.

Zhou Yang could only speculate that with each additional strand of Mindfulness, raising it further became a little more difficult.

The Mindfulness displayed in the Knife Credit Ledger had not changed, probably because the increase this time was not significant enough to show up in the ledger.

Zhou Yang lingered on the thought briefly, then focused on the ability "Imprinting."

His gaze fell on Ding Ling's abilities field-

Each of Ding Ling's abilities had become available for him to imprint.

Spend one unit of Good Karma to imprint "practiced butcher." Imprinting grants one-tenth of the Manifestation Body's proficiency. Imprint?

Spend one unit of Good Karma to imprint "skilled cook." Imprinting grants one-tenth of the Manifestation Body's proficiency. Imprint?

Good Karma was hard to come by, and none of Ding Ling's current abilities appealed to Zhou Yang in the least.

Now that he understood the use of Good Karma, he tucked the booklet back behind his waist and trudged through the mud toward A Fu's courtyard.

Zhou Yang needed time to consider and sort through everything he had experienced on the Karmic Retribution Body's side.

Yet after Huang Shaozi had forced him out of bed that morning, one matter after another had come at him in Guan Village.

Each one had demanded all his effort to deal with.

What he lacked most now was time.

Only by going to A Fu's smithy could he find time between bouts of forging iron to sort through the previous night's experiences.