Fire Judge
The opera singing rang out, fierce and imposing.
Hearing the singing from the main room's doorway, Zhou Yang could not help picturing a character to match.
-Surely it was a fearsome, majestic deity who oversaw punishment!
Perhaps a judge of the underworld!
He had only just had the thought when Ding Ling's excited thoughts reached him:
"Sir, the troupe leader is singing a passage from 'Nine Lotus Lanterns: Fire Judge.' He's playing the Fire Judge of the underworld!"
At such a critical moment, Zhou Yang had no mind to appreciate the opera.
Ding Ling was different. Listening as though it were heavenly music, she eagerly described the Fire Judge in the opera to Zhou Yang: "This Fire Judge wears a judge's hat, with a red bat-patterned face and a red, curling beard. He's dressed in red silk and a red official's robe. He doesn't carry a weapon, only a torch.
"To play the Fire Judge, you have to be able to breathe fire!
"I've seen the troupe leader perform it once. He held up his torch, puffed out his cheeks, and spat a jet of fire over ten feet long!"
Following Ding Ling's description, Zhou Yang added many details to the image of the Fire Judge in his mind.
As the details filled in, the red bat-patterned face of the Fire Judge in his mind seemed to shift repeatedly to the sound of Chang Dafeng's singing outside. At one moment its eyes bulged and its teeth were bared; at another its brows arched high. It was utterly fierce and terrifying!
The face was so clear in his mind that Zhou Yang started:
I'm listening through a door and can only hear his voice. Just from a few words of description from Ding Ling, I shouldn't be able to picture a character I've never seen in such detail!
Chang Dafeng must have sung so well that his opera achieved communion with spirits, giving him the ability to bring the character to life!
Realization dawned on him. Then he heard a series of cries from the main room's doorway: "Wah-yah-yah-yah-yah-"
"Let's go over to the window!" Zhou Yang promptly told Ding Ling.
Hearing that Chang Dafeng had brought out his true skills, Ding Ling had long been itching to look. Now that Zhou Yang had given his consent, she immediately crept back beneath the windowsill, furtively poked her head up, and peered hard toward the main room's doorway-
Looking sideways from the window of the left side room, she could only see the three steps in front of the main room.
She couldn't see what was happening at its entrance.
Even so, just as Ding Ling poked her head out to look, the Fire Judge's shrill cries at the doorway abruptly stopped.
A long intake of breath followed.
"Whoosh-"
It seemed that Chang Dafeng, standing at the doorway, had breathed out. Eerie green fire suddenly burst from the main room, flooding most of the courtyard in an instant!
"What a huge fire!"
Both Zhou Yang and Ding Ling trembled!
They were shaken, but not because they feared the fire that had dyed the whole courtyard green. Rather, they had both thought at once that the ability to breathe fire was most likely contained in the Draft of Divine Makeup and Ghost Painting.
They would soon be learning the Draft of Divine Makeup and Ghost Painting too!
The fire did not raise the temperature in the courtyard one bit. Instead, it made the wind blowing through the courtyard feel even colder.
The flames gathered in the courtyard in an instant, taking the shape of a ghastly green Fire Judge.
This Fire Judge, however, was swollen and fat, with patches of rotting flesh and festering sores all over his body. Green flames flickered among the sores and decaying flesh.
Zhou Yang saw at a glance that this Fire Judge had most likely been formed from the Corpse Bloat Form!
"Obeying the thunderous summons of fire!
"Swiftly prepare the Ten Thousand Crows Pot, the bows and crossbows, the smoke arrows.
"Surround the gates!"
Chang Dafeng sang in a hoarse voice at the main room's doorway. The Bloated Aspect Fire Judge in the courtyard also shrieked, transforming into a flock of fire crows that swooped toward the pitch-black courtyard gatehouse opposite!
"Whoosh!"
For an instant, the sound of a flock of crows beating their wings seemed to rise in the night sky!
A moment later, the courtyard gate was lit up by the green fire too!
At some unknown point, the gate had opened partway.
The light of the onrushing fire crows revealed what lay within the gap!
A "person" dressed in a riot of colors stood behind it!
One of "his" shoulders slumped, and half of "his" body leaned through the gap. His entire face was exposed in the green fire cast by the flock of crows, laid bare before everyone's eyes!
The "person" was short and sturdy, dressed in a gaudy opera costume whose material looked like lacquered oilpaper.
On "his" head was the ornate headdress of a huadan, its kingfisher-feather tassels swaying beside his temples.
His face was deathly pale as paper, with rouge on both cheeks and lips painted a deep red.
Despite the powder and rouge on his face, Zhou Yang and Ding Ling saw at once that the ghost leaning halfway through the gate looked exactly like Gao Hongbo!
Gao Hongbo, who played painted-face roles, had now been made into a huadan by a ghost!
He had come looking for the troupe!
"He's come for us!
"Ah-he's come to see us!"
Li Yichun suddenly shrieked from the right side room opposite!
The sound raised the hair on their bodies!
"Whoosh!"
The flock of crows gathered beneath the gatehouse and transformed back into the Bloated Aspect Fire Judge.
It flung its arms wide and lunged to seize the huadan Gao Hongbo in the gap!
Green fire spread along the Fire Judge's arms and onto Gao Hongbo, setting the ghost, who looked as though he wore paper clothes, ablaze!
Gao Hongbo reached out from amid the flames, moving faster than the Fire Judge. He seized both of his opponent's arms, stopping the Fire Judge from advancing another inch!
Then!
"Gao Hongbo" drew the Fire Judge's arms together and suddenly opened his mouth-
His mouth was pitch-black, with neither teeth nor tongue in sight. Seeing it open, Zhou Yang's heart jolted, and a guess occurred to him:
Could it be that he's going to eat the Fire Judge?
The thought had only just occurred to him when the ghost grabbed the Fire Judge's arms and stuffed them into his mouth!
First the arms, then the head, followed by the upper body and the two legs of the lower body... In a very short time, the ghost swallowed the Fire Judge, who was much taller than he was, whole through that small mouth!
His body did not change at all!
Still burning with green fire and standing stiffly in the doorway, he had shown nothing unusual from beginning to end, yet had eaten the Fire Judge alive-the figure Chang Dafeng had created with such great fanfare!
Chang Dafeng's Opera Communion with Spirits has little effect on ghosts!
It might be able to suppress Puppets, but it can't suppress ghosts!
A chill swept through Zhou Yang's heart!
At the courtyard gate, Gao Hongbo, his whole body aflame, suddenly stamped his foot and wiped a hand across his face. His powdered and rouged face became the Fire Judge's red bat-patterned face. Still dressed and adorned as a huadan, he sang in a shrill voice:
"Obeying the thunderous summons of fire!
"Swiftly prepare the Ten Thousand Crows Pot, the bows and crossbows, the smoke arrows.
"Surround the gates!"
As he sang, he swung his limbs like a puppet working its joints and rushed toward the main room's door!
His gait was stiff, but he moved extremely fast!
In the blink of an eye, he was in the middle of the courtyard!
"Hum!"
Just then, an indescribable aura spread in all directions from the main room's doorway. Zhou Yang and Ding Ling sensed it at once!
The aura entered Ding Ling's body, instantly giving her the feeling that her soul was floating high above while her flesh fell heavily downward. With the aura swirling around her, her body and soul seemed on the verge of separating.
Zhou Yang, however, only felt clearheaded and alert.
A thought stirred in him. Under the influence of the aura, he instantly recalled where it came from-
It came from the candle Chang Dafeng treasured!
The Ghost Candle that a person with sufficiently strong Mindfulness could light simply by looking at it!
Chang Dafeng must have lit the Ghost Candle at the main room's doorway!
The aura the Ghost Candle gave off seemed capable of strengthening Mindfulness. And-Zhou Yang lowered his gaze to Ding Ling's unconsciously opened hands. The honeycomb-like Ghost Mouths in her palms were constantly opening and closing, absorbing all the Ghost Candle's aura that drifted their way!
They were ravenous for the Ghost Candle's aura!
"Steady your mind!"
Zhou Yang's voice rang low in Ding Ling's mind:
"The way of a commander begins with mastering the mind.
"Only when Mount Tai collapses before him without changing his expression, and deer spring up to his left without making him blink, can he weigh advantage and danger and face the enemy..."
He recited to Ding Ling a passage from The Art of the Mind, which he often used to steady his own emotions.
As Ding Ling listened to the calm, steady male voice speaking slowly, her drifting soul seemed for the moment to find something to rely on.
She was a kite flying high in the sky, but its string was securely wound around Mr. Zhou's hand.
At that thought, Ding Ling suddenly came to her senses.
Zhou Yang took control of Ding Ling's body.
When his thoughts fully synchronized with Ding Ling's flesh, Zhou Yang's perception of his surroundings grew sharper.
The thick, sickly sweet stench of decay, the chill lingering around him, the aura that seemed both real and illusory... All manner of sensations surged around him, unsettling even Zhou Yang. It took him several breaths to calm down.
If even he, whose Mindfulness was somewhat stronger than Ding Ling's, reacted this way, what of Ding Ling herself?
If not for Breathing of the Ghost, and the two of them working together, Ding Ling might have been tainted outright when the ghost appeared outside the gate, and come to grief then and there!
Zhou Yang pulled the left side room's door open a crack and looked through it toward the main room's doorway.
There, Chang Dafeng stood ramrod straight, gripping the Ghost Candle in his left hand.
He extended a finger of his right hand and crooked it toward the candle flame. The flame leaped in response, growing taller and taller.
At the same time, a phantom figure behind Chang Dafeng, so faint it was nearly transparent, grew more solid as the flame rose. It grew larger and larger, reaching over ten feet tall in moments!
The swollen, rotting figure was none other than the Corpse Bloat Form!
Chang Dafeng rose onto his toes. As his heels left the ground, the Corpse Bloat Form suddenly pressed itself against his back, its insteps propping up his heels.
The Corpse Bloat Form behind him vanished without a trace, but a sinister aura emanated from Chang Dafeng.
His head hung low, and an eerie, chilling opera song issued from his mouth:
"Thunder crashes and bright lightning flashes!
"Seated atop the clouds is the Black Tiger Mysterious Altar!
"With the Sea-Coiling Whip, he parts the clouds and looks below-"
Chang Dafeng abruptly raised his head and wiped his right hand across his face, producing from nothing a black painted-face mask with straight-set features and eyes;
His left hand closed around empty air and rose high, as though he held a golden whip, ready to strike down an evil ghost!
The Ghost Candle's flame danced beside him.
Its light cast a fierce, ghostly shadow of Chang Dafeng on the wall to his side. The shadow held the same pose as he did, except that its raised left hand clearly gripped a human leg!
Blood continued to drip from the severed end!
In an instant, "Gao Hongbo" crossed the courtyard and reached the main room's doorway!
Two ghostly shadows appeared on the wall, one in the guise of Zhao Gongming of the Black Tiger Dark Altar, the other in the form of the underworld's Fire Judge. They fought!
The bloody human leg in "Zhao Gongming's" hand came crashing down, striking the underworld Fire Judge squarely on the crown!
It smashed the judge's hat on his head, and the Fire Judge's shadow abruptly scattered!
The red bat-patterned makeup on "Gao Hongbo's" face instantly became foul and rotten. He stood motionless, a thick stench of decay pouring from his body, and made no move for the moment!
Watching the scene from the left side room, Zhou Yang and Ding Ling did not dare let their guard down in the slightest-
If the ghost got through the main door, everyone inside except Chang Dafeng would die!
Fortunately, Chang Dafeng had lit the Ghost Candle and used Opera Communion with Spirits as well. With both working together, he had finally stopped it!
But...
Zhou Yang had only just felt relieved when another opera song rose from the room opposite:
"My beloved dwells in my fond heart, while I am left heartbroken; the moon knows my aggrieved feelings...
"Meeting is hard, parting easy; now all regret has come too late;
"I wonder if you recall the joy we shared like phoenixes that day..."