Paper Figures

In Daliangzi Village, all the everyday necessities were still in their usual places.

At the well by the village entrance, the well rope was wound several times around the windlass. A bucket stood nearby, still half full of well water.

A handcart stood in the middle of the road, several bundles of firewood piled on it, but there was no sign of the person who had been pushing it.

There was not a soul to be seen in the entire village.

The village still looked "alive," yet it was already dead.

Inside every dwelling that looked inhabited, corpses lay scattered.

The stench rising from the bodies permeated the air, leaving every object, every blade of grass and every tree smelling of death.

Despite the cold weather, the villagers' corpses had rotted rapidly in just a day or two. The only explanation was the influence of Opera Ghost's Ghost Rhyme.

Zhou Yang led Ding Ling carefully around the dwellings, so as not to disturb the dead inside and invite disaster.

Only after considerable effort did the two reach a cluster of gray-brick houses in the northwest of Daliangzi Village.

Behind three scholar trees and beneath a brick-carved gatehouse, two black-lacquered wooden doors were tightly shut. The studs on the doors were rusted, and a layer of moss covered the steps before them, with faint shoeprints on it.

Ding Ling stepped forward and tried pushing the doors, but naturally failed to open them. "They're barred from the inside..."

She stepped back down and took another look at the moss on the steps, then at the wild grass growing thickly against the base of the wall.

From outside, the house was clearly a place that had been uninhabited for a long time.

Because no one had lived there for so long, thick moss covered the front steps and wild grass grew all along the base of the wall.

The stench of corpses drifted out of nearly every other house in the village, but as Zhou Yang and Ding Ling approached these tiled houses, the reek of decay grew much fainter. This only supported Ding Ling's conclusion that the houses were uninhabited.

Zhou Yang and Ding Ling had searched Daliangzi Village for a long time before finding a place like this, with no dwellings on either side and no one living inside.

A dwelling like this had long been abandoned by the villagers. With no dead villagers inside, there would be almost no chance of Opera Ghost's Ghost Rhyme lingering there.

The place was also a great distance from the opera troupe. If Chang Dafeng wanted to find it, he would have to spend considerable effort and go through a great deal of trouble.

It was just the right place for the two of them to stay.

"Find a lower spot and climb into the courtyard. See what it's like inside."

Zhou Yang spoke.

The walls around the houses were very high, and Ding Ling was dressed in her full costume. She could only look for a lower spot and use Breathing of the Ghost to help her climb over.

Ding Ling agreed, found a slightly lower spot, and opened the Ghost Mouth in her palm. In a few quick moves, she climbed to the top of the wall.

She surveyed the area inside before jumping down. The uppers of her high black-soled boots plunged into a pile of dead leaves with a crunch, crunch.

As soon as Ding Ling found her footing, she glanced to the side and saw an old parasol tree leaning against the courtyard wall. It jutted straight toward the sky, its branches bare, without a single leaf left at this time of year.

One of its spreading branches lay across the ridge of a tiled roof, crushing it in the middle. As the ridge collapsed, the whole roof had buckled, the lower edges of its gray tiles curling upward like the raised neck feathers of an angry rooster.

Most of that tiled roof had caved in.

Treading over a layer of leaves that had accumulated for who knew how many years, Ding Ling rounded the corner of the house. She saw several more rooms cramped together within the high courtyard walls, with only the central courtyard admitting a little daylight.

A musty stench wafted out of the rooms.

"As expected, we can't smell that corpse stink in these houses. That's a good thing."

Ding Ling spoke to Zhou Yang as she approached a room with its door half open.

Since they were already here, the two naturally had to look around.

As she spoke, Ding Ling pushed the half-open door a little farther. Its hinges turned with a creak in the silence, making one's skin crawl.

A little daylight spilled into the room through the widening doorway.

The room was overgrown with grass. A canopy bed that had stood by the window lay collapsed amid the weeds, and tables and cabinets were toppled in every direction. Looking through Ding Ling's eyes, Zhou Yang suddenly spotted a hulking black figure.

His heart jumped. "Someone's there!"

"Where?!"

Ding Ling's eyes had only just turned away when they snapped back.

With her and Zhou Yang's minds linked, she immediately looked toward the spot where he had seen the figure. Behind a fallen, tilted wardrobe, she saw the hulking black "person."

The "person" seemed to have its back to the door, its head bowed and back hunched as it faced a dressing mirror.

Only then did Ding Ling make out the pitch-black mirror.

The daylight illuminated the dressing mirror as well.

Beneath a layer of dust and cobwebs, the mirror reflected the person facing it and Ding Ling peering in from the doorway. The reflection was hazy, and the person's face could not be made out at all.

The person remained standing in the same spot, motionless.

But as the door opened, a gust of wind swept inside.

The light breeze brushed over the figure and blew it face-down onto the floor.

It was like a person made of paper.

It was a paper figure.

With Zhou Yang reassuring her, Ding Ling gathered her courage and walked over, finally getting a full look at the paper figure.

Most of its outer form had rotted away, and only the sorghum stalks inside held it in shape.

But the clothes on it were not made of paper.

"That's a python robe, and a jade belt, official's boots..." Ding Ling recognized the figure's clothing at a glance. "This paper figure was playing a civil official of considerable standing...

"There's a hole in the belly of the python robe..."

Seeing the hole in the robe, Ding Ling thought of something, and her gaze grew uncertain.

Following her gaze, Zhou Yang saw it too: a gash that looked as though it had been cut with a knife in the belly of the python robe, its gold thread faded and its brocade rotting.

The fabric around the gash seemed to have been stained by some liquid, making it a darker black.

"Could this paper figure be dressed as Gongsun Yan in Slitting the Belly and Spilling the Intestines from The Grand Investiture of the Six States?" Zhou Yang had thought of the same thing as Ding Ling.

The two had just been through the entire process of practicing the Draft of Divine Makeup and Ghost Painting and Creating a Zhen at the Gate of Opening together, so the Slitting the Belly and Spilling the Intestines scene from The Grand Investiture of the Six States was already fresh in their minds.

Now that they had seen this strange paper figure that seemed to have "slit its belly and died," they naturally made the connection.

"How could...

"How could there be such a coincidence?"

Ding Ling denied it instinctively.

Doubts clouded Zhou Yang's mind. He neither agreed nor disagreed, saying only, "Go look in the other rooms.

"A paper figure is wearing a python robe as an opera costume. There's something wrong with this place, so stay alert."

"Mm!" Ding Ling stood up and slipped out of the room, hunched over and moving quietly.

She looked around and noticed nothing amiss, so she darted into the room opposite, whose roof had a huge hole in it.

Rubble and dead leaves covered the floor, and wild grass grew everywhere.

A stove that had not been buried beneath weeds and rubble stood out in the ruined room.

A large wood-fired pot still sat on the stove.

The bottom of the pot had rusted through. Through it, Ding Ling could see a pitch-black object stuffed into the equally dark firebox below.

Ding Ling picked up a stick and pulled the object out of the firebox. The moment she saw it, her expression froze-

The object pierced by the stick was unmistakably a paper human head!

Ash had dirtied the paper face, but its two eyes, painted bright red, had survived to this day, allowing Zhou Yang and Ding Ling to recognize it at a glance!

Ding Ling hurriedly dropped the paper head and fled the room.

She looked around again, and the seemingly dilapidated, abandoned courtyard now seemed strange in every corner.

In the corners screened by gray-brick walls, where sunlight could not reach, ghostly things seemed to be stirring!

Growing more alert, she entered the room in front of the woodshed.

The moment she pushed open the door, she saw a headless paper figure standing at the entrance. Her hair stood on end, and she swung the stick in her hand at it!

"Wait!"

Zhou Yang spoke up and stopped her.

After calming Ding Ling down, Zhou Yang examined the paper figure. He saw that it too was wearing an opera costume, dressed as a character from a play:

"I suppose it's the 'owner' of that paper head stuffed into the firebox.

"We couldn't tell much from the paper head just now.

"But don't you think there's something strange about the clothes this paper figure is wearing, Ding Ling?

"His nine-palace, eight-trigram robe worn backward, his waist bound with a silk sash and resurrection grass, cloud-climbing boots upon his feet, a tiger-beating ruler hanging at his waist... The golden helmet and cord-wrapped hat from his head are nowhere to be seen, but this appearance, this costume... Isn't it Shen Gongbao with His Head Twisted and Neck Split?"

Ding Ling frowned, her little face taut. "I know, sir," she said quietly.

"'Shen Gongbao with His Head Twisted and Neck Split' is also a scene that has to be performed and sung when Creating a Zhen for the Gate of Death Averting God in the Draft of Divine Makeup and Ghost Painting...

"This room, and the Opera Ghost in Daliangzi Village-it seems they were after us from the start!"

"They weren't after us," Zhou Yang corrected her. "Before you and I, Chang Dafeng was the main practitioner of the Draft of Divine Makeup and Ghost Painting.

"If trouble had broken out in this village and ghosts had appeared from the beginning...

"Then when this Opera Ghost invited your troupe here, Chang Dafeng was the one it was after. The rest of you were just extras."

"Then, then should we keep looking around?" Ding Ling asked.

Zhou Yang hesitated, then made up his mind. "Yes!

"Neither of us sensed any Ghost Rhyme inside or outside these houses.

"That means it's safe for the moment.

"If we don't take this chance to look around more, we might have even less opportunity later."

"All right!"

Ding Ling readily agreed.

The two took the opportunity to hurry through the remaining rooms in the front courtyard.

In the three remaining rooms, Ding Ling found Lady White Bone, corresponding to the character impersonated for the Gate of Rest, and Plague King Zhao Gongming, corresponding to the character impersonated for the Gate of Shock. Only in the last room was there no paper figure dressed in an opera costume as a character from a play.

This last room was the main hall of the front courtyard.