Master Gan, Kuang Tongsheng—or perhaps now, he should be called Huang Tongsheng.

He had never explicitly told Jiang Lian that he was a corpse herder, but he had shared many stories about herding corpses. Between the lines, that was clearly what he meant. He also knew the methods of different schools, such as how some sects treated corpses with utmost respect, honoring them as “joyful spirits,” while others were crude and vulgar, shouting “Beast, move!” when herding corpses, literally driving the dead like livestock.

To understand this story, we must go back nearly eighty years.

In the history of China’s War of Resistance, Hunan was a magical place. After the Japanese occupied the three northeastern provinces, they advanced rapidly with the momentum to swallow all of China. In 1939, their evil claws reached into Hunan. However, until their surrender in 1945, the Japanese fought and retreated, retreated and fought in this area, like being stuck in a swamp, unable to pull out or advance further.

War is cruel. While Western Hunan was temporarily spared due to its mountain barriers, the cities in Eastern Hunan had already suffered greatly. Even the provincial capital, Changsha, was nearly burned to the ground.

During that time, many families fled as refugees, hoping to relocate to the rear base of Chongqing. Since the highways were frequently bombed by Japanese planes and extremely dangerous, taking detours through the mountains of Western Hunan, known as a bandit’s den, actually became the preferred route.

The Kuang family was one such group of refugees. Nearly twenty people—men, women, old and young—packed their belongings, drove their pack animals, and followed guides and escorts through the Xuefeng Mountains, then into the unpredictably dangerous Greater Wuling Mountains.

Huang Tongsheng had heard a bit about the situation outside but didn’t take it to heart. He had never seen Japanese devils and imagined they would be similar to the long-haired rebels during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom—when the long-haired bandits came, the older generation would hide in the mountains, and if Japanese devils came, they could just hide in the mountains as well.

He continued as always, shaking his soul-summoning bell, treading the bluestone path, bearing the sun, moon, and stars, guiding joyful spirits around Wuling Mountain. Having walked these paths many times, he had made a friend or two, such as Old Ma’s family in Bahwang Village. Ma’s family made masks for Nuo operas, and the eldest son, Ma Crooked Neck, especially enjoyed drinking and chatting with Huang Tongsheng, thoroughly dissecting all the trivial family matters between his in-laws and brothers.

On that occasion, by coincidence, Huang Tongsheng and the Kuang family stayed at the same inn.

Normally, corpse herders stayed at special inns for the dead. Such small hotels were common in Western Hunan, located in remote places with high thresholds and black-lacquered front doors that remained open at night to allow corpse herders to come and go. These inns were often unattended, almost like self-service—when leaving, corpse herders simply left the room payment inside.

But if the innkeeper didn’t mind, they could occasionally stay at regular inns, as corpse herders tended to be generous with their money. Besides, in Western Hunan, there was a saying that if a “joyful spirit” had stayed at an inn, it would bring good luck, called “joyful spirit blessing the inn.” So, inns would usually keep one or two windowless, secluded rooms specially for these unique guests.

That day, Huang Tongsheng guided his joyful spirits to the inn before dawn and immediately fell asleep. While in deep slumber, he heard someone knocking on his door.

Huang Tongsheng broke into a cold sweat, thinking something had happened. When he opened the door, there was no one there.

Looking down, he saw a fair-skinned little girl of two or three years wearing a tiger-head hat, lying against the doorframe, drooling and giggling at him. Though covered in dust, she laughed so heartily, as if excited about playing a trick on him.

From her attire, she didn’t look like a local. Huang Tongsheng knew she was a guest’s child. When the little girl saw that the door had opened, she eagerly tried to crawl inside. Goodness! Inside were corpses standing facing the wall. If she disturbed them, it would be terrible. Huang Tongsheng panicked, quickly closed the door, picked up the little girl, and went to find her family. Fortunately, just as he turned the corner, he ran into the girl’s mother.

She was a young woman, only in her twenties, wearing a white sleeved qipao jacket and skirt. She looked extremely delicate and quiet. Knowing his ugliness, Huang Tongsheng was afraid of frightening her and didn’t dare raise his head. As his gaze slid downward, he saw her glass silk stockings peeking through the side slit of her qipao. He blushed from neck to ears, his speech stammering.

The woman, however, was extremely gentle and polite, continuously thanking him. Her pronunciation was soft and tender, her accent very pleasant, making him feel that his mountain dialect was truly crude.

When saying goodbye, he still kept his head half-lowered, unable to speak a complete sentence. Only after the woman had walked far away did he dare to look up: the little girl hugged her mother’s neck, waving her small hand to him in farewell. His eyes, however, were fixed only on the woman’s soft waist and slender legs showing beneath her qipao.

She was truly like a fairy! The girls in the mountain villages, no matter how beautifully they sang or how finely they embroidered flowers, couldn’t compare to her. Moreover, those village girls always laughed at his ugliness and wouldn’t even look at him directly. But that woman was so gentle and even had her child call him “uncle.”

Huang Tongsheng returned to his room with a wildly beating heart, a warm feeling in his chest. For the rest of the day, he couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning while thinking about that woman.

In earlier years, he hadn’t dared to think about women because his master had said that a virgin’s body had three fires, which enabled him to herd corpses. But a woman’s body was most poisonous, able to break this pure yang fire. He was told to stay away from women, not even to think about them.

But as the years passed, certain matters increasingly gnawed at his heart. In the past two years, he had thought more and more about settling down and taking a wife. He calculated his savings: in this lifetime, could he marry such a woman?

Touching his face, he felt it impossible—he wasn’t worthy of her.

Unless, he thought, unless that woman suffered some misfortune, like losing a leg, becoming blind in one eye, or having her face disfigured. Only then would it be his turn. And he certainly wouldn’t look down on her. He would treasure her, place her on a pedestal, eat chaff so she could eat meat, and even if he had to go naked, he would get the best cloth to make clothes for her.

Truly, it would be good if she suffered some misfortune; only then could they be a match. Huang Tongsheng indulged in fantasy, then suddenly became alert and slapped himself hard several times: how despicable to wish misfortune on someone—he deserved to die!

This inner turmoil continued until nightfall.

For a corpse herder, this was the time to work. He settled his bill, waved his apricot-yellow flag, and led several joyful spirits back on the road, swaying as he walked.

Midway, rain began to fall. Familiar with the route, Huang Tongsheng led the joyful spirits into a cave to shelter from the rain. He leaned against the cave entrance, waving a torch, idly waiting for the rain to stop.

As he looked around, he suddenly glimpsed far away, on a slope in front diagonally, what appeared to be a person hanging from a large cypress tree.

Huang Tongsheng was greatly shocked, not because he feared the dead-those in his profession had strong nerves—but because he remembered that a man with a braided queue and straw sandals had indeed hung from that tree, but last month, he had helped bury him.

That’s right, that person had been hanging in the tree for a month or two. Huang Tongsheng had seen him repeatedly in his comings and goings, becoming familiar with his face. Poor as he was, Huang had felt compassion and once made a vow to the man, saying that if he earned twenty foreign coins on this trip, he would buy a burial garment and help him be properly buried next time he passed by.

As it happened, that client had been generous, giving him thirty coins. Believing in keeping his word, Huang Tongsheng had indeed brought a burial garment on his next trip, changed the man’s clothes, dug a pit nearby, and buried him.

It had been just one month—how could someone else have hanged themselves in the same place? Strange, how did these people find such a remote location?

Finding it curious and unable to continue his journey for the time being, Huang Tongsheng went over to investigate.

He climbed the slope and, by the flickering torchlight, clearly saw the person’s face. In that instant, his hair stood on end.

Wasn’t this… the same man he had buried? How had he ended up hanging there again? Had he crawled out of his grave? But even if he had, he should be wearing burial clothes. This tattered clothing—hadn’t Huang burned those at the graveside?

Huang Tongsheng swallowed hard and, tremblingly, reached out to pull the body closer for a better look. To his surprise, he grasped at empty air.

He stood stunned for a long while, then suddenly realized: Heavens! This was what his master had called a “lantern painting”—and he had truly seen one with his own eyes!

Huang Tongsheng was inexplicably excited, examining the false corpse from left to right, marveling: it looked so real, even more real than reality. If he hadn’t reached out to touch it, who could have known it was fake?

Just as he was engrossed in his examination, not far behind him, panicked human voices and the sound of galloping pack animals suddenly broke out. Looking in that direction, the torch lights came closer and closer, mixed with fierce shouts and whistles. Having traveled at night many times, Huang Tongsheng immediately understood: bandits were robbing travelers!

Corpse herders did possess mystical skills, but these skills were for dealing with the dead. Like a scholar’s grand theories, when facing knives, guns, and clubs, they were equally useless.

At this moment, it was too late to run. If seen, he would certainly become a target. In his desperation, Huang Tongsheng lay flat in the bushes at the bottom of the slope, only hoping the robbed caravan could run fast enough to lead the bandits away from this area.

But things didn’t go as he wished. Screams, chopping sounds, overturning carts, and neighing horses all seemed to unfold right above his head. The flickering torchlight spilled down the slope, illuminating Huang Tongsheng’s face, streaming with mud and sweat.

Under the cover of the bushes, he fearfully raised his head to look.

The people in this caravan were quite tough, or perhaps, at a life-or-death moment, they had no choice but to fight. The men grabbed clubs to combat the bandits, and even the women rushed forward to help bite and scratch. However, the difference in strength was too great, and they gradually lost ground. In the chaos, Huang Tongsheng suddenly saw a woman carrying a child running in his direction.

He silently cursed his bad luck, afraid the woman would lead the bandits to him and expose his hiding place. When he saw the woman’s face, he was so shocked he nearly cried out.

It was the woman he had seen at the inn earlier that day, and the child in her arms was the little girl who had knocked on his door.

Huang Tongsheng couldn’t understand why this family was traveling at night. Later, after inquiring in various ways, he learned that they had likely been “sandwiched”: the guide had been bought by the bandits and served as an informant, leading them on detours, wrong paths, and causing them to miss inns, so they could be slaughtered in remote locations.

At that moment, recognizing her, Huang Tongsheng desperately hoped she could escape. However, a bandit with a knife immediately spotted this fleeing woman and shouted, chasing after her.

Hearing the shout, the woman was shocked and frightened. Her legs gave way, and she stumbled and fell. Whether by luck or not, after falling, she looked up and saw Huang Tongsheng’s face hidden in the grass.

Huang Tongsheng always wanted to know what expression had been on his face at that moment—most likely one of terror and refusal, offering no hope but instead despair—because the woman gave a bitter smile and said to him: “Don’t be afraid.”

After saying this, she quickly pushed the child toward him, then resolutely turned back and rushed toward the bandit with a determination to die, engaging in a struggle with him.

Huang Tongsheng’s mind buzzed. He held the child and inched down the slope. Above his head floated too many sounds, too chaotic and jumbled for him to discern whether any still belonged to that woman.

Rainwater dripped down his neck. He looked down at the little girl in his arms. Her mouth was turned down as if about to cry, but she made no sound, seemingly aware of the situation despite her young age. On her small neck, a thin silver chain gleamed faintly.

Huang Tongsheng pulled out the chain to look. It turned out there was a longevity lock hanging from it, engraved with the little girl’s birth date, hour, and name.

Kuang Yunyuan.

Later, the sounds from above gradually dispersed. Human voices died out, pack animals were led away, and the bandits gathered not far off, examining their spoils box by box, occasionally letting out excited cheers. Only the sputtering of burning cart frames remained.

The rain had also lessened, falling strand by strand into the remnant fires, hissing as it turned into light smoke.

Huang Tongsheng did the bravest thing he had done that night: carrying little Yunyuan, he secretly climbed up the slope.

He saw bodies scattered in all directions and foresaw that before long, wild beasts would follow the scent of blood and drag them away one by one. He found that woman lying face down in the mud, with a horrifying wound blooming at her neck. Her white jacket had already been dyed blackish-red with blood.

She must be dead. Huang Tongsheng trembled, his body shaking even more violently, and little Yunyuan let out a loud wail.

Afraid the bandits would hear, Huang Tongsheng quickly covered Yunyuan’s mouth. What he hadn’t expected was that this cry would rouse the woman.

She wasn’t dead yet. Using her last strength, she raised her face. Her lips, covered with mud and blood, moved slowly as if trying to speak.

Huang Tongsheng quickly knelt and leaned in to listen.

She seemed to be saying: “Box, house.”

Her voice was like a few wavering silk threads—each time she spoke, two or three threads broke. One more time, and another two or three broke. Finally, all were broken, and she made no more sounds.

Huang Tongsheng adopted Kuang Yunyuan. What happened afterward was similar to what Meng Qianzi had guessed earlier: during another job, he encountered Japanese soldiers near Changsha and only then realized that the Japanese devils were far more vicious than the long-haired rebels.

After being shot and wounded, he took this opportunity to leave his profession, changing his name to Kuang Tongsheng.

He hadn’t forgotten the woman’s dying words and speculated whether the Kuang family had buried some important box at their home. Fortunately, as the Kuang family had fled with many people and great fanfare, it wasn’t difficult to trace their path back—the Kuang family had lived in Loudi, the legendary homeland of Chiyou.

But when they fled, they had already sold their family home to a wealthy local family who was building a Western-style house. From the looks of it, they probably wouldn’t be returning anytime soon. Why would they bury an important box under the house?

Besides, now that everyone was dead, what meaning would a box filled with gold or silver have?

With a long sigh, Kuang Tongsheng stopped dwelling on houses and boxes. He took little Yunyuan and left Western Hunan to make a living elsewhere, eventually going to Southeast Asia after many travels.

Fortune smiled on him. In this foreign land, starting with a fur business, then moving on to shoes and retail, he accumulated considerable wealth and was known as the Retail King among local Chinese.

However, Kuang Tongsheng was not happy. The Japanese devils’ gunfire had damaged his reproductive system, making him unable to enjoy the pleasures of men and women, or continue his family line.

If that was how it had to be, he accepted his fate, feeling that his life and love in this lifetime were devoted to two women.

One was Kuang Yunyuan’s mother, the woman who died under the bandit’s knife, whose name he didn’t even know. Sometimes, he would force himself to believe he had harmed her: that afternoon, he had continuously wished for her to “suffer some misfortune” so he could match with her, and then she met with disaster. Could it have been his curse?

This woman had only spoken a few words to him, but that “Don’t be afraid” and the image of her slender figure rushing toward the bandit to fight to the death were enough for him to remember for a lifetime, enough to properly place his admiration.

The other was Kuang Yunyuan. Her appearance greatly resembled her mother’s. Sometimes, when Kuang Tongsheng looked at her, he couldn’t tell whether the person standing before him was Kuang Yunyuan or that woman in the white jacket and glass silk stockings. He watched her grow up and endured all hardships, unwilling to let her suffer any pain. He and Yunyuan called each other father and daughter, but he knew that his complex feelings toward Yunyuan were difficult to define.

But what could he do? He was an old-fashioned, traditional man from rural Western Hunan. Some thoughts, even if they just surfaced, he found dirty and obscene, deserving of the eighteenth level of hell and the boiling oil cauldron.

So he treated her as a daughter, happily accepted her lover, and grandly sent her off to marriage.

By this time, he had been settled in Southeast Asia for twenty years. The landscapes of Western Hunan, the sun, moon, and stars of the corpse herder, the lantern painting from that night of slaughter, and the bandits’ whistles were all far from him.

His only wish was for Kuang Yunyuan to live a peaceful and joyful life.

At the age of thirty-two, Kuang Yunyuan suddenly developed a strange illness.

Her skin would split open on its own, tearing from a fingernail-sized wound into a larger gash. Blood continuously spurted from the wound edges, like magma ceaselessly leaping from a volcano’s mouth. Even when bandaged, one could see the blood constantly pounding beneath.

Kuang Tongsheng consulted famous doctors far and wide, but all were helpless.

Her husband, who had vowed at their wedding to never leave her in sickness or health, soon after her illness began, became unwilling even to see her. He claimed he had no solution, that her appearance was too frightening and would give him nightmares.

Unable to bear this suffering and the accompanying blow, Kuang Yunyuan jumped from a building to end her life. Before dying, she left a note asking Kuang Tongsheng to take care of her daughter, Fengqing.

With a shattered heart and flowing tears, Kuang Tongsheng knew he had to keep living for this third-generation Kuang family daughter.

Feeling that the unreliable man wasn’t worthy of giving his surname to Fengqing, he changed his granddaughter’s surname back to Kuang—Kuang Fengqing.

At that time, he still believed that Kuang Yunyuan’s illness was an accident, an extremely rare disease, a predestined calamity in her life.

Many winters and summers, many springs and autumns passed. By the time Kuang Fengqing married, Kuang Tongsheng was nearly eighty years old. Time had diluted the tragic memories, and he often joked about himself, saying that in his previous life, he must have owed the Kuang women a lot of money, so in this life, he was being punished, forever serving them, generation after generation.

At least he was almost at the end of his life. They couldn’t make him continue serving—even if he wanted to, the King of Hell wouldn’t allow it.

This joke, as it turned out, became a prophecy.

Kuang Fengqing fell ill at twenty-nine, also suddenly, with symptoms identical to Kuang Yunyuan’s, even more horrifying: her scalp would fall off along with her hair, and the cracking wounds crawled up her face, crossed her eyelids, and climbed her skull.

Her husband held on for two months before finally breaking down and leaving. Kuang Tongsheng cursed furiously that “all men are bastards,” completely forgetting that this statement included himself.

Afraid that Fengqing would follow Yunyuan’s example and commit suicide, he tearfully but resolutely had her hands and feet shackled to the hospital bed. Four-year-old Meiying, not having seen her mother for a long time and missing her terribly, seized an opportunity to sneak into the small building that had been designated as a forbidden area of the family home. There she saw a monster struggling and rolling on the bed, skin cracking and bleeding all over, with even the jawbone exposed.

Kuang Meiying was so frightened that she fainted on the spot, thus developing a condition of being “unable to handle shock.”

Fengqing did not commit suicide but eventually died from the torment of the strange disease. She seemed to have some awareness, and her last words were a request for Kuang Tongsheng to “save Meiying.”

…

The undertakers carried away Fengqing’s body, and caregivers attended to the traumatized Meiying. Kuang Tongsheng sat on the floor, leaning against the blood-stained leg of the hospital bed, silently wiping away one tear after another.

Later, clutching a handful of old tears, he fell asleep.

In his dream, he returned to that night of slaughter by the bandits, seeing that woman whose neck had been nearly half severed, yet who still desperately crawled toward his hiding place.

She kept murmuring, repeatedly saying “box, house.”

On this day, nearly half a century after that night, Kuang Tongsheng finally understood what she had said.

She wasn’t saying “house” (fang zi); she was saying “prescription” (fang zi).

A medical prescription.