As Ma Er’ga was climbing the steps, he heard the words “from Chen Prefecture” and unconsciously slowed his pace. In Western Hunan, “Chen Prefecture” referred to “the Chen Prefecture Talisman School,” whose masters were particularly skilled in drawing and crafting talismans. He thought perhaps he could consult this person.
The invitation checked out, and Shen Wangu similarly directed the man inside, then looked toward the main road. Confident that no more guests would arrive for a while, he sat down heavily, just about to continue discussing Meng Qianzi’s situation, when Shen Bang said, “You stay here. I’ll go report the situation to Assistant Meng.”
Shen Wangu was puzzled: “Report what situation?”
Shen Bang thrust the activated iPad screen in front of his face.
It displayed a large photo of a middle-aged man, with a white area below containing personal information.
Shen Wangu read to himself: “Li Changnian, born 1969, from Tiaotou Slope in San Shi Village…”
He drew in a sharp breath.
Now he understood. The important part wasn’t the personal information but the photograph. Could it possibly be the same person who had just passed by?
Shen Bang sneered coldly: “He thinks we’re careless, easily fooled mountain bumpkins, that he can just bring an invitation and impersonate someone? I’ll let this con artist know just whose grandfather he’s messed with today.”
Everything had been properly arranged last night, but when she woke up early this morning and put on the eye patch, Meng Qianzi still felt this appearance was too unusual, especially for dining at the same table with more than ten people…
So she made a last-minute adjustment to sit alone in a private room. The room was well-positioned, elevated with a glass wall facing the main hall. When the curtains were drawn, it offered complete privacy. For important friends, she would meet them one by one for brief conversations. This way, they wouldn’t feel neglected, and she would be comfortable—a win-win situation.
As expected, visitors began arriving as soon as she was seated. Fortunately, they only exchanged pleasantries, presented gifts, and chatted briefly before leaving. So even though they came one after another, it wasn’t tiring.
After finally sending everyone off, Meng Jinsong went downstairs to attend to the guests while Xin Ci accompanied Meng Qianzi in opening and examining the half-room of gifts.
Most were mountain specialties that didn’t impress Meng Qianzi. There were also some valuable jewelry pieces, but she had more than a chestful of fine items and could hardly be impressed by these. The Chen Prefecture Talisman School, known for its skill in drawing cinnabar talismans, had its leader present a natural cinnabar crystal formation growing on a cluster of quartz. It was quite a generous gift, worth at least a hundred thousand yuan or more. Yet Meng Qianzi stared at it for a long time and asked Xin Ci, “Don’t you think this color looks like pig liver?”
The gift she liked most was actually from the Tiger Hunters.
Before liberation, in the Western Hunan region, mountains were vast and forests dense, with tigers on almost every mountain. Tigers coming down to snatch dogs, eat cattle, or even harm people was a common occurrence. Thus, tiger hunters emerged to meet the need, but they weren’t just ordinary hunters. Besides their skills, they also worshipped the Meishan Bodhisattva and used talismans for tiger hunting, earning them the name “Meishan Tiger Craftsmen.” They were divided into branches called “Three Valleys of Meishan.” According to their hunting methods, bow and crossbow hunters belonged to the Upper Valley, mountain-driving hunters to the Middle Valley, and trap-setting hunters to the Lower Valley.
Nowadays, these distinctions are no longer so clear. Collectively called Tiger Hunters, they had presented a dried tiger paw as large as a human head. Its five curved, black, shiny claws still had intact fur on the dried flesh. The Tiger Hunter explained that the paw had been air-dried for three hundred years and could ward off evil spirits and ensure safety when entering the mountains.
Even as just a paw, the tiger’s majesty remained. Xin Ci took it to examine, finding it quite heavy, but he felt it had no practical use and would only take up space: “At most, you could use it as a back scratcher.”
As he spoke, he pretended to scratch his back with it.
Meng Qianzi glanced at him: “It was a tiger after all. Playing with it like that, aren’t you afraid…?”
Her words carried an implication. Xin Ci felt a chill and quickly returned the tiger paw to its gift box, though he wouldn’t admit defeat verbally: “What’s all this about warding off evil spirits? It’s not even worth the little toe of our Beast-Subduing Golden Bell…”
Oh no, he’d brought up the wrong topic, letting it slip.
Afraid he might get scolded, Xin Ci made an excuse about using the bathroom and hurried out.
Once outside, the atmosphere was much more relaxed. The large hall was filled with people drinking and chatting loudly, creating a lively scene. Xin Ci sighed with relief and crossed the hall toward the restroom.
Passing a round table, he saw a curly-haired man with glasses, holding a paper with a drawing, speaking passionately: “I truly don’t recognize this talisman pattern. As they say, ‘Cangjie created characters with one load of millet, passed down to Confucius with nine dou and six, with four sheng not transmitted outside, left for sorcerers to draw talismans and spells.’ These ‘four sheng’ characters have no dictionary—how could one easily recognize them all!”
Sitting beside him was an old man in a blue cloth jacket who seemed to find his reasoning sound and kept nodding.
Circling another table, a young woman who had been drinking with her head down happened to look up.
Xin Ci was momentarily stunned.
Before joining his current position, Xin Ci had mingled in modeling and makeup circles, seeing countless beautiful women. Now he spent his days alongside Meng Qianzi, who “wouldn’t be allowed by her ancestors if she weren’t good-looking.” He had long since become numb to ordinary beauties. But this woman was different: not that she was exceptionally stunning—she was above average at best—but her face was clear and pure, with long, slender eyebrows and extraordinarily bright eyes. Sitting there, she emanated a gentle aura, quiet and authentic, drawing the eye at first glance and making it difficult to look away.
Seeing Xin Ci looking at her, the woman smiled naturally and gracefully.
Xin Ci’s face flushed with embarrassment, and he quickly averted his gaze, only to see Meng Jinsong with a solemn expression leading a man in his thirties toward the stairs to the private rooms.
The man had hunched shoulders and a slouched back, with a shrunken appearance and uneven, protruding teeth that his lips couldn’t cover, making him remarkably ugly…
Xin Ci’s heart stirred, and he hurried over to catch up with Meng Jinsong: “Is he…?”
Meng Jinsong grunted in affirmation: “He knows about the fake corpse.”
Xin Ci lowered his voice: “Is he… a ‘walker’?”
Despite his deliberately lowered voice, the man still heard and grinned, his garlic-shaped nose twitching: “Well, brother, you know the trade.”
Xin Ci’s heart pounded like a drum.
He didn’t know a damn thing about the trade. He had only looked up corpse-driving in the mountain encyclopedia last night and learned that corpse-drivers avoided the term “corpse-driving,” using “walking” instead. He also knew that corpse-drivers were supposed to be ugly—ugly-the uglier, the better—as if only such appearances could subdue the mountain spirits and walking corpses behind them.
The man’s surname was Lou, with the given name Hong.
Despite his casual demeanor along the way, upon entering the room and seeing Meng Qianzi, he couldn’t help but feel nervous. He sat before her with his hands restrained, not daring to let his gaze drift to her face. Most of the time, his eyes rested on either the spider at her neck or the tiger paw she was playing with in her hand.
Xin Ci closed the door, eager to hear the whole story.
Meng Qianzi still had the leisure for pleasantries: “From the Lou family… I remember that in Mountain Ghost Clan, Old Lady Duan’s generation had met people from the Lou family.”
Lou Hong nodded quickly: “Yes, yes, that wasn’t even in Western Hunan. My master’s master was walking in Guizhou when he encountered Miss Duan…”
Back then, Old Lady Duan, Duan Wenxi, was only in her twenties. Presumably, the Lou family referred to her as “Miss Duan” when speaking to their juniors.
“In those days, scholars were rare in our area, and Miss Duan was already a female teacher who had returned from studying abroad, quite formidable.”
Xin Ci widened his eyes, silently mouthing to Meng Jinsong: “Studied abroad?”
Meng Jinsong pretended not to see: Xin Ci was an outsider who thought the Mountain Ghost Clan was a conservative, secretive family. Now he’d learn that Mountain Matriarch Duan Wenxi was a female student who went to study in England in 1925, far ahead of her time in women’s education.
Meng Qianzi changed the subject, getting to the point: “Since we have this old connection, I’ll need your help with the matter at hand.”
Lou Hong was extremely deferential, sitting forward until his buttocks barely touched the seat: “Not at all, not at all… What Assistant Meng is asking about is indeed something only our branch would know. What you call ‘mountain mirage,’ we call ‘lantern pictures’—ghost paintings that can only be seen when a lantern is lit.”
Xin Ci thought to himself that the Mountain Ghosts were more cultured, calling it a “mountain mirage,” which sounded scientific. “Lantern pictures,” on the other hand, had a rustic, folksy quality to them. In the old society, mountain people hadn’t seen much of the world, so naturally they thought these were paintings drawn by ghosts that could only be seen by lantern light.
Lou Hong held nothing back: “My grandfather told me that lantern pictures only appear on rainy days, but they’re extremely rare—you might not encounter one even in ten years. Some clever people came up with a method to ‘fish’ for ghost paintings, using ‘fishing’ as in angling for fish.”
Fishing for ghost paintings…
Meng Qianzi pondered: “Fishing as in angling… so that fake corpse was bait?”
Lou Hong slapped his thigh: “This is why they say the ladies… the young mistresses of the Mountain Ghost Clan are smart! That’s right, it’s just like fishing. The lantern picture is the fish, and you need to set bait to lure it out, to ‘fish’ it up.”
Xin Ci was amazed: This was truly like minds thinking alike. Both families were fixated on the idea of “fishing”—the Mountain Ghosts used embrace spiders to fish for mirage pearls, while Lou Hong was talking about using bait to fish for the entire mirage scene.
“That bait can’t be set randomly, right?”
Lou Hong nodded like a pecking chicken: “Correct. The bait must come from the painting. Someone must have previously seen the scene in the picture to set the proper bait.”
“For example, if you saw a painting on a rainy day with a person hanging from a tree and a wolf crouching below, then the next time you set bait, you could use either a hanging person or a crouching wolf.”
“But whichever bait you use, it must resemble the one in the painting as closely as possible. Taking the hanging person as an example, the position of hanging, the clothes worn, even the hanging posture and facial features… in short, the more similar, the better. This is called… throwing a brick to attract jade.”
Meng Qianzi uttered an affirmative sound, leaning back and tapping the shiny, sharp claws of the tiger paw with her fingertips.
This wasn’t difficult to understand. The phantom scenes appearing in the mountains were perceived differently by different people: The Mountain Ghosts called it a mountain mirage and knew the mirage pearl was the source; Lou Hong’s faction believed it was a picture that, under the right conditions of time and place, could be used to “fish” out the entire scene by using a part to evoke the whole.
No wonder it was a fake corpse. The corpse was dressed in late Qing or early Republican style because the real body was long gone, so a high-quality replica was needed: braided hair, bound pants, straw shoes, and even a face covered with skin and painted with mouth and nose.
Meng Jinsong was somewhat dazed: From last night until now, he had been thinking this was a conspiracy, a trap. Now it seemed he had been completely off track—the mirage’s appearance last night wasn’t coincidental but deliberately “fished” for. The Mountain Ghosts had arrived later, which explained why that person had immediately tried to snatch the mirage pearl. Without the pearl, setting hundreds or thousands of baits would never lure out the picture.
Meng Qianzi didn’t quite understand: “What’s the use of fishing for that thing?”
At least the mirage pearl was tangible, but the mirage scene was ethereal, vanishing after being seen. Moreover, the scene witnessed last night, whether the fake corpse or the woman crawling in unwilling death, must have been from at least seventy or eighty years ago.
Lou Hong couldn’t explain clearly: “I don’t know. It’s not useful, maybe just to see something rare?”
After a pause, he added, “I’ve only heard about this method. They say it depends on luck. Even if you set a perfect bait, there might not be results. Success once in ten attempts would be good… Beyond that, I don’t know. Miss Meng knows that the walking profession is almost extinct.”
This was true.
The emergence of corpse-driving was closely related to Western Hunan’s remoteness, poverty, dangerous roads, and dense forests: Falling leaves return to their roots, and people who died away from home always wanted to be sent back. But firstly, the mountains were high and the roads long, making transportation expensive; secondly, even if one hired vehicles and horses, they couldn’t navigate Western Hunan’s treacherous paths. So skilled corpse-drivers emerged to meet this need, hiding by day and moving by night, shaking soul-summoning bells and holding long triangular apricot-yellow banners to “guide” the deceased back to their hometown.
After liberation, the vigorous campaign to destroy the “Four Olds” led practitioners to abandon their trade, not even daring to mention it, let alone take on apprentices. The tradition was cut off midway. Then, with reform and opening up, life improved, roads were built, various transportation modes became available, and cremation was strongly promoted. Corpse-driving was no longer needed and naturally died out. Even when Western Hunan developed tourism and television stations wanted to film documentaries about corpse-driving to satisfy tourists’ curiosity, they couldn’t find knowledgeable practitioners and could only film elderly people telling stories of rumors.
People like Lou Hong were the “last generation.” He had never actually driven corpses but had inherited what should be learned and remembered from the older generation.
Meng Jinsong, focused on his duty of finding the golden bell, asked very carefully: “Are you certain only your branch knows about fishing for ghost paintings, no one else? And your branch can’t be the only surviving one, right? Could there be collateral branches?”
Lou Hong was very certain: “Among walkers, only our branch knows about this because, although there are many factions of walkers, each has its path. In Wuling Mountain, going back more than ten generations, it’s always been us walking these routes. Walking so much, we inevitably encountered these things, so we know. Truthfully, besides the Mountain Ghosts, only we dare enter desolate mountains in the dead of night. The Mountain Ghosts have their ancestral grandmothers watching over them, treating the mountains as home. For us, there’s no choice—it’s our professional duty, our rice bowl. Our branch indeed… also has collateral branches, but Assistant Meng, you know the rules.”
Meng Jinsong remained silent.
He certainly knew the rules. The internal affairs of the Zhu Youke practitioners weren’t to be shared with the Mountain Ghosts, just as the Mountain Ghosts uniformly claimed to live off the mountains, but never revealed to outsiders exactly how they “ate” from them. That Lou Hong had revealed some details about fishing for ghost paintings was already showing great respect. Now he was observing the rules, which was reasonable. Without a compelling reason, it wasn’t right to force him to speak.
Meng Qianzi smiled, resting her arm on the table and leaning forward: “Look at me carefully.”
Lou Hong raised his head to look at her, puzzled, when Meng Qianzi raised her hand and removed the eye patch covering her left eye.