From the phoenix’s right eye, a living phoenix will fly out.
Shen Gun turned this sentence over and over, repeating it several times before complaining: “Such an important matter—how come the mountain keepers here never mentioned it?”
Meng Qianzi had anticipated this question and answered calmly: “You can’t blame the mountain keepers. They never thought this statement was important. It’s just a folk saying circulating Phoenix Mountain, not something my Elder Lady Duan originated. Search online—how many Phoenix Mountains are there across the country? If not a hundred, then at least eighty. The locals will all earnestly claim that phoenixes have landed, flown over, or nested on their mountain.”
Shen Gun was momentarily speechless: After visiting Phoenix Mountain, Duan Wenxi had casually added a line of local folklore to the mountain map. In the mountain keepers’ eyes at that time, it wasn’t something worth reporting.
But looking at it now, that line seemed profoundly meaningful.
Jiang Lian asked: “Does the record show Elder Lady Duan checking out Zhenlong Mountain’s map?”
Meng Qianzi nodded: “Yes, she did, and there’s an annotation there too: ‘Wind rises, dragon emerges.’ But that’s also quite ordinary.”
Shen Gun murmured: “It sounds ordinary, yet somewhat extraordinary.”
The “Book of Changes” says “clouds follow the dragon, wind follows the tiger,” meaning that a tiger’s roar generates wind, so wind commonly accompanies the tiger’s appearance. As for dragons, they soar through clouds and mist, typically emerging with rain. But Duan Wenxi wrote “Wind rises, dragon emerges,” which directly contradicts the “Book of Changes”—of course, to ordinary people, clouds, mist, wind, and rain aren’t very different, so “Wind rises, dragon emerges” doesn’t seem unusual.
Jiang Lian wasn’t as focused on semantics as Shen Gun and continued asking: “That Phoenix Mountain has a Phoenix Right Eye. Is there a Left Eye?”
Meng Qianzi shook her head: “I also thought that since a phoenix has a pair of eyes, if there’s a right eye, there should be a left eye—symmetry, right? But strangely, after going through the mountain maps several times, there is only a Phoenix Right Eye.”
At this point, she glanced at Shen Gun: “How about it? Before marching off to Kunlun, would you like to take a trip around Phoenix Mountain?”
Kunlun Mountain was thousands of miles away. Compared to Kunlun, Phoenix Mountain was practically at their doorstep. Shen Gun was itching to go, thinking that sharpening the knife wouldn’t delay the woodcutting—a trip to Phoenix Mountain wouldn’t be a bad idea.
In the afternoon, the rain showed no sign of stopping, pattering down continuously, lowering the temperature by several degrees. This weather was perfect for staying indoors and “conducting research.”
The motorhome became a workspace. More and more mountain maps and record materials were transmitted over. The printer kept clattering, continuously printing documents. When the table became too crowded, Meng Qianzi used the floor as a table. By the end, all three were sitting on the ground with papers spread out before them, the air filled with the scent of paper and fresh ink. When Lu Sanming came to bring them snacks, he couldn’t even step inside and had to leave the food by the door.
Meng Qianzi occasionally looked up, seeing this scene with both novelty and emotion. In the past, she would have handed off such work to Meng Jinsong, instructing him to report back only when he had clear conclusions, never personally participating. But actually, this feeling of complete immersion and involvement was quite nice.
Using both hands and feet, she navigated through the mess on the floor to bring over a plate of dried fruits to munch on. Guangxi, situated directly on the Tropic of Cancer, produced various fruits, with superior varieties compared to other regions, such as Rong’an kumquats and Leye kiwi, which, when dried, had a distinctive flavor.
Shen Gun suddenly made a sound of surprise and showed her the printed page in his hand: “What does ‘No Mountain Exploration’ mean? Was Phoenix Mountain not to be explored during the Song and Yuan dynasties?”
It turned out that these records were printed in chronological order in spreadsheet form, just as mentioned earlier, similar to library borrowing records. Each row listed which version of the mountain map it was, the year of access, and who accessed it. But on the sheet Shen Gun held, the entire two to three hundred years of the Song and Yuan dynasties were merged into a single cell highlighted in red, with only a simple note: No Mountain Exploration, Sheng Family.
Meng Qianzi explained: “We mountain ghosts have the tradition of mountain exploration and patrol, right? But for certain peaks, we act as if they don’t exist—we don’t explore them, don’t patrol them, completely bypass them. Let me give you an analogy so you’ll understand. It’s like renting out a house—once the landlord rents the house to a tenant, they can’t keep coming by every few days. They have to respect the tenant’s privacy.”
Shen Gun’s heart began to pound: “You mean this Sheng family resided on this mountain peak, so you avoided it?”
That’s about right, Meng Qianzi nodded, adding: “‘Residing’ is just an analogy. We’re not landlords, and the Sheng family never paid rent.”
Jiang Lian wondered: “Then why did you show such deference to the Sheng family? They stayed there, and you didn’t explore it?”
Meng Qianzi shrugged: “Old friendship, I suppose. It seems it’s always been that way. Just like ‘mountains and waters never meet’—why have we never had dealings with the water ghosts? It’s just habit.”
Another old friendship. Jiang Lian’s mind stirred: “Were your relations good?”
Meng Qianzi gave him another vivid analogy: “It’s like… poor relatives you don’t associate with who suddenly show up asking for rice and grain. Since you’re wealthy and generous, you’d give them something anyway.”
Jiang Lian took the spreadsheet from Shen Gun’s hand and examined it carefully: “So there was no mountain exploration during the Song and Yuan dynasties, but now it can be explored again?”
Meng Qianzi’s answer made him both laugh and cry: “The Sheng family is like a tack on one’s behind—they keep moving, never staying in one place for long. After a few generations, they relocate. Sometimes they move from one mountain peak to another, and sometimes you don’t know where they’ve gone—perhaps they’ve moved to the city, and then one day, they suddenly return to the mountains. Most recently, they were living on Bawan Mountain, but they vacated it a while ago. Let me see…”
She took out her phone, opened her family’s app, and after a moment, nodded with satisfaction, showing Jiang Lian her phone screen: “Our people are quite efficient. Look, at the beginning of this year, Bawan Mountain was still marked as ‘No Mountain Exploration,’ but now its status has been restored to ‘Normal.'”
She was about to show it to Shen Gun as well, but looking up, she found him still in his previous posture, continuously swallowing, his expression both excited and anxious.
Meng Qianzi was puzzled: “What’s wrong with you?”
Shen Gun asked: “This Sheng family… is it the Bell-wielding Sheng family?”
Meng Qianzi made an affirmative sound: “You know of them?”
More than just know! Shen Gun’s heart was pounding like a drum.
Jiang Lian thought the name sounded familiar, and after a moment recalled that Shen Gun had mentioned it briefly while they were having oil tea in the morning—apparently another mysterious family. Just the name itself sounded mysterious.
Bell-wielding, indeed.
He reminded the two: “There’s still someone here who doesn’t know what the Bell-wielding Sheng family is. Could you help… synchronize the information?”
This information synchronization was quite substantial and complex. Meng Qianzi didn’t know where to begin, but fortunately, Jiang Lian wasn’t counting on her; for such matters, Shen Gun would be more comprehensive in his explanation.
Shen Gun’s first sentence was: “That roommate of mine in Foggy Town, Old Shi, named Shi Jiaxin, is related to the Bell-wielding Sheng family. The Sheng and Shi families have always coexisted, like intertwined hemp ropes, always living as neighbors.”
Shen Gun’s knowledge of the Bell-wielding Sheng family came from two people: one was a dying Sheng family man he encountered at the bottom of a cliff after accidentally falling during his early years traveling in the west; the other was his roommate Shi Jiaxin.
When accepting Shi Jiaxin as a roommate, he unexpectedly learned that his good friend Ji Tangtang was a Sheng family descendant qualified to wield the bell. Unfortunately, Ji Tangtang had married someone he couldn’t provoke—Yue Feng, the man who broke Yan Laoqi’s nose. When he went around expressing his desire to “sincerely” interview Ji Tangtang, Yue Feng grabbed him by the collar and threw him out the door, telling him darkly that their home didn’t welcome discussions of such unpleasant past events.
Shen Gun was angry but dared not speak out. To protest, he didn’t visit the couple for a full half year, but Yue Feng didn’t care at all: Shen Gun originally only visited once every several months, and Yue Feng thought he came too frequently anyway—he could come or not, as he pleased.
Fortunately, Shi Jiaxin compensated for this disappointment: Ji Tangtang’s mother had fallen in love with an outsider and eloped, so she had grown up outside the large family, but Shi Jiaxin had grown up within the family. Whose value was higher was obvious.
…
In legend, the dead and the living are separated by yin and yang, making “dialogue” impossible. To communicate, an intermediary is needed, and bell sounds are the only sounds that can freely travel between the realms of yin and yang.
The Bell-wielding Sheng family had nine different branches, each with a special bell, totaling nine types. Each bell was associated with a particular manner of death, such as dying in a foreign land or being beheaded. Among the nine bells, the Road Bell was primary. The dead’s appeals could ring one of the nine bells, and the ringing sound was the bell language.
This bell language would sound like gibberish to ordinary people, only understood by women in each branch with bell-wielding abilities. In other words, only they could perceive the unfulfilled intentions of the deceased. Over time, this evolved into a mysterious and ancient profession—they were often invited to appease the dissatisfaction of the deceased, listen to their resentments, and resolve them in the living world.
Strangely, however, the transmission of this ability had no set pattern; it could only be passed to a daughter born as the first child of a bell-wielder.
Even after so long, Shen Gun couldn’t help but marvel as he recounted: “It has to be the first birth. If the first child is a son, or if a daughter is born as the second child, the ability is lost, discontinued—meaning the lineage is broken.”
“Remember when I said this morning that these mysterious families aren’t constrained by consanguineous marriages or broken lineages? I wanted to use the Sheng family as an example.”
“They’re not afraid of broken lineages; they’ve even grown accustomed to it. Once a lineage is broken, they can find any woman, even one forcibly taken from the street, and then replace her blood with the blood of the nine types of bell inheritors. This is called ‘butterfly transformation,’ probably meaning to help this woman transform from a cocoon into a butterfly.”
Can “metamorphosis” be used that way? A chill ran up Jiang Lian’s spine.
“Nine types of blood—even transfusing just one type with incompatible blood types could kill someone, let alone a mixture of nine types replacing the woman’s original blood. And that’s not all. The woman who undergoes the butterfly transformation can then give birth to daughters with bell-wielding abilities with men from the Shi family.”
“And that’s why the Sheng and Shi families have always coexisted as neighbors—because the daughters of the Sheng family always marry men from the Shi family. This is similar to the water ghost three surnames’ habit of intermarriage, but at least the water ghost three surnames have many people in each branch. The Sheng and Shi families are at most the size of a village. After repeated marriages and births, they would eventually become relatives.”
“But every time I argue with Old Shi, saying such things aren’t scientific, he gets impatient, saying science can’t explain everything anyway.”
At this point, he paused, momentarily unable to continue, so he looked at Meng Qianzi: “Miss Meng, do you have anything to add?”
Meng Qianzi knew less about the Sheng family than Shen Gun did, or rather, she had never been interested in them and didn’t want to delve into it, so what she heard was only peripheral. When Shen Gun asked, she simply nodded: “That’s about right. The Sheng family claims to sense the resentment of the dead and communicate with them. When Elder Lady Duan disappeared in Kunlun, my First Madam was so anxious that, in desperation, she even sought out the Sheng family.”
Duan Wenxi’s matter had actually… alarmed the Sheng family?
Shen Gun was stunned for a moment, then extremely pleased: “Then what happened? How did it go? What did the Sheng family say?”
Meng Qianzi had been in frequent contact with Gao Jinghong regarding Elder Lady Duan’s matter and had learned about many past events from the First Madam. Seeing Shen Gun’s enthusiasm, she felt he would likely be disappointed: “Nothing much. All thunder but no rain—very grand in presentation but with no results. My First Madam was so angry she called them charlatans behind their backs.”
…
Meng Qianzi’s characterization of the Sheng family was “poor relatives we don’t associate with,” occasionally coming by, immediately asking for mountains and land. But the mountain ghosts didn’t mind—just mountains, take them if you want, we won’t explore them.
After receiving favors so many times, one inevitably becomes soft-spoken and weak-handed. So when the mountain ghosts suddenly came seeking help, the Sheng family took it quite seriously, especially since the mountain ghosts were wealthy and a major patron.
Meng Qianzi spoke with some disdain: “Among the nine bells, the Road Bell is primary. To show their seriousness, they even deployed the Road Bell wielder, a mother-daughter pair. The mother was named Sheng… something Jinru, and the daughter was Sheng Qingping. The daughter was still young then, maybe in her teens, but they said she had just inherited the bell-wielding power and was surpassing her mother, with more acute perception in various aspects. My First Madam agreed.”
“First Madam followed their requirements, gathering my Elder Lady Duan’s items, stray hairs found at home—basically collecting everything possible—and hopefully delivered them.”
“But what happened? After all that trouble, nothing came of it. Their Road Bell didn’t even move. The mother-daughter pair still insisted firmly that there were two possibilities: either the person was still alive but couldn’t be found, or perhaps had passed away but had no resentment, so the Road Bell had no response. Isn’t that all nonsense?”
She muttered, “I think they are charlatans, too.”
This was a bit awkward. Shen Gun felt he needed to say a few words for the Sheng family, since he had several friends related to them: “Miss Meng, you shouldn’t generalize. You should know that the Sheng family calls the bell’s movement ‘resentment striking the bell.’ Resentment, resentment, unfulfilled intentions—the bell language produced after the bell is struck is the voice of the dead’s angry demands, their unwillingness… Miss Duan had no resentment to strike the bell, indicating she… passed away quite peacefully, right…”
He felt he couldn’t continue with this line of reasoning: could dying at Yanluo’s hands be considered “passing away peacefully”?
Just then, Jiang Lian, who had been silent all this time, suddenly blurted out: “Bell language is… the demands of the dead?”
Shen Gun casually replied: “Yes.”
“Unwilling demands?”
“Of course,” Shen Gun found Jiang Lian somewhat strange, asking repeatedly about such a straightforward explanation. “The Sheng family calls this ‘resentment striking the bell.’ Think about it—resentment, resentment—without unwillingness, where would the resentment come from?”
Jiang Lian knew Shen Gun hadn’t made the connection yet. Not just Shen Gun—Meng Qianzi probably hadn’t either. These two were so familiar with the situation that they couldn’t see it as clearly as an outsider like him, so he clarified further: “Do you remember when the Bai Mei monk from Huayao interpreted the knotted records? One phrase was, ‘Can help you hear the… unwilling voices of those lingering at the entrance.'”
Shen Gun was completely unprepared: “Huh?”
His mouth half-open, he eventually stammered: “How… how can these be the same?”
“Aren’t they?” Jiang Lian thought they seemed increasingly similar. “Lingering at the entrance—what entrance? From the living world to the underworld, there must be an entrance, right?”
“Because of unwillingness in their hearts, with unfulfilled wishes, they linger and wander at the entrance, hoping their grievances or appeals can be heard by someone and thus resolved.”
“Also, Elder Lady Duan went looking for dragon bones, saying that lighting the dragon bones could illuminate the afterlife. But when we asked Yanluo, he said he couldn’t explain clearly, only knowing it was an entrance—if you combine these two answers, lighting the dragon bones illuminates the entrance to the afterlife.”
“But what is the afterlife? If there truly is an afterlife, isn’t the state after death the prelude to the afterlife? Those without attachments enter the afterlife; those with unwillingness linger at the entrance.”