After breakfast, Yan Qige claimed he needed to purchase some items for tomorrow’s journey. Mingran accompanied him as they went together, while Yusang was sent off to hire a horse cart at the horse market at the southernmost part of the marketplace. Yusang put on a completely resentful attitude as she looked at Yan Qige, as if complaining that now that he had Mingran, he no longer wanted her. She put on a full act with the appearance of being wronged, yet not daring to speak out, humming and hemming before reluctantly agreeing and heading south.
After selecting a suitable horse cart at the horse market, Yusang didn’t return to Hulliu Town, but instead drove the cart directly toward the Red Pearl River. About half an hour later, Yusang reached the riverside just as the sun was rising over the river. From time to time, flocks of water birds flew across the river surface with their calls. The river breeze blew continuously, and the undulating river waves brought wave after wave of white foam crashing against the sandy shore.
Yusang stopped the cart and stood watching. Seeing a woman dressed in hemp clothing with her head wrapped in a square scarf, carrying a bamboo basket, and picking up seafood on the beach, she jumped down from the cart and trotted over.
“Aunt, may I ask you about something?”
“Go ahead,” the woman replied without looking up, still bending down to pick things up from the ground.
“I’d like to ask how to get to Red Pearl Village.”
“One li to the west, where there’s a large dead tree – that’s the place.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Yusang shaded her eyes with her hand, brushing away hair blown by the river wind as she gazed westward. Inadvertently, the corner of her eye caught sight of the woman’s hand as she picked up a shell from the fine sand where the waves had receded. The shell was about the size of a palm, with an uneven surface displaying mottled colors. It immediately caught Yusang’s attention – she had never seen such a beautiful shell before.
“Miss, isn’t this colorful shell beautiful?” Just as Yusang was silently marveling to herself, the woman seemed to hear her thoughts and asked.
“Beautiful, truly beautiful,” Yusang sighed while looking at the colorful shell.
“Then I’ll give it to you, miss,” the woman said, actually extending the colorful shell toward Yusang.
“This… how can I accept this?” Yusang was delighted and surprised, feeling somewhat improper about it in her heart, but her hands had already involuntarily accepted it.
“Miss, things born from water all have spiritual essence – don’t lose it.”
“Mm, I know. It’s so beautiful, I’ll keep it safe,” Yusang responded, lowering her head to examine the colorful shell carefully and touching it a few times. Thinking that the woman collected these things to exchange for money, she felt around her waist and took out her remaining small amount of broken silver to give to the woman. But when she took out the silver and looked up, she discovered the woman had already walked quite far away.
Yusang was greatly alarmed, not expecting this woman to walk so silently and so quickly. If not for the footprints she left on the beach, Yusang would have thought she was a demon who could move by teleportation.
Leaving the Red Pearl River shore and traveling west for a while, she indeed saw a dead tree as the woman had said. The tree was over ten feet tall, as thick as a millstone, with roots tangled across the ground. By its appearance, this tree must have lived for at least several hundred years. Under the tree was a stone carving that looked like a fox, appearing lifelike.
“Looking at you, you’re also an ancient tree with some years behind you. If you had a spiritual essence, you should have cultivated a spirit soul by now. It’s just a pity you died, and now only this withered trunk remains,” Yusang jumped down from the cart and approached the dead tree, looking up at the withered branches and sighing. Because the cart was too large to conveniently navigate the village paths, Yusang tied the horse reins to one of the dead tree’s tangled roots, even playfully patting the trunk as she said: “Old tree, I’ll trouble you to watch over things for me.”
She then kicked the stone carving under the tree with her foot, saying: “The carving is quite lifelike, just too thin and short. Can’t even tie a horse to it – truly looks good but serves no purpose.”
After securing the horse, Yusang looked around left and right toward the village interior. She discovered that before her was an area open on three sides – the direction she’d come from and both left and right were plains covered with low grass and trees. Only the area directly facing the dead tree had a dirt road. The road wasn’t wide, but it was fairly smooth. She could dimly see roof lines ahead on the road, presumably the villagers’ houses.
Yusang followed the dirt road into the village. The village wasn’t large, and as she walked through it, occasionally women and elderly people passed by her side. However, everyone seemed rather unhappy, all walking with their heads down, moving forward. Though their steps weren’t fast, they seemed to be in a hurry, making no stops at all.
Yusang felt that to clarify the matter of the sacrificial marriage, she first needed to find someone knowledgeable about the cause and effect. Remembering the conversation she’d heard from behind the reeds by the riverbank that day, it seemed there was a village chief presiding over important matters. She reached out to stop a passing elderly woman to ask how to get to the village chief’s house.
“Ah!” The instant the elderly woman looked up, Yusang couldn’t help but cry out softly in alarm. It was an elderly woman wearing a blue coarse cloth robe, extremely thin, with wrinkles covering her face like ravines. Her eyes were cloudy and sunken, making her look at first glance like a skeleton covered with old skin.
“Excuse me, how do I get to the village chief’s house?” Yusang took a shallow breath before asking as politely and calmly as possible.
The elderly woman looked at Yusang, seeming to have heard her words yet also seeming not to have heard them. She appeared to be examining her intently, but her eyes had no light at all, making Yusang doubt whether the old person could still see anything.
Just as Yusang was about to ask someone else, the elderly woman raised her withered hand and pointed to a house compound surrounded by mud walls more than ten zhang behind Yusang.
After looking in the direction the elderly woman pointed and withdrawing her gaze, Yusang turned to thank the elderly woman, but when she turned around, she discovered the elderly woman was no longer there. Looking around, she dimly saw what seemed to be her blue cloth-clad figure disappearing around the corner of a house wall.
“Can’t tell – her eyesight isn’t good, but she walks quite fast,” Yusang muttered, turning toward the courtyard.
The courtyard wasn’t particularly large, but it couldn’t be called small either. It was surrounded by mud walls two zhang high, with a heavily weathered wooden main gate in the center. Some faded, torn New Year pictures still clung to the door, and equally faded couplets were pasted on both sides of the door, though the characters could still be faintly made out.
“Is anyone home?” Yusang raised her hand and knocked on the door. While waiting for someone to come open it, she focused her gaze on the couplets on both sides.
“Spring fills heaven and earth, fortune fills the hall; Water covers marriage fate, trees provide shade.”
Though Yusang couldn’t be considered literarily accomplished, she at least knew that couplets were meant to be auspicious and well-structured. Looking at this couplet, the upper line still resembled what common folk typically used when seeking fortune, but the lower line was completely wrong by a hundred and eight thousand li – not only was it unbalanced, but it was also inauspicious.
Yusang instinctively looked up at the door lintel, which surprised her even more. Though the couplets on both sides had already faded and weathered, the horizontal inscription was very new – on red paper, four large characters were written in bright yellow paint: “Eight-Cornered Soul Sacrifice.”
As Yusang pondered in confusion, suddenly a thought surged in her mind. The hair on her back stood up instantly, and she turned to retreat from this door, but it was already too late. Just as she turned, the wooden door suddenly burst open wide. The red-bottomed, yellow-lettered horizontal inscription emitted blinding light, and from within the opened wooden door emerged something like silk yet also like smoke that brushed across Yusang’s face, wound around her neck, then quickly wrapped around her chest and waist. Before long, she was trapped as if in a large cocoon.
“The eighty-first one – finally enough…” Before Yusang lost consciousness completely, she dimly heard a voice of indeterminate gender speaking in her ear. After that, all of Yusang’s senses disappeared, and everything fell into darkness.