“Master Cui, this way, please.” Wei Yanqing led the path himself. “This is the storeroom — the finest puppets the Wei family has to offer are all kept in here. Have a look, Young Master — what kind do you require?”
With a long creak, the door was slowly pushed open, and a faint stirring of dust seemed to rise from the floor. Ming Huazhang and Xie Jichuan stood at the threshold and looked into the dim interior.
The storeroom was cold and damp, shut away from sunlight year-round — standing at the door, one could feel the chill seeping out. And yet in contrast, the room inside was crowded and alive with presence.
Puppets covered every wall. To demonstrate the suppleness of the Wei family’s craftsmanship, each had been posed in a different position, arranged to welcome those who entered.
Puppets were made for the dead, and so the paints used were thick and vivid. Coupled with the exaggerated expressions they bore, the overall effect was intensely striking.
They stood in place smiling, sustaining difficult postures, motionless, as if doing their utmost to appear welcoming — but the forced excess of it produced instead a creeping dread.
Under the gaze of so many sweetly smiling puppets, a chill ran along Xie Jichuan’s spine. Yet Ming Huazhang paused only briefly in the doorway before striding in with long, unhurried steps.
Moving among the vivid and ornate puppets, the sensation of being watched only intensified. Wei Yanqing, long accustomed to these things, noticed nothing unusual, and introduced each piece to Ming Huazhang one by one.
Wei Yanqing went through all of the Wei family’s best-selling styles, and Ming Huazhang nodded slowly along — but judging by his expression, nothing had particularly pleased him.
Wei Yanqing was uncertain. He asked, “Master Cui, what kind of puppet do you have in mind?”
Ming Huazhang said, “Proprietor Wei — these puppets. They are all produced in quantity, are they not?”
Wei Yanqing’s expression froze. After a brief pause, he smiled and said, “Every puppet the Wei family makes is hand-carved from start to finish, with each individual component crafted to the highest standard — the Young Master may rest entirely assured on that point.”
“I know,” Ming Huazhang said. “But even so, the Cui family, though we lack distinction, is not in the habit of accepting what others have already had. Our grandmother devoted herself to us her entire life — if she were to go to the underworld with only the most ordinary of servants, forever subordinate to everyone else, what does that say of her descendants’ filial piety?”
Wei Yanqing’s trade was an upper-tier one — even his most basic puppets were painted to spectacular splendor. Yet there was nothing the nobility lacked more of than money, and nothing they were more averse to than sameness.
So it was not uncommon for wealthy clients to come to the Wei family and commission something custom-made. Cost was no concern — only that it be singular and unique. Otherwise, if they went to the underworld and found themselves attended by the same servants as everyone else on the street, where would their dignity be?
So Ming Huazhang’s request was not unreasonable — for a noble house, a degree of pride was entirely normal. An order like this was troublesome, but it would certainly be a large one, and Wei Yanqing ought to have been pleased. And yet Wei Yanqing seemed to hesitate for a moment before he said, “Master Cui honors the Wei family with his patronage — it is this humble one’s great fortune. But a commission of this kind requires time, and the Young Master may need to wait some days.”
Ming Huazhang said, “As it happens, I must remain in Luoyang to call on old family connections — waiting a few days more is no inconvenience. These here are all too common. Where are the bespoke puppets you have made?”
Custom puppets commissioned for the noble and highborn could not be put on open display — Wei Yanqing found himself unwittingly furrowing his brow: “Those pieces are not yet finished and are kept in the workshop. The workshop is somewhat disorderly — it might cause offense to the Young Master. If you would care to wait in the main hall, I will bring the puppets out to you.”
“No need.” Ming Huazhang said this and was already walking toward the door. “Moving them back and forth only wastes time. I believe you mentioned just now that the workshop lies in this direction — I will go and have a look myself.”
Ming Huazhang’s steps were steady and swift. Wei Yanqing had only been distracted for a moment, and already Ming Huazhang was well ahead of him. Wei Yanqing hurried after him. “Master Cui, please wait.”
“Proprietor Wei.” Xie Jichuan called from behind and stopped him, smiling and gesturing toward the storeroom. “You are leaving this unattended.”
Wei Yanqing looked between the wide-open storeroom and Ming Huazhang’s retreating figure, and in the end could not bring himself to hand the key to anyone else. He indicated to the steward to go quickly after Ming Huazhang, then returned to lock the door himself. Xie Jichuan watched Wei Yanqing’s movements and said, “That lock looks sturdy. Proprietor Wei — how many keys are there to this storeroom?”
“Only this one.” Wei Yanqing locked it with practiced efficiency. “This is the livelihood this humble one depends on — I cannot afford to be careless.”
Xie Jichuan gave a slow, thoughtful sound of acknowledgment, and asked with genuine interest, “If the lock is sound and the key is with Proprietor Wei himself, then how did the puppets manage to get out? Could it be — truly the work of a ghost?”
Wei Yanqing’s hand trembled, and he fumbled and dropped the key. Xie Jichuan’s hand shot out and caught it, smiling as he offered it back: “Careful, Proprietor — hold it firmly.”
Wei Yanqing looked at Xie Jichuan’s gently smiling face before him, and for some reason — incomprehensible to himself — felt that the man was more unsettling than the puppets hanging inside.
He steadied himself and wondered at his own absurd thought — perhaps too much had happened lately and he was simply exhausted.
Wei Yanqing accepted the key and offered his thanks. By the time this brief detour was done, Ming Huazhang had long since disappeared. Wei Yanqing hurried to the workshop — sure enough, the steward had been entirely unable to stop him.
Ming Huazhang stood before the closed door, pacing slowly. He turned and asked, “Proprietor Wei, you said all had been dealt with — why, then, are these talismans still pasted here?”
On the door, conspicuously, was a talisman paper written in red cinnabar on yellow. And it was not only the main door — every window and surrounding entrance was hung with peach-wood swords, bronze mirrors, and talisman papers, giving the whole place a desolate and forbidding air.
Wei Yanqing sighed. He had only mentioned in passing which direction the workshop lay — it had slipped his mind immediately — and yet Ming Huazhang had retained it. But now that the man had found it, Wei Yanqing could no longer conceal the matter, and explained truthfully: “The Young Master may not be aware — a death is inauspicious under any circumstances, and suicide is the most inauspicious of all. I am told that one who dies by their own hand cannot pass on to the next life, and their spirit remains trapped where they died. I feared my second apprentice might be unable to reincarnate, so I invited Daoist priests to perform rites here to help her on her way.”
“Is that so?” Ming Huazhang said. “If the rites are complete, then there ought to be nothing to worry about inside. Open the door — after we select the puppets for my grandmother, I have other matters to attend to.”
The prestige of the Five Surnames and Seven Lineages was simply too great. Wei Yanqing was too eager to secure this transaction, and however unreasonable the request, he had to comply: “Very well. If the Young Master would step back slightly — it has been sealed for several days, and the smell inside may be unpleasant.”
He said this and gave the steward a significant look. “Remove the talisman papers.”
The steward’s body trembled. His eyes widened in terror: “Master…”
Wei Yanqing’s expression remained composed, his elegant, fair-complexioned face carrying a flash of cold resolve: “Remove them.”
The steward’s hands shook as he tore away the cinnabar-red, sweeping-calligraphy talisman, then quickly sidestepped and pressed himself against the wall, not daring to look inside even once. Wei Yanqing, by contrast, was considerably steadier — he pushed the door open and said, “Young Master, you see — this is the puppet workshop. It is dusty and cluttered inside, nothing remarkable. Perhaps you might be better served by—”
Before Wei Yanqing could finish, Ming Huazhang had already stepped inside.
Xie Jichuan followed in after him. What met the eye was a space that had been hastily cleared, the floor still bearing traces of the ritual that had been performed there, and a jumble of puppets — some finished, some half-formed — heaped carelessly to one side, their faces plastered with talismans of uncertain purpose.
Frankly, the result was more alarming than before.
The reputation of the Wei family’s puppets rested on one word: lifelike. Some of those scattered about had not yet taken shape; others had already been painted; still others had their limbs lying disconnected and scattered at random, like the remains of something that had been taken apart — heaped together, they resembled a hill of dismembered bodies. Standing among them, feeling those hollow, eerie eyes fixed on every direction, and remembering that a person had died here not long ago — a creeping dread rose on its own.
Ming Huazhang seemed entirely immune to the cold that had been slowly climbing up from the floor. His manner was still detached and indifferent. He tilted his head back and looked up at the unusually high rafters above, then asked, “Proprietor Wei, you said your second apprentice died by her own hand in this room. How did she take her life?”
The rafters of the workshop had been built deliberately high — it would have been nearly impossible to hang oneself. For a woman, then — what other way was left?
Wei Yanqing sighed, and gestured at the tools scattered across the floor. “With a knife.”
Ming Huazhang’s brow rose slightly — he was genuinely surprised. “She took her life by knife?”
“That is so,” Wei Yanqing said. “Though she was second in rank among my apprentices, she was in truth the one who inherited most faithfully from me. She had exceptional talent in the craft of puppetry. In recent years I have been occupied with business affairs, and the making of the puppets has gradually been entrusted to her hands. The eldest apprentice is, I’m afraid, somewhat less gifted in this respect. I had long intended for the two of them — as senior and younger fellow apprentices — to marry and carry the Wei family’s name forward together. Who could have foreseen that things would turn out as they did…”
Ming Huazhang picked up a small carving knife from the floor and turned it over in his hands, examining it from both sides. He asked, “Proprietor Wei — what was the state of the scene when you found her? Are you certain it was self-inflicted?”
“Certain.” Wei Yanqing lowered his head and looked at the floor. “It was the eldest apprentice who broke the door down. He entered and found her lying on the ground, the knife still embedded in her throat, blood still flowing. Moyuan was terrified — he immediately called for help…”
Wei Yanqing paused, barely perceptibly, then continued: “The second apprentice was always obedient and well-behaved — the least troublesome of the three. The fault is mine as well. After she defied me, I was furious and said things that were too severe, and I sent her to the workshop to reflect on herself. Who could have known she would be pushed to such an extreme, and do something like this to herself?”
Ming Huazhang asked, “What had you said to her, Proprietor Wei?”
“Nothing but matters of her marriage.” Wei Yanqing said. “It is truly a misfortune. She cared for the eldest apprentice, but the eldest apprentice cared for my third apprentice. For all of this, I have been caught in the middle, blamed by all sides — goodness knows what they must have said about me between themselves.”
Ming Huazhang turned the small carving knife slowly in his fingers. A blade this delicate — it would take a strike that hit an artery precisely in order to cause death. Would someone intent on ending their own life have the steady, unerring hand to do it?
“Was she alone in this room the entire time she was kept here?” Ming Huazhang asked. “Is it possible that during the time she was confined, someone came and saw her?”
“That I cannot say.” Wei Yanqing’s expression shifted to one of puzzlement, and as he looked at Ming Huazhang a trace of wariness entered his gaze. “Master Cui, did you not come to purchase puppets? Why this particular interest in my poor, ill-fated second apprentice?”
Ming Huazhang recognized this as the line he could not cross, and set the carving knife down calmly. His long, slender fingers tapped the surface of the worktable, and he suddenly said, “I have heard that the most prized puppet your family produces is lifelike enough to be mistaken for a real person?”
Wei Yanqing’s smile locked in place, and a subtle change passed over his expression. “Master Cui, that is an exaggeration from the streets. In any case, every one of our family’s puppets is made to a degree of realism — if you will look at this style here—”
Ming Huazhang cut him off: “The Cui family governs itself by the principle of filial piety. The objects for my grandmother’s use — if they are not of the finest quality, there is simply no need. My uncle’s devotion to his mother is absolute. He is afraid she will find the underworld unfamiliar, so the servants provided for her should ideally be the same as she has known in life — so that she need not adjust to anything new.”
With every point Ming Huazhang added, another shade of color left Wei Yanqing’s face. He kept wringing his hands and said, “Young Master, your requirements are exceedingly demanding — I can only do my best.”
Ming Huazhang inclined his head with patrician elegance and, at the end, added with a faint note of displeasure: “Do not take too long. I cannot remain in Luoyang indefinitely — you would not want me to leave empty-handed.”
Xie Jichuan said nothing, simply watching Ming Huazhang — and then, when Wei Yanqing turned to go fetch the contract papers, he leaned over and asked in a murmur, “Have the Cui family done something to offend you?”
“Not at all.” Ming Huazhang looked at him with genuine puzzlement. “Why would you ask that?”
Xie Jichuan clicked his tongue: “Now I understand why, even though the Lady of Zhen’guo’s estate is the Wang family of Taiyuan, you chose not to use the Wang name and instead put on a disguise as a Cui. That air of snobbery and prickly arrogance that defines the great houses — you have captured it with astonishing accuracy.”
Ming Huazhang gave him a cool sideways glance and said, “The Wang and Xie families actually carry more renown in the popular imagination. The Xie name would work just as well.”
“Let’s not bother with that,” Xie Jichuan replied, smiling. “The Xie family has enough unsavory history without you adding another chapter to it.”
Wei Yanqing returned shortly with the contract papers. “Young Master, here is the draft agreement — if it pleases you, shall we go to the main hall and go over the details?”
“No need.” Ming Huazhang gave it a perfunctory scan and then signed without hesitation — in any case, it was not his own name he was putting down.
Wei Yanqing had not expected that after all that careful deliberation, Ming Huazhang would now sign so readily. He stood by, and for a moment felt the ground tilt slightly beneath him — a strange, disorienting sensation.
Perhaps the nobility simply moved to a different rhythm than ordinary people, and this was simply how they behaved?
Xie Jichuan wandered idly through the workshop. His gaze fell on the half-finished puppets on the worktable, and he asked, “Proprietor Wei, I have noticed as I looked around that every puppet’s features are rendered with extraordinary precision — and yet the eyes are always painted pure black. Why is that?”
The Wei family’s puppets were crafted with the lashes rendered hair by hair. It could not have been difficult to paint a convincing pair of eyes that resembled a real person’s — could it?
Wei Yanqing put away his copy of the agreement. Though he had just concluded a transaction, there was a hollow, unsettled feeling in his chest — not the slightest sense of satisfaction. At Xie Jichuan’s question he explained, “The Young Master may not be aware — in our trade there is a principle: when painting the eyes of a puppet, one must never paint them as human eyes. If that line is crossed, the thing gains life and brings harm to its owner. No matter how lifelike the rest of the body and limbs may be, as long as the eyes are not made as human eyes, it remains a dead object in the end.”
Xie Jichuan nodded slowly. “That sounds like the same reasoning behind why you leave the eyes unpainted on a dragon — to prevent it from taking flight.”
“Precisely,” Wei Yanqing said. “The eyes are the most vital part of a living person — they must never carelessly be given to something that is not human…”
Before he could finish, a bloodcurdling scream rang out from outside. Ming Huazhang’s expression sharpened — the voice was a woman’s. Could it be that Ming Huashang and the others had encountered danger?
Without another word, he turned and ran toward the sound. Wei Yanqing’s expression changed too, and he rushed out after him: “Master Cui, please wait!”
But how was he to outrun Ming Huazhang? In the time it took to blink, the Wei household master and servants had been left far behind. Wei Yanqing stamped the ground in silent frustration and hurried after them.
In Wei Zhùyàn’s quarters, Ming Huashang watched wide-eyed as the puppet head rolled to a stop at her feet, its eyes weeping blood. Before she had time to react, Jiang Ling beside her let out a strangled yelp and kicked the puppet head with his full strength.
Caught off guard, he had no control over the force — the head shot like a ball and slammed into the wall, then rebounded hard. Ming Huashang watched helplessly as the thing — blood streaming from both eyes, garishly painted — flew directly at her face.
Ming Huashang had not been frightened before, but now she genuinely panicked, and immediately dropped into a crouch, letting the cannonball of a head sail clean over her.
She’d had a realization in that moment: the dead were not frightening. Even a haunting was not frightening. What was truly frightening was the companion standing behind her.
Ren Yao had been standing on Ming Huashang’s other side. She hadn’t seen anything strange about the puppet head earlier — but now that Jiang Ling had sent it flying, Ren Yao saw with perfect, unavoidable clarity: a head, hair wild and loose, blood streaming from both eyes, lips curved in an unnatural smile — it swept past directly in front of her face, and the black, viscous strands of its hair dragged across the tip of her nose.
Ren Yao’s heart stopped for a full beat.
Ming Huazhang followed the sound and ran into a courtyard. He had not yet had a chance to locate Ming Huashang when something dark and round came hurtling at him with tremendous speed.
Ming Huazhang sidestepped on instinct. Xie Jichuan had just stepped through the gate behind him and raised his arm by pure reflex — the unidentified spherical object slammed into Xie Jichuan’s forearm, dropped to the ground, rolled a few rotations with the hair tangled all around it, and finally came to rest.
Xie Jichuan looked down. An immaculate sleeve now bore a streak of some red, unidentified substance. He drew a slow, measured breath.
Ming Huashang climbed shakily to her feet. She looked out at the courtyard to find Ming Huazhang’s expression glacial, and Xie Jichuan standing in absolute silence — and she seemed to feel a very tangible weight of fury pressing toward her from both directions.
Xie Jichuan might project an air of careless ease, but he was a scion of the Xie family — the so-called Five Surnames and Seven Lineages were, by the standards of the ancient Chen Commandery Xie clan, nothing more than nouveau riche. He had been steeped in the manner of great houses since childhood, and many of their customs had long since become instinctive, written into the marrow of who he was.
He was, in truth, a man who cared a great deal about his personal appearance.
And now, his sleeve had been struck with something indeterminate and unclean. Ming Huashang could feel it — he was already furious enough to kill.
Jiang Ling blinked, unsure whether to say anything. Before Xie Jichuan could make a move, Ren Yao had already rolled up her sleeve and cocked her fist squarely at Jiang Ling’s head: “You absolute fool, are you trying to get yourself killed?!”
Jiang Ling fled yelping, and Ren Yao chased after him with bare-handed ferocity, somehow projecting the force of a ten-foot battle-axe despite being entirely unarmed.
The Wei family’s people stood and stared. Wei Zhùyàn forgot to be frightened. Wei Moyuan forgot to comfort his apprentice sister. Even Wei Yanqing, who had just come sprinting in, was stunned into stillness.
The manner of a noble house — was this what it looked like?
Ming Huashang rummaged through the room and emerged with a bamboo back-scratcher shaped like a small hand, hooked it through the puppet head’s tangled hair, and dragged it clunking back inside — thump thump thump up the steps, then a loud crack as it struck the doorframe, before finally coming to rest.
The Wei family’s people watched that puppet head knock against the steps, then thud against the doorframe on its way in, and all of them felt a phantom ache at the back of their own skulls.
Ming Huashang maneuvered the head back onto the puppet’s body, then returned the back-scratcher to Wei Zhùyàn. Wei Zhùyàn accepted the bamboo stick in a daze, too stunned to process what had just happened. Ming Huashang looked at her and smiled, saying, “The quality of your family’s puppets really is remarkable — look at this head, what excellent resilience. And the hair is exceptional too — I dragged it the whole way and not a single strand came loose.”
Wei Zhùyàn managed, with some effort, a faint smile: “Thank you.”
Ming Huashang smiled back warmly. “Think nothing of it.”
Wei Yanqing had run the whole distance and hadn’t yet caught his breath. He braced himself against a courtyard pillar, clutching his side, and watched a young man go shrieking past him with a young woman pelting after him, fist raised and swinging. Wei Yanqing thought privately — perhaps it was simply that he was of too humble a station to comprehend the transcendent eccentricity of the great houses.
Wei Yanqing felt a profound and genuine admiration from the depths of his heart. The Cui family of Boling — truly without equal. Each and every member of the household was, without exception, entirely… beyond conventional understanding.