“Xianwang, don’t rush off. There’s a celebration banquet in a bit.”
Backstage, Gu Xianwang had just shed her heavy costume and was sitting before the mirror, pulling out her hairpins, when Senior Brother poked his big pale face through the crack in the door and spoke softly.
A bustle of people thronged the space outside the cramped dressing room; the show had just wrapped.
They had performed Mu Guiying Takes Command over the past two days—the seventeenth and eighteenth—and Senior Brother had even been roped in to play Yang Zongbao opposite her. Every performance had drawn a full house to thunderous applause. With Gu Xianwang’s relative inexperience, even riding Master’s coattails, it was only natural for people to whisper that someone powerful was deliberately boosting her star power.
Her makeup was still on, her eyebrows sharp and bold, her features carrying the lingering edge of a fierce female general. “No, thanks. I’m no good at that sort of thing. I’d just bring the room to a standstill.”
“At least come toast a glass before you go,” Senior Brother said. He knew her well enough not to push under normal circumstances, but tonight was different. “Young President Ye’s coming tonight. He already said hello—he wants to meet you.”
Knowing how she hated crowded gatherings, Senior Brother added, “His company’s thrown a lot of weight behind this production. You know his grandfather and Master go way back in the treasure-hunting trade.”
Those were ties forged in the old treasure-hunting circles—life-and-death friendships, really. By all rights and sentiment, Gu Xianwang had no grounds to refuse as Master’s disciple.
But tonight truly wouldn’t work. “I’ve got a ten-thirty flight back to Suzhou. Something’s come up at the nursing home.”
“What’s wrong with your mother? Is she all right? Want me to come with you?”
Gu Xianwang shook her head. “No need. Just cover a drink for me tonight.”
Everyone in the troupe knew about her mother’s condition. Gu Xianwang had no time for herself, always shuttling between Beijing and Suzhou, while her mother lay in a coma at the nursing home for years now. Even Master cut her slack for it.
“Fine, I’ll hold the fort one more time.” Senior Brother grew serious. “If something’s up, don’t bottle it in.”
“Thanks, Senior Brother.”
It was no easy feat having a junior sister who kept everyone at arm’s length like her. By the time Yao Cuo was grinning through three obligatory drinks at the banquet, Gu Xianwang’s plane had touched down at Hongqiao Airport.
She caught a ride straight to the outskirts of Suzhou that same night, but visiting hours at the nursing home were long over. Caught in a downpour, she rapped on the security booth’s glass window, soaked to the skin.
“Hey, little Gu—you’re back!” Uncle Jiang cracked open a side door, umbrella in hand.
The nursing home on the city’s edge had stood for decades, once housing families of high-ranking officials in its deep, secluded grounds. Only familiar faces came and went. The Jiangs had worked there for a lifetime, and Auntie Jiang had been Gu Mama’s dedicated caregiver for a solid ten years.
“Auntie Jiang said Mom woke up. Is she okay?”
Uncle Jiang eyed her drenched state, hesitating before glancing back at the dark little white building. “She did wake up, but… you should see for yourself. Here, take the umbrella. Your aunt’s in the duty room.”
The night was black as pitch under the relentless rain. Gu Xianwang gripped her floral umbrella and peered up at the unlit third-floor corridor. Dense ivy clung to the glass windows, leaves rustling in the wind. In one shadowy crevice, a gaunt silhouette flickered—like a long robe draped over a bamboo pole.
Thunder ripped through the clouds, and in the lightning’s flash, it vanished.
Auntie Jiang had waited up, knowing she was coming, even brewing her a cup of hot tea before broaching the subject with reluctance. “Waking up is good news in itself, little Gu. Some things… don’t let them weigh on you too much. It’s just fate.”
Gu Xianwang’s face betrayed no emotion—no elation at a long-awaited reunion, no dismay at ill tidings.
Just calm indifference, as if it were someone else’s story.
“Go take a look first.”
Room 306’s door stood ajar. Spotting it from afar, Auntie Jiang hurried to explain. “She was still asleep a bit ago.”
Gu Xianwang’s hand lingered on the knob.
Through the dark green wood, she sensed a rhythmic breathing—expanding, contracting, taut and warm, like a presence brushing against her skin.
Someone hunched over, head craned, eyes boring through the solid timber, scrutinizing her.
She’d had such hallucinations since childhood, startling at shadows until others tested and found nothing, their gazes turning wary. Classmates had dubbed her the Witch for it, teasing endlessly.
The door eased open without resistance. The room’s air conditioning hummed cold; the figure on the bed lay bundled tight in thin sheets, back turned. Dry, gray-streaked hair spilled across the pillow.
Gu Xianwang’s eyes went first to the yellow talisman on the bedside table.
Auntie Jiang snatched it up, folding it away into a drawer with an embarrassed smile. “A peace charm from Xiyuan Temple—for health and smooth sailing.”
She was just about to fetch a chair for Gu Xianwang when, turning her head, she saw that the person on the bed had sat up at some unknown point. She sat there silently, tilting her head and staring fixedly at her. Her cheeks were gaunt, as pale as printed paper, framed by the gusting wind and sudden rain through the window—an indescribably eerie and terrifying sight.
Auntie Jiang shuddered all over in fright, nearly crying out.
“Little girl, you’re back?” Gu Mama giggled with a “hee hee hee,” shrugging her shoulders as she slipped out of bed barefoot. She stealthily took Auntie Jiang’s hand and pulled her into the curtains, enveloping them completely. She pressed against her back and sniffed deeply twice. “So fragrant. Little girl, you smell so good. Quick, hide—don’t let them smell you.”
“Did anyone bully you at school today? Tell Mama. Don’t be afraid. As long as you cover yourself well, it’ll be fine. Just don’t let anyone see you, and it’ll be okay.”
Gu Xianwang’s fingers trembled almost imperceptibly. In that instant, she wanted desperately to rush over and tell her:
Little girl is right here. You’ve been asleep for so long. Little girl has grown up now—she won’t be bullied anymore. Little girl doesn’t have to hide any longer.
Auntie Jiang finally wriggled out from the curtains and, with a mix of coaxing and deception, managed to persuade Gu Mama back into bed.
Gu Mama childishly tugged at the hem of her clothes, refusing to let her go unless she told a story. Auntie Jiang mentioned several times that Gu Xianwang had arrived, but she turned a deaf ear, acting as if she couldn’t see the woman at all.
“It’s fine. You go ahead and tell it—I’ll wait for you outside the door.” With those words, Gu Xianwang turned and left without looking back.
Auntie Jiang still couldn’t make sense of it. She had dealt with the Gu family mother and daughter for many years, but she wouldn’t claim to truly understand them. For instance, Miss Gu had shuttled tirelessly between two cities, rain or shine, for years to care for her mother—who wouldn’t praise her as a model filial daughter?
Yet every time they met, Auntie Jiang felt Miss Gu was distant, not warm and affectionate like daughters in ordinary families. How to put it—her gaze toward people always seemed veiled by a layer, as if they weren’t in the same world. It was the same even with her own mother. When keeping vigil at the bedside, she never tended to her personally; her chair was always kept at a distance, as if one glance was enough.
The two finally returned to the duty room. Auntie Jiang pulled out several examination reports and handed them to her. “These were taken this morning. I don’t really understand them, but Doctor Wang said it’s a symptom of brain atrophy.”
When Gu Xianwang flipped to the second sheet, Auntie Jiang hesitated before adding, “Also… we found something growing in her stomach today too. From the scans, it might not be good.”
This was already quite tactful. Gu Xianwang reached the last line: the doctor suspected a malignant tumor with extensive metastasis.
Afraid she would think it was due to poor care on her part, Auntie Jiang hurriedly explained, “Little Gu, as you know, we do check-ups every six months for patients of her age. You’ve seen your mother’s previous reports—there were no issues before. I have no idea what happened; today’s scan just suddenly showed—”
“I understand.” Gu Xianwang tucked away the reports, her expression betraying no emotion. “You’ve taken such good care of her all these years. It’s my failing.”
“Oh, how can it be your fault? You’ve been so filial already. Everyone at the nursing home has seen it—who doesn’t feel for you?”
Gu Xianwang barely lifted the corners of her lips in a smile, thanked her, arranged to visit again the next day, and then braved the rain back to the empty house she rented next to the nursing home.
The barren room held only a bed. She had returned in too much of a rush this time and hadn’t brought any spare clothes. Her soaked jacket and pants hung drying on the tiles, while the wooden window stood ajar by two fingers’ width.
She tossed and turned all night, sitting there in a daze as she watched raindrops splash in one by one. The downpour was torrential, just like the day her mother fell into a coma. The room felt the same as now, perpetually filled with that faint, lingering fragrance.
After a long while, she sat up, switched on her phone, and typed a few words into Tieba:
《Has anyone heard of the Forbidden Witch Bone?》
…
She was haunted once more.
It was still that familiar Black Sea, where gale winds whipped massive waves amid the curtain of rain. The deck underfoot was sodden with moisture, yielding softly with each step and emitting plaintive creaks.
Gu Xianwang headed once more toward the depths of the cabin. It was a massive Dragon Ship, but dilapidated: faded draperies, worm-eaten wooden lattices, dust blanketing everything. No one was aboard—only the sound of her own breathing.
The stairs were narrow, the cabins pitch-black and lightless, the hull constantly rocking. Gu Xianwang followed that cold fragrance, descending step by step into the depths.
Coldness permeated the air. She seemed to hear some distant chant; she couldn’t understand the language, yet it felt inexplicably familiar. Gu Xianwang glanced around—the narrow passageway was lined on both sides with small doors.
Knock knock knock.
The knocking came from inside a narrow door.
In that moment, inside and outside seemed to invert. Gu Xianwang instinctively pushed the door open. Inside was a wooden cubicle no more than two square meters, a coffin stationed squarely in the center.
The knocking emanated from within the coffin.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. She retreated in panic, shoving open the doors to left and right, revealing every narrow door. Each dark chamber was identical, and from every coffin came the sound of someone knocking inquisitively.
Is it human? The cold, alluring fragrance that had lured her here seeped from the cracks of every coffin.
Gu Xianwang staggered into the final chamber. The narrow door slammed shut without warning behind her, and the coffin lid abruptly dissolved into a pool of black water, sluicing down to the floor with a splash. She stood motionless in the pooling liquid.
The figure in the wooden coffin sat bolt upright. Strands of black hair draped over deathly pale skin. It wore the familiar hospital gown and turned its neck with mechanical stiffness.
The neck didn’t seem fully transformed yet, marred by large patches of yellowish blotches that bulged slightly, like dead skin desperate to slough away. The eyebrows had fallen out entirely, the black pupils compressing the whites of the eyes, while the features contorted into an impossible, grotesque arc.
Even so, Gu Xianwang recognized her at once. It was her mother.
“You… came… back.”
A rasping gust of wind whistled from the ragged hole of a throat. Gu Mama’s shoulders shook in silent laughter as her limbs—spindly as a spider’s—probed out from the coffin all at once. Hooking onto the ceiling, she scuttled upward.
Gu Xianwang stood rooted in place, watching as her mother skittered across the walls like a gecko. She seemed to have grown impossibly light; when she clambered onto Gu Xianwang’s back, there was scarcely any weight to her. Those hands—pale and elongated, reeking of the sea’s chill—brushed her earlobe, probing as if to burrow into her ear canal.
“Sister Gu?”
A light tap on her shoulder jolted Gu Xianwang. She shuddered violently and snapped awake.
Ye Chan blinked in surprise, staring at her hand as the woman beside her swatted it away.
Seriously? Was she that hated? Patting her awake before she was even conscious?
Gu Xianwang’s eyes fluttered open in a daze. Through the car window, mountains whipped past in a blur. Her gaze sharpened: the tour guide up front, the bus seats, the other passengers, herself.
Ye Chan clutched her phone, the screen still glowing. The group chat was blowing up with messages. She leaned in and murmured, “You okay? You’ve been out cold since we left Basha Village. You looked really uncomfortable, so I woke you.”
Basha Village? She blinked, her memories gradually resurfacing—her online post, the bizarre flyer mailed to the nursing home, the photos in the private message, and this Guizhou folklore tour group.
Right. She’d been away from home for three days now.
She stared blankly at the woman beside her. Ye Chan grew flustered under the scrutiny, swallowing hard as her fingers fidgeted guiltily. Gu Xianwang’s eyes drifted downward, catching a glimpse of the group chat.
【Chatterbox】: You guys don’t know shit. Fairy Sister is the most beautiful. Who told you to bail? Our group’s packed with hotties. Go cry in a corner.
【Big Feng】: What good are hotties? Who’s the one who got sweetly turned down for a shared standard room? Who’s tossing and turning sleepless in these damn mountains every night? Who’s the one who jumped in to fight someone’s battle and got iced out? Oh yeah, it’s our beloved face-connoisseur Miss Ye Chan.
【Chatterbox】: Jealousy, straight-up jealousy. Did I jump in to pick a fight? It was for justice! Who the hell grabs someone’s phone just ’cause they snapped a couple pics? Fair? Even tattooed Big Sis Head can’t pull that shit.
【SCI Guaranteed】: You didn’t snap pics of those ancestral tree carvings in Basha yourself? You’re in your second year of grad school—how do you let a pretty face derail the whole point? Weren’t you here hunting thesis inspo?
【Chatterbox】: …Study god, my bad. I totally meant to, but then those three babes started scrapping and I got distracted.
【Chatterbox】: Gotta bounce—Fairy Sister’s up. 886.
Gu Xianwang: …
Fairy Sister—that was her? Basha Village, Shavehead Village. No doubt about it. The tour guide had thrown it in as an extra stop that morning. They’d risen before dawn and driven two hours deep into the mountains just to see the Basha ancestral tree, a living relic thousands of years old.
The village was way off the beaten path; no vehicle could navigate the mountain trail. The tour guide didn’t seem familiar with it either, leading their group on a winding hike for over an hour. Ye Chan had nearly yanked a hemp rope tied to a tree—the other end looped around a razor-sharp sickle.
The Basha hosts arrived just in time. Otherwise, with the tree trunk towering five or six meters high, that blade crashing down could’ve been fatal.
Shavehead Village. That’s what the tour guide called it.
Gu Xianwang had eavesdropped closely. He hadn’t translated everything, but from the back-and-forth, the tree Ye Chan had leaned against was the Boundary King Tree—a sort of boundary marker. By the old customs: knot the rope for fate, the blade claims the intruder, and the village shaves heads.
He hadn’t spelled it out, but Ye Chan had clearly been rattled.
Unlike the Miao people, who split into “raw” and “cooked” branches, the Basha were a tiny group with hardly any Han influence. They were the only ethnic minority still permitted to carry guns.
It was a shame, though—the legendary ancestral tree had been split by lightning decades ago during a stormy night. The trunk had rotted through and snapped, leaving only a hollow stump about two meters tall, roots still anchored in the earth.
Yet the altar around it, ringed by colorful prayer flags and stones piled like mani walls, spoke volumes of the Basha people’s enduring devotion.
The tour guide seemed utterly disappointed that the tree had already snapped. He perfunctorily gestured toward the stone piles arranged in various styles, the conical birdcages tied around the trunk, and the vast Fragrant Maple Grove stretching out behind him. He even bothered to casually translate just a few lines he’d cherry-picked from what the Basha host had said.
The group of eight had spent nearly three hours hiking up here, with another full hour still ahead to make their way back down the mountain. And for what? A handful of half-hearted remarks.
If she hadn’t spotted that hidden carving inside the tree trunk, she would have marched straight back to file a complaint.
The real kicker was that those two women seemed to have noticed it too.
“Hey, what are you taking a picture of?”
