“Holy crap, he just jumped out like that?” Ye Chan still had the last bite of her roujiamo clamped between her teeth as she half-stood, glaring at the restaurant window overlooking the alley. “Uh, just now… did we push him too hard? Look at the kid—he was so pissed he could barely catch his breath.”
Gu Xianwang fell silent for a moment before shaking her head. “People from the Yang Family rarely take the conventional path. His bag’s still here, so he’ll probably be back by noon. He has his own fixations; let him sort them out himself.”
She turned to Long Li. “How much of what you said earlier was just to mess with him?”
Long Li shot her a glance, letting Yang Baibai’s parting words slide as she dabbed at the corner of her mouth. “It wasn’t really messing with him. The lay of the land he spotted? Anyone who comes here can see it just as well. But most folks who snagged a Human Skin Map from the Flower Fair these past few days have already pulled out of the Qinling Mountains. Any guesses why?”
Gu Xianwang had wised up by now. Long Li’s questions were usually loaded traps, so she held back, teasing out the suspense instead. Amid their subtle game of advance and retreat, Ye Chan shot her hand up with unbridled enthusiasm. “I know, I know! Going by the classic novel playbook, the feng shui here’s gotta be off. It’s gotta be some kind of illusion trick!”
“Art imitates life.” Long Li rose and gathered their plates. “I fell for the same thing when I first got here, just like him. This place has a kind of pull, urging you to puzzle out the lay of the land. On second thought, that’s the real anomaly.”
“I don’t think this village is as straightforward as it looks. Come on, let’s head out and see for ourselves.”
The three slung on their packs and stepped out of the homestay. Those earlier guests must have checked out already—the Nissan was gone from around the side wall. It was only then that Gu Xianwang remembered the Golden Crow was still in the car. They’d cracked half a window for air, but a couple of hours had passed now, and Bird Lord hadn’t eaten yet.
They popped open the door, but there was no trace of the Fat Bird inside.
Ye Chan deflated her cheeks. “Aw, crap. Bird Lord’s run off.”
Long Li scanned the nearby tracks, unconcerned. “No big deal. It’ll raise hell out there till it’s had its fun, then come right back. If the Yin Vortex couldn’t hold it, what’s one little village?”
Gu Xianwang’s gut twisted with worry. “What if something grabbed it?”
Long Li arched a brow and pointed to the faint streak of claw marks on the hood. “Grabbing that one’s not so simple.”
From the looks of it, the little rascal had bolted for the hills.
~~~
By now, most of the village shops were gearing up to open—hanging their curtains, erecting their stalls. The roujiamo stand was first out, its massive pot of braised meat bubbling away since early morning. The thick, fatty, savory aroma rode the billows of white steam up and down the long street, teasing Ye Chan into nonstop swallows.
The bluestone village lane was still mostly empty of foot traffic, save for the locals hustling to set up shop. Tourists like them hadn’t stirred yet. Ye Chan had room for more, so Long Li sent her to buy snacks along the way and fish for info.
The prime targets: local legends and village scuttlebutt.
Gu Xianwang had pegged Long Li as her own type—reserved, no-nonsense. Today proved otherwise. The woman had layers on layers of faces. She bantered effortlessly even with these mountain-village aunties, lacing her chatter with wit and spinning tall tales on a dime. “Eight-faced exquisite” didn’t do her justice; she ran circles around three Gu Xianwangs without breaking a sweat.
Unable to chime in, Gu Xianwang hung back, observing and playing along. But what she dreaded came to pass. Long Li zeroed in on the gossip dens—every early-morning shop had its cluster of aunties. Cue the improv: Gu Xianwang morphed from “little sister back home” at street’s start, to “student on a plein air trip” mid-block, to “coworker on team-building” by the end. In little over an hour, Long Li had role-played a lifetime of twisted histories between them.
They finally reached the clinic with Ye Chan’s gut ballooned round and Gu Xianwang’s brain on the fritz.
Long Li thrived in the flow, but Gu Xianwang’s head swam in porridge. Ghost stories piled on—one about freak weather, next about nosy neighbors, then shady deals. The threads tangled into a snarl, like they were meant to stay that way. Soon everyone looked shady, though she chalked it up to her nerves.
Suspicion bred phantoms in every bush and tree. Gu Xianwang kneaded her brow fiercely, shoving down the foggy exhaustion.
Ye Chan didn’t understand. “Sister Long, aren’t you thirsty? Why keep asking them basically the same questions over and over? In the end, the only things around here are the legend of the General’s Tomb, Ghost Soldiers marching through the Mist Forest, and a bunch of exaggerated tales about earthly immortals and monsters. Aren’t those just hype to build atmosphere for Star-Plucking Peak?”
Ye Chan hailed from an academic background. Though she’d joined her mentor on a few digs, she’d always been little more than manual labor and had no grasp of the real intricacies. Official archaeologists seldom had to locate tombs themselves. By the time sites reached them, locals had usually spotted clues, unearthed a few artifacts, and reported a precise area. That was worlds apart from tomb raiders, who prided themselves on beating everyone else to the punch. Arriving even a step late meant picking over the scraps, so raiders had far richer experience in prospecting, feng shui, and burial rites than any ivory-tower scholar.
Long Li had walked both sides of the law for years and picked up her share of tricks along the way. Pinpointing a spot in unfamiliar territory took more than books and a compass—you had to use your ears, listen and ask around. Anyplace rife with odd tales deserved extra scrutiny.
She asked, “Do you really think the earthly immortal legends are pure fiction?”
Ye Chan shrugged. “Yeah. Ge Hong wrote in the Baopuzi, ‘The highest cultivator ascends bodily into the void, becoming a Celestial Immortal; the middling one roams famed mountains, becoming an Earth Immortal; the lowest dies first, then sheds the corpse, becoming a Liberated Corpse Immortal.’ There’s no Daoist or Buddhist cave around here. As for Ghost Soldiers crowning the Ming General, binding the earth to achieve immortality, even surviving a Thunder Tribulation to ascend—doesn’t that sound way too far-fetched?”
Gu Xianwang strained to follow the train of thought. “The legend does seem pretty dubious. It feels like they just took the old Ghost Soldiers tale, spiced it up, and used it to inflate the importance of General Ming’s Tomb.”
“Yes.” Long Li smiled. “But don’t you find it strange that a story this outlandish comes out exactly the same from everyone’s lips?”
Gu Xianwang froze for a moment, then heard her continue. “They say ‘rumors grow tiger teeth after three tellings’—pass a tale through three mouths, and it’s usually mangled beyond recognition. The Ghost Soldiers sightings around here only started a century ago, but this doctored version has spread to every man, woman, and child with identical precision. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
They’d heard the same stories repeated so many times that Gu Xianwang’s ears had practically grown calluses, leaving her numb to it all. But looking back now, something did feel off. On second thought, though—if the General’s Tomb and earthly immortal tales were all fabricated, why bother stationing people at the mountain gas station to play ghost and spook travelers? Were they really going to such lengths out of the goodness of their hearts, just to steer folks clear of the Mist Mirage?
“Don’t rush. Let’s head to the clinic first and get that wound of yours checked. A tetanus shot, then we’ll talk about the rest.”
Gu Xianwang frowned and glanced up at the clinic sign. Behind a modest medicine cabinet sat a man in his early twenties, already nodding off mere minutes after opening shop.
She had clearly come prepared to have Long Li’s injury examined, only to get brushed off. What kind of freakish constitution did this woman have? No matter how strong her natural healing, a gut wound like that shouldn’t close on its own—but her complexion betrayed no hint of illness. She strode in those heels with unstoppable swagger. If anything, Gu Xianwang’s own pallid face and bruised shadows under her eyes made her look like the real invalid.
Both nursing their private worries and reluctant to bare their injuries, they traded a few barbs before Gu Xianwang found herself dragged over by the other arm for the shot.
In the meantime, Long Li made use of the time to glance around the little clinic’s setup. She smiled at Little Bro. “How come we haven’t seen many kids around the village?”
Little Bro looked like the youngest fellow in these parts. He answered offhandedly, “No school here, so all the kids get sent off to the city. I only just graduated and came back myself.”
Long Li let out an enlightened “oh,” then pressed on. “So the lady running the Earth Immortal Residence—she just graduated from out of town and came back too? Her Mandarin’s flawless, and she’s got a real knack for business.”
“Hey, every out-of-towner says the same,” Little Bro said with a wave of his hand. “Sister A did head out to another province for a spell, but she’s more than ten years older than me. She keeps herself looking good—gotta credit our Wild Hot Spring for that.”
Over ten years older? That would make her around forty, wouldn’t it? But she looked no more than twenty-something—truly young. Gu Xianwang’s mind raced as she sifted through everything she’d observed since entering the village. Suddenly, she grasped Long Li’s implication. The village had no school-age children, not even infants. It seemed populated by only one generation: no elders above, no youngsters below, just those middle-aged folks in their forties and fifties hunkered down here. People as young-looking as Sister A and this Little Bro were a rarity.
If the young had all left to study or seek their fortunes, then why were there no elders either?
Long Li let the question hang there. After the injection, they followed the signs toward the attraction at Star-Plucking Peak behind the village.
~~~
Star-Plucking Peak was actually a jutting cliff on the eastern face of the hill behind the village, short of the summit at roughly five or six hundred meters elevation. It was wild mountain terrain; before it was branded a tourist spot, folks called it Wild Man Ridge or Immortal Lord’s Couch—the same place either way.
Heading out from the back of the village meant looping past the Earth Immortal Residence first, then skirting the entrance to the Wild Hot Spring. The area wasn’t fully developed yet, with many of the spring pools still open to the air. Even through the trees, warm steam drifted out, carrying a faint whiff of sulfur.
Ye Chan took a keen interest in the Wild Hot Spring and found it hard to tear herself away as they passed. “Who knows if Yang Baibai spotted anything in there. That guy probably used it as an excuse to sneak off and soak in luxury, huh?”
By now, irritation churned inside Gu Xianwang. Rumor had it that Golden Hook Town marked the true heart of the Long Family’s Human Skin Map. They’d poked around for ages, spotting a few irregularities, but nothing that added up to a solid lead. No sign of their hidden adversaries, no trace of Master. Short on rest and bereft of a clear strategy, she felt hemmed in on all sides, foes lurking behind every shadow—a vicious spiral feeding her growing anxiety.
What’s more, the exact departure time of Master’s group was doubtless under wraps. Third Sister Red wouldn’t spill, and Long Li had no intel. Gu Xianwang figured that since they’d only looped in Long Li for clandestine work, even the Rat-Walkers hadn’t pinned down the underground truth yet. The window couldn’t stretch beyond two days, meaning about a day and a half had passed since Master and the others vanished. Their gear could hold out three to five days, sure, but what if poison or grave wounds were involved? Master was no youngster; the others might tough it out, but could a man in his eighties really race the clock in a fight for survival?
Lost in these grim thoughts, she heard a shout from the side: “Hey, ladies! Hold up before you head in—buy your tickets here first.”
Glancing over, she spotted a rickety wooden table under a tree at the village’s tail end, paired with a weathered chair. A scrawny middle-aged man sporting a wispy mustache waved them over. He wore a Lei Feng hat and was bundled tight in a gray cotton jacket. Bricks by his feet held some porcelain ware, plus a small sign: Ten yuan for five rings.
Ye Chan blinked in confusion. “Tickets for what?”
“You lot aren’t going up the mountain?”
“Oh, right—we are.”
“Then that’s your entrance fee. Covers Star-Plucking Peak, Ingot Stone, Golden Tree. Eighty yuan apiece. Wooden plaques? Hang ’em on the trees, make a wish—they’re potent. Three of you comes to three hundred.”
Three hundred? Outright robbery! Ye Chan’s eyes bulged. What kind of tourist trap was this? No gatehouse in sight, no groomed trails ahead—just raw wilderness, and they had the gall to charge?
She opened her mouth to protest, but Long Li gave her shoulder a light pat and stepped forward with a smile. “Only the one style of plaque? What’s the surest wish to make on the local maple trees?”
Well now, a big fish. The man slung the bamboo rings from his wrist onto the table’s edge and yanked open a drawer. “Got premium ones. Finer wood, red cords that’ve been blessed. Three for a hundred—special deal. Our Golden Tree delivers on everything: business booms, heirs, true love. Folks flock back yearly to pay their vows.”
“Perfect, we’ll take these.” Long Li fished five hundred from her wallet. “Got change?”
The man bobbed his head furiously and whipped out an ancient ticket stub booklet. The red bills screamed homemade—no stamps, no dates, half the pad crudely torn away.
“Lately… how many folks heading into the scenic area at night?”
Midway through checking the cash, the man froze. He shot her a sidelong glare laced with a subtle, chilling menace.
Long Li laughed. “Don’t be so nervous. I’ve been here before and know your rules here. Don’t you live right behind? Anyway, you’re manning the scenic area gate, so any extra fees you collect morning or evening are all yours anyway. We totally get it—making money these days isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Besides, your village committee has no objections, so what can us tourists say about it?”
Hearing this, the man finally squeezed out a smile. “Yeah, sigh—if only everyone were as understanding as you. Truth is, once it gets dark here, we really don’t like letting people into the mountains. It’s not safe. Folks say there are wild men in these hills, but lately there’ve been a few groups of people—real aggressive types—who insisted on going in, and I couldn’t stop them no matter what.”
Gu Xianwang frowned and asked, “Did they all come back out?”
“Huh.” He waved his hand. “The mountains around here have paths leading everywhere. All sorts come through—people up to all kinds of things. Most enter from here but don’t exit from here.”
Long Li nodded and said, “A few days from now, some friends of mine are coming too, specifically to pay respects to that old maple tree. I see the wooden plaques you make are pretty nice-looking, but look at these two you gave me—the bottoms have some worm holes. Could you swap them for a couple of better ones?”
Hearing there was more business to be had, the man—who’d been too lazy to budge—still stood up. He didn’t have many of these pricey wooden plaques stocked in his drawer anyway; no one had ever wanted them before. As he headed back inside, he said, “Sure, sure—don’t go yet. I’ll grab some for you.”
Gu Xianwang watched the direction he went in and figured the man must live in that old brick-tiled house behind the tree. The place looked at first glance like some rundown earth temple, surrounded by crumbling courtyard walls. The moment he stepped through the door, Long Li immediately made a “shh” gesture, then hurried over to the courtyard gate.
The three of them crouched there like thieves, peeking through the crack along the wooden door’s hinge into the yard. The inside looked just as dilapidated as the outside—fallen leaves scattered everywhere with no one to sweep them, the water jar bone-dry. It didn’t seem like a place anyone was bothering to keep up for living in. And the stuff hanging on those earthen walls? Nothing like typical farm tools—instead, there were knives, axes, shovels, and all manner of implements at the ready.
Under the eaves outside the kitchen stove on the left, atop that stone platform, an old man seemed to be sitting. The old man had gray-streaked white hair and a face full of wrinkles—he was definitely more than seventy. He looked extremely sluggish in his reactions, like a marionette puppet mindlessly repeating strange, pointless motions.
The man went inside and rummaged around for a bit before shouting something. The accent didn’t sound like Shaanxi dialect—it was too clipped to pin down exactly, but it strayed far from standard Mandarin pronunciation habits, and it sure wasn’t from any northern dialect family.
Gu Xianwang stared intently. The moment he shouted his second sentence, a chill shot up her spine, and she blurted out, “Black Teeth again…”
This old man had a mouth full of ghoul-like black teeth, just like the tramp they had seen in the Mist Mirage.
