This ghost was clearly ferocious, but possessing Lý Hưởng’s frail body—how could she possibly stand up to Sài Thìa?
It was like playing World of Warcraft on a crappy computer. No matter how skilled you were, if the hardware couldn’t keep up, you were out of luck.
Sài Thìa subdued her with ease. Unable to fight back, she wept bitterly, then suddenly shouted at the crowd, “We three sisters died because of you! You have to pay with your lives!”
Having picked up a clue, Old Khương pressed her for more, but she only kept crying and wouldn’t cooperate. As she sobbed, her head suddenly drooped, as if she’d left Lý Hưởng’s body.
It wasn’t much, but it was something. We carried Lý Hưởng to bed.
As we were leaving, his father grabbed us. “You really are immortals! Save my son!”
“Immortals?” I laughed and explained that Lý Hưởng had been scared out of his wits. All we could do was wait for him to recover on his own—like the police catching a murderer but being unable to save the victim.
I reassured him. “He’ll be fine after a few days in bed. I’ll draw a few spirit-calming talismans and put them under his bed.”
He thanked us profusely.
This raised our standing in the village. Nobody thought we were frauds anymore.
The next day, we went from house to house asking about the wrongful deaths of the three sisters, but everyone shook their heads. At dusk, the three of us met up, all sighing over how we’d come up empty-handed.
I said, “Either the ghost was lying to us, or the villagers are hiding something. Could there be some horrific crime buried in this village, one the whole village agreed to keep secret?”
Old Khương said, “You’re overthinking it. We’ll keep asking tomorrow. If we get nowhere, we’ll take off. We’ve already been paid in full.”
Sài Thìa suddenly pointed out the window. We looked and jumped at the sight of an old woman standing there with white, clouded eyes, like a typical ghost in a movie.
When she came closer to the door, we noticed her shadow and cane and realized she wasn’t a ghost, but a blind woman.
She said, “You’re asking about that, aren’t you? I know the story.”
We were thrilled and invited her inside.
After Old Khương offered her some tobacco, she accepted without hesitation and slowly began, “The story of the three Mu sisters goes back to the end of the Ming dynasty.”
“The Ming dynasty?” I exclaimed. “That was ages ago.”
Her voice was thick with a local accent, and it was hard to understand her.
Here’s what happened: Near the end of the Ming dynasty, there was a band of robbers in the nearby mountains. Their chief came from a poor family and had enjoyed no comforts for half his life, so he took to robbing people of their money and abducting women.
The girls taken up the mountain had a miserable time. At first, they were made the chief’s wives; when he got tired of them, he handed them over to his men. Hundreds of men abused them, and one by one they died or took their own lives. Then the bandit chief set his sights on the three beautiful Mu sisters from the village. He sent word that he would come to collect his bride, and if the village didn’t hand her over, he would slaughter them all.
To protect themselves, none of the villagers dared stand up for the three girls. To them, it was as good as a death sentence.
The three sisters cried all night. In the end, they hanged themselves together. Surely, driven into a corner like that, their hearts had been full of resentment and despair.
After they died, the entire village panicked, certain that they were all doomed. While they waited in terror, the wedding party arrived.
The whole village witnessed a bizarre sight: the bandits seemed to be blind. They lifted the three sisters’ bodies into a sedan chair, played pipes and drums, and carried them away as if they had no idea they were hauling corpses!
The old woman didn’t tell us what happened next in detail. I guessed that once the three bodies reached the mountain, something unspeakable must have happened. Afterward, the bandit chief suddenly came down with a strange illness, which spread through the camp.
Everyone who caught it died within three days. Before long, the bandits’ camp fell apart: some died, others fled. No one knew whether the sisters’ bodies had been buried or burned along with the camp.
When she finished, the old woman urged us, “The three Mu sisters had such hard lives. Please go easy on them.”
After she left, Old Khương sat in thought, smoking. I understood how the old woman felt. The older a ghost was, the harder it was to deal with. This time looked dangerous.
The evil spirit struck again. It happened after we’d gone to sleep; I heard about it later.
That night, a bachelor in the village was asleep when he heard stones being thrown at his window. He grabbed a flashlight and looked, but there was no one there, and even the dogs weren’t barking. He lay back down, only to hear another stone.
He went out again, but still saw no one. After this happened several times, he got annoyed, opened the door, and yelled, “Who’s there? You looking to get the crap beaten out of you?”
I have to give him credit for being brave. If someone had thrown stones at my house in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t have dared go out.
Suddenly, the dog in the yard started barking like crazy. Thinking there was a thief, he ran back inside, but saw no one. Though suspicious, he went back to bed.
In his dream, he suddenly couldn’t breathe. No air would enter his lungs, and he was on the verge of suffocating.
Fortunately, we showed up. His dog ran over and scratched at our door, alerting us that something was wrong. We hurriedly got dressed and followed the dog, finding him writhing on the bed, his face red as a pig’s liver.
“Sài, press down on his chest!” Old Khương ordered.
“Get the villagers! Now!”
I called for the villagers. Old Khương took out a specially made compass and sensed the changes in the magnetic field. Once we’d rescued the man, we led everyone up the mountain.
At a certain spot, Old Khương stopped and stamped his foot. “Here. Dig!”
The villagers treated us like gods and immediately started digging with their bare hands. After a while, someone pulled up a piece of cloth, then a whole shirt. It had only just been buried and hadn’t rotted at all, yet the ground around it showed no signs of disturbance. Everyone was astonished.
“Let’s go!” Old Khương waved us on.
By the time we got back, the man was out of danger. I’d never seen anything like it, so I asked Old Khương about it.
He pointed into the room. “Look. What’s missing?”
There were pants hanging on the rack, but no shirt.
“The shirt!”
“Exactly! Something stole his shirt. Ever heard of ‘soul-trapping clothes’? If a ghost buries or burns someone’s clothes, that person will die. It’s an especially vicious way to hurt someone, and rarely seen.”
Old Khương told us that once, a man gathering firewood in the mountains came across a tiger and climbed a tree, but his shirt fell off.
The tiger couldn’t get to the man, so it tore the shirt to shreds. The man went home in a panic, then died.
We left a few people to keep watch, and the three of us headed out. None of us planned on going back to sleep.
After talking it over, we collected our gear from where we were staying and went up the mountain. The incident had happened right under our noses. We were furious and swore on our honor as ghost hunters that we’d put an end to it that very night.
At the place where the shirt had been buried, Old Khương and Sài Thìa stayed behind while I went alone into the deep woods.
This was a familiar way of hunting ghosts: I had the weakest aura, so I was the best bait. When I first got into this line of work, I’d started out as a part-time decoy.
Old Khương had been blunt: of the three people who’d worked as bait before me, one went crazy, one ran away, and one became a vegetable. The pay was good, but so was the risk. Did I want the job?
I thought about it. My life wasn’t worth much, so I might as well get some value out of it instead of working for a boss who’d chew me out. I agreed. Thinking back to when I’d just started, I still felt afraid.
Even though I wasn’t new at this anymore, being alone in the silent depths of the forest was still unsettling......unnerving.
Suddenly, the temperature dropped. One—no, two—streams of cold air swirled around me, accompanied by the faint sound of a woman sobbing. It was soft, but in the stillness of the night, it rang out clearly. A hand patted my shoulder. I wasn’t afraid, but the hair all over my body still stood on end. I knew this was a shoulder-tapping ghost. Under no circumstances should I turn around. I reached into my bag, took out some realgar, and scattered it over my shoulder. A scream of agony rang out.
“Old Khương!” I shouted.
“Coming!”
He arrived faster than I’d expected. The two of them sprang out from the bushes. Sài Thìa let out a roar while Old Khương cast a net, catching the invisible thing in midair. He tugged on the net and fished a jar out of his bag. It was as if an invisible fish were pulling him; his body was dragged along with it. He struggled to get the jar ready to capture the ghost, but suddenly a hole tore in the net, and it went limp.
He panicked. “It’s gone wrong!”
A blast of cold wind accompanied by a shriek slammed into me and knocked me down. My head struck the ground, and my whole body went numb... How could this ghost be so strong?
Old Khương pulled out a dagger and stabbed wildly at the air. Ghosts feared fierce weapons, and this dagger had been consecrated, making it more powerful than a peachwood sword. Suddenly, the hand holding it was lifted into the air, dangling there. I saw a faint red handprint appear on his wrist.
“Damn it! The ghost’s gotten stronger!”
Sài Thìa took off his shirt, revealing a body covered in talisman tattoos. He roared, wrapped his arms around the invisible thing, and pinned it down. The way he clung to it made him look as if he were doing some bizarre dance. The other stream of cold air continued to swirl around us. There were clearly two ghosts here at once.
“Exorcise it! Don’t trap it in a jar—destroy it now!”
Old Khương said this while keeping his dagger at the ready, wary of the ghost possessing Sài Thìa. I struggled to my feet and scattered realgar over Sài Thìa, making him look like a plaster statue. As the powder drifted past his arm, the vague outline of a woman appeared. Destroying a spirit outright broke the rules, but we had no choice.
Old Khương kept watch while I told Sài Thìa to sit down and hold the ghost tight. Then I drew a formation around him and chanted the life-cutting spell.
The spell tightened around the ghost in Sài Thìa’s arms like an invisible rope. It struggled violently, its cries growing more anguished. Just as I was about to chant it a second time, a powerful force sent Old Khương flying.
“Don’t chant it!” he yelled as he was thrown back. Before I could react, something struck me from behind and knocked me down. This force wasn’t that of an ordinary evil spirit.