I scattered realgar powder wildly. The ghost shrieked and dodged it. Sài Thìa sat below, looking frustrated, wanting to help but unable to. I felt inside my pouch—it was empty. Damn it!
“Chant!” Old Khương shouted.
“Are you going to chant or not?”
“Not the prayer for rebirth in this life—chant the one for rebirth in the Pure Land!”
“What?”
“No time to explain. Send it on its way! I’ll protect you!”
I sat down and chanted the prayer for rebirth as fast as I could. Old Khương stood guard beside me with a knife, while the wind overhead howled in agony. When I finished chanting, Sài Thìa’s hand slowly relaxed.
He said the ghost in his hand had disappeared. The three of us scrambled to our feet and looked up. The remaining ghost was gradually leaving, too.
Everything fell quiet again.
“I get it now…” Old Khương said thoughtfully.
“Those three ghosts were here from the start. Otherwise, who was that guy playing cards with?”
Old Khương took a steady breath and explained.
“But the way they exist is strange. Did you notice? After we destroyed the first one, the other two didn’t weaken—they got stronger.”
“That’s why you told me not to destroy them, only to send them on their way.”
“Exactly. Even a fight needs a strategy. If we’re right, destroying the second ghost would finish all three of us. We can only send them on their way, not destroy them.”
“But why does each remaining ghost get stronger whenever one is gone? Unless…”
“You figured it out?”
“Yeah, they share their power! Like three people drinking from one jug of wine: take one away, and the other two get to drink more.”
“The biggest question now is what that jug of wine is!”
“What do you mean?” Sài Thìa asked, bewildered.
“We can be sure it didn’t form on its own. Someone’s behind this,” I reasoned.
“I’m guessing it’s a special formation. Anyway, let’s go back to sleep. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow,” Old Khương said.
When we got back, I saw red handprints on my back and on Old Khương’s chest. They were women’s handprints.
He laughed. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my future wife.”
The next day, we brought in the village feng shui master and asked him where the most inauspicious spot was. The old man took out his compass and led us to the intersection with the main road to the west.
“No need to look any farther. This is it. It used to be a graveyard, where they dumped the bodies of unknown people.”
“This whole area is huge!” Old Khương said.
“Point out the most inauspicious spot!”
The old man glared at us. “Are you trying to hurt someone—or yourselves?”
“We catch ghosts.”
“Oh, well, in that case.”
After searching for a long time, we finally pinpointed the most inauspicious burial spot. Old Khương picked up a handful of soil, sniffed it, then handed it to me. It smelled foul—grave soil. Someone had clearly been buried there, then dug back up.
“Could it be the headless filial son?” I said.
The feng shui master looked surprised. “You know about that? That’s right. They once buried a headless filial son here. Later, the villagers got so scared of the bad luck that they feared disaster would strike, and wouldn’t bury anyone here anymore.”
So the story about the villagers being moved by his filial devotion had just been made up. In truth, they’d moved the grave because they were afraid.
“Dig it up!” Old Khương said.
“No! Digging in an inauspicious place is taboo. We have to pick an auspicious day!”
“I checked the lunar calendar. Today’s not even suitable for farting, so shut up! Dig!”
The three of us dug. Before long, we touched something soft, like a lump of meat.
“Sure enough, inauspicious ground breeds monsters!” the feng shui master said.
“What is this?” I asked.
“A buried Tai Sui!”
( *Buried Tai Sui: In folk belief, Tai Sui is also understood as a supernatural entity beneath the earth, often found in inauspicious places such as graveyards or places where the wronged dead are buried. Buried Tai Sui is usually described as a strange mass of matter resembling meat or fungus, capable of absorbing yin energy, especially in places filled with resentment. Disturbing Tai Sui—for example, by digging in an inauspicious area—is said to bring great disaster by disrupting the balance of yin and yang. )
It suddenly made sense. Folk belief says Tai Sui is Jupiter in the sky, an inauspicious star. You mustn’t break ground over Tai Sui—that means no building houses or burying the dead there.
Beneath the earth was a massive Buried Tai Sui that moved with Jupiter, known as a “moving earthly baleful star.” It favored inauspicious ground or places beneath graves, where it absorbed yin energy. We dug a wider area and found that the Tai Sui was unusually large.
The feng shui master stopped us. “Don’t dig any farther! If you pull it all out, the whole village will be struck by disaster!”
“I’m sure someone tampered with the Tai Sui. Let’s find them, then cover it back up,” Old Khương said.
In the end, the feng shui master agreed. We dug carefully and saw the Tai Sui seemingly breathing. I’d heard stories about monsters being born from inauspicious ground. Back home, there was a patch of land where everything planted there died. When someone dug it up, they found a huge wasp nest. As soon as it was exposed to the light, hundreds of wasps, each about the size of a thumb, flew out. The unlucky man ran, jumped into a pond, and breathed through a reed. The wasps seemed to have a mind of their own and crawled into the reed. The man was rescued, but he couldn’t speak or eat, and he had trouble breathing. He died. Later, they found a wasp egg as big as a silkworm cocoon in his throat, blocking his airway.
The master said the Tai Sui slept during the day, but we had to be extremely careful.
Unbelievably, we were doing the most dangerous thing of all: breaking ground over Tai Sui!
Suddenly, Sài Thìa cried out. We looked over and saw that he’d dug up a small wooden figurine, about the size of a lighter. It depicted a hunched figure in ancient clothing, with a pointed bottom stuck into the Tai Sui, as if it were drawing energy from it. The figurine was heavy, as if it contained liquid metal.
“Look for more. There must be three of them!” Old Khương said.
We found all three figurines. One was charred black as coal. Old Khương examined them. “How vicious! The Ghost Commanding Technique is so subtle that the three ghosts share the baleful star’s power. Even ten ghost hunters would have a hard time bringing them down. The three sisters were just pawns being used.”
“How are we supposed to find the real culprit now?”
“If we can’t ask the living, we’ll ask the dead.”
“I was thinking the same thing, but where are we going to find someone with a weak constitution and low yang energy?”
The three of us turned and saw the frail feng shui master trembling in the wind. He noticed us looking at him. “What are you staring at?”
“Sài Thìa, get him!”
“What are you doing? What are you going to do to me…”
Knocking out the feng shui master to communicate with a spirit was nothing new, but summoning the three Mu sisters’ spirits was difficult. We didn’t know whether they’d be willing to appear after our previous clashes. After many attempts, the feng shui master suddenly sprang up, stood straight, and made a feminine gesture. In a coquettish voice, he said, “Who are you people? Why are you looking for me?”
“We want to ask you a few things,” Old Khương said. “If you cooperate, we’ll send you on your way.”
Perhaps because the formation had been destroyed, this ghost seemed more at ease and answered every question.
When we pushed open Mr. Lý’s door, he was changing the IV bag for his son.
When he saw us, he still smiled kindly. “You’re here. Did you find anything?”
“We did! A huge discovery,” I said.
“Using the power of a fierce spirit to force three kind souls to do evil—your methods are so cunning, you put us to shame. And to avoid suspicion, you made your own son the first sacrifice. Your cruelty puts us to shame, too. Don’t pretend. We know the truth!”
I hadn’t named him, but his expression changed. He gave a sinister smile and sneered, “When did you figure it out?”
“If you don’t want people to know, don’t do it in the first place!” Old Khương said.
He stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back. “I underestimated you. I thought you were just three wandering swindlers. I didn’t expect you to get this far. So what if you know? Call the police? Hmph.”
“Why do this? Why hurt your own villagers?” Old Khương asked.
“My villagers? What did they ever think of my mother? A menace! My family has been calling spirits for generations. When my mother was doing it, a political movement came along. She was humiliated and eventually hanged herself. Hmph. I’ll use my family’s secret art to make the whole village live in fear.”
“So you abuse spirit-calling to hurt people? Aren’t you afraid it’ll shorten your life?”
“I’ve got nothing left to lose. What would money-grubbers like you know?” He gave a contemptuous, cold laugh. “If you’ve got the guts, let’s fight. We’ll see whether my family’s spirit-calling is stronger or your bargain-basement ghost-catching tricks are better.”
“Damn it!” Sài Thìa roared and charged at him.
Old Khương stopped him and looked at the man. “Even bandits have principles. Here’s the deal: I challenge you to a rematch in three years!”
“Fine, I agree!” I understood that Old Khương was buying time.
We couldn’t stay, much less kill anyone. We’d completed the job and done plenty besides, but now that we’d stumbled onto the heart of the conspiracy, all we could do was sigh. The human heart was more dangerous than ghosts, but that wasn’t our business to interfere in.
Many people came to see us off as we left the village, including Mr. Lý, who had returned to his usual kindly self.
As we headed out, fog rose around us. Sài Thìa tapped me and told me to look back.
We turned around and saw a headless figure in black standing in the fog, watching us.
Old Khương chuckled. “Do you know who used a ghost to make the walls shift and lead us back that day?”
“The headless ghost?”
Old Khương nodded. “I figure this dutiful fellow committed such terrible sins when he was alive that he couldn’t be reincarnated. Maybe he’s been doing good deeds after death to make amends…”
I stared blankly. The killer saves lives, and the one he saves kills again. Was it the times that had changed, or the human heart?
A month later, at a hospital in Wuyuan.
“Thanks for your hard work. Here’s your payment.” As Old Khương handed the client a squirming cloth bag, the man offered an envelope of cash and hesitantly took the bag.
My eyes fell on the newspaper on the table. The front-page headline read: “A Bizarre Case! Comatose Son Kills His Father!” The dead man in the photo was Mr. Lý, Lý Hưởng’s father.
The article said that after lying in a coma for a long time, his son suddenly sprang up and strangled his father to death.
A medical examination confirmed that he was still comatose. The locals said he’d been possessed by an evil spirit.
The three of us exchanged a look, as if we’d all had the same thought.
Old Khương laughed. “Ha ha! What goes around comes around!”
—THE END—