Chapter 71: Strange Happenings in the Mountains, Part 4

Chapter 71: Strange Occurrences in the Mountains, Part 4

Zhang Sanlu had no idea how long he had been drifting in and out of sleep at the camp. As he slept, he was aware of an increasing chill. Though his eyelids felt as heavy as if they were weighed down with lead, the cold eventually overcame his exhaustion and forced him to open his eyes.

When he awoke, shivering from the cold, he saw through a haze that a dozen men were gathered around the campfire, warming themselves. Their figures flickered in and out of the firelight, faces blurred and distorted by the dancing flames, yet all of them unmistakably wore the same weary expressions, murmuring indistinct words he could not make out.

Zhang Sanlu struggled to sit up, reeling from dizziness, unsure how long he had slept.

“You're awake, Daoist?” a coarse, hoarse voice broke the silence. Zhang Sanlu looked up and saw a stubbled man gazing at him with a certain deference.

He nodded, “You've all worked hard,” and stepped over to the fire, stretching out his frostbitten, reddened hands to absorb the heat and drive away the bone-deep cold.

“Don’t mention it, Daoist,” the rough man replied with an awkward grin. “Besides, you’re here to help us drive away the evil spirits.”

Zhang Sanlu recalled that this man was the leader of the group, named Li Guangli.

The men around the fire fell silent, ending their low murmurs. In the firelight, a young man poked at the flames with a stick, making the fire leap and dance.

“What were you talking about?” Zhang Sanlu broke the silence. Some conversation, he thought, would be a welcome distraction.

“Daoist, we were talking about the madness that struck the Li family at the east end of the village. It’s a strange business,” Li Guangli replied, with the others nodding vigorously.

“Yeah, the boy was perfectly fine at home, and then he just died—it frightened everyone,” another wiry youth added.

Madness? Zhang Sanlu’s interest was piqued. Previously, Zhang Zhi Dao and the others had been quite concerned about this madness. Now that there was time, he wanted to hear what the locals thought, so he motioned for them to continue.

These men were not skilled storytellers, and perhaps a little shy in front of outsiders. Each added a piece here and there, piecing together the tale.

A few months ago, someone in the village had died from this madness—a young man named Li Qian. Before taking his own life, he had already lost his senses. He died before he turned eighteen, sadly passing before a wandering Daoist could come to help.

After Li Qian’s death, his family wanted to bury him in the ancestral grave, but according to local custom, there were three conditions under which one could not be interred there: dying before adulthood, dying a violent or self-inflicted death, and dying unmarried. Li Qian met all three conditions, so his burial in the ancestral plot was impossible.

To comfort Li Qian’s father, Old Li, the villagers used a local saying: “When the dog dies, the tiger thrives. We’re all saddened by your son’s death, but now he’s gone, you’ll grow stronger and healthier.”

Old Li was born in the year of the tiger, and his madness had first surfaced years ago. For a time, his family spent all their savings seeking shamans and healers from far and wide, performing countless rituals and trying many remedies. The saying about the dog and the tiger was not spoken out of callousness, but from hope that the son’s misfortune would take away the family’s evil afflictions and that Old Li’s old illness would not return.

Old Li’s family believed his illness began after repairs to their old house. About seven or eight years ago, after chopping wood in the mountains, he began to act strangely—restless at night, rambling nonsense no one could understand, and wandering off into the mountains alone in the dead of night. Yet, come morning, he would return home terrified, saying a crowd from the mountains was coming to take him away.

A few days later, in a lucid moment, Old Li told his family his illness was the result of angering the mountain god by cutting down a few trees in the mountains. He insisted that sacrificing a white rooster to the mountain god would cure him. The family hastily performed the ritual in the mountains as he instructed, and, remarkably, Old Li’s condition improved, and he stopped having attacks.

Years passed, and as his children grew older, Old Li needed to expand his house for his son’s marriage. This time, recalling his previous misfortune, he dared not venture deep into the mountains to fell large trees. Since their house was at the foot of the eastern hills, where many fine trees grew, he cut down a dozen or so from nearby for the new house.

But before the house was even finished, he fell ill again—and this time, far worse. He would run off into the mountains for days at a time and frequently attacked the village’s cattle and sheep with sharp tools.

Since Old Li’s home lay at the foot of the mountains, the villagers believed, once more, that he had angered the mountain god. Old Li’s wife’s grandfather, a wealthy man in the county, was finally persuaded by her pleas to seek out the wandering Daoist Master Zhang and invite him to Li Family Hamlet to perform the necessary rites.

Master Zhang had Old Li restrained, fed him talisman water, and mixed mountain soil into mud to take an impression of his footprint. He had thirty-six pairs of torches lit around the ritual grounds and instructed his disciple to sound the ox-horn to summon the mountain god.

The ritual seemed simple enough: first, a white rooster was sacrificed to the mountain god, and then a soul-calling ceremony was held for Old Li.

This soul-calling was unusual. A hole was made in the roof, and a soul-guiding thread was run from outside into the house. As the incantations rang out, the family was told to keep calling Old Li’s name, guiding his wandering spirit home. Some claimed to have seen a giant insect, bristling with legs, crawl along the thread from outside into the house.

The ritual lasted until dawn. The family was then instructed to sacrifice a white sheep to the mountain god. The ox-horn was sounded again to rouse the deity, and they planned to perform the rest of the rite at the eastern foot of the mountain.

However, all the trees there had already been felled by Old Li, making it an unsuitable place, so they found a level stone on the mountain to serve as the altar. Yet, before the ceremony could begin, the sacrificial sheep broke loose and vanished.

Villagers searched everywhere, combing the area until almost daybreak, when they finally found the sheep right at the foot of the mountain where the original sacrifice had been made to the mountain god. This astonished all present, and many believed it to be a sign of the mountain god’s presence.

After these extraordinary rites, a ram was slaughtered and its head, hooves, breastbone, meat, and skin were hung on a wooden pole as an offering. These strange events left the villagers deeply convinced of the Daoist's abilities and filled them with awe for the mountain god. From then on, every mishap in the village was attributed to offenses against the deity, with madness being its most direct manifestation.

After the rites, Old Li’s condition steadily improved.

But who could have foreseen that something even more terrifying would soon occur?