Chapter 143: Strange Occurrences 2

The deep mountains were rugged and steep, making outsiders a rare sight. Consequently, all the villagers—some several dozen people—went out to take a look. The young man went too, but when he saw the stranger’s face, he was terrified out of his wits.

That man looked identical to the corpse he had found in the cave three days ago! Even the clothes he wore were the exact same!

The young man was scared out of his wits, but he didn’t dare say anything on the spot. After all, he had only caught a brief glimpse of the corpse back then, and he worried his eyes had played tricks on him. Not wanting to make an unfounded accusation, he shouldered his wicker basket again under the pretext of gathering herbs, when in truth he intended to return to that cave.

But when he found the hidden cave again, there were only fallen leaves scattered across the ground. There was no sign of the corpse anywhere.

He realized at once that whatever had entered the village couldn’t be human. It was likely an evil thing possessed by some mountain spirit. Scared out of his senses, he scrambled down the mountain, taking a hard fall along the way, and ran straight to the village chief’s house to explain everything that had happened.

The village chief was shocked. That night, he took torches and headed into the mountains. The young man led him to the cave and showed him the leaves that had covered the body. Dried bloodstains were still visible on them. While it was common for wild beasts to drag corpses back to their dens, any animal would have left tracks. The strange thing was that there were bloodstains, but no drag marks whatsoever.

At that, the village chief believed him completely.

After returning, several of them gathered in a stone house. They all agreed it was an evil creature possessed by a mountain spirit and had to be rooted out completely. Their village lay hidden deep within the mountain forest, and over the generations, their ancestors had recorded many such occurrences. Gritting their teeth, they resolved to kill the evil thing under cover of darkness.

The next day, the village chief informed the village’s only hunter. He was swift with a blade, and having lived off hunting for years, he wouldn’t hesitate. Leaving the job to him was the best choice.

Several of them spent the night on edge. On the third morning, the hunter came to the village chief’s house alone and told them to dispose of the body. When the young man entered the makeshift stone building, he was bracing for the stench of a rotting corpse. But stepping inside, he was astonished to find no smell of decay at all. Instead, the room was filled with a strange, sweet fragrance.

The body lay on the bed, having bled very little. They covered it with a white cloth and quietly carried it out of the village on a wooden litter. Once they reached a point where the path was no longer passable, they set down the litter, abandoned the body, and fled.

Hearing the story up to this point, He Yu yawned, but Lu Ayao kept his brow furrowed from start to finish. I was listening in a haze myself, feeling as though I couldn’t quite grasp the point of it all. My fever had broken, so I sat up and propped myself against a seat cushion.

He Yu started running his mouth again: “What of it? Maybe that young herb gatherer really did misidentify the body. Besides, it’s pitch-black at night—what kind of tracks could they find with just torches? I know how these records go; it’s always a mix of fact and fiction. Maybe that outsider wasn’t an outsider at all. Maybe some locals had a grudge and accidentally killed him, then lied and claimed he was a demon. I’ve seen this kind of thing plenty of times.”

Fourth Brother smiled slightly. “But after translating what follows, we all agree that at least seventy percent of the information here is true.”

“Why?” He Yu asked.

“Because three days after they dumped the body, that ‘corpse’ walked back on its own.”

“What?!” I almost thought I’d misheard. He Yu and I instinctively looked at each other, both a bit stunned by this turn of events. Even the lethargy on my face vanished in an instant.

No one knew who had let slip the news of them killing the monster, but the villagers slowly caught on, agreeing that the outsider had indeed seemed stiff and strange in every way. The village chief and the hunter quickly became “heroic” figures in the village.

But just three days after they had dumped the body in the deep forest and thought everything was fine, another outsider arrived in the village, asking for a place to stay.

He looked identical to the previous man, dressed the same way, with leaves still clinging to his hair as if he’d just come down from the mountains. However, he was in high spirits, his eyes bright and full of life. He gave the exact same story, saying he was a traveler from outside looking to stay in the village for a while, seemingly having forgotten everything from a few days prior.

The villagers were filled with shock when they saw him. The moment the village chief and the hunter set eyes on him, they nearly went into shock themselves. Realizing this evil entity possessed considerable power, they forced themselves to calm down and told people to let him stay for the time being.

The outsider was somewhat slow, and he seemed to have no memory whatsoever of previous events. At night, the hunter picked up his machete and snuck into the stone house again, killing the outsider a second time. Several men carried him even deeper into the mountains to dump the body. This time, they were more cautious and left him in an area where wild beasts frequently roamed, hoping the animals would quickly drag the body away and eat it.

But to their utter despair, after another three days, that outsider actually returned once again, perfectly intact!!

The hunter was miserable. This meant he would have to kill the man yet again. In less than nine days, he had killed the exact same person three times in a row.

This time, after dumping the body, they felt no sense of relief at all. Instead, they grew even more terrified, knowing that in another three days, the man might return again and politely ask if he could stay in the village.

Sure enough, three days later, that man was standing at the village entrance once again.

After going back and forth like this four times, the villagers completely broke down. This outsider was like a persistent ghost haunting the village relentlessly. So this time, uniting in shared outrage, they stopped hiding their intentions, tied him up on the spot, and planned to burn him.

They reasoned that whether it was a possessed evil entity or a walking corpse, such things feared fire most of all. Only fire could completely destroy a physical body. Without a body, the creature would have nothing left and could no longer harm the world.

Regardless of how the outsider argued or struggled, the village chief grimly ordered the strongmen to tie the man up like a twisted knot. They laid out dry straw outside the village and were about to set him on fire when thunder suddenly cracked across the sky. An immortal arrived riding a cloud, stopping the hunter before he could light the flame.

The immortal called himself Master Jiyun and claimed to hail from the celestial palace. He explained that the outsider hadn’t committed any heinous acts, but had simply been bitten by a poisonous snake while trekking through the mountains. Having passed by at the right moment, he gave the man a black elixir, intending to save his life, never expecting it to cause such a misunderstanding.

By the end of the translated record, this immortal named Master Jiyun took the outsider away. From then on, no such strange occurrences ever happened in the village again, and the outsider was never seen again.

Listening to this, I began to pick up on a few details. First, the development of the second half of the story felt completely out of place compared to the first half. The first part read like a rural tale of the strange and supernatural, while the second part felt like something straight out of Journey to the West^[1]. The narrative felt intensely disjointed.

Second, if I guessed right, “Master Jiyun” wasn’t actually a personal name. “Yunshi^[2]” had been an official title ever since the Yellow Emperor, so what was Master Jiyun’s true identity?

Fourth Brother paused before saying, “After discussing it, we suspect the Master Jiyun mentioned in these unofficial records was a native of the Gune Kingdom. Legend has it they offered prayers and sacrifices to the Lotus Bodhisattva, so this elixir was very likely bestowed upon them by the Lotus Bodhisattva.”

“An elixir? Can an elixir really stop someone from dying, no matter what happens?” He Yu asked.

Lu Ayao, who had been listening from the side, shook his head. “It isn’t that they can’t die, but that they can return from the dead. The elixir Master Jiyun obtained could bring the dead back to life. Besides, Master Jiyun wasn’t an immortal at all. He was a feng shui master.”

He spoke with such certainty that I was surprised. I thought to myself that he had been with us the entire time recently, hadn’t met Fourth Brother once, and had never heard the experts’ translations of the documents. How could he conclude so accurately that Master Jiyun was a feng shui master?

So I asked him, “What do you mean? You know this guy?”

Lu Ayao nodded. “The Lu Family Ancestral Hall has records of this man. He was a very complex person who held many identities—sometimes a feng shui master, sometimes a tomb raider. He was deeply versed in ingenious mechanical craft and also had a firm grasp of sacrificial rituals.”