Chapter 29: Past Event (2)

“Who… who’s there?” I gripped the back of Wen Ye’s shirt tightly, fearfully pressing my forehead against his bicep and squeezing my eyes shut.

“It’s a ghost messenger. The protective array keeps them out. I just opened a crack in it. The wandering soul has already been taken away,” he explained patiently.

I followed Wen Ye through the Welcome Stele and into the front courtyard. He walked to the gate, nodded at something outside, and said, “Thank you for your trouble,” before turning to look at me.

“Just now, your great-grandmother was attacked. Your family’s cat spirit, to protect her, took her life-soul to the back mountain. Now, the ghost messengers have delivered it to the gate… Le Xiaomai, take your great-grandmother’s clothes, go to the gate, and call her soul back inside,” Wen Ye urged, giving me a push.

How did a cat spirit pop up all of a sudden? Just how many things are there in this house that I can’t see!

“How do I call? Like how adults call children home for dinner?” I grabbed a jacket of my great-grandmother’s from the courtyard and asked.

Wen Ye nodded. “Call out your great-grandmother’s name as you walk.”

It was my first time calling a soul back; I felt awkward and scared.

I opened the gate, cleared my throat, and spoke in a voice as faint as a mosquito’s buzz: “Cai Meifang, come home.”

“Did you not eat? Where’s your fighting spirit?” Wen Ye glared at me.

I raised my voice: “Cai Meifang, come home!”

I took a step and called out again.

Soul-calling is a folk custom practiced in various parts of China, with slight variations in methods, but all stem from the earliest forms of shamanism.

Ever since Wen Ye told me that my birth mother was a witch, I’d looked up some classical texts and materials. The earliest witchcraft originated from the most primitive belief in nature: heaven and earth, the sun and moon, day and night. People back then believed that everything had a spirit and everything could be worshipped.

The great shamans of that time were messengers who communicated between humans and gods, conveying heavenly will and the people’s wishes. They had the authority to admonish rulers and were the spiritual leaders of their tribes.

They were knowledgeable in astronomy, calendars, medicine, divination, history, song, dance, and culture. Only those with noble character, intelligence, integrity, and profound wisdom were qualified to be called ‘shamans’.

Women were called wu, and men xi.

It could be said that shamans were the unification of man and god.

It was only later, with the disasters of witchcraft, that wu were pulled down from the halls of power and became hidden in the marketplace. Some merged with evil arts and became ‘unorthodox’ practitioners in the eyes of the people.

Many religions actually have traces of shamanism, or have absorbed some of its techniques. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that shamanism is the origin of all religions.

And the earliest ten shamans of Mount Ling, legend says, were transformed from the intestines of Nuwa, and were messengers of the gods. According to Zhao Yanzu, their magical powers were immeasurable. It’s a pity that they eventually went into seclusion, and no one knows where they are.

I wonder if the Great Wilderness was created by these ten, or by their descendants.

And what kind of witch was my mother?

Holding my great-grandmother’s clothes, I called her name as I walked to the main hall’s bedroom.

The jiaolong spirit, originally lying on the bed, suddenly raised its head, its long, narrow pupils watching me—perhaps also watching my great-grandmother’s life-soul behind me—as I approached the bed.

Wen Ye hooked his fingers, made a hand seal, and called out, “Cai Meifang.” My great-grandmother, whose chest was barely rising and falling, suddenly took a deep breath and coughed. Then she slowly opened her eyes.

I was surprised and delighted, and leaned over the bed, calling to her softly.

“Xiaomai, why are you back?” she asked weakly, her face pale.

My nose stung, and I complained worriedly, “Good thing I came back! Otherwise, we’d really have to hold a funeral for you! If I hadn’t come back, you could have rotted in this house and no one would have known!”

She calmed her breathing, and the light slowly returned to her eyes: “You speak like a dog, nothing good comes out of your mouth. With something protecting me, this old woman won’t die so easily.”

“Yes, yes, yes, look at what you’re raising!” I pointed at the jiaolong spirit lying by the bed.

“And all those cat and dog spirits that I can’t see! How much have you been hiding from me!”

Great-grandmother wanted to sit up, and I helped her: “I didn’t hide it from you. They are all my family, I depend on them for life, they’ve been with me longer than you, running around the yard and the back mountain every day, it’s just that you can’t see them. I didn’t tell you, one, because I was afraid of scaring you, and two… hey, who are you?”

She leaned against the headboard, looked at Wen Ye leaning against the closet at the end of the bed, and suddenly smiled mysteriously: “Little fox demon, you’ve actually cultivated a human form. That’s not easy…”

Huh? How could she tell that Wen Ye was a little fox?

Wen Ye crossed his arms and snorted coldly: “Old witch, you’re not simple either. Finding a place like this to live in seclusion, and with a thousand-year-old jiaolong spirit, with yin-energy-heavy pagoda trees planted in front of the yard, I’m afraid there’s something fishy in the back mountain as well. The entire yard has a protective array, no wonder you could hide Le Xiaomai.”

“Hehehe… it seems you know everything.”

Great-grandmother pointed to the opium pipe on the windowsill, asking me to hand it over. I angrily slapped her hand away: “You’re like this, and you still want to smoke!”

“Two what? Speak quickly, don’t change the subject! What else is there in this house that I don’t know! What’s up with the man who came to the door! Who exactly is my mother! Where is she!”

There wasn’t a ripple on Great-grandmother’s face, she wasn’t surprised that I already knew about my birth mother.

“You brat, what’s the rush? Let this old woman have a puff of smoke and tell you slowly,” she pretended to glare at me.

Before I could grab it, the jiaolong spirit, which had been lying on the bed, raised its head, crawled to the windowsill, and rolled the pipe over.

“Ni Chang is still worried about this old woman,” Great-grandmother put the pipe in her mouth and stroked the jiaolong spirit’s head.

I watched the jiaolong spirit close its eyes strangely, seeming to enjoy Great-grandmother’s touch, and swallowed hard: “It’s called Ni Chang?”

“Does it eat people, do you know that?” I reminded her, terrified, looking at the human shape in Ni Chang’s stomach.

“How could these ungrateful youngsters be worthy of becoming Ni Chang’s food? It just uses its stomach acid to dissolve them and then throws them into the back mountain to deal with,” Great-grandmother said calmly.

“You you you! You’re killing people!”

Great-grandmother knocked my forehead with her pipe, signaling me to light the smoke: “You brat, isn’t it protecting you! Just a puppet, not worth regretting, and daring to try to take Ni Chang away, hmph, overestimating themselves.”

Ni Chang seemed to know I was afraid and slowly crawled off the bed, dragging a human shape in its stomach as it left the room.

I looked out the window. It crawled to the side of the dry well in the yard and then disappeared.

“Who sent the man that Ni Chang ate?” I turned my head and asked seriously.

Great-grandmother tremblingly reached for the old pouch hanging on the pipe, which contained tobacco and matches.

Thinking that Wen Ye couldn’t stand the smell, I grabbed her hand and frowned: “Tell me first, or I won’t let you smoke.”

“Are you rebelling! Don’t you know that smoke is my old woman’s life?” She used her other wrinkled hand, covered with age spots, to hold my wrist, like shackles.

Before I could cry out in pain, her hand suddenly released, and she glanced at Wen Ye behind me, chuckling, “From when you were sixteen years old, I knew that this day would come sooner or later, hiding it, but I still couldn’t avoid it… with him protecting you, it’s safer than my house’s barrier.”

My face burned, and I whispered in rebuttal, “We are just in a hiring and cooperation relationship, it’s not that he’s protecting me…”

Wen Ye urged impatiently, “Old woman, speak quickly, stop being so indirect! How could an old witch with decades of life have a thousand-year-old jiaolong spirit? Could it be that Le Xiaomai’s mother deliberately left it behind?”

Great-grandmother put down her pipe, narrowed her eyes, and pondered for a moment before slowly telling the story of this place…