Ji Yi got off the high-speed rail, looked around, and followed the direction signs forward.
Among the various electronic display boards, three characters stood out clearly: Nanling Station.
The last time Ji Yi came to Nanling, he was still riding a bumpy, stuffy long-distance bus. Nearly twenty years of memories were already difficult to piece together completely, but he could still clearly feel how much Nanling had changed. This unremarkable small city in the south had seen decent development in tourism in recent years, and after the high-speed rail station was built, transportation became much more convenient, attracting many out-of-town visitors.
Along both sides of the high-speed rail station corridor were advertising screens showing Ji Yi’s destination, Beishan. In front of one of the screens stood two delicate, slightly youthful girls, tilting their heads up as they stared at the billboard and chatting with hopeful excitement.
Ji Yi walked at an unhurried pace and happened to pass by them just in time to hear one of them say, “Is Jian Yi really filming here? I wonder if we’ll get to see him.”
The other girl clenched her fist in excitement. Although she didn’t speak, her emotions were obvious.
The name Jian Yi sounded somewhat familiar to Ji Yi, he seemed to be a popular idol who debuted through a talent show last year. Of course, Ji Yi didn’t recognize the name because he was interested in boy group survival shows. Rather, in the past two years Jian Yi had become quite a breakout star, his name and face frequently appeared in various places, so even without deliberately following him, Ji Yi had inevitably retained some impression of him.
Nanling, true to its name, is a mountainous region with a mild and comfortable climate. Beishan within its borders is somewhat well-known domestically. About ten years ago, the local government made the decision to heavily develop tourism, and it turned out to be the right move, helping lift up what had been an otherwise average city in many aspects. In addition to tourism development, Beishan occasionally attracts film crews who come for its natural scenery to shoot on location.
The two girls were still chatting excitedly. Judging from their appearance, they were probably high school students. Logically, on a weekday that wasn’t a holiday, they should still be in school, though that was none of Ji Yi’s concern, and he had no intention of getting involved.
Ji Yi withdrew his gaze and continued walking forward, letting out a faint sigh. The two girls who had likely skipped school reminded him that he had been unemployed for two months and was spending his weekdays idly as well. On top of that, thinking about the resumes he had sent out, some vanishing like stones dropped into the sea [1]with no reply at all jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2639872_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2639872_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, others rejected outright, left him feeling a bit irritated.
He had worked at his previous company for about half a year and had actually been doing fairly well. But at a company gathering, a drunk superior harassed a female colleague. Ji Yi casually stepped in to stop it, not expecting the superior to lose his balance and fall flat on his face on the spot. After that, Ji Yi lost his job.
It wasn’t a big deal, though. Ji Yi had no regrets about protecting his colleague, and he also didn’t think finding another job would be difficult. Who would have thought the job market would be this harsh? He had sent out so many resumes that his hand practically went numb. Just as Ji Yi was about to rot at home until mushrooms grew on him, and after his mother had, for the 800th time, regretted letting him learn martial arts for a few years, she handed him a set of keys and told him to go back to Nanling. Treat it as a trip to relax, and while he was at it, check whether the ancestral house was still standing.
The ancestral house his mother referred to had been left by his maternal grandfather. According to her, Ji Yi had visited it when he was young, but he had no memory of it at all. Fortunately, the location wasn’t hard to find, and his mother even gave him a photo of what the house looked like.
However, since it had been nearly twenty years without anyone returning to it, his mother probably wasn’t confident it had survived wind and rain intact. So she only told him to take a look if he could find it, if not, just forget it and go enjoy a trip around Beishan before heading home.
Ji Yi walked to the taxi pick-up area inside the high-speed rail station and joined the end of the queue.
His phone in his pocket vibrated. He reached in to take it out and accidentally touched a set of keys. He first looked at his phone, it was a WeChat message from his mother, repeating the usual nagging: telling him to restrain his temper outside so he wouldn’t endanger other people’s personal safety.
Ji Yi felt his mother was overreacting. Since when had he ever hit someone without reason?
He put his phone down and idly raised the keys he had been holding in his hand to take a closer look.
Calling it a “set of keys” wasn’t entirely accurate, because the wooden keychain only held two keys in total. After years of use, the originally sharp metal edges had become smoothly worn down, but there was nothing particularly unusual about them otherwise. What did puzzle Ji Yi more was the wooden keychain itself, he couldn’t tell what material it was made from.
The line moved forward a couple of steps, and new passengers joined behind him. Ji Yi tucked the keys back into his pocket.
The taxi drove smoothly along the route Ji Yi had given. The driver was a local and quite friendly, but after Ji Yi got in, he didn’t say much, so there were long stretches of silence between them.
When they were nearing the destination, Ji Yi saw the signage for the Beishan Scenic Area outside the window. He glanced down at the navigation on his phone and said casually, “It really is quite close to Beishan.” By normal reasoning, something this close should have been developed together with it, but that clearly wasn’t the case.
The mountain next to Beishan was noticeably shorter. Although it seemed to fall within the broader Beishan area, locals all knew that its development pace was completely different from Beishan’s.
That was something the driver had already mentioned earlier. Hearing this again, the driver’s enthusiasm didn’t fade as he replied, “Yeah, it’s actually just one mountain ridge away from the Beishan Scenic Area. If there were a tunnel or something, you could just go straight through. Right now you have to take a detour, but it’s only an extra seven or eight minutes. It’s really close.”
Ji Yi nodded.
A traffic light appeared ahead.
The driver gradually slowed down and stopped at the intersection just as the light changed.
He pointed at the road ahead. “See that? The road up ahead isn’t even properly paved. I told you earlier there’s basically no one going further in. You didn’t manage to book a hotel in the Beishan area, did you?”
Ji Yi looked ahead. The road was indeed quite different from the asphalt they were currently driving on. The surface wasn’t very even, it seemed like it hadn’t been properly maintained for years. Alone, it didn’t look like much, but the contrast made it obvious.
The driver continued, now with a more earnest tone. “Young man, you’re not from around here, right? There are some inns at the foot of the mountain further in, but honestly, it’s better not to go there. That mountain area… how should I put it?” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Even us drivers don’t like taking rides into that part of the mountain at night, you know? It’s kind of… strange.”
The driver squinted and blinked repeatedly, feeling that he had already made his meaning more or less clear, clear enough that Ji Yi should have understood what he was implying. When he drove, he liked chatting with passengers. Usually, when the conversation reached this point, most passengers would show curious expressions and press further, at which point he would launch into a series of highly eerie ghost stories. But Ji Yi only smiled and said, “Oh, is it because when you go into this area at night, you can’t pick up return passengers on the way back?”
The driver was momentarily choked into silence. At that moment, the traffic light turned green again, and the wheels started rolling forward. Realizing that Ji Yi didn’t seem interested in that topic, he merely muttered, “Not being able to pick up return passengers is nothing, it’s just that you might end up picking up some ‘other kinds’ of passengers.”
Ji Yi glanced out the window at the trees and hillside scenery receding behind them and pretended not to hear.
After driving another five minutes, Ji Yi felt the road beneath them drop another level in quality. It became narrower, and along both sides were rows of old two-story houses that looked like they had been built in the 1960s or 1970s. He even saw several shops still using old-style wooden slat doors.
The driver slowly reduced his speed. “We’re about there, right?”
Ji Yi checked his map. “Yes, thank you.”
He paid via his phone, grabbed his bag, and got out of the car. It was only a little past three in the afternoon, but because the sun was blocked by thick clouds, the sky already looked dim as if evening were approaching.
The taxi turned a corner and drove back the way it came. Standing by the roadside, Ji Yi looked back and saw an old bus stop sign.
As the taxi’s rear end completely disappeared from view, it felt as though it had taken away the last trace of modern life that had accidentally intruded into this place. Across the road, a few elderly men sat in a teahouse, now looking at Ji Yi from a distance.
Ji Yi’s gaze swept over them briefly before he carefully observed the street he was standing on. He did, in fact, have some impression of this place, or rather, the bus stop he had just seen triggered something in his memory. It connected to the stuffy, stifling long-distance buses from his past, this was a place he had been to before.
In his memory, this small town wasn’t far from his maternal grandfather’s home, which gave him a bit more confidence in finding his destination. Ji Yi walked over to the group of old men drinking tea and, while asking for directions, mentioned the village name his mother had given him. As expected, they all knew it, and quickly used gestures and speech to explain how to get there.
The old men showed no curiosity at all about why a young man like Ji Yi had come here. Instead, they asked with an unhurried, knowing air, “Are you doing some kind of livestreaming?”
As they spoke, they kept looking him up and down, as if trying to find where he might be hiding a camera or something.
Ji Yi shook his head. “No.”
He almost added that these old men were surprisingly up-to-date, even knowing about livestreaming.
“Not livestreaming?” The old men now looked puzzled. “Then what are you going there for? Redleaf Village has been abandoned for over ten years.”
“One time, a livestreamer went into those mountains and came back terrified, no one knows what he ran into,” one of them said solemnly.
Since Ji Yi had been polite in asking directions, they had a good impression of him. If he was just another person chasing novelty or thrills, they felt they should warn him.
Unexpectedly, Ji Yi smiled and said, “My grandfather’s old house is there. I’m just going to take a look.”
“Oh.” The old men nodded. “So it’s the ancestral house up there? That’s fine then, you can go.”
Ji Yi had originally planned to leave directly, but an elderly man who had been sitting in the corner and hadn’t spoken the entire time suddenly stood up and said, “You’re going up there? I’m heading home anyway. Come on, I’ll give you a ride on my tricycle.”
Ji Yi looked at him and was about to refuse.
But the old man cut him off first, persuading him, “Look at the sky, it’s about to rain. You don’t want to get caught in it.”
Ji Yi glanced at the overcast sky outside, which looked like it could start raining at any moment. A tricycle would indeed be faster than walking on foot, so he nodded and followed the old man toward the roadside.
The old man’s tricycle was parked in a rather hidden spot. He led Ji Yi around a bend to a corner of the street, then pulled out an old green tricycle from beside it and told Ji Yi to sit in the back.
Ji Yi roughly estimated whether that seemingly flimsy tricycle could actually support the weight of a young man like himself. While he hesitated, the old man simply shoved him, a bit roughly. “Get on.”
Ji Yi shifted his body and sat down in response.
The tricycle swayed slightly under his movement, but it was still sturdy enough, not at all falling apart as he had imagined.
Seeing that Ji Yi was quiet and obedient, and had been polite earlier, the old man seemed to take him for someone easy to handle and happily climbed onto the seat as well. “Let’s go, I’ll take you home.”
Although the old man sounded relaxed, pedaling the tricycle was clearly a struggle for him. He had to push down several times before the wheels began to roll smoothly, and he huffed as he worked hard to move forward.
After riding for a while, Ji Yi mentally checked the direction they had been given earlier. Just as he noticed the old man turning onto another road, and even picking up speed, he spoke up.
“Sir, did you take the wrong way?” Ji Yi asked.
“How could I? This is the road home.”
Ji Yi didn’t argue further. His gaze fell instead on the old man’s trouser hem as he pedaled. The deep blue fabric had several damaged areas, mostly worn at the edges. Looking closely, one could even see fading, or places where the dye had likely been uneven from the start.
Ji Yi reached out and lightly pinched the hem. With almost no force, he tore off a small piece of fabric. But the moment it left his fingers, it turned into ash.
The old man seemed to sense the movement and suddenly turned his head. “What are you doing?”
Perhaps because the sky was so overcast, the old man’s face looked faintly grayish-green. Combined with his unfriendly expression, it gave him an even more menacing appearance.
Ji Yi calmly blew the ash off his fingers and said evenly, “Sir, if this isn’t the right direction, I’ll just get off here.”
By now, they were already about a mile away from the town. The hills on both sides of the road were drawing closer, and signs of human habitation were becoming scarce. On the road they had turned onto, there wasn’t a single person in sight. Instead, further ahead, a few lonely graves could be seen scattered along the hillside.
The old man looked at Ji Yi with undisguised malice. Following Ji Yi’s expression, he also broke into a grin, like a predator seeing an undefended herbivore, confident and certain of victory. “I’m taking you back to my home. What does it matter whether it’s on your way or not?”
His tone even carried a kind of rogue-like arrogance. At the same time, his face became even more ashen and ugly. To frighten him, he deliberately let blood seep from his eye sockets, he was clearly no longer human. Any normal person would have realized by now that something was wrong with this old man. Most would have already been frightened out of their wits.
When a person is startled, their courage weakens, and once their courage weakens, they become more easily influenced by external forces.
The old man stared closely at Ji Yi, extremely pleased with himself. When he had just asked whether Ji Yi was willing to go home with him, Ji Yi had nodded, that was Ji Yi’s promise to him.
Once a promise was formed, it was like an agreement. Either Ji Yi would truly follow him back, or he would have to negotiate some way to break it. And if there was negotiation, there would inevitably be some benefit to be handed over. In short, the old man was already certain he would profit from Ji Yi.
As expected, Ji Yi seemed frightened. He frowned as if thinking for a moment, then said something that sounded like flattery to the old man: “That works too. It just looks like you’re getting tired from pedaling. Want me to take over and ride while you give directions?”
That was even better. The old ghost happily switched places with Ji Yi. Not only did he manage to trick a living person back, he no longer had to struggle pedaling the tricycle.
But Ji Yi’s reaction still made him confirm, “You know I’m a ghost, right?”
Ji Yi, with his back to him, gave a simple “mm,” continuing to ride smoothly and quickly.
The old ghost couldn’t help but feel a bit envious, youth really was different.
He couldn’t recognize what brand of clothes Ji Yi was wearing, but he could tell the fabric was good and the tailoring decent. In his mind, he was already calculating how he could squeeze some fine offerings out of this living person.
By this point, he had completely dropped the friendly act from when he first tricked Ji Yi into the tricycle. He began giving directions, left, right, turn, while the tricycle carried them deeper into the mountains and stopped in front of a cluster of graves. There were three to five scattered burial mounds, and at a glance it was clear they had been there for a very long time.
The graves varied in size, and the tombstones were made of different materials. The only thing they shared was that no one had tended them for years, the surrounding area was overgrown with weeds and looked thoroughly desolate.
“Which one is your grave?” Ji Yi asked the old ghost.
The old ghost didn’t quite understand, but still pointed at one of them. Then he began making demands. “I like pork head meat. From now on, every Qingming Festival you’ll come and offer me two portions. Also, bring seasonal fruits of all kinds. Burn plenty of paper money too. This time, just go buy some pork, lamb, and beef and deliver it to my house before noon tomorrow. Otherwise, I’ll keep following you.”
Ji Yi placed his hand on the tombstone, which was already so weathered that the inscription was barely legible. He could faintly make out that the old ghost had been dead for nearly forty years.
Seeing that Ji Yi didn’t respond immediately, the old ghost reached out to push him. But the moment he extended his hand, Ji Yi, who seemed completely unaware, grabbed it instead, yanked hard, and sent him stumbling to the ground.
“Ow! My old bones!” the old ghost cried out in pain, lying on the ground. Even his ashen face looked a bit more “human” because of the pained expression.
Perhaps because he was now lying on his side, or for some other reason he couldn’t figure out, when he looked at Ji Yi again, he found that Ji Yi’s expression had turned somewhat cold. It didn’t look very different from before, yet for some reason it was strangely frightening, even to a ghost.
Ji Yi patted the tombstone. He had long since gotten used to putting on the demeanor of respecting elders and caring for the young, but at this moment he couldn’t be bothered to pretend. He was still smiling, but it was clearly a cold smile.
His tapping of the gravestone took on a deeper meaning as he spoke. “Your place has weathered pretty badly, this whole front has really fallen apart.” Indeed, the tombstone material had been eroded by years of rain and wind. It was probably made of cheap stone to begin with.
Ji Yi clearly remembered that when he first saw a spirit of the dead, he had been so scared that he cried loudly. But he was very young then and couldn’t properly describe what he had seen to his mother. His mother simply assumed he was physically weak and overly sensitive, so she sent him to study martial arts with an old master in the same residential community for a few years.
Ji Yi trained seriously, and his physical condition gradually improved. During those years after school, what he learned most firmly, besides how to identify an opponent’s weaknesses and maximize his own advantages, was something his master often said: “Even evil ghosts are afraid of evil people.”
Even evil ghosts are afraid of evil people. Ji Yi had verified that truth for over ten years now. It was indeed the case. As for how to be more vicious than a ghost, he knew that by heart too.
The old ghost hadn’t even processed what Ji Yi meant when Ji Yi had already squatted down in front of him, staring straight at him. He increased the force of his pat on the tombstone and said in a rather nasty tone, “Your house is gone.”
No matter how weathered it was, a gravestone was still stone, it retained some hardness. Yet under Ji Yi’s seemingly casual tap, a corner actually crumbled off with a rustling sound.
The old ghost stared wide-eyed at this heartbreaking scene and suddenly began to understand why Ji Yi had so foolishly followed him back and even taken over pedaling the tricycle.
It turned out the fool wasn’t Ji Yi.
The fool was him.
References[+]