With a guest arriving the next day, Ji Yi was still riding high on the novelty and excitement, and he didn’t forget to share the news with his family. His parents were pleased too, telling him to take it slow, not to rush, and to build things up steadily.
It was in moments like this that Ji Yi really tasted the difference between a capitalist boss and his own family.
Lin Zhao couldn’t care less whether he worked 996 or 007 [1]996 and 007 are Chinese internet slang for grueling work schedules: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, or midnight to midnight, seven days a week jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931971_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931971_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. The moment Lin Zhao opened his mouth it was all about growing bigger and stronger, you couldn’t so much as get in a stroke [2]the cat metaphor: no gentle petting jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931971_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931971_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); before he was swiping at you with a claw, and he made it sound like he was doing Ji Yi a favor.
No matter how Ji Yi ran the numbers, he always came out on the losing end.
At least a 996 grind paid overtime wages. As far as he could tell, Lin Zhao hadn’t given him anything at all.
The last time the subject came up, Lin Zhao had indeed dangled options like “eternal youth and immortality,” but the more Ji Yi mulled it over, the more it terrified him. Lin Zhao wanted to use that to squeeze him into serving every last resident of the planet, all so Lin Zhao could find the person he was looking for.
Running a guesthouse forever, young and undying, never mind whether he’d end up hauled off to a research lab, just consider whether he’d be worked to death.
Just thinking about it made Ji Yi’s skin crawl. Lying in bed, he couldn’t help shaking his head, trying to knock the horrifying thought out of his skull.
Ji Yi decided that the next time he saw Lin Zhao, he’d have to demand something more concrete and a little smaller in scale. Set a modest goal first, like, say, getting Lin Zhao to hand over some cash.
While Ji Yi’s mind was clicking away like an abacus, he suddenly heard someone calling him from outside the window.
Out of the darkness the voice came drifting, cold and eerie. “Boss Ji…”
On a pitch-black night like this, a call like that was not something to answer casually. But by now Ji Yi was practically desensitized to ghosts and monsters and all the rest.
Besides, he’d already recognized the voice, it was Ying Xiaotao, the one who’d installed his Ghostnet before.
Ji Yi got out of bed and opened the window. Sure enough, standing below was a pale-faced ghost, looking bitterly cold under the dim, cheerless moonlight.
But Ji Yi’s gaze shifted to behind Ying Xiaotao, because he wasn’t standing there alone, there were several other ghosts behind him. Ji Yi only had to glance at those few to feel his eyes go uncomfortable, as if they’d been iced over.
Although those ghosts weren’t dressed in the traditional garb of netherworld runners, Ji Yi still recognized their identities at once, and a wariness rose in his heart.
Earlier Ying Xiaotao had said he’d have the local netherworld runners look out for Ji Yi, and Ji Yi hadn’t been keen on the idea. Netherworld runners weren’t the kind of characters you could fob off easily, the less he got tangled up with them, the better.
Ji Yi looked away and addressed only Ying Xiaotao. “Is there something you need?”
The runners were studying Ji Yi closely, and seeing that he showed no fear at the sight of them, they’d already taken his measure.
They’d heard from Ying Xiaotao that a living man had moved in at the foot of the mountain, and one who was fairly free with his money at that. Since they happened to be over on official business, they figured they’d help themselves to a little grease on the side.
Ying Xiaotao was inwardly groaning, too. He certainly hadn’t meant to bring them here to fleece Ji Yi. It was just that after he’d taken a few ingots from Ji Yi last time and had a bit more to spend, he’d gone and greased the local runners’ palms so they’d make his life around here a little easier.
While a bunch of ghosts were drinking and chatting together, one of the runners asked where such fine-quality ingots had come from, and in his drunken haze, tongue thick, Ying Xiaotao let Ji Yi’s name slip.
Hearing that Ji Yi was living in Hongye Village, could see ghosts, and had a stash of good ingots, the runners guessed he might be a living man who earned his keep off the netherworld, a folk medium or Taoist priest, say. That type usually liked to stay on good terms with runners, the better to carry out their work.
So the runners had Ying Xiaotao lead them over to make Ji Yi’s acquaintance. By the time they’d walked all the way there, the night wind had mostly sobered Ying Xiaotao up, and he was quietly starting to regret it.
Seeing Ji Yi ask what he wanted, he stammered, “It’s, uh, a few of the local honorable runners who’d like to get acquainted with you.”
Finding his mumbling grating, a runner stepped past Ying Xiaotao and said to Ji Yi, “We didn’t come specially, it’s on account of a meeting we’re here for.”
“Oh. Thank you for your trouble, gentlemen.” Ji Yi nodded along, showing no inclination to ask anything further.
Seeing that he wasn’t taking the hint, the runner who’d spoken had to press on. “Do you know what meeting we’re here for?”
Ji Yi shook his head. “No idea.”
He didn’t want to know, either.
The runner shot Ying Xiaotao a sidelong look, and Ying Xiaotao immediately rattled it off like a well-worn lesson: “The Development Congress on the Problems of the Beishan Region, namely its backwardness, the difficulty of managing its ghosts, the idleness caused by low employment, and its relatively poor public order.”
Ji Yi felt a wave of exasperation at the endless string of a meeting name. With that many themes, could they possibly hammer out anything useful?
The runner picked up where Ying Xiaotao left off. “The Public Order Management Congress for Backward Regions, you know it’s a backward region, yes? Public order here is very bad. Even we runners have to travel in pairs around these parts. A living man like you, staying here with no one to lean on, will surely have a hard time of it.”
There was concern in his tone, but Ji Yi could tell with his toes that this concern had an ulterior motive.
Sure enough, another runner promptly stepped forward to sing the same tune. “We only heard from Xiaotao that you’re close with him, if it were just any old stray we wouldn’t bother. But out of respect for that connection, all we ask is this many.” The runner held up both hands, all five fingers on each, and raised them to Ji Yi. “Just this many, each of us gets a share, and we’ll keep you safe for a whole year. Of course, if money’s tight, monthly payments are fine too.”
Ji Yi knew right then that they’d come to extort him, and naturally he had no desire to pay.
If he opened the door to handing over money, from then on he’d be folding paper money until his hands cramped. And if he agreed this easily, ghosts like these runners were very likely to keep pushing for more. Once their greed outran his supply, wouldn’t he just become an ingot-folding machine?
Wow. Once he thought it through from that angle, Ji Yi flat-out wanted to go back to the city and be a corporate drone. Otherwise he’d be getting squeezed by Lin Zhao while running the guesthouse AND working for the netherworld runners on the side, was he even supposed to live?
But wanting to refuse was one thing, how to refuse was another, and it stumped him. After all, runners weren’t as easy to handle as ordinary ghosts, and there were several of them here now. If it came to an actual fight, he was no three-headed, six-armed warrior, odds were he’d lose and come out worse for it.
While Ji Yi hesitated, the runners pressed him. “Did you hear what we said? This many ingots shouldn’t be any trouble for you, should it?”
“That’s right, don’t tell me you don’t want to pay? If you don’t, who else in these parts can keep you safe?”
Their patience had clearly run dry, they could no longer keep up the friendly act, and had shifted into full protection-racket mode.
Ji Yi was the sort who yielded to gentleness but never to force, and now he bristled. He was reining himself in, meaning to put together a few tactful words of refusal, when he suddenly heard someone speak from behind the runners.
“I’m in these parts too. How many ingots do I owe you each month?” The voice wasn’t loud, but it carried clearly into the ears of everyone present, human and ghost alike, a light, clear male voice like moonlight, like a mountain stream.
Ji Yi froze, then recognized it as Lin Zhao. His fist immediately unclenched, and he no longer felt so wary of the runners.
However you sliced it, this was the guesthouse being shaken down, so it was perfectly normal for Lin Zhao to step in. Ji Yi’s plan had actually been to hand over a little bit of ingots first, then go to Lin Zhao later to talk it over and tactfully turn them down.
The runners, who’d been facing Ji Yi with murderous, terrifying expressions, heard the question from behind them and were about to answer, but when they turned, they found Lin Zhao standing there.
Combined with what Lin Zhao had just said, it set the several runners trembling in an instant.
Although Lin Zhao was a demon, of a different system than theirs, his years spent in these parts were beyond anything they could match. What was more, the runners knew well enough that the ownership of the Dai Mountain area seemed to still be in question, if it ever came to a real reckoning, it wouldn’t be their level’s business to manage.
Lin Zhao’s temper was unpredictable, and there were plenty of rumors of him killing humans, ghosts, and demons alike. The runners had come to extort a living man and never expected to run into Lin Zhao. The deathly aura on them counted for nothing before him, instead, they were nearly scared out of their wits.
Now they kept crying “We wouldn’t dare,” terrified that Lin Zhao would raise a hand and strike them dead on the spot.
“We had no idea Your Excellency was here. We meant no offense, please don’t hold it against us, my lord. We’ll take our leave at once.”
Having said their piece, the runners didn’t dare linger, they turned and fled at a run.
Lin Zhao glanced at Ji Yi, who was still poking his head out the window, and seemed disinclined to bother with him.
“Hey, um—” Ji Yi called out to stop him.
But having opened his mouth, he didn’t know what he’d wanted to say. Seeing that Lin Zhao had already stopped walking, he blurted out, “Um, a guest is coming tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know.”
Only then did Lin Zhao turn to face Ji Yi again. Ji Yi always felt there was something complicated in the way Lin Zhao looked at him, something he couldn’t quite name.
Thinking that they’d probably have to keep dealing with each other going forward, and that Lin Zhao had just bailed him out, he said, “Um, about hugging you the other day, sorry about that.” Ji Yi glanced at the scab on his hand. “But you did claw me, so doesn’t that make us even? Surely it’s not worth minding this much?”
Lin Zhao clearly minded very much. “Do not bring that up again. Bring it up again and I’ll kill you.”
Ji Yi’s face filled with shock. “Whoa, is that really necessary?”
But Lin Zhao ignored him and walked straight off.
What a cheapskate.
Ji Yi pulled his head back in, gave a little “tch,” and closed the window.
Lin Zhao really was a heartless member of the oppressor class. Not a good kitty at all.
Back in the mountains, Lin Zhao’s mood was quite complicated. He shifted into his true form and curled up on a huge boulder, tilting his head back to gaze at the starlight and the moon.
These past few days, the sensation of being lifted up in Ji Yi’s arms kept swirling around in his mind, reminding him of what it had felt like to be held that way by someone else, long ago.
Probably it was just that he’d gone so long without being held that his mind had made the association. Otherwise, how could an ordinary person like Ji Yi stir up his memories?
If Ji Yi hadn’t had some use to him, Lin Zhao would never have let him linger here. He detested humans.
A few plump little birds swept across the sky, seemingly fighting over something. In a careless moment, the thing they were tussling over got a hole poked in it, and several seasoning-dusted potato chips came tumbling down out of the air.
One of them drifted down onto the black cat’s back. The black cat lifted its head to look at them, just one glance, and the birds, so lively in the air a moment ago, instantly froze, then scattered in a mad rush.
Then another bird flew over, and at the sight of Lin Zhao’s cold cat eyes, it hurried down in fear and trembling to confess its crime, it was the shrike.
Their shrike clan bore the duty of patrolling Dai Mountain, which gave them relative freedom, though they still weren’t supposed to leave the mountain at will.
The potato chips the shrike had brought back from Ji Yi’s place earlier had been discovered by some of the youngsters at home, who’d stolen them and gotten into a fight over them, and now that they’d caused trouble, it fell to the shrike to clean up the mess.
The black cat shook the chip off its back and, with distaste, reduced it to ash. “Where did it come from?”
The shrike knew that what Lin Zhao hated most was anything human-related turning up in Dai Mountain. “It’s, it’s from Boss Ji’s place.”
Just as it was about to swear off ever touching such things again, Lin Zhao silently walked away, as if he didn’t want to keep dwelling on anything to do with Ji Yi, or as if he didn’t care that the shrike had brought human food into Dai Mountain.
The shrike stood frozen in place, and so did the owners of the many eyes, near and far, that had been watching this scene throughout the forest.
Lin Zhao hadn’t said it wasn’t allowed, which amounted to tacit permission. Indeed, lately their lord seemed to leave the mountain often, going to that old house where someone now lived. The animal spirits of the mountain had gone far too long without contact with humans, and this tacit consent set the shrike’s eyes gleaming, stirring up a wave of murmurs through the forest.
“【Underground Burrow】 Job hunting is so hard, and my paper money’s almost gone. I’m going to shut myself in and give up.”
Ji Yi was browsing a post on Ghostnet, yawning as he came out of his room, when he saw Old Li and Old Sun standing by the courtyard well, heads tilted up watching the rain drizzling down.
So he took a moment to ask, “What are you two looking at?”
Ji Yi had grown completely used to always having a ghost or two around the house. But actually, apart from Liu Dalei, who did the cooking and never left, the ghosts like Old Li and Old Sun who did odd jobs helping Chen Weiguo mostly went back to their own graves to sleep the day away when they had nothing to do.
It was a bit unusual for them to still be around at this hour. The main thing was, they all knew Ji Yi had installed Ghostnet here, and although Ji Yi said it had no effect on them, the old ghosts were still wary of it.
Seeing them still here as they were today, Ji Yi just assumed it was because, even though it was daytime, the weather was overcast and rainy with no sun to be seen, so they weren’t in any hurry.
His attention was mostly still on Ghostnet. Lately one of his big pastimes had become browsing Ghostnet, using it to learn more about life in the ghost world. For instance, he’d found that one forum board even posted netherworld documents and directives, the meeting the runners had mentioned wasn’t just an excuse.
There really was such a meeting, aimed at solving Beishan’s public order problems. Netherworld civil servants were run off their feet too.
Although the realm where ghosts lived overlapped in large part with humans’, in fact, most of the time, the vast majority of ghosts’ life paths never crossed with ordinary people’s.
Their troubles and worries, too, overlapped with humans’ yet weren’t entirely the same.
After handing his design draft over to Ji Yi, Jian Yi had been busy shuttling between two sets, filming and studying, running around like a headless fly, with no time to talk with Ji Yi about anything. But Ji Yi noticed on Ghostnet that the ghost director’s complaints about him hadn’t been updated, which suggested Jian Yi had made at least a bit of progress.
Old Li and Old Sun had been huddled together muttering to each other. When they heard Ji Yi’s question, Old Li first shook his head and said it was nothing, but Old Sun bluntly said, “How is it nothing? The rain came down hard yesterday and washed a hole open in his grave mound. Now it’s like a leaky roof over a broken house, the coffin lid can barely stay covered anymore. Very bad.”
Ji Yi had been scrolling on his phone, but at that he grew a bit more serious. “It’s that bad?”
“You bet. We’re just afraid the rain won’t let up anytime soon, and then it’ll wash his bones right out, that’d be even harder to deal with.”
Old Li hung his head. “It was a small hole a few years back already, a mouse burrowed out through it. Old grave mounds always have a little something wrong with them.”
“I see.” Ji Yi set down his phone. “All right. I’ll go take a look for you in a bit, let me go pick up the guest first.”
At that Old Li was first grateful, then delighted. “There’s a guest coming today?”
The old ghosts called him “Boss Ji” at every turn, did a fair bit of work each day, and were quite invested in how the guesthouse was doing.
Ji Yi felt refreshed and full of drive. “That’s right. I’ll be heading out shortly.”
It was just this weather. Ji Yi looked up at the sky, with no idea when the rain would let up.
Fortunately, right as Ji Yi was about to head out, the rain stopped. Apart from the mountain road being a little muddy, it didn’t much affect his trip.
Ji Yi rode his little electric scooter all the way to the spot he’d agreed on with the guest whose username was “Locally Famous Handsome Guy.” The guest hadn’t arrived yet. Ji Yi got off and waited, and before long a taxi pulled up. Through the window Ji Yi caught sight of the driver, and thought he looked somewhat familiar.
The car left quickly, though, and Ji Yi didn’t dwell on it. He just checked details with the guest, confirmed he had the right person, then helped the guest set his luggage on the front of the scooter, straddled the seat, and waved for the guest to hop on too.
The Locally Famous Handsome Guy’s real name was Shuai Zhiming, a young fellow just past twenty who looked friendly enough.
The moment he was on the scooter, Shuai Zhiming asked Ji Yi curiously, “Boss, I heard these mountains of yours are pretty spooky. Is that true?”
Ji Yi was very much on guard about this sort of thing. He didn’t know what strange ghost stories the guest had heard, surely the guest hadn’t caught wind that something was off about Dai Mountain?
“Not at all. Things here are perfectly normal.” Ji Yi lied with a completely straight face.
Of course he had to deny it, otherwise, if the guest minded that kind of thing and, say, wanted to cancel his booking, what then?
Ji Yi even asked, “Who told you that? Are you very concerned about this sort of thing?”
Shuai Zhiming wasn’t stubborn about it. He just said, “Oh, the taxi driver told me on the way in just now. He made it sound pretty convincing, said something about how, when you drive back empty from here at night, you tend to pick up a ‘good friend.'”
The more Ji Yi listened to this guest, the more familiar it sounded. Connecting it to the driver he’d found familiar just now, a flash went off in his head and he caught on.
Wow, wasn’t that driver the very one who’d dropped him off here?
So the guy told every passenger the same thing.
Ji Yi thought to himself that it would be stranger if a backward region, one the netherworld runners even had to hold a meeting about, on promoting its development and managing its ghosts, weren’t spooky. But out loud he gave a triple denial: “No way, nothing to it, don’t read into it.”
Shuai Zhiming wasn’t especially interested in ghosts and gods to begin with, so seeing Ji Yi deny it, he didn’t press further.
Sitting in the back, though, he looked at the storm clouds that hadn’t yet dispersed and sighed. “This weather, honestly. I came out here just to see the scenery at Beishan, but if it’s raining it’s probably not great for hiking.”
That was true. Although Beishan had both its precipitous, dramatic scenery and its more level, gentle spots, on the whole you had to climb, and a rainy day would definitely affect the safety of the climb, as well as the view of some of the sights.
Ji Yi rode the little scooter all the way back to Hongye Village. The guesthouse sign was already hung at the door of the old house. Ji Yi got off and took down Shuai Zhiming’s luggage, then turned to him and said, “Welcome, welcome. You’re actually our guesthouse’s very first guest.”
Shuai Zhiming was taking photos with his phone. Snapping away, he asked, “Boss, is that mountain behind here Beishan? It looks really close from this angle.”
Ji Yi hurriedly explained, “No, no, that’s not Beishan.”
“Can you go in there?” Shuai Zhiming had taken a couple of shots, and feeling that this mountain behind them seemed to rival Beishan in both elevation and scenery, he was itching to explore.
Afraid he’d get the urge to go into the mountain, Ji Yi immediately headed him off. “You can’t. This is different from Beishan. The ecosystem here is, uh, pretty pristine, so going in is fairly dangerous. Even we locals don’t go in.”
A look of regret crossed Shuai Zhiming’s face. “I see. Never mind, then.” Then a thought struck him. “There’s no danger of wild animals coming down the mountain to forage, is there? I’ve seen videos where, in places with good environments, wild animals come right into people’s homes.”
“Don’t you worry about that.” Ji Yi gave him his word. “Nothing like that happens here. The mountain is rich in resources, the animals won’t come out for no reason.”
The animals in this mountain were under Lin Zhao’s watch, and no small number of them had become spirits, so Ji Yi could say this with real confidence.
Whether relieved or slightly disappointed, Shuai Zhiming turned back to look at the guesthouse sign.
The two characters “Dai Mountain” struck him as quite poetic, and he couldn’t help snapping a couple more photos of it.
Stepping over the threshold of the main door, Shuai Zhiming’s eyes took in the full sight of the ground floor.
The bright light spilling in through the courtyard well gave the whole floor plenty of illumination. The beams, pillars, doors, windows, tables, chairs, and benches all seemed steeped in the scent of passing time, giving off a feeling that was both rustic and serene.
Ji Yi led him to a room off to the side of the ground floor, pushed the door open, and introduced it. “This is your room.” He set down the luggage and then beckoned Shuai Zhiming over. “I’ll also need your ID here to register you.”
Small as the guesthouse business was, none of the proper procedures were skipped. Ji Yi’s setup was linked with the relevant authorities, and everything that needed registering got registered.
Handing over his ID, Shuai Zhiming couldn’t resist pulling out his phone and starting to snap photos again. “Boss, is your decor made to look old, or…?”
“Of course not. This is a genuine hundred-year-old house. Apart from repainting the walls and a few small details, almost everything is original,” Ji Yi said. “It’s just been very well preserved all along.”
Shuai Zhiming was an ordinary office worker, but he was also a small-time blogger online with tens of thousands of followers. He liked to share little slices of his life, posting photos with captions, and each Weibo post got at least a hundred thousand reads and over a hundred follower comments.
So he quite enjoyed cultivating his little corner of the internet, and every time he went out he loved snapping away nonstop.
After finishing the registration, he photographed the whole old house again, even the second floor, which Ji Yi told him was still under renovation and not open for business, he went up to see, and only then did he put his phone away, satisfied.
It was Ji Yi’s first time hosting a guest too, and afraid he wouldn’t know how to handle things, he’d rehearsed his lines well in advance, so they came out fairly smoothly now.
“If you’ve got plans to go out, just let me know and I’ll set aside time to drive you. We can also provide three meals a day, though those are charged separately, breakfast is fifteen, lunch and dinner are twenty-five each. Eat all you like, but you have to book ahead.”
Plenty of the farmhouse guesthouses around here offered this kind of service, so it was nothing unusual.
Shuai Zhiming nodded. “If it’s not raining later, I’d like to head over to Beishan, I might have to trouble you for a ride. As for meals, let me book dinner.”
He didn’t know the exact dishes, but the prices Ji Yi had just quoted weren’t high. At places like scenic areas, fifteen might buy you a single cup of instant noodles, so Shuai Zhiming had his expectations set accordingly.
Although this guesthouse was a short distance from the Beishan scenic area, Shuai Zhiming counted it as within the scenic area’s range, and at this point he held no particular hopes for the food it could offer.
Unluckily, though, before long, fat raindrops began falling into the courtyard well again, dense and heavy, with no sign of stopping anytime soon.
Seeing this, Ji Yi remembered what Old Li had said before he went out, about the grave mound. Old Li had already gone back to his grave, and now, watching the rain with no end in sight, Ji Yi decided to make a trip out there.
Before leaving he asked Shuai Zhiming, “I might be out for about an hour, that shouldn’t affect your plans, right?”
Shuai Zhiming said it wouldn’t, so Ji Yi threw on a rain slicker and rode off on the three-wheeler.
The three-wheeler had been brought over by Wei Hu. Back when his grandfather was in good health, the old man had liked to ride it around. Now that his grandfather’s eyes had gone bad, the vehicle sat idle at home, so Wei Hu had brought it over for Ji Yi to use.
Ji Yi didn’t take it for free, he’d bought it at a depreciated price, and used it whenever he had a lot to haul.
He first steered the vehicle deeper into the village. The village was mostly old houses, some crumbling, some intact, with moss growing on the stone paths, looking all the more tender green in the rain. Ji Yi picked up some bricks and loaded them on, planning to use them to patch up Old Li’s grave mound.
Ji Yi headed out into the rain, and moments later Shuai Zhiming, umbrella in hand, walked out of the old house as well.
From chatting with Ji Yi earlier, he knew that this whole area used to be a village, only now the villagers had all moved away, leaving just Ji Yi, who’d inherited his grandfather’s old house and come back to open this guesthouse.
Hongye Village was a fairly typical southern village, white walls, dark tiles, narrow lanes, paired with the uneven brick-and-stone pavement underfoot. In the daytime, the deserted village front and back held no eerie or sinister air, instead, in the post-rain weather, it had a certain charm steeped in mist.
Raindrops pattered off the edge of his umbrella. Shuai Zhiming took photos here and looked around there, his mood much improved from the disappointment of not making it to Beishan, feeling that Hongye Village was pretty interesting too.
Without realizing it, he wandered deeper and deeper.
Hongye Village wasn’t large overall, even at its population peak it had only just over two hundred people, and just a few dozen houses. But they layered and interlocked as you went in, merging into the foot of the mountain, worn down by the long grind of the years. On top of that, with few people around in recent years, some of the houses looked as if they were nearly being swallowed by nature.
When Shuai Zhiming came back to himself, he’d already walked to the far edge of the village. There was one house whose door board had half rotted away, the remaining half barely hanging in place, with a pitch-black void beneath it. But on the mud wall beside the door grew a few bright little flowers, so Shuai Zhiming didn’t immediately notice the unpleasant damp, rotten air coming from inside the door.
He cocked his head, tucked the umbrella carelessly against his neck, aimed his phone at those little flowers, and took a few shots he was happy with. Then, as he was righting the umbrella, the phone’s lens drifted a few degrees on its own and landed right on the pitch-black part inside the broken door.
Even though it was nothing but a black void, the phone suddenly triggered portrait mode, framing out a little patch within the lens.
Shuai Zhiming glanced at his phone, then looked away at the space inside the door, with the naked eye all he could see was darkness. Curiosity got the better of him, and he aimed the phone at that black void again. It still showed portrait mode, and the patch it had framed out before seemed a little bigger now, from the lens, you could also say it seemed a little closer to him.
Whether or not the sound of the rain had suddenly grown louder, Shuai Zhiming felt a buzzing in his ears, and his whole body felt uneasy. Skeptic though he was, he had a sense that something wasn’t right at that moment.
Suddenly, something seemed to flash past inside the frame in the lens.
Shuai Zhiming couldn’t help taking a big step back, wanting to get farther from that door, as that uncomfortable feeling grew more and more pronounced.
“Damn, how does the Socialist Scientific Outlook on Development go again?” he muttered under his breath, reciting the internet’s favorite demon-repelling spell, and turned to leave.
The umbrella spun a fast about-face in the rain, but the instant he turned, Shuai Zhiming found that a splash of black, one that hadn’t been there a moment ago, had appeared on the courtyard wall in front of him.
“Holy crap!” Already on edge, Shuai Zhiming cried out before he’d even made out what the black thing was, only afterward did he feel embarrassed.
Because the black thing on the courtyard wall was a cat.
And it was a black cat he’d seen before, the guesthouse listing even had a photo of the owner holding this very cat. Its eyes were a very pale moon-blue, which Shuai Zhiming remembered clearly.
“Phew, gave me a scare.” Shuai Zhiming patted his chest, and when he looked at the cat again, a bit of a smile came to his face. “Hey there, Kitty.”
Kitty, the universal name for every stray cat in the country.
Shuai Zhiming still remembered Ji Yi saying this was a little wild cat and shouldn’t be pet casually. So he didn’t reach out directly, only softened his voice in an attempt to befriend it.
But no matter how he looked at it, this black cat didn’t strike him as a stray or feral cat, because from its build and the cleanliness of its coat, it was frankly in far better shape than a lot of carefully pampered pedigree cats.
In particular, Shuai Zhiming even felt the cat was sizing him up with its gaze, giving off a hint of something almost human.
If he had to put it into words, he felt this black cat was rather out of the ordinary, carrying a touch of spiritual presence.
But the cat showed no reaction at all to his overtures. When he called “Kitty” once more, it even coldly turned its head away, looking as if it were about to leave along the courtyard wall.
Shuai Zhiming found the cat fascinating and hurried to pull out his phone to snap a photo. But in the split second he lowered his head to grab it, the black cat had vanished before his eyes.
Staring at the empty courtyard wall, Shuai Zhiming felt a twinge of regret. He decided that when he got back and saw Ji Yi, he’d ask about this cat’s habits, being able to snap a photo to pair with a Weibo post would be great.
Thanks to the little interlude with the black cat, Shuai Zhiming felt the crawling sensation from before had disappeared.
He turned to look again at that broken doorway a few meters off. It was still pitch-black, yet there wasn’t the slightest eerie feeling anymore. He tried aiming his phone at it again, and it no longer showed portrait mode.
Recalling the moment the cat had appeared, Shuai Zhiming couldn’t help imagining, could it be true, what they said about black cats warding off evil?
Shuai Zhiming took a small loop around the village, and as the rain came down harder and harder, he doubled back to the guesthouse after all.
The water in the courtyard well had already gathered into trickling streams, and the aged old house gave a deeply relaxing feeling.
Shuai Zhiming had seen some mock-antique guesthouses online before, and just from the pictures the furniture and furnishings inside gave off an uncomfortable vibe. Probably an aftereffect of all those horror films.
But this Dai Mountain guesthouse gave him a fresh, easy feeling, a sense of being back in the home he remembered from childhood, when his elders were still living.
Shuai Zhiming went back to his room, opened the window, and lay on the bed watching the raindrops off the eaves, hands pillowed behind his head, feeling rather content.
His mind drifted to the black cat he’d just seen. His expression had been quite relaxed, but suddenly, as he remembered something, Shuai Zhiming’s eyes snapped open and he frowned, unable to work it out.
Just now, while he’d been holding the umbrella, he could hear the rapid patter of raindrops drumming on it, the rain was just as heavy then as it was now. So why did he feel that the black cat had been perfectly dry? He even recalled the scene of seeing that black cat as if it were half clear sky and half rain.
It was as though the black cat had been in a different weather than he was.
Shuai Zhiming’s head was full of question marks. Just as he was wrestling with whether his memory was playing tricks on him or the cat really was extraordinary, he heard the sound of someone coming in the door outside.
He got up and left his room to look, it was Ji Yi, back again.
Ji Yi had just been to Old Li’s grave mound, plugging up the leaking hole for him and placing bricks over several spots prone to gaps. Although the mound was old and, short of relocating the grave, probably couldn’t really be fixed, his bit of patching still made it much better and would hold up for a while.
For this Old Li had thanked him profusely all over again, following Ji Yi back and insisting on doing more work to help out.
Ji Yi was already used to having these old ghosts hang around the old house. Knowing that talking them out of it was pointless, he simply let Old Li do as he pleased.
Old Li trailed along behind Ji Yi and saw a room on the ground floor open, with someone leaning half out the door. He let out a little “aiyo.” “So this is today’s guest, looks like a decent, upstanding fellow.”
Over there Shuai Zhiming was speaking to Ji Yi too. “Boss Ji.”
“Mm-hm.” Ji Yi answered vaguely, one word for two people.
“I think I ran into something strange just now,” Shuai Zhiming said, stepping out toward Ji Yi.
Ji Yi’s first reaction was, “You went to the kitchen?”
He remembered that before heading out, to keep Shuai Zhiming from possibly seeing the flying cleaver and the self-stoking stove in the kitchen, he’d locked the kitchen door in advance.
Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the kitchen, and at the same time heard Shuai Zhiming deny it. “No, I didn’t go there.”
“Oh, then what happened?” Seeing the lock intact, Ji Yi relaxed a good deal. As long as it wasn’t something the guest had seen inside the house, anything else was easier to explain away.
So Shuai Zhiming told Ji Yi about running into the black cat, and how the cat hadn’t gotten wet in the rain.
Ji Yi listened with knitted brows. He’d expected some far stranger business, but after hearing it out, his expression eased and he clapped Shuai Zhiming on the shoulder. “Oh, that? You definitely misremembered. That’s just an ordinary little stray cat, its fur isn’t waterproof, so how could it stay dry in the rain? Photos and such often glitch out, you know. My phone does it too.”
As he spoke, Ji Yi pulled out his phone and aimed it at Old Li. Sure enough, portrait mode popped up on the phone. Then he shot Old Li a look, signaling him to step aside, and portrait mode vanished again.
“See? Just like that. Sometimes the phone misjudges on its own. Haven’t you seen those news stories about cars driving through wide-open areas but the display shows other cars on both sides? These smart gadgets all glitch a little these days.”
“That’s true,” said Shuai Zhiming, sorted out by Ji Yi’s little speech and now feeling he’d probably been overthinking. He’d been startled when he saw the black cat, so it was perfectly normal for a few details in his memory to have gotten muddled.
“Of course it’s true.” Ji Yi gave Shuai Zhiming a friendly, sincere smile. “Trust in science. Where in the world are there so many strange, bizarre things? That cat you saw is just an ordinary little stray. The animals around here are as ordinary as ordinary gets.”
Shuai Zhiming was thoroughly reassured.
Having spun his tall tale, Ji Yi went back to his room to change clothes. He’d gotten quite splashed on his trip out, and being soaked through was rather uncomfortable.
Shuai Zhiming went back to his room, grabbed a bag of QQ gummies, and tore it open to snack on.
It wasn’t lunchtime yet, so he wasn’t really hungry, just a little peckish.
He stood at the door looking at the great mountain amid the curtain of rain, feeling it was especially atmospheric, especially eye-catching. Shuai Zhiming even thought he might not need to make the special trip to Beishan, he’d have plenty of content to write up and share with his followers as it was.
His thoughts wandered along with his drifting gaze, settling on nothing, until a head suddenly poked out from the bushes.
Shuai Zhiming looked closely, it was indeed a furry head, seemingly a monkey’s.
He’d been standing there lazily, but now he couldn’t help straightening up and staring over that way.
Monkeys apparently turned up in Beishan now and then, and they were pretty notorious. If tourists carried backpacks and the like, sometimes the monkeys would snatch them away.
Those monkeys knew tourists had food and couldn’t hurt them, so they’d grown bold and thoroughly bandit-like in their ways. Most tourists dreaded getting bitten by a monkey and then having to get rabies shots, so they didn’t dare tangle with them head-on, most of the time they just guarded their electronics and let the monkeys grab whatever food they wanted.
Thinking of this, Shuai Zhiming grew a little tense, because more than one monkey had emerged from the bushes over there. Three monkeys were hesitating now, but clearly bounding his way.
Shuai Zhiming had eaten only one QQ gummy, and now he didn’t dare reach for a second. He froze in place, even forgetting to call for Ji Yi.
The three monkeys came right up to him, and to Shuai Zhiming’s surprise, they were polite.
They didn’t seem to have any intention of grabbing by force. They just extended their hands toward Shuai Zhiming, making a begging gesture.
Shuai Zhiming’s heart pounded. He tried slowly tipping the QQ gummies out of the bag, giving each monkey a few.
The monkeys ate the candy right in front of Shuai Zhiming, then eyed the bag in his hand. Shuai Zhiming opened it up to show them and, though he knew monkeys probably couldn’t understand human speech, still said, “That’s all of it, I gave you everything.”
At this the monkeys, rather than pawing at his clothes, simply turned and left, as if they’d only been a bit greedy watching him eat and had come over just to satisfy a craving.
It wasn’t until they’d turned away that Shuai Zhiming remembered to take a photo with his phone, capturing only the monkeys’ retreating backs.
But the experience was so novel that he stood in the doorway for a good while still finding it delightful, unable to resist looking at the photo over and over, thinking this was yet another piece of material he could post.
He didn’t expect the bushes to stir again, and one monkey came back out. Only this time it wasn’t empty-handed, it held two fresh, plump peaches, and walked right up to Shuai Zhiming to hand them to him directly.
Shuai Zhiming was flattered and, tentatively, took them.
Seeing him take them, the monkey finally turned and left.
So did the monkey just trade him two peaches for a bag of QQ gummies?
Shuai Zhiming remembered what Ji Yi had told him not long before: “The animals here are all perfectly normal.”
Shuai Zhiming’s whole worldview wobbled a little. It was hard to judge whether this kind of monkey counted as normal.
References[+]