After a day of rest, more guests came knocking.
Ji Yi made a pickup run in the morning and another in the afternoon, and the afternoon trip actually took two round trips, because there were two guests total and cramming them into one ride wasn’t safe. The guests were understanding about it, but Ji Yi still felt a little embarrassed, and it got him thinking that his guest-shuttle vehicle had a lot of room for improvement. For now, though, everyone would just have to make do.
Both parties of guests had come for Beishan: one young woman on her own, and a young couple.
The couple dropped off their luggage and headed straight for the Beishan scenic area. The woman who’d come alone, on the other hand, was in no rush to start her itinerary. After resting in her room around midday, she came back out carrying a cat bag, crouched by the door, and started playing with the cat in front of Daishan.
The little couple had seen posts on Weibo saying the food at the owner’s place here was pretty good, so they asked Ji Yi specifically whether they could order dishes. Once Ji Yi agreed, they picked a few dishes and paid him for the ingredients plus a cooking fee.
Ji Yi had just gone into town to buy groceries. When he parked and came back carrying the bags, he happened to catch the woman crouched down talking to her little cat.
Ji Yi set the groceries down, and the woman asked him, “Boss, could you find something to hold a bit of water for my cat to drink?”
“One second.” Ji Yi agreed, turned around to dig out a little tin that had held biscuits, poured some clean water into the lid, and brought it out for the cat.
Only then did the woman open the cat bag, letting the little cat poke its head out to drink.
The cat was a golden British Shorthair, round-eyed and adorably big-headed. Ji Yi crouched down alongside her. “Can I pet it?”
“Sure.” The woman smiled. “His name is Yangyang. He’s a bit timid, but he’s very friendly with people.”
Sure enough, the moment Ji Yi laid his hand on the head of the golden cat called Yangyang, the cat tilted its head up and nuzzled his hand several times on its own, letting out a dainty little meow.
“So cute.” Ji Yi nearly grinned like a besotted fool, and gave the little cat a few more strokes.
The cat really didn’t seem well adjusted to being outdoors, though. After a few sips of water it immediately shrank back into the bag.
The woman soothed it with a few words, then said to Ji Yi, a little sheepishly, “He’s been kept at home since he was tiny and never gone out, so he’s on the timid side. I couldn’t leave him at home while I traveled either, so I just brought him along.”
Ji Yi said with a smile, “Yeah, keeping him with you is better. That way you can look after him properly.”
Seeing that Ji Yi’s eyes as he looked at the cat were full of genuine affection, the woman asked, “You really like cats, boss. You don’t keep one?”
Ji Yi nodded. “I like them quite a lot. I think I had one when I was little, but that was a long time ago. I can’t really remember it clearly.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a lithe black shape padding slowly toward them along the top of the courtyard wall. Ji Yi looked up. It was a very familiar black cat.
Inside the bag, Yangyang started to grow uneasy. The woman glanced down, stroked the bag and murmured comfortingly, then looked back up and said, “Is that so? To be honest, you could get another one now. A place like yours suits keeping a cat much better than mine. I live in the city, but I think a cat is happiest with a natural place to live and an owner who loves it.”
Ji Yi’s attention was pulled back to the woman’s words. He said thoughtfully, “I’ve never really thought about it that way. I think it’s because the cat I had before was just too adorable, so any other cat probably couldn’t measure up, and I just gave up on the idea.”
The woman laughed. “Didn’t you say you couldn’t remember it clearly? So it really is a case of once you’ve seen the ocean, no other water will do [1]nothing else compares after the real thing jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2932314_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2932314_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.”
Ji Yi laughed along with her.
But the woman went on, “I get it, though. Yangyang’s been with me for years. When he finally leaves me one day, it’ll be hard for me to keep another cat too. It’d feel like a betrayal of him. Cats are very jealous creatures, you know.”
The black cat’s steps came to a halt on the wall, now directly above Ji Yi and the woman’s heads.
By this point Yangyang’s struggling had grown violent enough that the woman couldn’t ignore it. Something had clearly frightened the golden cat badly. Ji Yi caught the cat’s reaction and felt a slight headache coming on. One look and he knew this was Lin Zhao’s doing.
The woman sensed something amiss too, but she just scooped up the cat bag. “What’s wrong? Have you been out too long? I’ll take him back to the room first, boss.”
With that she hurried off toward her room, cat bag in her arms.
Only then did Ji Yi lift his head to look at the black cat. “Big guy, look how badly you scared it.”
Lin Zhao was utterly unmoved by the emotional turmoil of a cat with a heart the size of a pinhole. What he cared about instead was the topic Ji Yi and the woman had just been discussing.
“You used to keep a cat?”
Ji Yi carefully glanced back at the house, worried someone might notice there was a talking cat in front of him. Fortunately, aside from the woman who’d already gone into her room to comfort her cat, he was the only one around the guesthouse.
“I did,” Ji Yi said, lowering his voice. “Kept one when I was very small.”
There was something unreadable in Lin Zhao’s eyes, but Ji Yi couldn’t shake the feeling the cat was skeptical of him.
“I really did keep one,” Ji Yi said, defending himself. “And I raised it well, too. It slept in my arms and was so affectionate with me.”
He put a bit more effort into thinking back. “I think… it was black too?”
The moment he said it, both his eyes and Lin Zhao’s filled, in unspoken unison, with a hint of distaste.
Bad omen. Really not a great omen.
Lin Zhao said, “You can’t even remember what color it was, and you raised it well?”
“It was way too long ago! It might’ve been when I was two or three. Anyway, it was a very, very long time ago.” Ji Yi found it hard to pin down an exact time. He only knew that somewhere deep in his memory was the firm impression that he’d definitely had a cat, and of that he was utterly certain.
“Never mind, why are we even talking about this,” Ji Yi said, changing the subject. “We’ve had guests these past couple of days. How about it, have you figured anything out?”
Lin Zhao’s attention was diverted. He stayed silent for a while before saying, “No.”
“Speaking of which,” Ji Yi said, pulling over a little stool by the door and sitting down casually, “I’ve always been curious how you go about searching. Is there some knack to it? If you tell me, maybe I could help you look too.”
Lin Zhao gave a light chuckle.
“What are you laughing at?”
“He and I are naturally connected. How would you know his aura?” Lin Zhao said.
So mystical. Ji Yi had only mentioned it in passing and wasn’t really invested in helping Lin Zhao with it. He had other things to discuss with him instead.
Ji Yi looked back once more, confirmed no one had overheard him talking to Lin Zhao, and only then spoke again.
“Lord Lin Zhao,” Ji Yi said solemnly, a polite smile on his face.
Seeing this attitude, Lin Zhao knew Ji Yi was probably after some favor. He lifted his feline head slightly, looking down at Ji Yi. “What is it?”
“I hear there’s plenty of good stuff in this mountain of yours, melons and fruit and vegetables, meat, seafood, none of it in short supply. I wanted to ask whether I could make use of it from now on?”
Before Lin Zhao could say yes or no, Ji Yi hurried to color in his request. “Of course it’s not for myself. It’s for the guests staying at the inn. Our mountain produce is fresher and tastier than what you get outside. If I served it to the guests, they’d never forget it after one taste. That’d earn us a good reputation, and might just draw in a lot of guests who love good food.”
“Our mountain?” Lin Zhao seized on the word, looking at Ji Yi with displeasure.
Ji Yi took the correction gracefully. “Your mountain.”
Only then did Lin Zhao say, “Anything that benefits the business, you may simply do it. It’s only a bit of produce and poultry.”
Ji Yi didn’t expect Lin Zhao to be so agreeable this time, granting permission outright rather than something wishy-washy or merely implied. This would make dealing with the little monkey, the shrike, and the other little sprites of the mountain go far more smoothly.
Ji Yi immediately turned and dashed back to the kitchen to share the news with Liu Dalei. He was thrilled at the prospect of freeloading tons of free produce, while Liu Dalei was very pleased with the quality of Daishan’s melons and fruit.
Lin Zhao, left alone outside the door, didn’t leave right away.
He watched Ji Yi’s back as he sprinted inside, mulling over what Ji Yi had said earlier.
Ji Yi had kept a cat. He liked cats very much. Because he’d loved that one cat so much, even though he still loved cats now, he no longer kept one.
Lin Zhao didn’t like people, all people, Ji Yi included. But that little speech just now had left Lin Zhao feeling somewhat differently about Ji Yi.
As dusk was just beginning to smudge the sky dark, the little couple sent Ji Yi a text saying they wanted to push back tonight’s dinner a bit.
There was an event at the Beishan scenic area today, featuring performances of several local folk customs. The two of them wanted to watch the whole show before coming back, and hoped to move dinner to around nine, treating it more like a late-night snack.
Ji Yi of course agreed at once. He took their money and did the job either way, the cooking was Liu Dalei’s department anyway, and nighttime was actually the more comfortable time for a ghost to be active.
The thing was, Liu Dalei had discovered a new way to have fun on Ji Yi’s phone today. He’d found out from somewhere that a living chef he rather admired was going to livestream on some platform today, and he was planning to watch.
Fortunately the stream ran from six-thirty to eight, so it wouldn’t interfere too much with the guests’ reserved dinner. Otherwise Ji Yi definitely would’ve stopped Liu Dalei from watching.
Because Liu Dalei’s usual daily phone time was only one hour, today’s hour and a half of streaming already went over. For the last dozen minutes or so, Ji Yi sat and watched the stream with him, to keep Liu Dalei from sneakily opening other videos and losing himself in them.
The living chef demonstrated a few very basic dishes in his stream. The viewer count was actually pretty mediocre, a hundred people at the peak. Ji Yi hadn’t paid much attention before to who this living chef was, and had assumed he was some famous chef of the moment, given how effusively Liu Dalei praised him. But looking closely now, he realized the man was actually just a tiny, tiny minor influencer with under two thousand total followers.
Liu Dalei kept commenting as he watched. “Now those are solid fundamentals. Looks effortless, but all the skill is in the details.”
He’d occasionally chime in agreement with the little streamer too. “Right, well said. Being a cook isn’t that easy, this is a trade with a real barrier to entry!”
Ji Yi had no idea how to judge whether a cook’s fundamentals were solid anyway. His only thought was to take his phone back once eight o’clock hit.
Liu Dalei was a bit reluctant to stop, and even asked Ji Yi, “What are those colorful things that sometimes come flying out beside them? I noticed he thanks people every time.”
“Those are gifts people send him,” Ji Yi explained. “From folks who think he’s doing a good job.”
Liu Dalei caught on fast. “Oh, I get it, they’re tips.”
“Mm-hm.” Ji Yi nodded.
Then Liu Dalei dropped a bombshell. “Then help me tip him a little too. Put it on my account, take it out of next month’s wages.”
Ji Yi’s face went blank. “How’s it supposed to come out of your wages? Is he going to spend spirit money or something?”
Liu Dalei looked at Ji Yi, displeased. “I just want to show a junior in the trade a little care and affection.”
Ji Yi couldn’t withstand his stare. He took out his phone and tipped fifty on Liu Dalei’s behalf. “Just this once, don’t make a habit of it. Tipping this doesn’t do much good anyway, the platform takes half of what we send, so he doesn’t get much in hand.”
“Is that so,” Liu Dalei said regretfully. “It’s just that we’re separated by the divide between the living and the dead. Otherwise I’d have taught him a bit of the craft, however much I could. Such a promising seedling.”
Before he’d finished lamenting, another little ghost walked in through the door, none other than the little gambling ghost who’d been caught stealing money earlier and was now staying on to work off his sins.
The two gambling ghosts, one called A-Liu and one called Xiao Qian, were both shifty, cringing little ghosts with no backbone to speak of. Liu Dalei cursed them out eight hundred times a day.
Now, catching sight of A-Liu, Liu Dalei’s earlier wistfulness instantly curdled into irritation. He pointed at A-Liu and said, “You worthless wretch. With a whole set of skills right here in front of you, can you learn even a scrap of it? What a waste, your mother wasted her labor bringing you into the world. A total waste, through and through.”
Ji Yi was a little speechless. He honestly couldn’t figure out what internet-trend content this half-old, half-new ghost had been watching ever since he got his hands on a phone. Maybe he had the bullet comments [2]bullet comments (‘bullet comments’) are live viewer comments that scroll across the screen in real time, a feature common on Chinese video and livestreaming platforms jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2932314_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2932314_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); turned on every time he watched a video? His way of talking was gradually catching up with the times.
Cursed out by Liu Dalei, A-Liu didn’t dare talk back. He dropped an armful of firewood in the corner and scurried out fast, sparing himself further scolding, and the occasional flick to the forehead, which was miserable.
When A-Liu and Xiao Qian were alive, they’d been degenerate gamblers, and death hadn’t changed their ways one bit. They often gathered with a pack of idle ghosts to pull petty thieving schemes, and were forever going on about their dream of becoming gambling gods. They weren’t ghosts buried in the Beishan area to begin with. It was only because law and order in the netherworld around Beishan was terrible that these do-nothing ghosts took to the place like fish to water, which was why they liked to congregate here.
In the past they hadn’t gotten caught too often, and even when they did suffer a little, it was usually over in a few days. But they’d never expected getting caught this time to be so miserable, no touching gambling cards anymore, and having to work honestly on top of it.
A-Liu and Xiao Qian couldn’t say how much they missed their free ghostly existence and the joys of reckless gambling.
And so they resolved to stop enduring the beatings and scoldings here, and to find a chance to escape as soon as they could.
Just now, as A-Liu came out of the kitchen with his head still ducked low, out of the corner of his eye he spotted Old Li and Old Sun coming downstairs, having just finished tidying the sheets and bedding upstairs. He just hunched his head and stood off to the side, saying nothing.
Right then, an old ghost who usually got along well with Old Li and the others poked his head in from outside. “Old Li, Old Sun, haven’t you left yet? The opera over at Beishan is already halfway through, hurry up or you’ll miss the second half.”
Among the folk performances at Beishan today was traditional opera. Old Li and Old Sun had both asked Ji Yi for time off in advance, having arranged to go out and watch it now.
A-Liu didn’t know about any of this, but he watched Old Li and Old Sun leave with that ghost, then looked back to see that Ji Yi and Liu Dalei still hadn’t come out of the kitchen. The main hall of the old house stood completely empty.
If this wasn’t a good chance to run, what was?
A-Liu did have some sense of loyalty, so he snuck off to go fetch Xiao Qian.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Ji Yi and Liu Dalei were talking over a basin of freshly butchered chicken.
The chicken was one Ji Yi had made a special trip into town to buy during the day. One of the dishes the couple had ordered was stir-fried chicken, and it would be cooked up for them shortly.
Liu Dalei said, “This chicken’s fresh enough. I’ll cook it up in a bit.”
Looking at the tender chicken and thinking of the taste of stir-fried chicken, Ji Yi felt his stomach start to growl. “How could it not be fresh? Earlier when I bought it and tied it up at home, it still wanted to run off. The second I wasn’t watching, it was looking for a chance to bolt.”
A-Liu and Xiao Qian happened to be drifting down from upstairs right then. As they passed the kitchen, hearts already in their throats, they caught exactly the second half of what Ji Yi said. The two ghosts stared at each other, and together felt a chill shoot up their spines, their whole bodies going rigid.
Then Liu Dalei’s voice came from behind the half-shut kitchen door. “Heh, you think it looks dumb and slow, but that’s all an act it puts on in front of people. In fact this thing’s got a whole scheme of its own. I’ve seen plenty of them before, turn your back or take your eyes off it for a second, and it’ll cause trouble.”
“True. I saw earlier that it wanted to run.” Ji Yi patted the plate holding the chicken, recalling how the chicken had kicked him while he was tying it up that afternoon.
Liu Dalei looked smugly at the plate of chicken. “Wanted to run? One slice across the neck and the blood comes gushing out, let’s see if it’s still got a life left to run with.”
Outside the door, A-Liu and Xiao Qian were completely lost in the fog of it all, yet growing more and more certain that the people inside were beating the ox across the mountain [3]getting at them indirectly jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2932314_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2932314_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, using these words to hint and warn them. The two ghosts’ legs went numb, and hearing that line about “one slice and the blood gushing out,” they were already clinging to each other and trembling like sieves.
And the talk inside still hadn’t stopped.
Looking at the chicken, Liu Dalei thought of all the ways to cook it. When he’d been watching videos before, he’d seen a foreign way of preparing something called a turkey. He’d never seen or eaten turkey, but he understood roast chicken well enough. Even though that turkey meat in the video looked awfully dry and stringy to him, he still had the urge to try it himself.
To that end, Liu Dalei couldn’t help pressing Ji Yi again. “When exactly are you going to buy me an oven? The kind where you can adjust the top and bottom heat separately. If I had an oven, after I finish the slice there’d be more fun to be had, top heat at one-eighty, bottom heat at two-twenty, slow-roast for a few hours, and I bet I could roast it till even the bone splinters go crisp and crumbly.”
The moment he heard “oven,” Ji Yi’s broke-man headache flared up. He deflected, “Aiya, wait till we’re making money, we’ll talk about it then.”
Talk of this subject made him afraid Liu Dalei would go on and on, so he didn’t want to linger in the kitchen and chose to push open the door and leave.
But the moment he pushed the door open, Ji Yi saw A-Liu and Xiao Qian at the doorway, their faces deathly pale and looking terrible. He couldn’t tell what was wrong.
Ji Yi was still puzzled when A-Liu and Xiao Qian, before he could open his mouth, threw themselves flat on the ground, then half-scrambled up and clung to Ji Yi’s legs to pledge their loyalty. “Boss Ji, we, we’ll definitely work hard from now on, we absolutely won’t get any other ideas.”
“Yes, yes! Please spare our lives!”
Ji Yi: “???”
Hearing the commotion, Liu Dalei poked his head out from the kitchen, cleaver still in hand. “What’s going on? What’s going on?”
A-Liu and Xiao Qian’s eyes lingered on the cleaver in Liu Dalei’s hand for a moment, and then they scrambled up as if they were flying. One said, “I’ll go gather more firewood.”
“I, I’ll go wipe the tables upstairs.”
Ji Yi and Liu Dalei exchanged a look, each seeing mountains and seas of bewilderment in the other’s eyes.
Ji Yi was keeping the accounts when a notification chime from his phone interrupted his writing.
He looked down and saw it was a message from the little couple, saying they’d be back any minute.
They hadn’t let Ji Yi drive them out earlier, riding off on his three-wheeler instead. Now they were telling Ji Yi they’d ride back on their own shortly, so he could get the meal ready ahead of time.
Ji Yi mentioned it to Liu Dalei, but on second thought he still walked to the door and took a look. At this hour Hongye Village had sunk into total darkness, save for the guesthouse still lit up.
Ji Yi himself of course wasn’t afraid, but the road into the mountain at night was never all that safe.
From Ji Yi’s vantage point, the dense woods on either side of the mountain road carried a chill and an air of the uncanny.
Lin Hao and Chen Lili were an ordinary couple. Both fresh graduates, they had a very limited budget for their trip. They’d happened to spot this guesthouse online, felt the price was reasonable, and having heard the food was very good, booked the place.
It really had been nice after they arrived. The owner was very kind, and this evening’s free performances at Beishan were splendid too. Even though their stomachs were empty on the way back, the thought of getting to eat once they returned put them in a good mood.
There was just one thing. The farther Lin Hao rode the three-wheeler down the main road inward, the more the streetlights, though still there, were crowded in by the looming mountain terrain, their light always seeming half-blocked and not so bright anymore.
On top of that, the night wind blowing through the mountains felt a little cold. Goosebumps rose along the arm Lin Hao had on the handlebar, and he couldn’t shake a creepy, crawling feeling.
But Lin Hao was afraid of putting ideas in the head of Chen Lili, riding in the cargo bed, so he held it in and said nothing. Until Chen Lili, on the verge of tears, called to him softly, “Hao Hao, do you feel like there’s something—”
She trailed off, not quite daring to say it, only carefully pinching a corner of Lin Hao’s clothes, not daring to let her eyes wander left or right, afraid of seeing something she shouldn’t.
Lin Hao cut her off. “It’s fine, we’ll be there in a minute. Don’t think about it and you won’t be scared, okay? Hold on to me. It’s just a little cold in the mountains at night, that’s all.”
He was terrified too, but with his girlfriend like this, he still had to be the pillar she could lean on.
Chen Lili wrapped her arms tightly around Lin Hao’s waist. Then, catching sight of a grave mound faintly showing on the mountain beside them out of the corner of her eye, she swallowed her yelp back down her throat. She glanced behind her, the darkness at her back was gathering in, and the only light left seemed to be the flashlight in her hand.
She struggled to raise her phone’s flashlight to light the road ahead. Suddenly, in the beam, she saw a pair of legs up ahead.
Chen Lili’s nerves, strung to the breaking point, finally snapped. She shut her eyes, on the brink of tears. “Hao Hao!”
Lin Hao’s heart was pounding wildly too. He was not doing well at all.
Then the owner of those legs up ahead switched on the headlight of an electric scooter, and at the same time came Ji Yi’s voice, “I was worried the road would be too dark, so I came to meet you.”
Only then did Lin Hao and Chen Lili see clearly that it was the guesthouse owner.
The color slowly returned to their ashen faces. Ji Yi, meanwhile, looked without any change in expression at the two old ghosts panting hard behind Lin Hao and Chen Lili.
Old Li and Old Sun were nothing but old bones. They’d gone to watch the performance earlier, and on the way back had happened to see this little couple riding home to the guesthouse too.
The two ghosts had thought the road wasn’t safe, that there might be other ghosts or monsters about, so they’d kindly followed along behind the couple’s vehicle. Who’d have thought the pair would ride faster and faster, the wheels practically spinning up sparks.
Lin Hao and Chen Lili looked at Ji Yi gratefully, and under his guidance made it back to the guesthouse. Feeling the glow of the guesthouse’s lights, their hearts finally settled fully back into place.
Lin Hao even said to Ji Yi, embarrassed, “On the ride back just now, I kept feeling like something was following us. I was about to start believing some of those paranormal tales you read about online are real.”
Ji Yi completely ignored Old Li and Old Sun, who had just come in the door. “How could anything be following you? Hallucinations. It was all just hallucinations.”
References[+]