Lin Hao and Chen Lili were both young people, and neither of them normally cared much about paranormal happenings. If it hadn’t been for the eerie mood set by the surroundings and the temperature on the ride back, they never would have let their minds wander to anything strange.
Now that they were back at the guesthouse, bright and warm and with another living person around, their mood gradually settled. On top of that, the closed kitchen door was already leaking wave after wave of savory cooking smells that teased their appetites, and the two of them quickly had their attention pulled elsewhere.
Lin Hao had worked up a sweat, so he grabbed a change of clothes and went to take a shower, while Chen Lili headed back to their room first to drop off her things.
Ji Yi went to the kitchen to bring out the food. Not sure whether Chen Lili and Lin Hao wanted to eat outside or in their room, he figured he’d set the dishes on the eight-immortals table first.
But a flutter of wings from above the courtyard well caught his eye. He looked up and saw the shape of the shrike. Before it could speak, Ji Yi immediately raised his index finger in a “shush” gesture, then pointed toward the outside of the yard, signaling for it to come out and talk there.
Interrupted like that, Ji Yi absent-mindedly set the two steaming plates in his hands on a small wooden rolling coffee table parked by the kitchen door.
A moment later the sizzling of the wok inside stopped, and the kitchen door opened a crack about two hand-spans wide. Liu Dalei looked left and right, saw no one, and no sign of Ji Yi either. The only thing he did see was the dishes he’d just cooked sitting on the little coffee table beside the kitchen door. He thought about it, then simply set the last plate, the main course, on it too, and closed the kitchen door again.
…
Ji Yi stood in a patch of darkness outside the courtyard, his hands practiced and easy as he opened a can of cucumber-flavored potato chips, took one out, and held it up to the shrike’s beak for it to take.
He had by now mastered the art of feeding the shrike.
The shrike crunched and munched the big chip clean, and only then got around to speaking. “Lord Lin Zhao has ordered me to help you make good use of the mountain’s resources. So I’ve come to ask what it is you’d like.”
Ji Yi had just been mulling over when to summon the shrike again, and didn’t expect Lin Zhao to reach out first on his behalf. His opinion of Lin Zhao ticked up a notch.
Ji Yi thought it over. “Mostly some meat and vegetables for now, to feed the guests staying at the inn. I don’t need much each day. Later, if I can grow the business, I might need more.”
The shrike snagged another chip for itself and said, very much like a seasoned elder, “What kind of meat do you want?”
“Mostly pork, I guess. Is there beef or mutton in the mountains?” Ji Yi asked, not too sure. He was pretty sure he’d only ever seen wild cattle on the African savanna on nature documentaries, mountains wouldn’t usually have those, right? Mutton, though, should be around.
“Or besides pork, what other meats can you eat up in the mountains?” Ji Yi rephrased and pressed on. Pork he knew he had, and had tasted.
He figured it had to be wild boar, though he didn’t know why the boar the shrike had brought last time hadn’t had any gaminess to it. By rights, an unfixed boar’s meat wasn’t supposed to be tasty. Or maybe what the shrike brought was sow meat?
It wasn’t really an important question, so Ji Yi didn’t ask.
Cheeks bulging with food, the shrike answered with perfect composure, “There’s beef, and there’s mutton. Beyond that, rabbit, snake, rat, cat, dog, bird. Whatever meat you’ve seen out there in the world, the mountains have that and more, never less.”
The string of meats it reeled off like a menu left Ji Yi thinking some sounded good and some sounded frightening. He said to the shrike, “Snake, at a stretch. But as for rat, cat, dog, or bird, we don’t go in for that out in the world, you know.”
The shrike shot him an odd look. It didn’t argue, but Ji Yi still caught a flicker of confusion in those little bean eyes.
Probably, the way the shrike saw it, standing atop the food chain and looking down, one kind of meat was no different from another. Otherwise it wouldn’t have thrown bird meat in there too.
Many animals, once they became spirits, no longer regarded their own species as anything special. After all, an animal that had become a spirit was fundamentally different from an ordinary one.
Of course, plenty of birds already had the habit of preying on other birds to begin with, which was probably why the shrike could rattle off “bird meat” without a second thought.
“Anyway, it’s a human custom,” Ji Yi said. “For now just get me pork. As for a trade, besides potato chips, is there anything else you’d like?”
“Since Lord Lin Zhao gave the word, I’d help you with or without the chips. Besides, the meat I gave you is nothing more than what I keep at home to treat myself to now and then. It’s no trouble at all.” The shrike spoke breezily. “Since you’re willing to give me chips, then that’s just fine.”
What a cute, friendly little bird, Ji Yi thought. He reached out and gave the shrike’s head a rub, and with the other hand, backhanded a slap onto his own calf.
Summer in the mountains meant plenty of mosquitoes, and that one slap left a smear of blood on his palm.
“Damn, that’s nasty.” He handed the can of chips to the shrike. “I’m going inside to put on some ointment first.”
Ji Yi crossed the main hall and, out of the corner of his eye, glimpsed the food by the kitchen door. He figured he’d call the guests out to eat once he’d finished dabbing on the ointment.
No sooner had he stepped into his room than Xiao Liu drifted down from upstairs.
Xiao Liu genuinely couldn’t find anything left to do upstairs, and old man Li had shooed him down to see whether there was anything to do on the ground floor.
Xiao Liu was still gripped by fear, not yet fully out of the shadow of having earlier overheard Ji Yi and Liu Dalei discussing “one slash and the blood spurts everywhere.” His mind was still stuck on that oven Liu Dalei had mentioned, and the mere thought of being shut inside an oven scared him half to death.
In Xiao Liu’s mind, that so-called oven had already been upgraded to something no different from a torture device of hell.
But now that he’d come downstairs, what work was there to do at this hour?
He stood at the foot of the stairs, dazed for a moment, then saw the male guest staying at the inn come out from his shower. On his way back to his room, the man hadn’t fully closed the door, and the sound of the guests talking drifted out.
“Too tired to move? Then I’ll go bring the food in later.”
“Dry your hair first before you talk about it. Aw, I thought the owner was going to bring it in.”
Xiao Liu was very sensitive to those two words, “the owner.” He hurriedly stood up and scanned the main hall, and sure enough spotted the food on the coffee table by the kitchen door.
Sharing the owner’s burden, wasn’t this exactly the moment to show what he could do?
Xiao Liu stepped right up, meaning at first to pick the food up and carry it. But when he glanced down, he found that the coffee table had a few little wheels underneath that let it roll. In an instant it felt like a good deal less trouble, so he simply pushed the table forward, planning to deliver the food to the guests’ door and make them happy.
Lin Hao had the towel draped over his head. He had a buzz cut to begin with, so drying his hair took no effort, a couple of rubs and there were no more drops of water dripping down. So even though Chen Lili had told him to dry his hair before going out for the food, he’d just gone ahead and walked out while still toweling it.
Their room wasn’t far from the main hall anyway.
Who’d have thought that the moment he opened the door, he’d see the most bizarre sight.
The coffee table with the food on it was rolling along on its own wheels, coming straight toward their door. Lin Hao swallowed, and even his hand froze mid-towel.
Because it was an old house, the floor wasn’t perfectly level, there were a few spots where the ground rose and dipped. Maybe it was because of the uneven floor that the wheeled table, unsteady to begin with, had started rolling from momentum?
Lin Hao instinctively searched for a reasonable explanation for the scene.
Sure enough, the coffee table seemed to come to a stop before his eyes.
But before Lin Hao could let out a breath of relief, the table moved again, and not only moved, it slowly turned a corner right in front of him. The path between the table and his door wasn’t perfectly straight, and the bend was precisely where the table needed to change direction.
The table’s trajectory was exactly as if someone were pushing it forward at an even pace. There was no way it could be explained by momentum or anything of the sort.
Lin Hao’s heart went ice-cold. Just earlier he’d managed to convince himself that the ride home had only felt eerie because the mountain wind was cold and he’d spooked himself, but now, how on earth was he supposed to explain a coffee table moving all by itself with no one behind it?!
Ji Yi had smeared on a bit of cool, soothing ointment and walked out of his room, just in time to see the coffee table gliding to a slow stop in front of Lin Hao, Lin Hao’s expression all but collapsing, and Xiao Liu wiping at a nonexistent bead of sweat on his forehead, pretending to look worn out.
Ji Yi’s relaxed expression froze on the spot. He didn’t even need to ask Lin Hao to know what the man might be thinking, faced with this scene!
What normal person could see a coffee table start moving in front of them for no reason and not read too much into it?!
But this was no time for Ji Yi to grumble or scream inwardly. He had to come up with an explanation immediately, otherwise, if Lin Hao wrote something like “haunted” in his review when he checked out, could his guesthouse even stay in business?
By then, forget normal guests daring to come, even if some did dare to stay, most would probably be thrill-seekers coming for the novelty, like Wei Hu had back at the start.
Ji Yi’s mind raced, and under Xiao Liu’s honest, bewildered gaze, a flash of inspiration struck.
“Mr. Lin,” Ji Yi said, striding quickly up to him, seizing the initiative, “pretty impressive smart-delivery system we’ve got, isn’t it?”
Lin Hao could barely get a word out. He’d been teetering on the edge of a breakdown, and Ji Yi’s single sentence yanked him back to reality, though he still couldn’t quite process it. “Wh-what?”
“The smart-delivery system,” Ji Yi said, breaking into a genial smile. He lifted his hand and flashed his phone screen in front of Lin Hao, but only for a split second, far too quick for him to make out what was actually on the screen. “I was just testing it from my room with my phone. Didn’t expect it to actually work.”
“Smart-delivery system?” As Lin Hao heard those words, he felt his soul, which had been gradually slipping out of his body, slowly return to its shell. A bit of warmth came back into his eyes. He liked the direction Ji Yi’s words were heading. “That’s a great way to put it. Tell me more.”
He clearly didn’t want this whole thing to veer off toward the paranormal and the uncanny either. He even grabbed Ji Yi’s arm and looked at him full of hope.
“…” Ji Yi gritted his teeth and kept spinning it. “It’s just a smart-delivery system, you know, lots of hotels use those robot delivery carts, and I thought I’d rig one up too. It’s still in the testing stage.”
“Ah, one of those,” Lin Hao said, the light dawning. But looking at the table again, his expression still held a bit of curiosity and puzzlement. “Is this cart mechanically powered?”
It looked like a perfectly ordinary wooden coffee table, with nothing but a few wooden wheels underneath. He couldn’t tell where the smart system was installed, and half wanted to lean in for a closer look.
Because a lot of hotels really had adopted this kind of smart delivery, Ji Yi’s explanation came across as fairly reasonable. Lin Hao figured that both of tonight’s strange experiences were probably just his imagination. His fear gradually faded, replaced by curiosity, he was itching to go over and see just where this coffee table’s “smarts” were.
Chen Lili, who’d been lying on the bed playing on her phone, heard Lin Hao and Ji Yi talking and came out to peek around the doorframe. “What’s going on?”
Lin Hao pointed at the table. “The owner says this is a smart-delivery cart he’s testing. Pretty impressive, huh, he made it look just like a coffee table.”
Chen Lili’s eyes widened too. “Whoa, that is impressive. Is it really a smart system? Although I think I’ve seen the exact same coffee table on Taobao.”
Because it was, in fact, just an ordinary wooden coffee table, a Taobao bestseller, Ji Yi thought silently to himself.
But on his face he still had to tell the young couple with total conviction, “It really is a smart-delivery cart. As for the look of it, the manufacturer probably just couldn’t be bothered to design one and copied something at random. See, copying is a bad thing, so after making this model the manufacturer went out of business, they probably only ever produced this one unit. Let it be a lesson to us all.”
He talked it into a dead end, partly to keep them from asking where he’d bought it and the like.
Lin Hao nodded in agreement, though his eyes clearly showed he didn’t fully buy it, and he still looked like he wanted to go over and investigate.
Ji Yi steeled himself and shot a look at Xiao Liu, who was standing off to the side, already feeling he’d done something wrong and wearing a face full of unease. “How about I give you a demonstration?”
Lin Hao nodded, very interested. “Sure, sure!”
Ji Yi raised his phone and pretended to swipe a fingertip across it, saying aloud, “See, when I do this, it’ll roll forward.”
Fortunately Xiao Liu had a bit of quick wit. He stepped up at once and played along with Ji Yi, pushing the table forward a few steps as he spoke.
Ji Yi’s hand then swiped to the right. “And this makes it go right.”
Xiao Liu looked left and right. He couldn’t quite tell left from right, but he didn’t dare hold things up just then, so he pushed in one direction on instinct, and the table rolled several turns to the left, right in front of Lin Hao and Chen Lili.
Lin Hao: “Huh?”
Chen Lili: “Eh?”
Xiao Liu: “S-sorry, sorry!!”
Ji Yi withdrew his phone with a straight face. “Ahem. I accidentally swiped the wrong direction. But that’s roughly how the function works.”
Lin Hao was full of admiration. “That’s amazing. Technology really is developing fast these days.”
He had a fairly strong curiosity about tech and still wanted to step up and see where this table’s smart system was installed. Chen Lili, however, wasn’t very interested. Looking at the food on the table and smelling the drifting aromas, all she felt was hunger.
She gave Lin Hao a push. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
It was already late to begin with, and they hadn’t had dinner out. It would’ve been strange if they weren’t hungry at this point. Reminded by Chen Lili, Lin Hao finally remembered what actually mattered right now, and his attention shifted. He just stepped up, carried the food into the room, and said a thank-you to Ji Yi.
Ji Yi kept up his image as a kindly owner in front of them. Only once they’d shut the door did he let a lingering-fear expression show. Then he grabbed Xiao Liu and tossed him into the kitchen. “Can’t even tell left from right and still wants to be the God of Gamblers? Go study, you idiot!”
…
The parcel pickup point in Qingxi Town.
Ji Yi parked his electric scooter outside the pickup point and pulled out his phone to check his pickup text. The woman running the place already recognized him. She set down the bowl she’d been using to feed her child breakfast and came over to ask, “What’s your pickup code, and when did you get the text?”
Ji Yi answered her questions, and the woman went off to find his parcels.
Ji Yi stood there scrolling on his phone when he suddenly felt a small hand gently tugging at his pant leg.
Ji Yi looked down and saw a chubby little girl, maybe just over two years old, pawing at his trousers. There was still a bit of porridge at the corner of her mouth, but it did nothing to diminish her plump, fair-skinned cuteness.
Seeing Ji Yi look her way, the chubby little girl broke into a goofy grin.
The woman glanced over their way distractedly and, seeing the scene, laughed. “Niuniu, don’t bother the nice uncle.”
Ji Yi couldn’t help but return a friendly, warm smile to this child called Niuniu, crouching down to stroke the little girl’s cheek.
Niuniu walked quite steadily. Seeing that Ji Yi was playing with her, she took the initiative to pull him by the hand over to a pile of her toys in the corner, holding each one up to show him one at a time. But when she opened her mouth, all that came out was “ah-ah,” with hardly any meaningful words.
This age was exactly when children were learning to talk, some earlier, some later. Learning to speak was proof that they’d taken a step forward on the road of life.
Looking at Niuniu, Ji Yi thought of those little monkeys in the mountains. Size-wise, they were a bit bigger than Niuniu, but that clear, limpid gaze was exactly the same, as if they held no guard against the world.
And on another level, although the little monkeys had awakened their spiritual awareness, they still only half understood human society, they were in the stage of getting to know it and couldn’t yet speak human words either, which, at this moment, made them rather like Niuniu too.
Ji Yi drifted off in thought for a moment.
Lately he’d been thinking about how to communicate effectively and as equals with the little monkeys. They did understand some of what he said, but not entirely, if Ji Yi said anything the least bit complicated, the monkeys couldn’t fully grasp it. And the monkeys’ own way of expressing themselves was even more of a barrier.
Ji Yi was quite fond of those little monkeys, and for that reason he wanted to find a way to help them break through this basic stage.
“Apple.”
An electronic female voice sounded, flat and emotionless. Ji Yi came to and looked toward the source, finding that Niuniu had pressed a raised apple picture on a sound chart hanging on the wall.
“Ple!” Niuniu promptly read along in a mumbly voice.
Ji Yi’s gaze was drawn to the chart as well, and an idea sprouted in his head. His hand followed by tapping another picture on the chart.
A cucumber.
“Cucumber,” the pre-recorded female voice on the chart sounded again.
Niuniu read along fluently: “Cumber!”
She tilted her little face up, all set for Ji Yi to praise her.
The idea in Ji Yi’s head suddenly clicked into place, and he chirped his praise aloud, “Niuniu, you’re amazing!”
“Heh heh heh.” Having earned praise from the handsome uncle, Niuniu smiled bashfully.
By now the owner had found both of Ji Yi’s parcels and brought them over to hand to him. Seeing how well Ji Yi got along with her daughter, she struck up a conversation. “Niuniu’s too mischievous, she didn’t bother you, did she?”
“No, not at all,” Ji Yi said. He asked her, “Ma’am, is this really useful for helping kids practice pronunciation? I saw Niuniu reading right along with it.”
The owner glanced at the chart on the wall and nodded. “It’s pretty useful, but it depends on the kid too. Some children just aren’t that interested in it. Niuniu here really has learned quite a lot from it, she likes it.” Seeing that Ji Yi looked genuinely interested, she went on to ask him, “Why, do you have a kid at home too?”
She saw how young Ji Yi looked and didn’t expect he might already have children.
Ji Yi answered vaguely, “It’s a relative’s kid. I wanted to buy them one of these charts for some early education.”
“I see,” the owner said, picking up the rice bowl again to feed Niuniu a bite. At the same time she enthusiastically filled Ji Yi in. “These sound charts really are great for early education. This one, for instance, is specially for introducing fruits. There are ones just for vegetables, animals, people, even pinyin and numbers and the like. They come in all kinds. The supermarket up ahead sells them.”
“Thank you, thank you. I’ll go take a look right now.” Ji Yi headed out with his parcels in his arms.
The owner was puzzled. “In such a hurry?”
The supermarket owner up ahead was sitting behind the register, bored, swatting flies. Ji Yi walked straight in and, sure enough, found a stack of charts in a corner inside.
There were not only the ones the woman had mentioned, but also things like vehicles, colors and shapes, Tang poems, Chinese characters, and the Three Character Classic. Ji Yi picked out one of each kind, not leaving out the English alphabet or the strokes and radicals either.
They weren’t expensive anyway, so he figured he might as well buy a complete set all at once.
How to give the little monkeys a decent start in learning had been a worry of Ji Yi’s, but now that he’d found a workable path, he felt a lot more at ease.
He was going to be asking the little monkeys for a lot of help down the road, so of course he wanted to give them whatever help he could now, within his means.
When Ji Yi got back to the guesthouse, he happened to spot one of the little monkeys in a tree not far off. He waved at it right away, and the monkey came clambering over from the tree, quickly reaching Ji Yi.
Ji Yi took the stack of charts down and handed them to the little monkey, giving a brief demonstration by pressing a button on one. “I think these will be pretty useful for you all, good for learning along with.”
With the female voice inside sounding out the words and Ji Yi’s explanation, the little monkey caught on without much effort. Overjoyed, it hugged the stack of charts and called out to Ji Yi several times, then, as if eager to go share the good stuff with its companions, darted off into the woods in a streak.