Mornings in Qingxi Town were lively in their own quiet way. The town sat right beside the Beishan Scenic Area, yet somehow stayed outside its bustle. Aside from the handful of tourists who came to stay overnight, the faces you saw around town were the same old regulars, seen and known year after year. Even so, when Ji Yi wandered around, he didn’t feel out of place at all. If anything, he fit in rather well.
Qingxi Town was small, but it had everything you could need [1]small but fully equipped jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. A quick walk was enough for Ji Yi to figure out where things were, the parcel pickup point, the little diner in town, and tucked away in one corner he even found two bike-share bicycles.
He scanned the code, hopped on, and rode straight toward Beishan.
Coming out here, aside from checking on the old house, his main goal all along had been to travel and clear his head.
It was still early, but plenty of tourists had already gathered at the entrance to the scenic area, getting ready to head up the mountain. Ji Yi noticed a small cluster of young men and women, mostly girls, standing at the exit, craning their necks and looking around.
He parked the bike and went to buy a ticket. As he passed by them, he overheard them murmuring in worried tones. “Are we sure there’s only one exit here? He couldn’t have already left, could he?”
“Last night was a night shoot, I think. He’s probably resting at the hotel up on the summit first.”
“Aw, he works so hard. I hope he gets to rest a little longer, I can wait!” They didn’t dare go into the mountains. The Beishan scenic area was huge, with several separate peaks, and they were afraid that if they went in, they’d miss him by sheer bad luck. Staking out the only exit felt safer.
The girls’ fresh young faces glowed with warmth and determination. Ji Yi didn’t really get their enthusiasm for chasing celebrities, but what he sensed from them was, at least, positive energy.
The Beishan Scenic Area was famous nationwide for several spots of dramatic, perilous, or majestic scenery, plus vast stretches of forest. In recent years, a lot of film and TV productions liked to come here to shoot. Hadn’t he overheard two girls at the high-speed rail station talking about Jian Yi, that hot young star everyone was into right now? By the looks of it, Jian Yi really was filming here these days.
Ji Yi scanned his QR code at the ticket gate, picked a random path, and followed the electronic guide toward one of Beishan’s main scenic overlooks.
The sun had only peeked a faint sliver over the edge of the sky, yet it still tilted plenty of golden light down through the leaves of the trees, onto Ji Yi’s cheeks.
It took him a little over ten minutes to reach the first overlook. Leaning against the railing and looking out to either side, he saw waterfalls and cliffs, green foliage and grassy meadows stretching more than a hundred meters into the distance, quite an imposing sight. Even the air here felt crisp and fresh. Many of the tourists standing at the spot wore looks of pure contentment.
Ji Yi had only been standing there a moment when he suddenly heard footsteps coming down beside him, clearly the sound of a group of people descending.
He turned his head and saw several strikingly good-looking men and women being escorted down, people clustered around them front and back. From their clothes and the gear they carried, they were obviously not ordinary tourists. Ji Yi recognized the young man standing in the very center: it was Jian Yi, the hottest heartthrob of the moment.
Ji Yi had chosen his path at random, he’d never expected to run into Jian Yi here. Jian Yi’s looks really were exceptional, standing in a crowd, he was the one your eyes went to first, whether you meant to or not.
But probably from staying up all night to film, right now he looked worn out to Ji Yi, listless, his lips pressed together in a wilted, spiritless way.
The moment Jian Yi left, Ji Yi heard people around him start discussing him.
“Whoa, that’s Jian Yi, right? Didn’t know he was filming here.”
“God, seeing him makes my hands itch [2]I want to smack him jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. His acting is as bad as his fans are brain-dead. Last time he was in scenes with my fave, and even my fave’s acting couldn’t save it. Only his fans could stare at that expressionless face and rave about his acting. Wonder whose show he’s going to poison this time.”
Ji Yi didn’t understand the love-and-hate feuds between different fan camps, but he had to admit Jian Yi’s acting really was terrible.
To see all of Beishan properly, a single day felt a bit tight. Ji Yi just decided to head down a little early.
He checked his phone. The photos he’d casually snapped and posted to the family group chat earlier had already gotten a round of replies. His mom, especially, had fired off a string of 【Strong】 and 【Thumbs Up】 emojis, then started telling the others about the fun she’d had climbing Beishan as a kid. Voice messages popped up one after another, and the several middle-aged and elderly members of the group ate it up.
For Ji Yi, taking those photos had just been going through the motions. Seeing that his mom wasn’t going to bother him about it, he actually breathed a sigh of relief.
Just as he thought he’d dodged a bullet, his mom rang him on voice call.
“How many days are you planning to spend out there? Oh, let me tell you, when I went grocery shopping today I ran into Auntie Chen from the next unit over. You remember Auntie Chen, right? Her son went to the same high school as you.”
Ji Yi answered vaguely. “Mm-hm.”
“I hear Auntie Chen’s son works at a foreign company now, doing quite well for himself. She heard you’re not working at the moment and asked if I wanted her to help introduce you to something—”
Ji Yi had some vague memory of this Auntie Chen his mom kept mentioning. Her son and he weren’t the least bit close. However well the guy was doing now, Ji Yi felt it would be awkward to pin his job search on some offhand remark. He and the man were basically half-strangers, and parents, when they talked about their own kids, mostly did it to show off a little. How could he take such casual talk seriously?
Ji Yi felt his mom was grasping at straws [3]panicking and trying anything jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, and immediately turned down her suggestion. “Mom, stop worrying about my job search. I’ll handle it myself.”
She caught the seriousness and displeasure in his voice, and softened her tone a little. “I just thought there’d be no harm in looking, that’s all. I’m not trying to rush you. I just worry that you’re the one getting anxious.”
Ji Yi understood what she meant. His mom really had no intention of pushing him to find work, most of the time she even told him to take it easy. It was Ji Yi himself who felt anxious about being unemployed, and that anxiety had rubbed off on his parents. When you care, you worry [4]caring clouds your judgment jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, a lot of the words came out despite themselves. His parents were probably more anxious about it in their hearts than he was.
In the past, whenever this topic came up, Ji Yi couldn’t help but feel a knot of frustration. This time, though, he stayed calm. He looked at the tourists coming and going around him, at the vendors doing business outside the scenic area, and, probably to set his mom’s mind at ease, the words just slipped out. “Actually, I want to try starting my own thing. Open a guesthouse out here.”
The sentences that followed came out smoothly, as if they’d been brewing in his heart for a long time.
“Grandpa’s house is in pretty good shape overall, and it’s close to Beishan. I want to try running a guesthouse. You know my temperament, maybe it really is better for me to work for myself. The scenery’s nice out here, the environment’s nice, and I like it. Anyway, I’ll just give it a try first. It’s our own family’s house, so the cost isn’t much and the risk is low. If it really doesn’t work out, I’ll just treat it as taking a long vacation.”
“A guesthouse, huh…” His mom was startled at first, but her voice quickly lightened. “That’s fine too. If you’ve got the idea and the plan, then give it a try. Every line of work builds up some experience. It’s good.”
Ji Yi chatted with her a bit more, then hung up the call.
The midday sun shone on his face. Ji Yi lifted his head toward the especially bright blue sky, where thin layers of cloud overlapped one another.
He’d just made an impulsive, risky decision, yet his mood was strangely light.
That was right, he was still young, he had room to make mistakes and try again. And after such a long stretch of anxiety and tension, he really did need a chance to unwind.
When it came to opening a guesthouse, Ji Yi didn’t harbor grand ambitions. Rather than say he wanted to build a great enterprise, it was more that he wanted a suitable excuse to stay out here for a while.
Ji Yi spent a night at a hotel at the foot of Beishan, a very ordinary budget chain hotel. He took a shower, changed his clothes, lay in bed, and played on his phone. He didn’t expect that the moment he opened a video site he often watched, the algorithm would push him a video about the Beishan area.
Even though the video had fewer than a hundred views, Ji Yi saw the title, “Exploring the Abandoned Village Beside Beishan: Terrifying, Enter at Your Own Risk!”, and, driven by curiosity, clicked in.
Once inside, he looked at the uploader’s ID and knitted his brows, wondering whether Wei Hu had anything to do with “Hey-Hey Little Tiger.”
The video was only five minutes long: shaky footage, a dim sky, eerie bird calls, and Wei Hu’s narration in the background, laced with a bit of nervousness. He had to admit, it actually did feel like the real deal.
The comment section, though, had only a scattered few comments, and he couldn’t tell if they were left by one of Wei Hu’s own alt accounts, since they were all things like “You got this” and “Nice work.”
Ji Yi thought for a moment, then decided to do Wei Hu a favor and leave a comment that looked reasonably heartfelt.
“Great video, keep it up. Hope to see more finished pieces.”
After posting, he backed out and browsed a few other videos. Once Ji Yi had watched a round of guesthouse-experience clips, a notification popped up in the top right corner: his comment had gotten a reply.
He clicked in. It was the uploader, Hey-Hey Little Tiger, replying to him: “Thanks for the support! Tomorrow I’ll drop another clip about all kinds of spirits and monsters I’ve run into over the years, including an old tree that turned into a spirit, real experience, super terrifying!”
All kinds of things he’d run into over the years, huh. Ji Yi couldn’t help but laugh, thinking Wei Hu sure knew how to lay it on thick.
Early the next morning, Ji Yi checked out.
After finishing the call with his mom yesterday afternoon, she’d packed up some things and shipped them to him, an express parcel with extra postage for rush delivery. That morning Ji Yi planned to head to the old house first and tidy up.
The town’s supermarket was tiny, basically no more than a corner shop. Ji Yi searched through it and just barely managed to find what he needed: a broom, rags, dish soap, and various other cleaning supplies.
There was no telling how many years these things had been sitting in the store. They were unopened and new, yet they all looked aged. Ji Yi even studied the dish soap over and over, checking the expiration date on it, which earned him a rather displeased sidelong glance from the owner.
Once the total was rung up, Ji Yi opened his backpack to tuck the small items inside. Opening it right in front of the owner exposed the paper clothes he’d bought the day before and hadn’t yet had time to burn. In an instant, the owner’s already odd look at Ji Yi took on a few more shades of wariness.
Ji Yi squeezed the items in and rearranged them. The paper clothes were still inside a fairly proper transparent hard-shell box, so they weren’t afraid of a little pressure. He shouldered his pack and left without changing his expression, as if a young man carrying incense candles and paper clothes in his backpack were the most normal thing in the world.
Ji Yi didn’t head back to Hongye Village first. Instead, he went straight from memory to the grave of the old man ghost.
The weather was fine and sunny. In front of the several solitary graves, wild grass still grew thick, and the scene lay quiet and desolate.
Ji Yi’s steps stopped before the old man ghost’s grave. The corner of the tombstone he’d knocked a piece off of earlier was still broken. He crouched down and took a careful look at the characters on the marker, which were already hard to make out. The name was very blurred, he could only faintly tell that the old man ghost’s surname was probably Li. The two characters after it took Ji Yi a good long while before he settled on them. With the birth and death years and the name, burning things over to the deceased would be easy.
A gust of ghostly wind blew past. Ji Yi could feel something in the shadows quietly watching him, but he paid it no mind. He simply opened his backpack, pulled out the paper clothes, recited a string of words with practiced ease, and, with a click of the lighter, the paper clothes quickly caught fire before his eyes, turning to flying ash in a moment and vanishing.
Once that was done, Ji Yi clapped his hands and stood up. Not caring whether any ghost was listening, he addressed the tombstone. “Ruined your clothes, so I’ve burned you a new set. We’re square now.”
With that, he made as if to leave.
Old Man Li had been hiding behind the grave mound, watching Ji Yi with his heart in his throat, not knowing what Ji Yi meant to do. He’d never imagined Ji Yi had come to burn him clothes.
As the paper clothes turned to ash on this side, on the other side Old Man Li was instantly wearing a brand-new, neat set of garments. The set he’d had on before had been burned by his daughter decades ago, the material was ordinary, and after all these years of wear it could no longer take any wear and tear. Yet Old Man Li had still been reluctant to change it.
Once his daughter died, and with no grandchildren to speak of, his offerings had been cut off. Never mind extra comforts like paper clothes, even eating his fill was something he hadn’t known in over a decade.
As the old saying goes, “A ghost, once well fed, can endure a year.” It didn’t mean one meal kept you full for a year, it meant you could bear a year’s worth of hunger. Ghosts who received offerings had it better, there were always descendants remembering them. But a lonely wandering ghost with no way to reincarnate, one who never caught any offerings or charity, could only endure hunger for a long, long time.
The apple Ji Yi had left him the day before yesterday, for instance, was the first taste of food Old Man Li had had in over ten years.
Now, seeing the clothes Ji Yi had burned for him, a comfortable, brand-new set worn against his body, Old Man Li was overcome with a tangle of emotions.
Ji Yi was fierce, yes, but Old Man Li had, after all, come up with the idea of harming a living person only because he’d been driven half-mad by hunger. And Ji Yi hadn’t truly held it against him, he’d even given him an apple to eat and new clothes to wear.
Seeing Ji Yi about to leave, Old Man Li couldn’t be bothered with anything else. He hurriedly showed himself and called out, “Young man, wait a moment.”
His heart carried a touch of shame, mixed with gratitude. Having stopped Ji Yi, he hemmed and hawed for a long while before finally saying, “This… I don’t even know how to repay you. If there’s anything I can help with, just say the word.”
“No need to repay me. From now on, just try not to harm people, that’s all,” Ji Yi said. He didn’t press the matter. People and ghosts each had their own karma and fate, a few words from him couldn’t change that.
Speaking of help, though, Ji Yi’s feet, already turned to go, stopped again. “There is actually something I’d like to ask you.”
Old Man Li had been a local before he died, and he’d stayed here for decades after death, so he ought to know the local matters well. Ji Yi figured he’d be clear on quite a lot of things.
It was while pulling out the paper clothes to burn that Ji Yi had seen the incense candles in his pack, which made him wonder whether Wei Hu had gone to apologize to the old tree spirit. Thinking of the old tree spirit, he then remembered Lin Zhao, whom he’d seen two nights ago.
Ji Yi could tell Lin Zhao’s identity was out of the ordinary. He’d figured Lin Zhao was probably a ghost, yet the old tree spirit had been extremely wary of him, and the man was dressed like an ancient. Could he be someone who’d died centuries ago and already cultivated into a ghost immortal? Since a being like that existed here, even though Ji Yi still intended to hold to the principle of “well water not troubling river water” [5]each keeping to their own domain jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_5').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_5', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, he wanted to get clear on the man’s identity.
“Two nights ago I ran into someone called Lin Zhao. Do you know who he is?” Ji Yi asked it casually, but at the words Old Man Li was startled out of his wits.
“Aiya, that lordship—” he stammered. “I’m not very familiar with him myself. I only hear he’s a great personage who watches over the mountain behind Hongye Village. As long as you’re within the mountain’s bounds, you have to tread carefully. But that lordship doesn’t usually leave the mountain. When did you run into him?”
Ji Yi saw the bewilderment on his face and knew Old Man Li wasn’t lying to him, and had no reason to. What Old Man Li had revealed was already enough for Ji Yi.
“Oh, I just heard the name.” Ji Yi didn’t say where he’d heard the name Lin Zhao, only offering a vague reply to close the topic. “Well, nothing else then. I’ll be off.”
He did set off straight down the road home, but after a few minutes something felt off, he kept feeling that something was following behind him.
In the mountain woods, Ji Yi suddenly whipped his head around, only to see trees and grass of all heights. Yet after two or three times of this, when Ji Yi was nearly back to Hongye Village, the feeling still hadn’t faded.
He walked on in silence, and the next time he turned, he moved very fast. This time he finally caught a figure with no time to hide, clearly Old Man Li in his new clothes, drifting cautiously among the trees a dozen or so meters behind him.
Ji Yi frowned and stared at him. “What are you following me for?”
He wondered whether Old Man Li might still be harboring some ill intent. It wasn’t uncommon for ghosts to be fickle and unpredictable.
Seeing the suspicion on his face, Old Man Li could tell Ji Yi had thought the worst of him, and hurried to clear his name. “I— I just wanted to see where you live. In case there’s ever anything I can help you with down the line, so I can lend a hand.”
Ji Yi didn’t expect Old Man Li to be so honest, so set on repaying a kindness. His brow relaxed. He wasn’t afraid to let Old Man Li know where he lived, either. He simply said, “What could you possibly help me with? No need to trouble yourself. Go on back.”
Now that Old Man Li knew where Ji Yi lived, he figured he’d come by often from now on, surely there’d be somewhere he could lend a hand. So he didn’t rush to get anything done just then, and under Ji Yi’s gaze he slipped into the woods and slowly drifted away.
Ghosts didn’t fare well coming out in daylight. If not for all the woods around Beishan, which carried their own yin energy for cover, and for the apple of Ji Yi’s he’d eaten counting as a bit of an offering, Old Man Li could hardly have taken shape.
Having sent Old Man Li off, Ji Yi went in and threw open every door of the old house. He’d bought the tools precisely to give the place a thorough cleaning, today was going to keep him busy.
One sweep of the broom stirred up years of accumulated dust, which scattered into countless motes of light in the sunshine pouring in through the skylight.
Ji Yi tied a brand-new towel over his face as a makeshift mask, better than nothing at blocking the flying dust. After sweeping through upstairs and down, even with a young man’s decent stamina, he felt his arms getting sore.
With all this dust, Ji Yi was glad he’d changed into an old set of clothes he’d dug out of the wardrobe beforehand. Their color and style were a little like the ones he’d burned for Old Man Li today. They must have been his grandpa’s old clothes, men’s clothing for the elderly always looked about the same.
After an afternoon of cleaning, the old house was finally refreshed, looking fit for someone to live in.
Ji Yi stood in the doorway of the old house, hands on his hips, looking inside, his heart full of accomplishment. His phone buzzed. He took it out for a look and thought, perfect timing. After his mom hung up the voice call yesterday, she’d packed up quite a lot of things and rush-shipped them over, now the delivery guy was calling to have Ji Yi come pick up his parcel at the intersection.
Ji Yi jogged over to the intersection and, sure enough, saw a delivery guy waiting there, an old three-wheeled cart parked at the roadside.
Seeing Ji Yi, the delivery guy looked rather conflicted. “There’s a lot of stuff. Want me to bring it in for you…?”
Although he’d offered on his own, his tone was very hesitant, and his eyes kept darting to the area behind Ji Yi. He added, “Someone actually lives in there? I thought this place had been empty for ages.”
Ji Yi wrote his name on the delivery slip and said offhand, “Just moved in. Thanks. So yeah, help me bring it in, it’s not far, your cart can make it.”
The three-wheeled cart itself wasn’t wide, and the road leading to Hongye Village was more than enough to fit it.
The delivery guy stayed silent.
Ji Yi read his expression and asked tentatively, “Or how about I drive it in myself, drop off the stuff, and bring it back to you?”
Ji Yi didn’t mind either way, but he was worried the delivery guy wouldn’t feel easy about it. Who’d have thought the guy would look so relieved at his words, he immediately hopped off the cart to make room for Ji Yi. “Then be careful. There aren’t any other parcels on the cart anyway. I’ll wait here for you.”
Ji Yi noticed his eyes kept darting to the space behind him, and thought there might be something there. He couldn’t help glancing back, but behind him there was nothing but a road leading to Hongye Village and the mountains, nothing else.
“You really live in there?” The delivery guy still looked doubtful. “Living there for good?”
“Yeah.” Ji Yi had already climbed onto the cart. He turned back and said, “Are you in charge of this area? Then we’ll probably be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”
The delivery guy’s expression was complicated, he seemed on the verge of speaking but held back [6]wanting to say something yet stopping himself jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_6').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_6', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. In the end, when Ji Yi came back to return the cart after dropping off the stuff, he couldn’t help but blurt it out.
“You know these mountains are strange, right?” Not waiting for Ji Yi to answer, the delivery guy poured it all out at once, like beans tipped from a bamboo tube [7]a nod to the Chinese idiom 竹筒倒豆子 (‘pouring beans out of a bamboo tube’), meaning to blurt out everything at once, holding nothing back jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_7').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_7', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. “I’m a local, see. I used to hear the old folks say that back in the day nobody went hunting in this mountain, and even during the famine years hardly anyone would walk into it. I heard someone once got so desperately hungry that he went into the mountain, no telling what he ate in there and filled his belly with, and came back out, then dropped dead within a day.”
The mountain was surely strange, but hearing the delivery guy’s example, Ji Yi couldn’t help but wonder aloud, “Wasn’t it that he ate himself to death?”
When a person had been starving badly, going without food for a long time and then suddenly eating too much, it really was possible to burst. Ji Yi had heard the older generation talk about the famine years, some people, driven half-mad by hunger, would eat wildly the moment they got food, downing several catties of grain at a go, and before long the person was done for. They’d been stuffed to death, plain and simple.
The delivery guy went on, “Then why do you think this village emptied out for no reason?”
Ji Yi didn’t know how Hongye Village had emptied out either, but he made a reasonable guess. “Rural hollowing-out, probably. I read an article about that once.”
To be honest, even though he could see spectral things and had gotten used to all sorts of absurd, nonsensical ghost-and-spirit affairs, Ji Yi couldn’t go against his conscience and say things that didn’t fit scientific progress.
Because ghost-and-spirit matters intersecting with the human world were extremely rare to begin with, where was there any broad universality to it? In reality, a great many of the paranormal tales people were so keen on online, or the so-called personal experiences, were largely just self-imagined embellishments born of coincidence and fear.
The delivery guy just took Ji Yi for the fearless sort who didn’t know any better [8]the ignorant fear nothing jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_8').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_8', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); and shook his head. “Anyway, if you really are going to live here, you should still be careful.”
That last line was a well-meant warning. Ji Yi nodded. “Thanks.”
Ji Yi’s mom had sent him a full three big boxes of things. Never mind the clothes and bedding, she hadn’t even left out Ji Yi’s toothbrush cup. Ji Yi found it funny as he unpacked, but he still carefully set the toothbrush cup on the table.
These three big boxes were all his parents’ care and concern.
Ji Yi hadn’t stopped all day, and by a little past four in the afternoon his stomach was growling. As he walked toward town, he mulled over the fact that he really needed to arrange a proper means of transport. If he was going to live here from now on, getting the electricity connected was crucial too.
This hour barely counted as the start of dinnertime, but the town’s only restaurant was deserted [9]so empty you could set a net for sparrows at the door jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2931956_1_9').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2931956_1_9', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. Inside sat a middle-aged man playing on his phone, unbothered by the greasy tabletops and the grime left over from lunch, or maybe yesterday.
Ji Yi couldn’t cook for himself. He let his eyes go blank and ignored the stains on the tables and chairs, brainwashing himself: “I’m wearing Grandpa’s old clothes anyway, and I’ve been cleaning all day, who’s got room to complain about what’s dirty?”
Having steeled himself, Ji Yi ordered two home-style dishes, then plugged his phone into a charger. While waiting for the food, he asked Wei Hu whether he knew any local electricians.
Wei Hu replied quickly, loyally promising Ji Yi he’d bring an electrician to his place tomorrow.
Wei Hu also didn’t forget to tell Ji Yi that the video he’d posted had racked up quite a few views, some viewers had even said they were looking forward to his next one. Maybe he really was about to blow up.
Ji Yi, that enthusiastic viewer, sent Wei Hu a big “You got this” sticker.
Making the old house livable was simple, but making it fit for a modern person’s lifestyle wasn’t easy. Even with just Ji Yi living there alone, there were still plenty of things that needed renovating.
Ji Yi reckoned that for at least the next half-month or more, he’d have his hands full.
But the novelty of changing up his living environment was enough to sweep away the fatigue. Staring at his phone screen at the simple vegetable seeds he’d added to his cart, Ji Yi was already daydreaming about clearing out a little vegetable plot and slowly learning from online tutorials to grow crops like baby cucumbers and cherry tomatoes.
The smile lingering on Ji Yi’s face only slowly faded when the owner brought over two plates of indescribable dishes.
“Shredded pork with green peppers, tomato and egg.” The owner announced the dishes like a machine with no feelings, setting before Ji Yi one plate of something that couldn’t be told apart as stir-fried tomato and egg or tomato-paste-mixed egg, and another that looked more like green peppers stir-fried with green peppers.
“Rice?” the owner also asked.
Ji Yi suppressed the urge to turn and walk out, telling himself over and over to just make do for now, then stiffly cracked a smile and nodded. “Big bowl, please.”
Fortunately, though the owner’s cooking was a muddled mess, the plain white rice was actually quite fragrant. Ji Yi ate two big bowls of it and finally felt the stamina he’d lost coming back.
Ji Yi made another trip to the town supermarket. As he entered, the owner was bent over sorting goods. Ji Yi turned in from another aisle, and the owner didn’t notice him.
By the time Ji Yi came out with a pile of instant noodles in all sorts of flavors, ready to pay, the owner finally noticed him. At first the owner glanced up at Ji Yi, then took a second, quick and startled look.
He remembered from Ji Yi’s face that he’d come by during the day, but the clothes Ji Yi was wearing were unmistakably in the style of those paper clothes!
The supermarket owner recalled the paper clothes Ji Yi had exposed earlier when he opened his backpack, and his mind rapidly strung together a story. Could it be that Ji Yi had stolen them from a funeral shop that morning to wear himself, and now wanted to “buy” food at his store?
They all said some of the mountains around here were strange. The owner had only ever heard of such things before, never experienced one himself. Now, running into it out of nowhere, his heart pounded and his legs couldn’t stop trembling.
The owner looked in terror at the bills in Ji Yi’s hand, wondering whether the money might be hell money or ash. Right now he was just being deceived by a ghost, wasn’t he? If he took the money and had to give Ji Yi change, wouldn’t he be out both the goods and the cash?
He was tempted to open his drawer and check whether the money he’d taken in that morning had any of Ji Yi’s paper money mixed in.
Ji Yi held out a bill, but the owner didn’t reach for it for the longest time. Feeling the owner’s gaze fixed on him in such a complicated way, Ji Yi thought it strange too. He waved the fifty-yuan note in his hand. “You’re not taking the money?”
The owner’s nerves were already stretched taut. Hearing Ji Yi urge him, he blurted out in fright, “No money, no money.”
Ji Yi: “…Then does WeChat Pay work?”
Only then did the owner’s cold sweat abruptly stop. Looking again at Ji Yi’s shadow under the lights and his ruddy lips, his terror turned to embarrassment. After a long pause, he said, “Then… then scan mine.”
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