Chapter 3: Painted Skin

14TH AUG 2021~ VERALUCTL

The rays of a few torches were combined into one. Meng Xiaoming’s lips trembled the entire time. An Jie placed a hand on her shoulder and she took a few deep breaths in, putting on her gloves and calming slightly. She watched from the side, helping pass some tools to An Jie and make some small incisions.

Mo Yannan watched at first with horror, then with growing disgust before he was helped to the side, his face pale. A while later, Meng Xiaoming dropped her tools abruptly, pushed apart the small crowd, knelt down, and retched. An Jie stood silently next to the corpse, his brows twisting.

Shen Jiancheng’s looked at the severed head with heavy eyes. The place where the head and the body were connected was filled with tentacle-like things, the parts exposed to air a grey-purple color that they had oxidized into immediately when An Jie had pulled the head separate from the body.

An Jie coughed lightly. “What do you think it is?”

“Impossible.” Shen Jiancheng rubbed his eyes heavily. “Impossible, this is impossible…”

Lao Ma looked at An Jie, then at Shen Jiancheng, then pointed at the beauty’s head. “This…”

Li San’er sighed, sat down, and rubbed his face, a small chuckle coming from his lowered head. “I swear I’m not old enough to be insane… Guys, how did this monster grow a human head? Is it a man or an animal?”

Nobody answered his question. 

An Jie sighed. “A painted skin1.” He picked up the jacket that he had taken off and pinned the pistol that he had picked up some time ago to his waist. “Everyone, round up your tents; we’ll take turns to stand guard. I’ll go first.”

Lao Ma took a cigarette and stared at An Jie for a long time before puffing out a smoke ring. “Then I’ll swap with you after midnight.”

—————

The desert stars shone like they had been polished. An Jie leaned against the tent’s entrance and hugged his knees, looking to the heavens. Starlight showered down on him as he sat there, the entire Milky Way reflected in his eyes.

The past, the future; the stars knew it all.

That was what Mo Yannan saw as he crawled out from his tent: a man who had been colored with vicissitudes by time, yet was still so decidedly handsome sitting on the sandy ground, his jacket wrapped around his lean and frail silhouette and the hair falling around his face making him seem a little bit desolate. 

Mo Yannan walked up to him. An Jie smiled and shuffled across a bit. “Why is Professor Mo still up when it’s this late? Aren’t you afraid that you won’t have enough energy to walk tomorrow?”

Mo Yannan mimicked him and raised his head up to the desert sky, sighing. “How could I sleep? I close my eyes and feel like there are things crawling across my body, and then I’m reminded of that humanoid ‘painted skin’.” He shook his head and laughed mockingly at himself. “How cowardly of me.”

“Who’s not a coward?” An Jie stretched out his cramped limbs and said almost nonchalantly. “Who’s not a coward after all… I’m also afraid.”

“You?” 

But An Jie stopped, his eyes moving to another place. “Professor Mo came to such a dangerous place at such an old age. Isn’t your family worried?”

Mo Yannan’s expression dimmed and he silently took off his glasses, cleaning them with his clothes.

An Jie glanced at him and knew he had hit a sore spot. He was just about to redirect the topic with a smile when Mo Yannan started quietly, “My wife2 and I divorced a long time ago… The kids, the kids are all busy with their own things, so they don’t really know what I’m doing.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small folder, opening it in front of An Jie. “My son and my two daughters.”

An Jie took it and in the overhead stars’ low light, he took a closer look. A much younger Professor Mo held a woman with thin brows, their smiles beautifully bright, each of them carrying a little girl of about one or two years old in their arms; a pair of twins. In between them stood a young boy with a serious outfit and a silly face, about five or six years.

An Jie couldn’t help but chuckle. “How nice.”

Mo Yannan continued quietly, “The boy is called Mo Cong, with the ‘cong’ for ‘hurried’. His mother’s temper was a little fiery and we both wanted him to consider his actions carefully before making them, so we gave him that name. He got into university this year; he’s not a very obedient child but quite studious. The girls are both in high school. The one I’m holding is the older sister, Xiao Jin, and the one that my wife is holding is the younger one, Xiao Yu3. They used to be such good kids…” He paused and sighed again. “I’m not a good father.”

“‘Of pure and noble character’.” An Jie stuffed the folder back into Mo Yannan’s pocket. “A good name, no wonder they’re both so cute. They’ll be pretty girls when they grow up as well. It’s hard to raise children, they might yet understand your true feelings when they’re older. Children are always like that; you can’t know your parents’ kindness without raising a child yourself.”

Mo Yannan was a little embarrassed. “What am I doing, saying this to you…”

An Jie suddenly lowered his head and looked at him seriously. “You shouldn’t have come here.” His eyes were so bright; Mo Yannan remembered this man expressionlessly loading a gun, remembered him putting his entire arm into the monster’s mouth, and couldn’t help but freeze. “There are people waiting for you at home, you shouldn’t have come to such a dangerous place.”

An Jie slowly lowered his eyes. His long eyelashes cast a small pool of darkness in those shadowed orbs; compared to his heartless-looking mouth and nose, it was truly gentle, truly desolate. Mo Yannan suddenly felt that this man was lonely, had a huge weight on his heart, and couldn’t help but soften his voice. “What, is there something weighing on you?”

An Jie shook his head lightly and smiled. “Why would there be?”

Mo Yannan patted his shoulder. “I’ve eaten a few more years of rice than you, so please don’t mind me offering some advice. Xiao An, I’ve already lived more than half of my life away and I know that there will be many more bad times than good times, but can I say that as long as life continues, as long as there are still people to look after, we have to keep on striving forwards; no matter how bad life becomes, we will have to endure it!” He sighed. 

An Jie carefully looked over this white-haired old professor. He had always felt that this old scholar was a little backwards, old-fashioned and timid, but now he suddenly realized that he too was a courageous man, simply that all his courage had been deeply locked up, either buried underneath the long scrolls of history gone by and dimly lit lanterns, or within that broken and heartless family.

They both fell silent simultaneously. An Jie’s fingers tapped on the gun’s barrel, but his eyes were fixed towards the vast sky. Mo Yannan looked in the same direction as him, a little lost, his thoughts drifting to someplace unknown.

Suddenly, An Jie’s breathing hitched and before Mo Yannan had time to react, An Jie pushed him down and said shortly, “Don’t make any sound. Go back to the tents and get everyone up. Be careful!”

He commanded him with a deterrent force that could not be ignored. Mo Yannan immediately climbed up and tried to copy him, listening for any noises, but he couldn’t hear anything; everything appeared to be as normal as it could be. Though in this ‘normal’, something strange could be sensed. His back broke out in a cold sweat and he ran back as fast as he could to the tents to gather everyone.

Lao Ma saw him come in and immediately climbed up, his two beady eyes staring at him brightly as he dragged Shen Jiancheng up as well. “What happened?”

Mo Yannan shook his head. “I’m not sure, we were chatting when Xiao An told me to gather everyone. I’m not clear on what happened.”

“I’ll go and take a look.” Hearing that it was An Jie the news came from, Lao Ma frowned and carried his gun outside. Shen Jiancheng and Mo Yannan went to call for Li San’er and Meng Xiaoming but before Li San’er had time to crawl up and ask what was going on, a gun suddenly fired outside. All of them were stunned and ran outside one after the other.

That one look was already too much. Mo Yannan hadn’t prepared himself mentally and almost threw up last night’s dinner. An Jie and Lao Ma stood with their backs to each other, a mob of man-faced monsters surrounding them. Lao Ma was still holding onto that gun in his hands- it seemed that he was the one who had shot just then; very close to where the blaster was pointing, a painted skin was blasted into shreds, pieces of flesh splattered all over the ground.

The sound first alarmed the monsters and they stood in silence for a while. Then, there came rustling as those scythe-like legs slowly moved- towards the direction of that flesh.

They all watched with wide eyes as the monsters gathered together, the ones with human heads slowly raising their front legs, exposing their bloody mouths as they started to devour their own companion, bite after bite. Almost immediately, the entire body was gone. The largest monster suddenly stopped and hissed to the sky. The rest of the mob turned towards it and waited.

As they watched, a huge sucker appeared on that thing’s neck, mouthing on the dead monster’s human head that no one had touched. The sucker slowly expanded until it engulfed the entire head. At the same time, the head that the monster originally wore fell off as if it had been excreted, a new head slowly appearing at where it was originally- the one it had just devoured!

“I understand, I understand now!” Just when everyone was holding their breath, watching the scene unfold, Meng Xiaoming suddenly spoke, her voice trembling. 

“Miss Meng, don’t make a sound!” Lao Ma scolded quickly.

It was still too late though; Meng Xiaoming muttered as if under a trance, “I understand now, the heads are the remains of those they ate; they eat humans and cut off their heads… they eat humans and cut off their heads…”

The sound of voices immediately drew the attention of all of the monsters, the unfeeling, grey heads turning to face them all at the same time with an eerie smile, razor-sharp legs slowly beginning to move…

An Jie suddenly grabbed a shotgun from Li San’er’s back. “Take care of Miss Meng,” he said.

He pulled Lao Ma behind him, the two immediately switching positions. His lean figure was like a leopard suddenly seeing its prey, filled with an excitement that others could not understand. He didn’t observe nor detour, but rather ran straight ahead before the monsters had let loose a single attack.

Mo Yannan’s heart rose into his throat——

Predator, and prey.

1A monster from the Chinese short story The Painted Skin from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio (1740). In short, a man brings back home a homeless and beautiful young lady, only to find that she’s actually a monster with a beautiful painted face, her true one having ‘great jagged teeth like a saw’ and a green face. He’s given a demon-repelling charm by a Daoist once he realizes, which enrages her and she rips out his heart.

The story itself has lessons on morality, namely lust (the man has sex with the woman, despite having a wife, and is fooled by her beauty), humanity (the monster was spared for pity for its sentience, only to kill the man), and karma (the monster after killing its benefactor is killed in return). 

2Mo Yannan uses ‘爱人’ here, which is a geographical-dependent term that can replace ‘wife’ in a sentence. It’s more formal than ‘老婆’ which is the most commonly used term for wife, and more affectionate than ‘妻子’.

3Mo Cong when put together means ‘don’t hurry’, and the names of the two girls when you put them together means ‘beautiful jade’, but can also mean ‘of pure and noble character’. The ‘xiao’ in their names is an affectionate prefix meaning ‘little’. It’s used as an indication of someone dear to you; it’s not part of their actual names.