Chapter 7: A Trapped Beast

3RD OCT 2021~ VERALUCTL

An Jie froze as the others looked around them, every blade of grass seeming like a potential enemy. After a while, Li San’er asked, “Xiao An, was it… your stomach?” 

An Jie raised a finger to his lips and after a short while, that thin, cold laughter came again, but a little louder. This time, everyone could hear it. Lao Ma’s face paled immediately and the old merchant who feared nothing muttered under his breath, “All ghosts know how to cry, but those that laugh… are the deadliest.”

Li San’er’s face was miserable. “This- this isn’t Meng-jie blaming us for leaving her behind and coming to look for us, right?”

Mo Yannan patted Li San’er’s shoulder heavily. “Zhixiao, as a scientist, you shouldn’t have such thoughts.”

“B-but…”

“I’ll go take a look,” An Jie interrupted suddenly, scaring Li San’er into silence. He stared at An Jie like he was looking at a monster. Li San’er told himself that if he had kids, he had to educate them well; any issue was fine as long as it wasn’t An Jie’s curiosity-killed-the-cat attitude. Snowy mountains that buried people without even spitting out their bones and he wanted to take a look; mirages in the great desert and he wanted to take a look; now a laughing ghost in an eerie, ancient city, and he still wanted to take a look! What a man…

An Jie raised a foot but was unable to step forward. He looked down. Li San’er, was clutching a corner of his jacket and looking at him painfully with small, watery eyes. “An-ge, Master An, can you please not be so energetic? I-I’m not that brave… That little miss’ laugh was really creepy; who knows, maybe she has some grievances from her past life. You’re not working for Kaifeng1 you know, you don’t have to deal with other people’s things, l-let’s just go our own way and not disturb anything…”

Halfway through speaking, he suddenly froze. A light breeze blew by, carrying with it a certain sickly sweet fragrance… but why was there wind underground?

It was as if someone had blown out a perfume-scented breath. A female voice sighed behind them longingly before singing shrilly, “The Jingu of Shi2 values all new voices, ten hu3 of beads for a lady’s grace…”

Li San’er made an off-key screech like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and leapt onto An Jie. He was a big man with a big body and the impact made An Jie stumble back before he got his footing.

Lao Ma was standing close to them and without thinking, he turned around and shot.

“Don’t…” Mo Yannan opened his mouth to stop him, but froze before he could.

There was nothing behind Li San’er but open air. The bullet from Lao Ma’s gun headed straight towards the palace’s pillar… Mo Yannan rubbed his eyes. The bullet had vanished. He had watched as it entered the pillar, but there wasn’t even a scratch left on the surface!

It was doubtful that Li San’er’s mouth would ever be able to close again.

Shen Jiancheng took a silent step backwards and An Jie frowned. 

In the silence, the city of demons seemed to sense the unfriendliness of its intruders and like an ominous gate had been opened, the woman’s disturbing laugh, her deranged sigh, and her low, murmured recitation grew louder and louder, circling the entire palace but right next to them at the same time… Like a maggot that had burrowed into their bones, it tortured them from the inside out until even their organs seemed to radiate icy air.

“Calm down! Lao Ma, calm down!” An Jie raised his voice but the voice of the ghostly woman rose with him.

“Shi…”

“The Jingu of Shi… The Jingu of Shi…”

“The Jingu of Shi values new voices…. new voices.”

An Jie took a deep breath, fingers loosely over his gun’s handle, and closed his eyes.

That person had once said to him, ‘When your senses are confused, close your eyes. Your eyes are the windows to your soul, but sometimes the fluttering petals will blind you, confuse you, and lure you away.’

Suddenly, he sprinted out, aiming at the throne high up in the golden hall! The sound of laughter became shriller, the gentleness and crispness it had at first vanishing. As he approached, it turned into an almost ear-piercing shriek, like… the man-faced monsters in the desert.

An Jie kicked out and with a swift movement, the thick and massive dragon throne was swept aside. Behind it was a small cubicle, the door to which had already been corroded away by the vast expanse of time. Once the barrier blocking it had been removed, a thick black smoke floated out. It seemed almost sentient, stopping and gathering for a moment before suddenly lunging towards An Jie.

“This day, the day he gives his love; this time, the time for joy to be received…” The scream sounded like an explosion by An Jie’s ears. He took half a step back into thin air, causing the people behind him to almost yell out in fear- but he merely flipped backwards and landed firmly a few steps down. Ignoring the black smoke, he unslung the machine gun from his back and sprayed at the hole behind the dragon throne.

“Your wife has never… AHHHHHHH!!”

Everyone’s palms were sticky with sweat. An Jie that man, he was so unreliable at crucial moments! Just when the black smoke was about to touch him, a shriek sounded, living up to their expectations. The bandit-like spraying from An Jie had finally achieved its effect. The black smoke stopped midair before scattering lifelessly.

It looked like the thing inside had died already.

Li San’er opened his mouth. “Commander An, this- this… is this the work of the Eighth Route Army4?”

An Jie took a few pathetic steps back to escape from the smoke’s attack range. He smiled at Li San’er. “It’s not that the communists were cunning, it’s that the national army was incompetent5. This thing knew how to laugh and recite poems but I didn’t recognize what it was reciting. Does anyone care to take a guess?”

Li San’er shook his head vigorously. “I-I-I- I don’t want to know at all…”

An Jie ignored him and looked expectantly at the hole.

“Lord Chen feasts in Ping Le, Ji Lun feasts in Jingu. The ‘the Jingu of Shi values new voices’ should be about Shi Cong,” Shen Jiancheng said quickly. “The poem should be about Shi Cong and Lü Zhu.”

Mo Yannan took a deep breath and like An Jie, stared fixedly at the hole behind the dragon throne that grew clearer as the black smoke slowly dispersed. He responded unconsciously, “It’s ‘Green Beads’ by Qiao Zhizhi6.”

Green beads?

An Jie took a glance at the bracelet that clutched his wrist tightly. Yes, clutched. He

hadn’t noticed before due to stress, but now he felt like the beads were trying to dig into his flesh, almost hurting him. A thought crossed his mind and he was just about to say it when he heard Li San’er yell out in shock.

As the smoke disappeared, a beauty’s head looked out from the hole directly at them… A beauty whose body was a long and slippery… snake.

“Medusa…” Mo Yannan righted his glasses.

“Dear aunt in heaven, is this not the beauty snake in Sir Lu Xun’s hundred-plant garden7?” Li San’er shivered. “How come everything’s got a human head? Don’t tell me we managed to run straight into a demon den!”

“It looks like the demons want us to stay as their husbands,” An Jie replied coldly.

The gun in Lao Ma’s hands fell onto the ground with a thud. The old merchant pointed at the snake and a few words jolted out from his teeth hoarsely. “Lady… of the Snake… You- you- you killed the Lady8…”

All of the desert’s traveling merchants lived off the heavens, so it was impossible for them not to believe in old legends. In such harsh conditions, faith might even have become their spiritual support pillar, but An Jie had never expected that they prayed to such a strange creature. Shen Jiancheng was stunned and didn’t know what to do. Before he recovered his senses, Lao Ma half-stumbled, half-rolled onto the jade stairs, pushing An Jie aside and kneeling down trembling and devoted in front of the snake lady. 

“Lady, have mercy on us, this mortal had no intention to disturb…” He muttered underneath his breath until what was said couldn’t be heard anymore. An Jie scratched through his hair9, sighed, and took a step back, thinking that after Lao Ma was done, he should at least apologize. No matter how urgent the situation was, it had damaged Lao Ma’s faith… and since those bookworms couldn’t be counted on in the journey to come, he could only rely on this experienced merchant.

They all watched as Lao Ma worshipped the ‘Lady of the Snake’, each with their own thoughts, when Lao Ma suddenly straightened his body, turned around, and smiled at them. It was extremely gentle and even a little seductive. Such a smile on Lao Ma’s rough face, almost glinting with a green light under the torches, was a terrifying sight.

An Jie cocked his machine gun. “Lao Ma?”

Lao Ma stood up shakily- his posture was like that of a snake, unused to the human legs, every step twisting his body around as he walked down the jade stairs.

Li San’er widened his eyes. “Holy mother, Lao Ma got possessed by the snake demon!” No one corrected him because under everyone’s eyes, from between Lao Ma’s lips came the forked tongue of a snake, moving in and out.

Before An Jie made a single move, a gunshot sounded. Lao Ma stumbled, his eerie smile turning towards Shen Jiancheng who had opened fire, before he fell down, his body becoming frozen like a rock as he collapsed, thin snakes crawling out from every open orifice and dispersing all around him.

“Heavens…” Mo Yannan breathed out a sigh, all of his remaining words stuck behind his trembling lips, unable to be spoken. An Jie looked at Shen Jiancheng gloomily. For some reason, he felt that the glint of this righteous archeologist’s glasses in the cold hall under the overly bright torches held something obscure and unknown.

“Stay silent and leave here,” An Jie barked quietly at the other three. Before his sentence was finished, a long and familiar shriek sounded as Lao Ma stood up again, shaking. The wall behind him suddenly collapsed, revealing a stanza of poetry written in blood, both an ease and a power to its strokes: 

Moon of Qinghuai, snow of Balin, a pair of eternal lovers

A generation’s beauty in dreams falls low from a crumbling tower

A hundred years of hate will leave no trace in time

But for you; to come with many, and leave alone10

It was like it had been freshly written, the final stroke of the ‘e’ dragged down by dripping blood. Lao Ma’s face was pale, the blood from the gun wound on his chest flowing onto the wall by itself, leaving no trace behind. He giggled, a gurgling sound coming from his throat as if muttering, ‘To come with many, and leave alone’.

An Jie raised his light machine gun at the half-human, half-demon thing and pressed down on the trigger. Half of ‘Lao Ma’’s head exploded into a bloody meatball; he convulsed a few times before falling back down onto the ground, rolling around like a dead fish. He pointed at An Jie, a gurgling, inhuman noise in his throat, only the last few words somewhat decipherable as ‘trace in time’ before he stopped moving.

The remaining four looked at each other, not understanding what had just happened, but the cursed place they were in wouldn’t let anyone take a break. Just as the poem had said, the ground beneath them started shaking violently. A generation’s beauty in dreams falls low from a crumbling tower. The huge palace was about to crash.

Author’s Notes: First update today, there’s more ^^

Luci: No there isn’t. Also the amount of random references in this chapter, and the POEMS completely killed me inside. Thank you Vera-sama for editing through that, must’ve been painful.

Vera: Isn’t a double-update enough? That being said, hi, it’s a double-update! If you skipped the first chapter, go back and read that! I felt rather bad for taking a bit longer than two weeks per chapter but never shorter, so this is the manifestation of my guilt- forcing Luci to translate more, sooner. Sorry Luci. 

1Kaifeng was the administration and house of justice of the Northern Song Dynasty’s capital. Li San’er is probably joking here that since Kaifeng is from eons ago, it works as a police station for ghosts.

2Jingu is a garden literally translated as ‘Golden Valley’ which was owned by the Shi family. It was known for its beauty both in scenery and in women.

3A hu was a term of measurement used in ancient China which translates to roughly 20kg. It was used specifically in the context of buying beauties. 

4The Eighth Route Army, officially known as the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China, was the main group army under the command of the Chinese Communist Party. Li San’er is essentially praising An Jie’s skill as a fighter.

5This is a reference to a movie, except the order is flipped. In the movie, an officer from the national side says ‘It’s not that the national army was incompetent, it’s that the communists were too cunning’. An Jie replies that it’s not that he’s good, but that his opponent was too bad.

6Lü Zhu translated directly means green beads. The poem is about the woman called Lü Zhu, hence the name. 

7A garden from a book Lu Xun wrote based on the memories of his childhood. The full name is ‘From The Hundred-Plant Garden to The Three-Flavor Study.

8The lady of the snake is another name for Nüwa as in the legends, she was also described to be half-human and half-snake. Nüwa is in Chinese mythos the creator of mankind and very much a good guy, which is why Lao Ma is freaking out about her being dead.

9It specifies here that his hair is… not short, but not long either. On the longer end of normal male hairstyles. I’m personally imagining something like this:

10Long breakdown ahead:

Qinghuai, as explained earlier, is a tributary of the Yangtze. Balin is the mausoleum of Emperor Wen of Han, located in Xi’an, which is basically smackbang in the middle of China. The ‘eternal’ here directly translated is ‘a thousand autumns, eternity’, the ‘thousand autumns’ part also being used frequently during burials. 

The second line states that a lady who could be described as the most beautiful of her time suddenly fell from a high building, along with her dreams. Reading it literally suggests that the building and the dreams collapsed together.

The third line details a hundred years of separation and hate, and how there is now no trace of it left since the stars have shifted, or that time has passed.

The fourth line suggests that whoever wrote the poem, or perhaps the victims of the tragedy itself, has become a curse so that whoever enters the city will leave alone, i.e. only one person will survive.