Chapter 121: Thatchgrass Bay

Anyone who smokes knows that a cigarette cherry only glows when being puffed. My eyes did not deceive me; I clearly saw that ember ignite. The sky was nearly pitch black, so dark one could not see their own hand, and in a daze, I felt a hazy white shadow flash past my head. I immediately grabbed my pillow, sat up, and shouted, "Who's there?"

This cry startled everyone in the room. The lights went on, and aside from the three people looking around in confusion, the room was deathly quiet. I looked down and saw that the cigarette had burned all the way to the filter.

"Someone was here," I said. Even though the doors and windows were locked and the lights had been turned on promptly, I was certain.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Cha Wenbin asked with concern. "Don't overthink it. Get some sleep, and we'll head home tomorrow."

"No, there was someone!" I picked up the cigarette butt. "This is Gansu tobacco, bought only yesterday. This type has a specific trait: if you don't smoke it continuously, it goes out on its own within moments. It would never burn down to the filter like this. I had only smoked half of it, and I clearly saw the ember flare up brightly..."

For some reason, Cha Wenbin did not continue the discussion. Instead, he comforted me again, "Alright, don't think too much into it. It was likely just an accident."

"It was him!" I grabbed Cha Wenbin’s hand. "Wenbin, it was him. He had this habit—he wouldn't stop smoking until the very end, right up to the sponge filter. I used to call him stingy, but he’d always say the last half was the most satisfying. Back when we were broke, I’d share a cigarette with him; he always let me have the first half while he took the end..." As I spoke, I began to cry, overwhelmed by memories of the time I spent with Fatty.

"I know you miss him; don't I miss him too? Trust me, we will have an answer soon." As he said this, I saw a resolute glint in his eyes—a certainty that left me no choice but to believe him. It had been a long time since I had seen that look in his eyes, so I asked, "Do you have a lead?"

"It's not certain yet. We need to wait a little longer."

"How long is 'wait'?"

"Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, or maybe a lifetime." After saying this, he laid down to sleep. Before long, Zhu Zihao’s snoring began again, leaving only me to listen to the rain outside the window, wide awake.

I am not a person who likes to wait. Just as he never told me what exactly was in that strange, massive tomb—was it merely a zombie? No, I don't believe that. Because he is Cha Wenbin. I had seen him with my own eyes battling those things when he was only sixteen. How could he be so afraid of a mere zombie that he would burn down a tomb he had worked so hard to find, a tomb that was considered our only clue? He was hiding something from me; he definitely was!

I hadn't been back to the village for a while. When I arrived home, my father was looking for someone to check the foundation for a new house. He hadn't believed in these things in the past, but as he aged, he had become more cautious and unwilling to take risks. He said I was grown up now and that he was thinking I might be getting married in a few years, so he wanted to build a few rooms for me. This was the greatest task in the hearts of the older generation in the countryside: to complete the most important event in their children's lives.

The person checking the foundation was from a neighboring village. I knew him; when I had a high fever as a child that wouldn't break, he was the one brought in to look at me. He burned a black talisman and made me drink the ashes. My parents had to pinch my nose to force it down, but it didn't help. He was the uncle of one of my elementary school classmates, knew a bit about the craft, and was a quintessential, unpolished rural geomancer.

My father’s choice of site was actually on the original plot, but the most important thing in building a house is the orientation of the main gate, which concerns lighting, sunlight, and Feng Shui. I thought to myself that instead of finding this guy, we should have just let Wenbin take a look. But adults have their own plans; perhaps in my father's eyes, Cha Wenbin was just a kid the same age as me.

The old house had been a mixed structure of rammed earth and some brick walls. In those days, those with better means had started using brick structures, which were faster to build. By noon, the man had used a hemp rope to mark a line on the ground; this line would determine the orientation of the main gate. The gate was to be centered on this line, parallel to the walls on both sides. Cha Wenbin glanced at it, nodded, and said to me, "He’s got the general idea right, but shifting it one centimeter to the left would be even better."

He spoke quietly, but it was still overheard. The man hurriedly set up his compass again, took one look, and couldn't help but give Cha Wenbin a thumbs up. "Not bad, you’re a real expert. You’re so young, yet you know this—that’s rare."

Cha Wenbin, who had always been low-key, just replied politely, "I’m merely showing off in front of an expert."

Seeing that Cha Wenbin had engaged him, the man was reluctant to leave. He looked him up and down and asked, "Who did you learn from?"

Cha Wenbin smiled. "I don't know much; I was just talking nonsense." With that, he pulled me away, but the man chased after us, tugging at Cha Wenbin's clothes. "I remember now—are you Ma Sufeng’s apprentice? Your surname is Cha, right?"

"You know me?" In our area, Cha Wenbin was a rather obscure figure at the time. He had been taken around by his master since he was a child, and whenever he returned, he would shut himself away to chant scriptures and study the Dao. It was normal for people not to know him; it was actually quite strange that this man did.

"I saw you when you were a child. Master Ma was a man of great skill; it’s no wonder you understand these things since you’re his apprentice. Actually, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you."

*With you?* I thought to myself. *What generation are you compared to our Master Cha? What is there to talk about? Aren't you just a traveling charlatan, the kind who can only trick ignorant old women in the countryside?*

The man seemed to see right through me, saying, "Fellow practitioners are not defined by age, only by destiny. This young master’s experience is clearly extraordinary, and he is the disciple of a high-level master."

I couldn't be bothered to be polite anymore and called him by his name. "Old Liu, just say what you have to say. Stop beating around the bush!"

"I want to ask Brother Cha for a favor..."

About thirty *li* from Hong Village, there was a place called Reed Bay. The area was flanked by mountains on two sides and rivers on two others, and it was the mandatory route to the county seat. Anyone traveling at night would make sure to go in groups, except for the exceptionally bold. Why? Because it was known by every child as the "Soul-Snatching Bay."

Years ago, a drunkard was returning home from a relative's house at night. Passing through Reed Bay, he saw a woman crying by the roadside. He went up to talk to her, but she ignored him at first, so he walked around to her front to ask what was wrong. But just as he got to the front, the woman turned her back to him. He was unsatisfied and circled back, but the woman was faster and turned around again.

"Good grief, I just want to see what you look like!" The drunkard didn't believe in superstitions. He lunged to the side of the woman, but then he saw clearly: the woman had been crouching there the whole time without moving, and no matter which side he looked from, he was only seeing the back of her head. The woman had no face!

The drunkard sobered up seventy percent the moment he realized this. He turned and ran, but his feet were tripped, and he tumbled to the ground. Looking back, he realized his feet were tangled in a clump of hair. The woman cried to the drunkard that her house was leaking and she had nowhere to live, and since her family wouldn't help, she asked if he could do her a favor.

The drunkard didn't dare refuse and hurriedly asked where the house was.

The woman said, "Reed Bay, Chestnut Gully, the seventh one on the left."

The moment the drunkard heard this, he fainted on the spot—he was frightened unconscious. What kind of place was Chestnut Gully? It was on the mountain behind Reed Bay, a place where graves were piled upon graves. I had even gone there to pick chestnuts myself. In the past, the harshest bet in the village was: "If you have the guts, go sleep in Chestnut Gully at Reed Bay tonight. If you go, then I’ll do such and such..."

The next day, when the drunkard woke up, he found himself sleeping in a ditch by the side of the road, his feet wrapped in a bundle of straw. Recalling the events of the previous night, he crawled home and frantically looked for someone who knew the craft. And who did he find? He found my grandfather!

My grandfather told me this story himself. Later, he went to check on the grave for that drunkard and actually found it. The top of the grave had cracked open more than a finger's width, and one could even see the coffin boards inside. My grandfather had the drunkard find a mason to repoint the grave, and after buying plenty of incense, candles, and paper money to offer sacrifices, the matter was settled. A few years later, the drunkard moved away and supposedly made a fortune, though some said it was the female ghost’s way of repaying him.

In short, the stories about Reed Bay could go on for days and nights. When Old Liu asked Cha Wenbin to talk about Reed Bay, my heart sank—it couldn't be anything good. But Cha Wenbin agreed to listen, and Old Liu told him the truth.

Old Liu was self-taught. He had known my grandfather, and they had some dealings. He was particularly fond of studying bizarre things and was very keen on metaphysics. He hadn't even finished elementary school, but he could recite several scriptures. He had thought about finding a master, but no one would take him in. So, he came up with a method: he would specifically go to funerals to help out, just to steal techniques. He would copy how other Taoists did things, and after a few years, he had pieced together a system of his own.

However, since he had cobbled it together from various sources, it didn't really belong to any school and didn't look like any of them. It was fine for fooling old farmers, but when it came to real incidents, he lacked the necessary depth.

The incident Old Liu encountered was actually brought to him by someone else. Someone had encountered an evil spirit in Reed Bay. Encountering something there wasn't strange—everyone knew the place wasn't clean—but the person who encountered it had died, and they died in a bizarre way.

How did they die? They were scared to death—literally!