After returning to the temple, I lay in bed unable to fall asleep for a long time, caught up in excitement. Is this vanity, a sense of achievement? Seeing their respectful gazes, I felt quite gratified. Even I wasn't aware that this sense of achievement had turned me into one of the world's top Yin Yang Masters, but that's a story for later.
The next morning, I got out of bed early, with big panda eyes, and cooked a pot of thin porridge, waiting for Master to return.
It wasn't until the sun was high in the sky that Master finally came back, dusty and weary. I warmed up the porridge, and he ate three bowls in one go. Seeing him eat so much made me wonder, "Don't they let you eat when you perform rituals?" Master said there had been some complications that kept him quite occupied, so there was no time to eat, but everything had been taken care of.
I recounted last night's event with the Cat Startled Corpse, not leaving out a single detail to Master. He praised me, saying I did well, that if I had gone up without any tool, I might have been strangled to death by the Cat Startled Corpse. If it had killed someone and accumulated malevolence, giving it straw would no longer work; I'd have had to subdue it by force and burn it to ashes.
After Master finished his porridge, he yawned and went to the back hall to rest. I cleaned up the bowls and chopsticks and, finding myself with nothing to do, swept the yard again.
Seeing that it was still early, I ran out of the Taoist Temple, wanting to play in the nearby village.
The nearby villages were poor, and the children had no entertainment other than playing with slingshots, hide and seek, climbing trees, and raiding bird nests. I met up with some kids I knew from the previous days, and we agreed to go to the woods to climb trees and search for bird eggs.
"Look, there's a bird's nest!" I pointed at a large old locust tree and shouted.
That locust tree must have been quite old, at least requiring six or seven people to encircle it with their arms. Its bark was so dry it was hardly recognizable, looking from afar like a sorrowful face. At a fork in the middle of the tree, there was a round bird's nest quietly wedged in it.
I held onto the dry bark of the locust tree and started climbing up, bit by bit.
"Come down quickly, that's a crow's nest, don't touch it, it's bad luck," one of the kids shouted loudly.
I thought he was trying to trick me, wanting to coax me down so that he could go up himself to raid the eggs. I paid him no mind and continued to climb steadily upward, even waving and making a face at them when I reached a large branch.
They were already frantic below, knowing if I stirred up any trouble, they wouldn't be able to escape blame either.
I tiptoed and reached out slowly towards the nest. How many eggs would there be?
Flap flap...
A crow flew out of the nest, its eyes blood-red.
I was startled, my feet gave way, and I almost fell.
Ah... ah... The crow, seemingly angered by me, circled above before swooping down at me fiercely.
I broke off a branch and started to swing it, trying to fend off the furious crow. After several unsuccessful dive-bomb attempts, the crow gave up with indignant cries and flew deeper into the forest.
I scrambled down from the old locust tree, still shaken. Falling from such a height if the crow had pecked me could have been disastrous.
Seeing me unharmed, my friends let out a sigh of relief and began to chide me for being too reckless. They said the adults had told them crows only nest in old locust trees where someone has hanged themselves. Such round nests are always crow's nests. I secretly noted the shape of a crow's nest while shaking my head; this tale spun by the adults was likely just to keep us kids from climbing too high.
Children are like that; they forget in an instant what just happened. We continued to search deeper into the woods for bird nests, but none of us saw anything. The moment we turned around, a woman with eyes rolled back, wearing white and with a long tongue, stood exactly where I had just been standing.
In the depths of the forest, we rummaged through bird nests for a while, but the spoils were meager. We found just three eggs, nowhere near enough to go around for the four of us, so I nobly let them have it all.
We wandered in the woods for a while longer, and I don't know whose idea it was, but we started playing hide and seek.
Happy times are often fleeting, and the day gradually turned to dusk. When we gathered and were ready to head home, we realized one of us was missing.
In order to save time, we agreed to split up to search, and no matter the outcome, we were to meet back here before the darkness completely set in.
Xiao Huang... Xiao Huang... Xiao Huang...
As twilight almost gave way to night, the three of us met back up at the original spot, each shaking our heads to indicate we hadn't found him. With night about to fall and our hands empty of any lanterns or torches for light, we could only discuss going back to get the adults and return with lanterns and torches to continue the search.
Following the path we came by, we groped our way in the direction of the village. To bolster our courage, we held hands as we walked.
Wu wu wu wu wu
As we passed the old locust tree, we faintly heard someone crying nearby. I suggested we go check it out, but the other two adamantly refused. They said that now with the dark, the crying was nothing but the Hanged Ghost whimpering on purpose. Its goal was to attract people to investigate, just to replace it in death.
Having no other choice, I asked the two of them to wait there while I ventured alone into the darkness.
Wu wu wu wu wu
The crying grew closer and louder, causing my scalp to tingle. I approached closer and even closer, until I finally saw who was beneath the old locust tree when I arrived.
"Xiao Huang, how did you end up here? We've been looking for you for so long." Seeing that the person crying was Xiao Huang, who'd disappeared earlier, I breathed a sigh of relief, wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, and asked.
Seeing it was me, Xiao Huang burst into tears and ran towards me.
He said that while playing hide and seek, he had waited a long time for us to find him. As he waited, he fell asleep, and when he woke up, he found himself under the old locust tree. Frightened, he ran to look for us, but after running a big loop, he ended up back here, which terrified him even more. He didn't bother to search for us any longer, and instead ran desperately towards the village. But no matter how long he ran, he found himself back at the same place again.
After several attempts of running and still ending up here, he had no choice but to sit down and cry until I arrived.
I loudly called the other two over, saying we'd found Xiao Huang. Upon hearing this, they were overjoyed and ran over in a hurry.
The four of us held hands and hurried towards the village. Despite our efforts, after about half an hour, I could see the old locust tree in the distance.
A shock went through my heart. What was going on? We were clearly heading towards the village, so why had we ended up back at the same place? Could it be because of the darkness that we had lost our way? That couldn't be right; there was only one path from here to the village. It was impossible to get lost. Truly strange...