The girl was fair-skinned and tidy, with an oval face and large, round eyes, very charming. She wore a light pink ruqun and her hair was bound up, bearing the innocent and inexperienced appearance of a new wife. She rubbed her eyes dazedly in the dark, looking around.
"Where…am I?"
"You are within the Truth Restoration Barrier I have set," Chu Wanning replied.
The girl was shocked and asked, bewildered, "Who are you? Why is it pitch black here? I can't see you, who is speaking?"
"Have you forgotten? …You're already dead," Chu Wanning said.
The girl's eyes widened. "I'm already…I…"
Then, gradually, she remembered.
She bowed her head, and crossed her hands over her chest. There was no undulating beat there. She "ah"-ed softly and murmured, "I'm…I'm already dead…"
"Only souls can come to this Truth Restoration Barrier. Hatred is erased here. Those who have passed, no matter if they've transformed into a menacing ghost or a regular ghost, they will maintain the character and appearance of when they were alive. Hence, 'Truth Restoration'."
Stunned, the girl was lost in thought for a moment, as if she was gradually recalling her past life in the world. Then, suddenly, she lowered her face and started weeping silently.
"Do you…have grievances?" Chu Wanning asked.
The girl's voice was thick with tears. "Are you the King of the Underworld? Or are you the Greeter of the Dead[14]? Are you here to bring me justice?"
Chu Wanning rested a hand on his temple. "…I'm not the King of the Underworld, and neither am I the Greeter of the Dead."
The girl wept softly. Chu Wanning remained silent for a while and didn't speak, waiting until she brought herself together before he spoke again. "However, I am certainly here to bring you justice."
Hearing this, the girl looked up. Though her breathing was still labored, she exclaimed in both joy and anguish, "You really are the Lord King of the Underworld!"
"..." Chu Wanning decided not to continue that subject with her and asked instead, "Do you know what you've been doing after you died?"
"I don't know…it's not clear. I only remember I was very sad, very sad. I wanted revenge…I wanted to find them…then I wanted to find him…"
When souls were first aroused, there would be many things they could not recall temporarily, but that was fine. Chu Wanning asked patiently, "Who did you want to find?"
The girl replied softly, "My husband, Chen Bo'huan."
Chu Wanning was taken back. Chen Bo'huan——wasn't that the name of the eldest son of the Chen family?
"What…is your name? Where are you from?" He asked.
Tianwen's powers filled this world of illusion behind the barrier, and most of the deceased who came within would converse with Chu Wanning truthfully and honestly. Thus, the girl responded, "This lowly one is named Luo Xianxian, from Butterfly Town."
"Before I came I reviewed the ancestry scroll of Butterfly Town, and this town only has about five hundred some households, none of which are named Luo. Who was your father?"
The girl took her time to recall the details, and the anguish in her eyes grew. "My father used to be a scholar in this town, and was an intimate friend to my father-in-law. Several years ago, he contracted an illness of the lungs and passed away. Afterwards, there was only me in the household."
"What did you die for?"
The girl was taken aback, then wept harder. "Other than death, I had no other path. They— they deceived my papa and made him leave behind the secret formula for the fragrance. They also beat me and yelled at me, threatened me, made me leave Butterfly Town. I…I'm a weak woman, where else could I have gone? I have no other relatives left in this world…the world is so big but where could I go? Other than the Land of the Dead, where else would take me in…"
Once her memories of the past life returned, her heart seemed to brim with endless sufferings and anguish, anxious to tell another. Even though Chu Wanning did not pursue any further inquiries, she slowly continued to speak on her own.
It turned out that this Luo Xianxian had lost her mother when she was very young, and through her papa's words, she'd learned that she had an elder brother. However, her brother had gone missing during a riot in the Lower Cultivation World, and they'd never seen him again, and did not know if he was alive or dead. When her brother went missing, she hadn't yet reached one year of age, had still been wrapped in swaddling clothes. Later, when she tried to remember this elder brother of hers, she still couldn't recall any impressions.
The house of Luo thus only had Xianxian and her father left, the two depending on each other to survive. They'd drifted everywhere before finally building a small house in Butterfly Town where they settled.
That year, Luo Xianxian had been five. The eldest son of the house of Chen, Chen Bo'huan, had been older than her by two years.
At the time, the house of Chen hadn't yet struck it rich. The entire family had lived squeezed together into a small earthen cottage with two rooms, and next to the low wall in the yard there was a clementine tree. When autumn came along the tree would bear fruits, and the dense branches growing past the low wall would peek into the yard of the Luo family.
Luo Xianxian had looked up with her head raised; the branches dangling with clementines were like the lanterns lit on the Lantern Festival. She was an introverted child and didn't play with others, would only sit quietly upon her little folding bench, peeling soybeans while sneaking glances at the clementines peeking overhead from Chen's yard.
The clementines were jaunty and enticing; against the sun, it was easy to imagine their full, brimming, sweet and sour, juice.
Luo Xianxian would stare at them fixedly, swallowing hard from time to time, her cheeks sore from gluttony.
However, she had never extended her hand to pick them. Her father was a mediocre and ineffectual scholar who had failed the exams; however, he'd never failed in his dignity and integrity. The soured scholar was probably broken in the head, and had constantly admonished his daughter to be a 'man of integrity'.
Luo Xianxian had already known by the age of three that wealth was not to be misused and poverty was not to move wills. Her eyes might be greedy but her hands had never come close to an inch of those clementines.
One night, taking advantage of the moonlight, Luo Xianxian sat in the yard to wash clothes, humming as she worked.
Her father's health wasn't great, and he'd long since gone to rest. Impoverished children learned to take care of households early; the little girl had her sleeves rolled up, her thin little arms soaked in the wooden bucket, cheeks puffed out as she rubbed and kneaded with vigour.
Suddenly, a hoarse, coughing noise came from the front door, and a young man, covered in blood, stumbled in, glaring at her.
The little girl was petrified, so much so that she even forgot to scream.
The young man's face was covered in blood and grime yet his brows were strong and handsome. The two of them watched each other, one big and one small, frozen in their places. Finally, the young man couldn't hang on anymore, and slowly slid down a wall and into a sitting position. His breathing was laborious as he croaked, "Give me some water."
Maybe it was because that young man didn't have the looks of a villain, or perhaps it was Luo Xianxian's own kindness, but although she was afraid, she still ran inside and filled a teapot, and brought it to the lips of the young man.
The young man didn't hold back either, and gulped down the water soundly. When he'd finished he wiped at the corners of his lips, eyes lifted to stare at Luo Xianxian's charming face. His gaze was a little intent but he didn't say a word.
He didn't speak, and so Luo Xianxian didn't speak either. She only blinked at him anxiously, staying at a distance she deemed safe, holding her hands not too close and not too far away, looking over this stranger.
"…You look a lot like someone I once knew." The young man's lips suddenly curled up, his eyes curving into crescents as he smiled coldly at her. With all that blood on his face matching the smile, he looked somewhat savage. "Especially the eyes, big and round. It just makes people want to dig them out, poke them through with a finger and swallow them whole, one by one."
Such terrifyingly sinister words were so blandly and casually said, and there was even a little laugh to go with them. Luo Xianxian shivered even harder, and covered her eyes without thinking.
"Heh, what a smart little girl," the young man said. "Keep covering your eyes like that, don't stare at me. Otherwise I can't say what my hands will do."
When he spoke, his tongue curled; his accent was from the north.
Moonlight spilled in the yard. The young man was licking his cracking lips when he suddenly spotted the clementine tree in the yard. For some reason his eyes lit up, his pupils shimmering brightly, but that glow didn't last before it faded. He rubbed his chin, then gestured.
"Little girl."
Luo Xianxian: "..."
"Pick a clementine and peel it for me."
Luo Xianxian finally moved her lips to speak, her voice tiny and quivering but without hesitation as she said, "Da gege, that fruit tree doesn't belong to my family. It's someone else's, I can't pick it."
That young man was taken aback. He seemed to remember something again and his face slowly turned dark.
"If I said pick then go pick. I want to eat clementines, so go pick them for me right now!" The last bit was growled out aggressively, like the sound had been gnawed into pieces between his teeth before they were spat out. Luo Xianxian was shaking from fright, but she still remained stubbornly where she was.
The little girl had a soft personality but her spine was as extremely rigid as her father's.
"I won't."
That young man suddenly squinted his eyes, arched his nose and his expression changed like the weather. "Foul wench! Do you know who you're talking to?!"
"If you want water, I, I'll pour you some. If you want food, there's some in the house too. But the clementine tree doesn't belong to my family, I can't pick it. Papa said, to take without asking is to steal. I'm a man of integrity, wealth is not to be misused, poverty is, is not to move gills…..."
In the midst of nervousness, she misspoke and said 'gills' instead of 'wills', a tiny little girl playing pretend, her face red and puffy, stubbornly hanging on to the teachings of her father, sputtering and stuttering, dumping everything she wanted to say, yet under the intent gaze of that young man, she was already trembling so hard her feet were crossed.
That young man was silent.
If it wasn't for the wrong timing, hearing from the lips of this kid, and a little girl kid at that, the words "to take without asking is to steal", "wealth is not to be misused, poverty is not to move wills", and——"I'm a man of integrity"?? Pfft, he really wouldn't be able to hold back his laugh.
But he couldn't laugh.
Instead, there was a violent, soaring anger trampling within his chest like so many horses, stomping on his heart.
"I hate people like you the most, the so called…" Holding onto the wall, he shakily rose to his feet, words squeezing out from his lips, "Man of compassion, man of integrity, man of charity, heroes."
Under the terrified gaze of Luo Xianxian, he painstakingly shuffled his injured feet and went beneath that clementine tree. He raised his head, sniffing at the scent of clementines with greedy yearning, then a hateful crimson flashed in his eyes, and before Luo Xianxian knew what was happening, he'd climbed onto that tree and started violently shaking it, kicking it, knocking at it, beating it.
Branchfuls of clementines were soundly shaken off the tree, tumbling to the ground, rolling to the side. The smile of that young man was twisted as he yelled recklessly, "So much for taking without asking is stealing! So much for wealth is not to be misused! So much for strength is not to be exploited!"
"Da gege! What are you doing! Please stop! Dad! Papa!"
Luo Xianxian hadn't wanted to call for her father, who was weak in health, a scholar with no strength in his body. Even if he'd come out, there wasn't much he could do. Still, she was a little girl after all. Having held on to this point, she was finally scared and breaking down.
"What are you yelling for! If your dad comes out, I'll chop him down too!"
The little girl was terrified, tears welling up in her big, round eyes.
The Chen family next door had gone to visit relatives in the neighbouring village, and so no one in the family was home. There was no one around to stop this little lunatic.
The little lunatic shook until all the clementines had fallen from the tree, but even then his madness couldn't be stopped, and he stomped heavily on the ground, crushing many of the fruits. Then, with a sudden aggression and using a burst of strength from who knew where, he leapt up and flipped into the Chen's yard, found an axe, and chopped down the tree. Then he flipped back over and laughed heartily.
He laughed and laughed, then stopped abruptly and squatted down. He started spacing out, his eyes unfocused.
Suddenly, he twisted his head over and beckoned Luo Xianxian over. "Little girl, come here."
"..." Luo Xianxian didn't move. She stayed where she was, shuffling her little cloth shoes embroidered with yellow flowers.
The young man saw that she was hesitating and softened his tone, speaking with as much kindness as he could muster, "Come. I've got something good for you."
"I…I don't want to…no, I'm not coming over…" Luo Xianxian mumbled, but before she could finish her sentence, that young man erupted in rage again——
"If you don't come here right this instant, this I'm[15] gonna go into your house and chop your dad into minced meat!"
Luo Xianxian shuddered violently and finally, little by little, she shuffled towards him.
That young man looked askance at her. "Hurry up, I ain't got time to watch you do the Yangko dance[16]."
Luo Xianxian drew closer to him, head bowed. When she was still a few steps away, he suddenly reached his hand out and yanked her over. Luo Xianxian let out a squeal, or tried to, because before the sound could leave her mouth, it was shoved back inside by an object. The young man had stuffed a clementine in her mouth, unpeeled and unwashed, still covered in mud.
How could Luo Xianxian possibly eat a clementine with just one bite? The young man forcefully stuffed it in. The clementine ripped as it was crushed against her, juice and mud smeared over half her face. The lunatic was still cackling, squishing the fruit on her face, trying to shove it past her tightly shut lips.
"Aren't you a man of integrity? Weren't you not going to steal? Then what are you eating right now, huh? WHAT ARE YOU EATING RIGHT NOW?"
"Wuuu…no…I don't want it…papa…papa…"
"Swallow it." The young man's eyes curved into crescents, and he stuffed the last bit of fruit into Luo Xianxian's mouth. His eyes shone darkly as he said, chilling and cold, "Swallow the goddamn thing!"
The young man watched Luo Xianxian as she was forced to swallow the clementine, sobs choking from her throat as she cried for her father weakly. He was quiet for a moment and then he suddenly smiled.
That smile was more terrifying than his savage expression.
He ruffled Luo Xianxian's hair, satisfied, and said warmly as he continued to squat there, "Why call papa? Shouldn't you call da gege? Is the clementine gege gave you sweet? Is it good?"
Then he picked up another one from the ground.
This time, he didn't try to force it into her mouth. Instead he attentively peeled off the skin, even picking out the white fibres sticking on the meat before he wiped his hands, pulled out a piece and brought it to Luo Xianxian's lips. He said with a chiding, gentle voice, "If you like it then eat some more."
Luo Xianxian understood that today, she'd run into someone who was mentally disturbed. Left without any choice, she bowed her head and wordlessly munched on the clementine that the lunatic passed over. Its sweet and sour juice diffused in her throat, causing turbulent waves in her stomach…
The young man continued to squat there, feeding her clementines piece by piece, seeming to be in a good mood again, even humming a tune.
His voice was rough and coarse like a damaged basket with breeze blowing through the holes, fuzzy and unclear, but some of the words floated into Luo Xianxian's ears.
"Three four drops of petals upon the pond,
One two cries of strings rang from ashore
Youthful years before crowing be the best of years,
Hooves light horses fast,
See the ends of the world…"
"Little girl," he suddenly said.
"..."
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue and cupped Luo Xianxian's little face with his hand. "Let me take a look at your eyes."
Luo Xianxian was trembling, but without any power to retaliate, she could only allow that young man to examine her eyes thoroughly, letting those bloody fingers rub over her brows inch by inch.
"So alike," he said.
Luo Xianxian whimpered as she shut her eyes, scared that this lunatic would pick her eyes out the way he had the fruits, all on a whim.
But the young man didn't pick.
He only said to her in a somber, chilling voice, "Didn't you teach me "wealth shan't be misused, poverty shan't move wills"? Da gege has something to say to you too."
"Sob…"
"Open your eyes."
Luo Xianxian's eyes were tightly shut. That young man laughed in exasperation, and said, voice hoarse, "I won't dig out your eyes, now open them!"
"…Do you think I won't be able to poke your eyes out if you have them closed?!"
Luo Xianxian could only obey. She opened her large, round eyes. Her long, soft lashes trembled, and large beads of tears fell. The fearful and pitiful expression on her face seemed to somehow please the mysterious young man.
He suddenly loosened the hand that was squeezing her cheek. It hovered in the air for a moment, then gently patted her head.
He stared at her eyes intently, a trembling smile curling from the corner of his lips. His grin was seven parts twisted, two parts savage, and one part sorrow.
He said, "There was a man from Linyi whose heart died at twenty."
Then, done speaking, he turned around and his figure slowly disappeared into the shadows.
The only indication that there had ever been such a person, appearing in the depths of nighttime all covered in blood, was the mess left behind on the ground.
[14] [白無常] "White Impermanence" is one of the two Greeters of Death who collects deceased souls and brings them before the King of the Underworld for judgement. One black, one white, although they show up in pairs, the innocent will be collected by the white and the sinners will be collected by the black. The girl asked if CWN is the white one meaning she believes herself innocent.
[15] Orig text: 老子 aka chinese equivalent of ore-sama
[16] The Yangko dance, also called twisting Yangko dance, is a traditional Chinese folk dance commonly performed in the Northern provinces of China.