Xie Lian sprang to his feet. Shi Qingxuan stomped a foot down on the table, rolling up his sleeves as if ready to charge right down there; however, Xie Lian hastily held him back.
"It's nothing, don't worry. Lord Wind Master, please calm down."
Shi Qingxuan was quite alarmed. "Is it 'nothing'? Their eyeballs got squeezed out!"
"It's nothing," Xie Lian reiterated. "What a rare opportunity—it's a Bloody Fire Social!"
Shi Qingxuan quickly removed his foot from the table. "Bloody Fire Social? What's that?"
The two sat back down, and Xie Lian explained.
"Different regions have different kinds of Fire Socials. A Bloody Fire Social is a special type, and extremely rare. I've only ever heard about them; I've never seen one in person. Since the performances are gruesome and unusual, and the makeup artistry is a trade secret, there are fewer and fewer of them every year."
Shi Qingxuan was astonished. "Makeup? It's all fake? I-I-It's it's just too real. Here I thought it was the work of some sort of evil magic!"
What he said was no exaggeration, and Xie Lian sighed in awe as well.
"There are some extraordinarily talented people in the world."
Not only did the performers in the parade have weapons "deeply embedded" in their skulls, some also had exposed innards and missing limbs, and they crawled on the ground, crying and howling. A few were carrying a large wooden frame, and a woman was hanged by her neck from one of the beams. Two performers marched while dragging a woman by her legs; the woman's clothes had been torn to rags, and she left a long trail of blood as her face was scraped against the road. It was truly a realistic vision of hell. Even though it was a performance by humans, it was more horrifying than the ghosts of Ghost City—in comparison, Ghost City was practically an ordinary, bustling human market. Just how had all that makeup been done? Xie Lian knew of the tradition, but he'd also thought it was a procession of evil at first glance.
There were quite a few women and children who tried to squeeze to the front of the crowd to watch out of curiosity, but they screamed in fright and backed away when they actually caught a glimpse.
"Your Highness, didn't you say that the point of Fire Socials was to celebrate? Who celebrates like this?" Shi Qingxuan commented. "People are running scared, and those little girls are going to have nightmares. Do people really have fun watching performances like these?"
It really was hard to tell whether people enjoyed watching such performances. But in truth, slaughter and the sight of blood did get people excited. A rush of adrenaline would wash over them after the initial shock wore off, regardless of whether they felt true terror. It seemed there was another name for Bloody Fire Socials in the local dialect: "Stabbing Ecstasy." That meant that when a person was violently stabbed to death, the heart in that moment would be filled with ecstasy—at least, that was how Xie Lian understood the phrase.
The lust for slaughter ran deep in the hearts of humans.
Of course, Xie Lian didn't voice these thoughts on the subject and only watched the spectacle intently for a while. In that impressive parade, there was a pale-faced man dressed in black, tall but skinny as a twig. Knife in hand, he struck at the head of one of the lavishly dressed performers and plunged the weapon deep into their skull. Next, he took out a long spear and used it to skewer the other performer and hoist them up to hang in the air. It was cruel and gruesome, almost like there was a real murder happening right before them. The crowd screamed in horror, though some also cheered.
"I'm guessing they're acting out a story," Xie Lian said. "The black-clad man should be the protagonist and the people he's killing should be the antagonists, the villains. The story tells of the defeat of evil and the triumph of good."
Having said that, something clicked in Xie Lian's mind. "Lord Wind Master, watch closely."
"I am watching," Shi Qingxuan said.
"No, I'm telling you to watch for the story," Xie Lian explained. "Watch for the characters they're performing and the kind of story they're telling. There must be a reason why the Reverend of Empty Words brought you here and picked today of all days. Maybe it was so you'd watch this Bloody Fire Social."
The black-clad man's brow was deeply furrowed, and it looked like he was drowning in grave misery. As he single-handedly "butchered" hundreds of "villains," he was also stabbed all over his body by all sorts of weapons. At the end, he dragged along a number of mangled "corpses" with white bandages around their throats, and then he lowered his head and moved no more. Surprisingly, the ending was one where everyone perished together. As one troupe went past, another troupe followed and performed the tale again. The parade cycled endlessly like this.
"Have you figured out what the story is about?" Xie Lian asked.
Shi Qingxuan knitted his brows. "No. I don't think Iunderstand. He's doing nothing but killing people."
Next to Xie Lian, Hua Cheng said leisurely, "I imagine it's
not a widely known story. Ask a local and see if it's about someone renowned from the area."
Coincidentally, the waiter came by again to bring their orders. "Honored guests, how's the show? Is it exciting?"
"It's good. Very exciting," Xie Lian responded. "May I ask who the main character of this Bloody Fire Social performance is?"
Sure enough, the waiter said, "Oh, outsiders usually don't know and always have to ask. Our town Fu Gu's Fire Social tells a tale that was once passed down through word of mouth alone, starring a character from local legend. Many centuries ago, there was a scholar with the surname He.
"Although this scholar He's family was very, very poor, he was a talented man. Since his youth, he was frighteningly intelligent and picked things up quickly and expertly. He was also widely known as a good son; there was really nothing bad to say about the guy in any respect. Unfortunately for him, he was also very unlucky. For him, nothing good ever lasted.
"When he studied and took the state exam, even though he got the highest marks of them all, he offended the officials because he didn't give a gift to the examiner. They hid his test scrolls and exchanged them for blank ones, so for years he couldn't land a rank.
"When he got engaged, it was to his childhood friend; she was beautiful like a flower, kind, and compassionate. But
both his fiancée and his little sister were forcibly taken by a wealthy household to serve as the lowest kind of concubines. One wouldn't obey and was beaten to death, the other couldn't bear the shame and committed suicide. Scholar He went to seek justice, but those criminals accused him of committing adultery. He was locked up in jail and almost died of starvation there.
"His old ma and pa, both over seventy years old, kowtowed an entire night to beg for him to be shown mercy. But it was no use, and he rotted in jail for two years. His mom had no one to take care of her and was long dead from illness when he finally got out. His dad had to labor for the family by himself and was hanging on by a thread. Scholar He was forced to abandon his scholarly pursuits and went into business instead, but he was too good at it and the other merchants ganged up to suppress him. All the money he made was fleeced away, and instead he drowned in debt."
"..."
"So what do y'all think?" The waiter sighed aloud. "How could anyone be so unlucky?"
Xie Lian cleared his throat quietly and agreed earnestly, "Yeah."
How could someone other than Xie Lian be that unlucky?!
After that brief lamentation, the waiter was radiant with
cheer as he continued the tale.
"And then, one fateful night, the guy went crazy—just completely mad. On the eve of Hanlu, he grabbed a bunch of sharp tools and butchered everyone who had ever caused him harm! It was a bloody sight, I tell ya! Flesh and gore flying everywhere; he hacked 'em all to tiny bits! Since everyone he killed had been bullying the town's citizens for ages, everyone cheered for him. So that's why the town commemorates him with a Bloody Fire Social every year on the eve of Hanlu. Pray Lord Scholar He watches over us and slaughters the wicked."
Supposedly, evil had been defeated and good had triumphed, but it seemed like it still didn't end well. After the waiter left, Xie Lian noticed that Shi Qingxuan seemed contemplative.
"Lord Wind Master, do you have any thoughts?" Xie Lian asked.
Shi Qingxuan snapped out of it. "Some baffling thoughts, but…they're too confusing, so I can't exactly explain. What about you, Your Highness?"
"I was wondering if that Scholar He could've been the previous incarnation of the Reverend of Empty Words."
As they spoke, another troupe started performing the same story again. Shi Qingxuan looked over.
"Its previous incarnation?"
"That's right," Xie Lian said. "Spirits and monsters that resemble humans are usually born from extreme cases of human resentment or obsession. For example, I've heard of a monster in Dongying that was formed from the resentment of women. It's called the Bridge Princess. Some say it was born from the grief of women who waited for husbands who never returned, and others say it was the madness of jealousy. If the Reverend of Empty Words was born of
someone plagued by misfortune, one could say it was formed by that person's jealousy of another's good fortune or their hatred of their own unfortunate fate."
"Investigate the local history. The timeline needs to be verified," Ming Yi said.
"Right. We need to investigate," Xie Lian said.
To determine whether their theory was true, they had to investigate when the "Scholar He" character first appeared in these tales. If he first appeared after the earliest records of the Reverend of Empty Words, then their theory didn't hold.
Shi Qingxuan nodded. After a moment's thought, he continued, "There's one small thing…"
Suddenly, a voice laughed heartily from the crowd below. "Just wait! Your closest family, your best friend—they'll all die a disgraceful death because of you!"
Shi Qingxuan's face immediately changed when he heard. He slapped the table and pushed off, leaping out the window of the restaurant and soaring through the air as light as a feather.
The voice had come from the parading crowd!
"Lord Wind Master! Come back!" Xie Lian yelled from the building's upper floor.
Shi Qingxuan landed in the crowd of bloodied living dead.
"Come the hell out!" he raged. "Come out!"
However, the performers all bore wooden expressions; they ignored him completely and continued to march as though sleepwalking. Shi Qingxuan was shoved around by the crowd as they flowed past him. He couldn't decide who among them was the most suspicious—he saw one that looked dubious, but just as he was about to strike with his Wind Master fan, he spotted another who looked even more suspect. If his aim was not true, there would be a life on his hands.
Hua Cheng hadn't touched his vegetables, and he pushed them around on his plate to form a smiley face. He never looked up once. "It's pointless. It's too easy for a thousand-year-old monster to hide its tracks."
It would be simple for something inhuman to infiltrate this peculiar parade, and Venerables of Empty Words already commonly took on human form. It would be child's play for the Reverend, who was the strongest of them all.
A moment later, Ming Yi jumped down too and pulled Shi Qingxuan out of the crowd. The group left the restaurant on the main street and walked toward the Temple of Wind and Water. Shi Qingxuan gripped his Wind Master fan with a still-trembling hand, but the trembling now seemed like it was from anger rather than his initial fear. He dangled a small wine jug from the restaurant from his other hand; after walking for a while, he tossed back the jug and took a drink, and the seething redness in his eyes finally faded away.
"Ming-xiong, maybe you shouldn't be my best friend for the time being. Wait till I've killed that thing first!"
Ming Yi, however, replied without a trace of restraint: "Who's your best friend? I've never been."
"..." Shi Qingxuan took a moment to process, then his expression turned to outrage. "Ming-xiong, that's too much Don't turn your back on people so quickly when things get tough!"
They were off once again, bickering away. Xie Lian shook his head and fished out two small items from his sleeve.
"Here, Lord Wind Master. I think you'd best use these after all."
Shi Qingxuan took them. "Earplugs?"
Xie Lian nodded. "The idea might be silly, and it doesn't address the root problem, but it'll work for the time being. The creature can't do anything to you if you can't hear it. I made a new group communication array; the verbal password is 'By heaven official's blessings, no paths are bound.' If we need to talk to you, let's do it in the array."
Sure enough, Shi Qingxuan could hear nothing after stuffing in the earplugs. One after the other, the four entered the array.
All of a sudden, Xie Lian heard Hua Cheng's voice calling softly next to his ear. "Gege, gege."
Xie Lian looked over and saw Hua Cheng pointedly blinking at him. His lips weren't moving, but his voice was still resounding in his ear.
"Didn't you say you wanted to talk to me? You won't come to me, so I've no choice but to come to you."
Xie Lian grinned. "It's your fault for setting that as your password."
"Fine, fine. My bad," Hua Cheng acquiesced.
Shi Qingxuan adjusted the earplugs and saw the two of them staring at each other, smiling without saying a word.
"Your Highness, Crimson Rain Sought Flower, what are the two of you doing?" he asked in the communication array, puzzled. "Did you exchange verbal passwords? And now you're exchanging secrets?"
Xie Lian softly cleared his throat and deadpanned in the communication array, "Nothing of the sort."
Hua Cheng raised his brows slightly and passed him another message. "You liar."
Xie Lian stumbled in his step.
Looking straight ahead as he walked, and keeping an equally straight face, he replied, "San Lang, stop teasing me…I need your help with something."
The two of them walked side by side, not looking at each other.
"What is it?" Hua Cheng asked.
"Work with me to test whether a certain someone is the Reverend of Empty Words."