Xue Xian felt as if a thousand-ton force had slammed into his chest, knocking his senses right out of him. It was fortunate he was made of paper, or he might have hacked up his lungs from the impact. At the same time, his ears were assaulted by Jiang Shining’s undignified scream and Xuanmin’s muffled grunt.
By the time he’d regained his awareness, Jiang Shining had been hurled into the wall, reverting to his original form with a puff before fluttering to the floor. There he lay, more dead than usual.
Xuanmin had a hand pressed to his chest, and he coughed several times before collecting himself.
“What was that?” Xue Xian asked, exhausted.
It was all he could do to dangle from the pouch’s entrance. He could barely raise his head to look at the square opening in the ground. The fresh hole was partially filled with yellow soil, and he could vaguely see an iron chain with a talisman wrapped around its length protruding from that soil. Strangely, the iron chain was rotating on its own.
Frowning, Xuanmin scanned the damp yellow soil before he looked up to search the room.
Xue Xian watched in confusion as Xuanmin stood up and walked to the table. He rummaged until he found a brush, its bristles half gone, then returned to the hole and swept away the soil using the brush.
Xue Xian really had to hand it to Xuanmin. So fussy, he silently scoffed. Will your fingers rot away if they touch some dirt?!
Once Xuanmin had finished brushing aside the yellow soil, what sat concealed beneath it became visible.
“That’s…a millstone?” Xue Xian said, confused.
The round stone block had a hole in the center, a solid base, and a horizontal rod extending from its side—definitely a millstone. However, the stone was unusually small, only about the size of a palm. Its surface was also atypical, being carved with two sets of complex runes. One end of the iron chain was secured to the millstone’s base, while the other end was attached to the rod.
Without the yellow soil cushioning it, the chain fell right onto the millstone, making faint scraping sounds as it moved. With each inch it moved, the horizontal rod rotated slightly, as if an invisible person was ceaselessly pushing the empty millstone day and night.
“Old Lady Liu?” Xue Xian called without thinking.
“Hahhh…” That weary sigh echoed once more.
Xue Xian felt a chill run down his spine. Of course, paper couldn’t get cold, and he wasn’t scared, but the thought that a person could trap their own mother underground just to guarantee themselves a prosperous future filled him with disgust. Some people were remarkably grotesque in their wickedness. Raising a millstone would be better than raising a son like that!
Xuanmin reached in and removed that millstone, no larger than his palm, from the hole. Placing it on the ground, he peeled off the yellow talisman wrapped around the iron chain, then lit a tendril of flame, burning it to ashes.
As the yellow talisman was swallowed, Xue Xian, who was hanging at the pouch’s entrance, sensed a faint droning vibration. It felt like someone was striking a hammer against his bones, the force neither hard nor soft but distinctly unpleasant.
This millstone had been sealed underground for at least three years, absorbing great quantities of resentful energy from its surroundings. With the talisman gone, the bitter energy bound to it was dissipating. An adverse reaction to the sensation was normal. But if he—a limp paper doll at a distance—felt this much discomfort, the man burning the talisman must have been suffering even more.
Xue Xian turned to glance at Xuanmin, only to find him completely unaffected. His expression was cold, as if he were doing a different task entirely. Xue Xian had a sudden sense that Xuanmin was unlike any monks he’d seen before, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how.
Perhaps…he was just extra infuriating!
While Xue Xian was thinking his ridiculous thoughts, Xuanmin finished burning the talisman. As the last of its ashes fluttered to the ground, the iron chain fastened to the millstone snapped with a crack and clattered to the floor.
The faint shadow leaning against the millstone slowly came into focus. At first, it resembled a withered branch curled upon the ground. But before Xue Xian and Xuanmin’s eyes, it swelled, morphing into a hunched old woman.
The old woman’s hair was sparse and white, tied into a limp bun at the back of her head. Her face was etched with deep creases, and her eyes were clouded, as if perpetually brimming with old tears. Her appearance bore a faint resemblance to that of Old Lady Liu, yet this version, now a true ghost, seemed even more frail than the cane-using apparition within the array. It looked as if she might shut her eyes and collapse at any moment. Without her cane, her crooked body seemed even more deformed; her left side was much more shrunken than her right. She could barely stand upright and had to support herself against the millstone’s rod.
“How horrific,” Xue Xian muttered. As a creature born from nature, he’d grown up without parents and thus had little understanding of familial bonds. However, after being thrust into human society for these last six months, he’d managed to glean some superficial insights.
Scribe Liu had opened Xue Xian’s eyes to a new low. To do something so monstrous… How much did he hate his own mother?
Xuanmin glanced down at him, and his gaze left Xue Xian a little perturbed. He defiantly raised his chin and glared back, but it was lacking in strength. He rolled his eyes. A moment later, he came up with a great idea: To! The! Head!
He’d always acted on impulse, so he wasted no time hauling himself up Xuanmin’s robe using his arms. As he’d done this before, his movements were much nimbler this time. In a flash, he reached the front of Xuanmin’s robe. As he extended his arms to heave himself further up, a scream came from the doorway.
“Ahhhh! Don’t touch me! Help! Help!”
The voice was shrill, desperate, deafening, and most of all, unpleasant—as if its owner had seen a ghost. In Xue Xian’s surprise, his hands wavered and he lost his grip. He fell from Xuanmin’s chest and fluttered down to land, gracelessly, right on his face.
Humiliated, Xue Xian refused to make eye contact with anyone after his fall. His limbs were stiff as he lay there unmoving, as if he’d perished upon touching the floor.
Xuanmin ignored the unending screams outside and crouched down to look at the paper figure sprawled on the ground and playing dead.
“Not getting up?” he asked indifferently.
Xue Xian played dead even harder.
Xuanmin tapped on the back of his paper head with a finger. “Time to burn you, then.” Without further comment, he lit a fire starter.
The tiny flame licked close to the paper, and Xue Xian could feel the heat baking his body.
“Where did your Buddhist compassion go?” Xue Xian cried. “Did you feed it to the dogs?!”
At this, Xuanmin stayed his hand, as if he’d recollected something. His expression flickered for a moment, then he shook his head and put out the fire starter.
Picking Xue Xian up by one of his paper feet, Xuanmin asked in a low voice, “Still want to climb?”
Xue Xian covered his face with both hands while being dangled upside down, even more humiliated. Still, he couldn’t resist retorting, “I’ll climb your dad!”
As Xuanmin tucked Xue Xian back into the bag without further comment, lumbering footsteps rushed toward the inner chamber.
Uncovering his eyes, Xue Xian saw Liu Chong staring blankly at them. He had just escaped the array and seemed to have been through quite an ordeal. His blue robe was torn in several places, with stuffing protruding from the holes, and his expression was anguished as he turned to say something to Xuanmin.
However, before Liu Chong could speak, his gaze fixed on the old lady holding onto the millstone, and he froze.
“Grand…Grandma?” he called to her hesitantly. Perhaps the apparition in the array had attacked him, for he shrank back, too afraid to step forward.
Old Lady Liu raised her lifeless eyes to look at Liu Chong. As soon as she saw him, tears sprang to her eyes and streamed down her face. With a pained sigh, still supporting herself against the millstone, she gestured to Liu Chong.
“Chong-er, what happened to your clothes?”
The moment he heard her tone, all the suffering Liu Chong had endured within the array was wiped from his mind. He rushed forward with watering eyes and fell to his knees, trying to grasp Old Lady Liu’s hand. “Grandma, why did you shrink? Wh-why can’t I touch you?”
The millstone had drained the old woman for far too long. Now, she stood barely half the height of the average elder, her form hunched and frail. She said none of this to Liu Chong, though; instead, she pursed her lips and smiled.
“Grandma’s old. People shrink when we’re old. It’s fine if you can’t touch me.”
“G-Grandma, why haven’t you come to see me? I folded so many ingots. Didn’t you say that if I folded them and wrote a name on them, everyone would come to take them? But I-I fold and burn them every day, and no one ever comes to see me. Why haven’t you come even once? I want to hear you talk, I want to talk to you, but I never see you. I’ve… I’ve already forgotten what I wanted to say…”
Liu Chong’s mind was still that of a child. Upon seeing the grandmother he’d missed so dearly, he gasped out the rest of his words, then started to cry. He lacked the restraint of an adult man, so he sobbed like a waterfall, as if his tears could empty out all the words he’d stored up for three years and forgotten.
“Grandma was listening. Even if Chong-er doesn’t tell me, your grandma already knows.” Old Lady Liu wiped her tears. “I’m always watching you, day and night…”
While grandmother and grandson wept, the man outside burst into the house like a madman. “Help! Help! Don’t touch me—stay away!”
The newcomer’s hair was disheveled and his clothes were ragged. He must have taken his fair share of tumbles, because his body was covered in mud and his appearance was wretched.
“Wait, isn’t that Scribe Liu?” Xue Xian said after studying him.
From the looks of it, Liu Chong had been quite lucky. The array must have terrified Scribe Liu beyond imagination, given how he’d recklessly charged inside the house despite his intense reluctance to enter it earlier.
Xuanmin frowned at Scribe Liu’s mud-covered clothes and stepped aside. Scribe Liu was still rushing forward; with no one to catch him, he crashed directly into Liu Chong and fell to the ground on his behind.
With that, he found himself face-to-face with Old Lady Liu. Scribe Liu was instantly petrified: His body stiffened and his eyes went wide. In his terror, he even forgot to breathe.