The sky gradually darkened, the insect sounds in the trees becoming denser. The chill on Mo Xiaoji’s body grew stronger, so intense that she could hear her own drum-like heavy breathing. If her old witch grandmother knew, she would surely mock her.
Mo Xiaoji tried to calm her breathing, telling herself there was nothing to fear, that ghosts and monsters didn’t exist. Yet, she couldn’t help her scalp from tingling.
The footsteps behind her seemed to stop. Mo Xiaoji could no longer hear matching sounds within her own footsteps.
Mo Xiaoji thought the presence had left. Many times, the footsteps would stop as she got closer to the village.
Her nerves were once again fully alert to the surrounding sounds. Even the slightest breeze could make her heart leap to her throat, the pressure from her heart making her breathing increasingly heavy.
Suddenly, a figure flashed from the bushes. Mo Xiaoji’s already fragile spirit couldn’t bear the shock, and she immediately fell to the ground.
“Xiaoji,” a low, hoarse voice spoke.
Eerie Village
“Uncle Hao Lian,” Mo Xiaoji recognized the familiar voice, knowing Uncle Hao Lian had come to fetch her. Although his face, covered in knife scars, had always been the source of her nightmares, his appearance in this desolate grove of ancient trees still helped her heart return to its normal position.
Uncle Hao Lian simply gave Mo Xiaoji a silent glance and walked away without another word.
Mo Xiaoji was already accustomed to his cold demeanor, following closely behind. Though she wanted to ask about Brother Yu’s absence, she thought better of it, knowing she could hardly get Uncle Hao Lian to speak.
At the village entrance, Uncle Hao Lian stopped.
The entire village was encircled by towering trees, forming an impenetrable wall. You’ve surely never seen such a wall – hundreds of massive trees densely merged together, with no understanding of how they were originally planted to grow so naturally interconnected.
The village had only one entrance. Uncle Chong sat on a wooden stump at this sole entry point.
Wearing a black short-sleeved shirt, with stern eyes, he held a black cloth, carefully wiping a short knife. The blade, which gleamed with a cold light, was polished so meticulously that even a hair could be reflected.
“Uncle Chong,” Mo Xiaoji greeted respectfully.
Chong narrowed his phoenix-like eyes, looking at the knife in his hand, treating Mo Xiaoji as if she were invisible.
Mo Xiaoji shrugged indifferently. She had long been accustomed to the strange people and odd occurrences in their village.
However, Mo Xiaoji had always wondered if Uncle Chong’s smile would be as beautiful as Brother Yu’s, perhaps even more so. Unfortunately, she had never seen Uncle Chong smile. His angular face seemed perpetually wrapped in thousand-year-old frost.
Mo Xiaoji sighed and walked through the wooden stump into the village.
The village remained lush with ancient trees, luxuriant branches climbing everywhere, with a few wooden houses scattered sparsely among the trees.
Grandmother the Witch
Few strangers ever came here. Even if strangers arrived and entered the village, without a local guide, they would get lost. The wooden houses would be right before their eyes, seemingly just a few steps away, yet unreachable. Mo Xiaoji had lived here for twenty years and would sometimes still get trapped and unable to exit.
Moxiaoji walked to the pine tree with mottled old bark in front of her house, and saw her grandmother hunched over, kneeling devoutly before the incense table in the center of the wooden house.
Her head full of white hair was messy like boiling water, scattered and unruly. Beneath that tangled hair, her aged face was covered with deep, mottled wrinkles even more weathered than the tree bark. Her thin, dry hands gripped a skull-headed cane polished to a shine, resembling a witch from 18th-century Europe.
“Xiaoji”
Moxiaoji stared unblinkingly as her grandmother rose tremblingly from the ground, leaning on her cane. Beneath her sunken eye sockets, her grayish bulging eyes, like those of a dead fish, bore an indescribable eeriness as they fixed on Moxiaoji standing beside the pine tree.
Moxiaoji knew nothing about the grandmother who had raised her.
For instance, no matter where Moxiaoji secretly stood in the courtyard, her grandmother would immediately know she had returned home. Sometimes she wondered if her grandmother might truly be a witch.
Her grandmother’s gaze on Moxiaoji grew increasingly strange. Though Moxiaoji was accustomed to this look since childhood, she still felt goosebumps all over. She remembered how her curious classmates would always be scared away by her grandmother’s terrifying eyes, unanimously saying that her grandmother’s dead fish eyes looked like those of a man-eating old witch.
Under her grandmother’s compelling gaze, Moxiaoji reluctantly and slowly walked into the wooden house, took off her shoes, and obediently knelt before the table like her grandmother had, though her eyes secretly wandered, looking at the hanging deity.
However she looked at it, he didn’t seem like an immortal at all, yet made her kneel and burn incense for him daily. In her heart, Moxiaoji cursed his ancestors eight generations back.
Look at him – what about him resembles an immortal, except for being slightly more handsome than an ordinary person?
Evil Youth
A beautiful face, sword-like eyebrows sweeping into his temples, narrow elongated eyes, black eyes carrying an evil spirit, with an upward-curving elegant angle, a straight and attractive nose bridge, thin lips as beautiful as jade, black hair tied up with a jade hairpin, wearing a white, snow-like flowing silk robe, with a white belt of the same color around his waist.
Moxiaoji admitted he was even more beautiful and evil than her brother Yu, but was he an immortal? Really? At most, he looked like a kept pretty boy. These words could only be mumbled in her stomach – she would never dare to say them out loud, or her grandmother would devour her.
She didn’t know how much her grandmother treasured this painting, constantly wiping it. Just for once having a moment of infatuation and wanting to observe him closely to see if he had an immortal’s essence, she was locked in the house for two days. If her brother Yu hadn’t brought her food, she would have been close to starving.
After cursing him several times in her heart, she heard her grandmother’s aged voice: “Time to eat.”
Moxiaoji stood up, grimacing and rubbing her sore knees.
Lifting her head and meeting her grandmother’s cold gaze, Moxiaoji immediately forced an obedient smile. Her grandmother just glanced at her and turned to walk into the western room.
Moxiaoji obediently followed her grandmother, inwardly complaining.
This was her grandmother’s bedroom and their dining area, simply furnished. Besides a wooden bed with white curtains, there was a black-patterned wooden chest in the corner and a small square wooden table in the center of the room.
From the moment she entered, Moxiaoji’s eyes were fixed on the wooden chest – her old witch grandmother’s treasure. Moxiaoji couldn’t even dream of touching it. It was difficult to even see inside, as she was forbidden from entering this room except during mealtimes.
Since childhood, Moxiaoji had imagined countless times that it might contain a witch’s broom or precious treasures, but her grandmother always kept it locked with an enormous padlock. Only once, when Moxiaoji was fifteen, her grandmother forgot to lock it.
