Ghost and monster stories circulated in the countryside were somewhat different from those in the city.
The ghosts and monsters in the city were all deeply sentimental, particular about things like the unerring cycle of karma and retribution, repaying a drop of kindness with a surging spring, transforming into beautiful women to seduce scholars…
The ghosts and monsters in the countryside were much simpler, all following the same template: “If you don’t behave / go to sleep / eat your food, [Name] will take you away / eat you!”
Country folk didn’t understand things like karmic cycles or beautiful women and scholars, but wild beasts descending the mountains to steal chickens and dogs and carry off children was a common occurrence.
If there had been any other way, the old man wouldn’t have pinned his hopes on Li Qiuchen.
But Li Qiuchen didn’t thump his chest and promise to take care of everything.
He knew his own limits; his chest wasn’t that broad to begin with.
Rather, he was quite interested in the Profound Pearl the old man had mentioned.
“What if you stake your life, but those bandits still refuse to let the villagers go?”
“Who knows? If we can’t get it, we can’t get it. We can’t have the whole village jump into the river and drown, can we?”
The old man’s face was full of sorrow, sighing repeatedly.
Li Qiuchen’s suspicions didn’t diminish in the slightest.
This old man wasn’t telling the truth.
Having learned from Great-Granduncle’s precedent, he now harbored intense vigilance toward all oldsters who refused to die.
“When your family’s ancestor obtained that Profound Pearl back then, didn’t he leave behind any experiences or techniques?”
The old man raised his eyelids and glanced at Li Qiuchen. After a long silence, he lowered his voice and said, “There are some accounts, but we descendants are incompetent and lack the old ancestor’s skill.”
“What sort of accounts?”
“…”
Seeing the old man’s hesitation, Li Qiuchen smiled. “It doesn’t matter whether you tell me or not. There are definitely people more curious than me. When you pass on, if those bandits take your family…”
The old man hurriedly grabbed Li Qiuchen and smiled. “What is there to hide at this point? I’ll tell you the truth. Back then, my great-grandfather encountered a Mountain Lord by chance while hunting in the mountains.”
Mountain Lord—that is, a tiger.
“That Mountain Lord was severely injured and collapsed by the water. Its blood flowed into the water, drawing countless fish and shrimp to fight over it. Among them was a stone mussel. After consuming tiger blood, it couldn’t endure it and got ‘drunk,’ collapsing by the riverbank, allowing my great-grandfather to pick up a bargain… You tell me, how can one simply encounter such a stroke of luck?”
So that was it.
Li Qiuchen nodded, shoveling food into his mouth as he pressed, “Did Jiao Potian say when he’d come again?”
“Within these few days, I reckon he should be coming.”
“Old man, no matter what, I’ve eaten your family’s food and taken some of your things, so I owe your family a favor. How about I help you think of a plan for this matter?”
This was exactly what the old man had been waiting for. Upon hearing it, his face lit up with joy, and he hurriedly picked up the wine jug to pour Li Qiuchen a drink. “Little Brother, if you have any ideas, speak quickly. As long as you can save my family’s lives, you may take whatever catches your eye from my home!”
“Don’t get excited just yet, Elder.”
Li Qiuchen pressed down on his wrist and smiled. “Let me ask you—where did your ancestor encounter that Mountain Lord?”
“At that waterhole in the northern mountains…”
“The north… the one about four or five mu in size?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“Then listen to me. Early tomorrow morning, have your people go over there, build a fire by that lake, cook a meal, and set up a banquet. I’ll help you pull some strings and invite that Mountain Lord out to ask it for a bowl of tiger blood. Perhaps that will lure the stone mussel out of the lake.”
The old man was stunned. Little Brother, do your connections run that wild? You can invite a Mountain Lord to dinner?
“Is this true?”
“I’m just suggesting an idea. I dare not guarantee whether it will succeed or fail. But even if I’m deceiving you, it’s nothing more than tricking you out of a single meal. What could your family possibly lose?”
Li Qiuchen shrugged. “There’s an old saying about treating a dead horse as if it were alive. If you find it improper, just pretend I never said anything.”
“No, no, no! It’s proper! It must be proper!”
Now that Li Qiuchen said this, the old man grew anxious instead.
“You tell me, how should the wine and dishes be prepared? Should we slice up a couple more catties of meat, get some good wine, and so on?”
Two catties of meat? That’s not even enough to get stuck between a Mountain Lord’s teeth.
Li Qiuchen pointed at the food on the table. “Just use this as the standard, but with larger portions. First, stew up a big pot of something hot, and bring two jars of wine.”
The old man followed Li Qiuchen’s finger with his gaze.
Does a Mountain Lord also like pork stewed with glass noodles?
“And one more thing—remember this. Once the food is ready, leave quickly. Don’t have anyone stay there.”
Li Qiuchen said seriously, “If the Mountain Lord discovers people there, it’ll eat both the food and the humans together. Don’t blame me then.”
“Of course, of course, I understand.”
The old man was overjoyed, repeatedly urging him to drink. In his eyes, this was no child at all, but clearly a transformed spirit monster—and not an ordinary one at that.
Ordinary lesser spirits wouldn’t dare joke around using the Mountain Lord’s name.
Seeing how firmly the old man believed him, Li Qiuchen didn’t stand on ceremony. He raised his hand to refuse the wine, pulled out a copper basin from his hemp sack, dumped all the food from the table into it, hoisted the sack onto his back, and turned to leave.
He had just stepped out the door when the old man chased after him from behind, carrying a half-cut braised pig’s head in his hand. “Little Brother, Little Brother, take this too! We still have a vat of cornmeal in the back room. Wait a moment, I’ll go pack some for you…”
“Next time, let’s talk next time!”
Li Qiuchen didn’t even have a storage bag; how could he carry so much? Taking advantage of when the old man went back inside, he broke into a run.
Having run two li from the village in one breath, Li Qiuchen unloaded the hemp sack from his back. Before he could catch his breath, a White Crane descended from the sky, flapping its wings.
“Ga-ga—!”
“I know, I know, don’t snatch!”
What’s the use of snatching? You can’t even get it into your mouth yourself.
Li Qiuchen had just set the basin down when the White Crane plunged its head in, burying its entire head in the basin and began to wolf down the food.
A living person can’t suffocate from holding their pee. Though this way of eating was rather unsightly, it was still better than starving to death.
This stupid bird only knew how to eat all day long.
Sometimes Li Qiuchen even suspected that beneath its feathers, it had nothing but a stomach pouch.
In the blink of an eye, the entire basin of food was eaten clean, even licked out by its tongue. Even so, it seemed to want more, staring at the braised pig’s head in Li Qiuchen’s hand as if it had further designs.
“If you eat any more, it’ll be cannibalism.”
The White Crane was silent for a moment. Once it realized Li Qiuchen had called it a pig, it unceremoniously slapped him across the face with a wing.
Li Qiuchen decided to give it an even uglier nickname: Ga-Ga Pig.
After eating and drinking his fill, he returned to the lakeside, and Li Qiuchen began preparing for tomorrow’s plan.
He definitely didn’t know any Mountain Lord. Tricking the old man into setting up a banquet was just because he coveted that large iron pot, and by the way, he wanted to freeload another meal.
As for how to catch the stone mussel and retrieve the Profound Pearl, Li Qiuchen already had some ideas, but he wasn’t in a hurry to put them into practice.
That old man seemed quite honest, but he hadn’t told the truth.
Or rather, he hadn’t divulged all the information to him.
From start to finish, there were two things he had never explained clearly.
One was the authorities.
This village wasn’t as remote and isolated as Songlin Village. Merchants came to purchase pearls, and government officials came to collect taxes.
Now that something like this had happened, why didn’t you report it to the authorities?
This point was understandable. Perhaps there were all sorts of difficulties that were hard to mention—for example, the authorities not caring, or the county town being too far away, so distant water couldn’t quench a nearby thirst.
Li Qiuchen didn’t understand the local situation and couldn’t easily make a judgment.
But the second matter was rather suspicious when considered carefully.
Over the years, the village had only obtained a single Profound Pearl, and that was a very long time ago. How did the newly arrived bandits know of it and come knocking to demand it?
Li Qiuchen thought there were two possibilities.
One possibility was that the old man’s family had provoked some enemy, who used the Profound Pearl as an excuse to buy off the bandits and cause trouble for them.
Another possibility was… his family actually did have a method for retrieving pearls hidden away, but the news had leaked and fallen upon interested ears.
Or perhaps both.
“What do you think?”
Li Qiuchen actually felt it was unnecessary to ask the stupid bird this, but there were no other living creatures nearby to chat with.
“Ga!”
The White Crane pointed at the food basin and pinched its talons.
This stupid bird’s thinking was quite simple and honest: since it had eaten someone’s food, it had to help them settle their affairs.
“What if we can’t retrieve the Profound Pearl, and those bandits refuse to act reasonably, unwilling to let the villagers go?”
“Ga!”
Then they all die!
The White Crane viciously made a throat-slitting gesture.
Quite bloodthirsty.
The problem was, with a stupid bird that couldn’t even feed itself, plus a child like him who couldn’t carry a load on his shoulders or lift anything with his hands, how were they supposed to deal with a group of fierce, vicious bandits?
Since things had come to this…
“Sleep first.”
With limited intelligence and clues at hand, Li Qiuchen couldn’t rashly draw conclusions.
Early the next morning, there was movement from the village.
Li Qiuchen hid in the woods, watching several villagers come to the lakeside to build a fire and set up a pot, arranging tables, chairs, bowls, and chopsticks.
Country folk were relatively honest and sincere. When they said they were preparing a banquet, they prepared it earnestly. They actually carried up a live pig weighing several hundred catties and began to butcher it on the spot.
The local banquet had a very simple and straightforward name: Pig-Slaughtering Stew.
After slaughtering pigs during festivals and holidays, they would stuff sausage with pig blood, slice thick fatty pork pieces, and throw them into the pot together with heart, liver, stomach, lungs, and thigh bones, adding pickled sour cabbage strips from the previous year to stew.
This was the main dish. The remaining parts each had their own preparations. The most common were pork stewed with glass noodles, crystal pork hock, braised pig trotters, braised pig’s head, and roasted spare ribs…
The cooking methods were actually all quite simple; whether it tasted good or not depended mainly on the quality of the pig.
The villagers didn’t know the Mountain Lord’s tastes, so they very wisely only prepared half a side, hanging the remaining half nearby, and left behind five large jars of aged wine.
This busyness took up the better half of a day. Seeing the sun slanting westward, the group discussed it and decided they’d better leave early.
The host had instructed that no one could remain at the scene. Who knew how large the Mountain Lord’s appetite was? If it wasn’t full, it might take them for a midnight snack.
Once these people left, Li Qiuchen stood up and walked out openly and boldly. He came to the pot, served himself a bowl of yellow millet rice, sat down, and began to wolf it down.