Chapter 7

Jiang Wu turned and ran, pulling out his phone as he went.

“Sorry, the number you have dialed is switched off…”

Xie Qingyuan’s phone gave that message.

Jiang Wu’s fingertips were slightly damp. He cut the call and immediately hailed a cab—not a ride-share. He called both an express taxi and a regular one at the same time.

Soon, Jiang Wu was in an express car heading to the Xie Residence.

The journey was smooth until they neared the street of the Xie Residence, where they hit a jam. The driver glanced at the red line on the map and clicked his tongue softly. “What happened? Even that street is jammed!”

Jiang Wu could already hear crying and the buzz of hushed conversations, though he couldn’t make it out clearly.

He quickly unbuckled his seatbelt. “Pull over here.”

After getting out, Jiang Wu ran all the way. He reached the subway entrance from the day before in a flash. Looking across, the road leading to the Xie Residence was still as congested as yesterday.

When he lifted his foot again, it felt heavy.

Xie Qingyuan was his first friend.

If…

Jiang Wu clenched his phone and ran onto the crosswalk.

The crying grew closer, the voices clearer.

“Yes, passed away in the early hours of the morning last night.”

“Sudden heart attack.”

“Ultimately, he couldn’t cross the hundred-year threshold. My condolences; at least the teacher didn’t suffer much before he went.”

…

Through the stream of cars, Jiang Wu saw Xie Qingyuan walk out of the gate with a group of people, a black armband on his sleeve.

The one who had died was not Xie Qingyuan.

Jiang Wu let out a long breath. He pressed his hand to his pounding chest and retreated to the base of a wall, watching Xie Qingyuan get into a car.

These cars were heading to the funeral home. Xie Peitang was to be cremated promptly at 11:26 AM.

The congested road emptied instantly. Silence fell. The snow piled on the roadside had turned a semi-transparent brown, no cleaner than anywhere else.

Jiang Wu paused briefly, then took a taxi to the city hospital.

In the past, Jiang Wu never went to hospitals. He didn’t get sick, so he never needed one. He also didn’t like them; that place showed too many Death Notices, filled with suffocation, despair, and parting. He didn’t like it.

That day, however, Jiang Wu visited every intensive care ward in all of Xianjiang’s hospitals.

He saw three Death Notices with absolute clarity.

None had vanished.

Stepping out of the last hospital, the roads were busy with traffic, neon lights flashed, and there was no snow.

He hadn’t eaten all day. Jiang Wu wasn’t hungry, but Banfen was. He went into a pet store and bought a box of Dubia roaches. When he offered them to Banfen, it waved its front claws in disgust, refusing.

So Jiang Wu gave the Dubia roaches to a bearded dragon being boarded at the store. Afterward, he took Banfen to a supermarket and bought a small bag of shrimp for it, a small bottle of white liquor, a bag of fried peanuts, and a double beef hamburger.

Coming out of the supermarket, he found a spot to feed the shrimp to Banfen. Once it had eaten its fill, he went to buy incense, candles, spirit money, and a bouquet of chrysanthemums.

By the time he’d finished shopping, it was fully dark. When Jiang Wu got a cab, the driver kept sizing him up and made the entire trip on the phone with his family, speeding all the way to the suburban public cemetery.

The suburban night was cold and windy. This public cemetery was cheap, remote, and deserted, with no cemetery management staff, not even a single streetlamp. The moment Jiang Wu stepped out, the driver reversed and sped away at lightning speed.

Jiang Wu silently paid the fare and left a good review. Carrying his things, he walked into the darkness, climbing the steps up the hill.

Vast swathes of tombstones emitted a stark white glow in the darkness. Occasionally, a few characters were visible: Zhao, Li, Wu…

Jiang Wu knew the path well. He reached the hilltop, then turned left and walked a long path until he finally arrived at Granny Jiang’s grave.

Jiang Saifeng, passed away at sixty-one years of age.

In the affixed photo, Granny Jiang was, as always, stern-faced.

She rarely had relaxed moments. She often kept a stiff face; even when happy, she only slightly softened her brow.

The only time she would smile was when she had the leisure to sip some wine with peanuts and eat a favorite hamburger. But they were too poor. Occasionally, when there was spare money, Granny Jiang would only bring back a large order of fries, asking the clerk for many packets of ketchup. Crispy fries, freshly out of the fryer, sprinkled with a bit of salt, dipped into a thick blob of ketchup—it was the sweetest delicacy in Jiang Wu’s world.

Jiang Wu neatly arranged the items before the grave. He unscrewed the bottle cap, poured a circle of liquor onto the soil, crouched down, and lit the incense and candles. “Granny, from now on, eat freely. I can earn money now; I can afford it.”

Utter silence. Banfen crawled out of his pocket, its thin legs climbing along his sleeve to his wrist, then stopping on the back of his hand. Its two main eyes gazed at him quietly, large and round, as if comforting him.

Jiang Wu tore open the paper money and fed it into the candle flame. The firelight reflected on his face, his eyebrows curving into crescents. “I have good news to tell you: I can get sick now. A cold feels really awful, but normal people get colds, right? Maybe I’m getting closer to being normal.”

“Whoosh, found you.”

“Wow, so fragrant and sweet!”

Voices suddenly spoke.

Jiang Wu’s long eyelashes fluttered slightly. He raised his eyes to look around; his surroundings were completely dark, only the light from the incense, candles, and burning paper money before him. The voices from moments ago had disappeared.

Sometimes, when the space was too quiet, Jiang Wu could hear sounds from kilometers away. Jiang Wu paid it no mind, lowered his head, and tore another sheet of paper money into the fire.

After the incense, candles, and paper had burned to ash, Jiang Wu didn’t waste any of the other offerings except the liquor. He ate them all clean.

Finally, he drank a small sip of liquor to warm himself up, then poured the rest in front of Granny Jiang’s grave.

“Granny, I have to go back. I’ll visit you again next time.” Jiang Wu got up. His foot had just left the ground when it slowly settled back down. He took a deep breath, crouched again, leaned his upper body forward, and pressed his cheek against the ice-cold photo. “If you have time, come see me in my dreams. Even scolding me would be fine. I miss you.”

~

The path down the mountain seemed different. Jiang Wu remembered there being a few wintersweet trees to the left of the steps, but they were gone now.

And from nowhere, the sound of gulping saliva emerged, growing increasingly clear, rising and falling in waves.

He immediately thought of the program he’d heard in the early hours.

“Do you believe there are ghosts and gods in the world?”

Yes!

He himself was an existence out of tune with the world!

Jiang Wu suddenly sped up, charging down the steps. But the steps had no end, stretching endlessly downward into the darkness.

As if—

Leading to the eighteenth level of Hell.

“Hee hee, don’t run!”

“You smell so delicious.”

“So sweet, so fragrant!”

The chorus of laughter suddenly became clear, clinging tightly to Jiang Wu’s ears.

A sticky liquid trickled down his earlobe into his neck.

But Jiang Wu had no time to be disgusted. The steps ahead began to twist and writhe, and simultaneously, like bamboo shoots after rain, countless pale, bluish-purple hands burst from the ground.

Some slender, some thick, belonging to men and women alike. Hands painted with bright red, purple-black nails surged toward Jiang Wu like a writhing swarm of maggots.

“Mine, you’re mine! You’re ours! Ours!”

…

Jiang Wu was going to vomit.

Shielding his pocket, he turned and sprinted upwards.

“Baby, you smell so good, so sweet!”

“Hee hee hee, you can’t escape, baby.”

Another wave of stark white, blood-red hands surged from above, blocking Jiang Wu’s path. Overwhelming voices swirled in his ears.

“Baby, we told you, you can’t escape. Don’t struggle anymore.”

Jiang Wu watched helplessly as the hands multiplied, stretching longer and longer, emerging from the ground like endless noodles, reaching for his neck.

“Let us eat you, baby!”

Completely unarmed, Jiang Wu’s mind raced. The next second, he proactively grabbed a hand. Rough and icy cold. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the hand outward. Once its length was sufficient, he lifted his foot and stomped down decisively.

Crack.

“Ah!”

A shrill scream. The severed hand splattered blood. The thick stench of rot sent the writhing mass into a greater frenzy.

“Blood! It’s blood!”

Jiang Wu now had a makeshift weapon. He swung the severed hand, batting away the hands lunging at him.

Between the fingers, red tongues slithered out one after another, greedily, frantically licking the blood all over the ground.

“Ugh…” Jiang Wu finally couldn’t hold back and vomited. The scene before him was too bizarre and nauseating.

Just then, the severed hand came alive again. Ten sharp fingernails sliced through Jiang Wu’s jacket and embedded themselves deeply into his flesh.

Jiang Wu was vomiting and in pain. His vision began to blur. He tried to shake off the hand, but it was wrapped around him tightly, impenetrably. All he could hear was—

Drip, drip…

Translucent blood dripped onto the ground.

The swarm of hands and tongues was stirred into unprecedented agitation.

“What fragrant blood!”

“It’s the baby’s delicious blood!”

The putrid, sticky stench surged. The severed hand scraped against Jiang Wu’s arm like a blade. A red tongue wriggled out from between its fingers, impatiently sucking Jiang Wu’s blood.

Jiang Wu couldn’t hold on any longer. He dropped to one knee as an invisible force pushed him forward, toward those ravenous tongues.

“Blood, blood! The baby’s blood!”

Jiang Wu’s face grew closer and closer to those drooling red tongues…

He was about to become a midnight snack for these sticky tongues…

Liquid pattered down onto his eyelids—perhaps saliva from those tongues, perhaps his own blood—sealing his eyelids shut.

As his vision was about to go black, a thought suddenly struck him: he hadn’t seen his own Death Notice either.

Could it be—

Jiang Wu violently wrenched his eyelids open, raised his other hand high with all his might, and grabbed that tongue tightly. He ripped it from his own mangled, bloody arm and swiftly broke it into two pieces.

“Let me go!” The two tongue segments howled madly in his grasp, struggling to escape.

Jiang Wu held them fast, not letting them flee. Just then, one of the severed tongues abruptly split into two and plunged into Jiang Wu’s palm. The piercing pain made Jiang Wu involuntarily hiss.

Almost simultaneously—

“AAAAAHHH!”

The hands surging toward him, the red tongues drooling as they closed in, were instantly consumed by flames. They shrieked and wailed piteously, gradually transforming into birds.

These birds resembled hawks, only smaller in size. Their foreheads to the backs of their necks were a dark ash-gray, their bellies white with brown markings. Their two small eyes gleamed with ferocity and cunning.

Jiang Wu had seen them in books before. This kind of bird was called an Old Harrier.

The darkness was illuminated by a golden flame. Flocks of burning Old Harriers were incinerated into ash in an instant, turning into sparks of fire that drifted up into the sky and then dissipated, speck by speck, into the darkness. The world returned to calm.

The invisible force pushing Jiang Wu also vanished.

Thud, thud…

The steady, powerful sound of leather shoes became the sole sound in the world.

Jiang Wu gasped for air as his blurred vision gradually cleared. In the sky-filling flames ahead, a tall, upright figure walked toward him on the newly re-emerged stone steps.

Jiang Wu looked up, stunned, and collided directly with a pair of cold, unattainable, downward-slanting eyes that looked down upon all creation.

The words escaped his mouth involuntarily. “Who are you?”

The man looked down at him, his jawline sharp and distinct. His noble, slender left hand lifted slightly. The severed hand embedded in Jiang Wu’s arm and the severed tongue Jiang Wu clutched immediately flew into his palm. He closed his fingers. “Bang!” Those things instantly turned into fiery light.

Those two cold, sharp, thin lips parted amidst the fiery red glow, uttering two words.

“Ghost Emperor.”