Chapter 33: Evil Dog Ridge — Perhaps Death Does Not Mean Loneliness and Forgetting

In that instant between life and death, Lu You felt a scalding heat over his body — and the next moment, a golden shield stood before him. The Golden Rooster couldn’t brake in time; the instant it struck, it rebounded as if burned.

Lu You used his own momentum to hurl himself hard out of the mountain mouth, and only after hitting the ground did he pause to recover.

His heart was still hammering. Half in shock, he looked back and saw the Golden Rooster pace a while at the mountain mouth before turning away. Only then did Lu You finally exhale, gaining the strength to examine the thing that had just saved him.

He rummaged through the bundle and abruptly pulled out half a handful of white ash.

— The half of the Paper Rooster that had already saved him once before.

He Zhuchun chased to his side and checked him over carefully, asking hurriedly, “Are you hurt?”

Lu You shook his head and crushed the half-handful of ash between his fingers, scattering it on the ground.

His chest heaved a few times; he rested a while longer, keeping to the clock, before finally pushing himself up on his arms. “Let’s keep going.”

He Zhuchun still watched him worriedly, brow half-furrowed; seeing his face remain unchanged, he reluctantly set his mind at ease, saying too, “Then let’s keep going.”

Past Golden Rooster Mountain, the next station was Evil Dog Ridge.

Legend says this place is covered in vicious dogs, and that those who abused, killed, or ate dog flesh in life have an especially hard time passing. To let their ancestors cross safely, some bereaved families not only stuffed meat and rice balls into the coffin — some even prepared a Dog-Beating Staff, terrified the vicious dogs here would tear something off and leave the soul incomplete, unfit for judgment and rebirth.

Lu You was still a little worried. “I wonder if the dogs will come after me the way the roosters did.”

Dogs truly were far more terrifying than chickens.

He Zhuchun asked, “Scared of dogs?”

Lu You shook his head. “I love dogs.”

“Oh, so you’re a dog lover.” He Zhuchun consoled him. “Dog lovers needn’t fear — Evil Dog Ridge will treat you well.”

Lu You pressed his lips together, looking at He Zhuchun’s encouraging face, not knowing what to say in reply. After a long while he only managed, “Thank you.”

He Zhuchun smiled generously. “You’re welcome.”

After what had just happened at Golden Rooster Mountain, the two of them tacitly dropped the thread of that conversation.

They walked shoulder to shoulder toward Evil Dog Ridge.

Just entering this territory, what Lu You noticed first was that nearly every dog bore crisscrossing scars. Some wounded at the neck, some at the legs, some still dripping blood, small pools gathering beneath them — knife-like marks running the whole length of their bodies.

Lu You glanced once, and couldn’t bear to look again.

He Zhuchun, having passed the two ferocious stations, had noticed something: the exits always held notably fewer monsters, the numbers grew deeper in, and thinned again toward the entrance. He was still wondering whether Evil Dog Ridge would run the same way when he turned to find Lu You, head half-bowed, saying not a word.

“What’s wrong?” He elbowed the person beside him and bent to look at his face.

“Nothing.”

Lu You straightened up, eyelids faintly red — whether from rubbing them himself, who could say.

From the bundle at his side he fished out several chunks of raw meat wrapped in cling film, handed half to He Zhuchun, and said, “Be careful how you act. Try to get through this place safely.”

He Zhuchun took the meat and nodded. “Right.”

The sky over Evil Dog Ridge was peculiarly gloomy. Lu You kept a wary eye on the vicious dogs; at first he picked his way in carefully, but seeing that no dog paid them any mind, he paused — and then his movements grew steadily bolder.

He Zhuchun sauntered along behind, laughing. “I told you — if you love dogs, you needn’t fear this place. Dogs are creatures with spirits; they won’t hurt a dog lover.”

Lu You blinked and gave an “Mm” by way of reply.

He Zhuchun laughed again. “Silly.”

He explained to Lu You, “The dogs of Evil Dog Ridge all died abused in life, or carrying Grievance Qi or Lingering Obsession, and after death were conscripted here to serve as one of the trials for souls.”

Lu You said, “I’ve heard that theory.”

He Zhuchun asked, “Have you ever kept a dog?”

Lu You answered, “One, when I was very small.”

“What happened to it?” He Zhuchun asked, meanwhile peeling the cling film off the raw meat in his hand and casually feeding a piece to a black shepherd by the roadside with half its head shorn away.

The dog came forward, ate his offering, and wagged its ears and its tail at him.

Lu You said, “It got lost. By the time I found it again, only the skin was left — the meat had been stripped by the owner of a dog-meat shop and boiled into soup.”

He Zhuchun’s face went hot with anger. “Dog thieves stole it and sold it?”

Lu You nodded. “A little yellow farm dog, with drooping ears. It always waited at the shop door for me to come home. One day after school I couldn’t find it; I skipped class and searched for three days — and never imagined that when we met again, only its head was intact. The whole pelt had been stripped off and hung on a stick, its eyes gone dim, and between us lay the parting of Yin and Yang.”

Lu You’s face showed no great emotion as he spoke of the past — he was as faint and flat as ever — but He Zhuchun somehow kept sensing an uncomfortable feeling coming off him.

He Zhuchun loved dogs too. Though he’d never kept one, any time he passed someone walking a dog he would halt in his tracks and give the dog a full escort of attention all the way down the street.

The story sat poorly in his chest. He groped for something else to ask: “Do you often bring up these sad things of yours with other people?”

He Zhuchun always felt Lu You was a person carrying many sad stories.

Lu You shook his head. “Hardly anyone likes hearing other people’s negative-energy stories. I don’t like telling them either. It makes people dislike you.”

“Fair enough.” He Zhuchun ground his teeth over a couple of mouthfuls of air, then said, “Have you only ever told me this one?”

Lu You gave him an odd look. “Qin Shuheng knows too.”

“Oh.” He Zhuchun stopped chewing air and answered expressionlessly, “That’s nice.”

Lu You couldn’t parse what that sudden change of face meant, and followed him two steps forward, bewildered.

He Zhuchun walked along, glancing this way and that, not speaking to Lu You again — until they had covered nearly two-thirds of the way, when he suddenly called Lu You to a stop, pointed at a spot, and asked, “Doesn’t that dog look like the one you kept as a child?”

Lu You’s steps hitched; his eyes followed the pointing finger by instinct.

Crouched there was a tawny-yellow pastoral dog. Small in build, only reaching about the height of a person’s knee, with two soft flopped little ears atop its head — but its body was flat and sunken, from neck all the way to tail root, deflated to a strangely disproportionate degree. Not a dog’s normal shape at all — more as if some stuffing had been casually pushed into a pelt and stretched out to size.

Blood stained its fur too, in clumps and streaks, dirty; compared with the other dogs dripping drool, it looked almost pitiable.

Was it a stray with no home to return to?

He Zhuchun asked, “Strays carry the heaviest Grievance Qi, right? There must be plenty of strays here.”

“No, it’s not a stray.” Lu You shook his head. “Most strays go on to reincarnate. People and animals are alike — it’s Lingering Obsession that makes it easier for one to be left behind.”

He Zhuchun froze.

The dog, seeing Lu You, froze too. It stood dazed a beat — then the little tail behind it began spinning like a propeller, wagging furiously, four little stubby legs scrabbling as it tried to run over.

He Zhuchun said, astonished, “You two really know each other?”

Lu You crouched down. “It’s my dog.”

He had recognized it at first sight. The little dog was exactly like the tiny pup that had haunted his midnight dreams through all those childhood years — lively, joyful, only its body not quite right. In Lu You’s memory, it should have been fatter.

The little dog spun in excited circles in place, several times surging as if to throw itself into Lu You’s arms and each time forcing itself to a hard stop.

Lu You gathered it into his arms, gently smoothing the fur matted together by blood, and asked, “Why haven’t you reincarnated?”

The little dog only burrowed into his chest, unable to speak.

Lu You asked again, “I performed a Deliverance Ritual for you. Why haven’t you gone to reincarnate?”

The wounds of childhood seemed long since washed pale by time, no longer so painful — that was what Lu You had believed, all these years, before seeing the Little Huang Dog again.

Yet when he met that regret once more, the small body, blurred in memory, wriggled its way back into his palm. The little dog had been dead many years; its body was cold. But holding it, Lu You felt only a scalding heat in his chest, a scalding heat in his eyes too.

An aching, swelling emotion filled his body to the brim.

Lu You had not carried an emotion this strong in many, many years.

Since when, exactly?

Perhaps since watching the members of his own family pass away; perhaps since scraping out a living utterly alone; perhaps since truly grasping the heavy weight of responsibility that rests on the head of a household — or perhaps since the day he accepted that he would die at thirty.

He would be dead soon.

Alone, sleeping quietly inside an urn.

The Patron Spirits would rise in Immortal Ascension; his friends would carry on with their lives; his Patron Clients would find a new Diviner who suited them. No one in the world would remember that a man sharing a name with the Southern Song poet Lu You had ever existed. Come the Hungry Ghost Festival, treading through paper money swirling the length of the streets, perhaps one or two people who still remembered him would draw a ring with a gap at the foot and burn him something.

Lu You had assumed he would be forgotten by his friends the way he had forgotten this little dog.

But now that this unexpected reunion had truly come, Lu You found that the accumulated longing was like floodwater bursting a dam — the emotion drowned him whole, and in that extreme, regained-against-all-odds joy, he was nearly suffocating.

Perhaps it was simply that he had always owned so little, that whatever he had ever been given became all the more precious.

In any case, in this moment Lu You finally understood: he had never once forgotten that round, tawny-yellow little dog.

And the little dog, neither.

Lu You’s voice finally choked too. He asked the little dog, “I performed your Deliverance Ritual. Why didn’t you go reincarnate?”

He Zhuchun came up behind him and answered for the little dog: “Because it still wanted to see you.”

Evil Dog Ridge — a terrifying place that put countless souls in dread, crawling with malformed, drooling vicious dogs, where nearly every passing soul had to endure their pursuit and tearing, and taste the very extremity of fear.

And yet today there was an exception: a young man come Netherwalking, meeting here the treasure he had lost in childhood.

Lu You’s eyes were still rimmed red. “A Deliverance Ritual that countless Ghost Souls beg for and never receive — you, one little dog, were given it. Why didn’t you treasure it and go reincarnate right away?”

A Deliverance Ritual is immensely exhausting work.

But perhaps the little dog didn’t understand any of that. All the little dog knew was that every dead soul must walk Evil Dog Ridge once, on the way to an unknown place to reincarnate — and so the little dog had chosen to wait here, foolishly.

The little dog only wanted to see you one more time.

Lu You gave the little dog’s black paws a gentle squeeze. Through the blur, a new thought dimly took root in his heart:

Perhaps death does not mean loneliness and being forgotten.