Daomu Biji: The Mystic Nine

It was a well-known fact in the army that Zhang Qishan acted quickly.

They went to sleep after midnight, but it was still dark the next morning when Lieutenant was done sorting out the accompanying soldiers in the yard. They were all wearing casual clothes, their pistols were hidden under the water bags on their saddles, and their bayonets were placed on their hips.

As the sun rose, Zhang Qishan checked his Colt and asked the groom to take his horse to the outskirts of the city first. Then, he and several soldiers got in the car and drove away. It was past eight o'clock when their group gathered on the slope near the railway on the outskirts of the city. With a total of fourteen people, they decided to split up. A group of six disguised themselves as a caravan and went twenty miles ahead, while the second group of four disguised themselves as traveling tea merchants so they could go around and investigate. Zhang Qishan, Lieutenant, and two mess cooks brought up the rear. They would gather intelligence along the way and double-check to ensure they were going in the right direction.

After the first two teams left, it took a long time for Qi Tiezui to arrive. Zhang Qishan and Lieutenant were dressed like betel nut vendors with tobacco boxes on their backs. Qi Tiezui arrived dressed like a fortune teller and riding a donkey.

Fortunately, Changsha had been a major transportation and trade hub for generations, so it wasn’t uncommon for strange people and businessmen to travel from south to north.

But the donkey walked too slowly and often fell two or three miles behind, so Zhang Qishan and the others ended up having to wait half an hour for it to catch up. Zhang Qishan endured it halfway and then sighed: "Fortune teller, I asked you to disguise yourself. What are you doing riding a donkey?"

"Fo Ye, if a fortune-teller didn’t ride a donkey, but a tall horse, wouldn’t that be like telling the world I have business here? Don't look down on my getup. Once we get further into the mountains, you’ll see how useful it is."

After they entered the mountain, Lieutenant constantly remained vigilant. Whenever a bird flew up, he would stop his horse and look at it for a long time. He had rarely looked back, but after listening to Qi Tiezui's words, he said, "The Taoist priests in this mountain are already poor and extinct. Most of the so-called Taoist priests are lone mountain bandits who hide in abandoned temples deep in the mountains and scam people. They steal children from the village, bring them back, and raise them to be violent bandits. If you’re seen looking like this, someone may beat you to death."

"Those violent bandits you're talking about only use brute force. I’m from the Qi family, who learned their skills from the masters who studied ‘The Yellow Court Classic' (1).” Qi Tiezui said as he patted his bag full of treasures. "I have a hundred and eighty remarkable abilities. I'm just like a walking immortal wherever I go. Otherwise, I would have died of poisoning when Fo Ye fed me that oracle bone fragment."

"Those fragments were already boiled in my blood. Why else would we dare touch them barehanded and not be afraid of infection?" Lieutenant said quietly.

There was a legend that the Zhang family's blood was different from ordinary people’s, and could even cure diseases. Qi Tiezui often asked Zhang Qishan for evidence of it while they were chatting over tea, but he was always laughed at. Now that Lieutenant had said it so bluntly, he couldn’t help but feel skeptical. He was just about to ask more, when he saw Lieutenant's bandaged hand. The bleeding wound still hadn’t healed, and he couldn’t help but think, if the blood was boiled, did it become blood tofu (2)?

Off to the side, Zhang Qishan stopped his horse, glanced at Qi Tiezui, and seemed to be laughing at him. Qi Tiezui quickly swallowed his questions back down.

As they headed towards Xiangxi, it was impossible to follow the tracks the whole time. After entering the mountain, they could only follow the tracks distantly from their location on the ridge. They encountered several mudslides along the way, which caused Qi Tiezui to become dirty and disheveled, and made him look like a wild vagabond roaming the area.

Three days later, they arrived at the first mining area delineated on the map.

Xiangxi was rich in mercury, so there were eleven or twelve mines here, along with various other mines. The miners ate and lived deep in the mountains and only came out once every two months. There were even special horsemen to transport ore back and forth every day. Most of them were Miao and Dong people who came from villages distributed throughout the mountains. They were basically autonomous, and the Miao border was considered a wild frontier.

In addition to the mining bureau, there were some Germans and Japanese who were cooperating with the authorities. Now that the Japanese had all withdrawn, however, the miners were mostly local Han Chinese, which made the ethnic situation very complicated.

The railroad tracks were two miles away, so there was no way back for the time being. Their group went into a Dong village on the mountainside, and then looked for the old relay station that was said to be on this part of the Southern Silk Road. It had been run by locals to supplement their income, since hundreds of businessmen and other travelers could gather in one place. All those people came from various ethnic groups and had different characters.

The Dong village was built on the mountainside, but the relay station was set up along the mountain road on the edge of the cliff. The long straw eaves stretched along the road for half a mile, just like some sort of dragon. The hundreds of people sleeping in the long station ignored the abyss waiting under their pillows, which was a very scary thought.

Qi Tiezui’s pale face was covered in dirt, and he shook his head. "Fo Ye, if you go pee in the middle of the night and make a wrong step, you’ll suffer a terrible death."

Zhang Qishan patted the dust from his body, walked up to the relay station’s railing, and looked out at the vast valley.

****

TN Notes:

(1) A Chinese Taoist meditation text. Wiki link here

(2) Pig blood curd, also known as "blood tofu" or "blood pudding", is a popular Cantonese delicacy. It’s basically solidified blood (*barf*). Manufacturers coagulate fresh blood by letting it sit in a clean container for ~10 minutes. The blood cube is cut into smaller pieces, then heated in a pot with medium heat with water. During the heating process, salt is added to solidify the blood cubes. More info here