Daomu Biji: The Mystic Nine

Zhang Qishan looked at the holes in the woman's neck, and felt his heart clench. He didn't intend to leave any alive, but the woman's appearance made him more alert. He glanced at the other Japanese, and Old Man Zhang also lifted the man's chin up. He had the exact same symptoms.

Zhang Qishan gave Lieutenant a nod. Lieutenant exerted a lot of force to dislocate the woman's lower jaw and then struck her throat, rendering her speechless for the time being. He then lifted one of his arms and untied the bandage on his hand with his mouth. When he squeezed his hand and blood came out of the wound, he smeared it on the woman's neck.

The woman immediately started convulsing. She couldn't make a sound, but her whole body arched up. Lieutenant was very strong and managed to hold onto her as her legs started kicking wildly and the veins on her neck bulged. Then, all the blood on her neck was sucked into the holes. The woman’s eyes immediately rolled into the back of her head and she started to vomit. The smell of cumin and hot pepper soup filled the air, and a lot of white worms began to crawl out of the small holes in her neck.

Zhang Qishan watched it all coldly, knowing that something big was going to happen. He thought it over and decided that these two people couldn’t be killed. He could only find a place to interrogate them.

There were many pedestrians on the plank road even in the middle of the night, so it would be easy for people to see them escorting these two. But there was also the deep abyss down below. Although it wasn’t impossible to get down, it would take some time and accidents might occur.

He went back up, secretly pulled down some hemp blankets and damaged rugs, and knocked the two Japanese people unconscious against the cliff wall. He then wrapped them in the blankets, slung them over the horses’ backs, and quietly headed up the mountain road. He had stolen Qi Tiezui's fortune teller banner to open the way, pretending to be a Xiangxi corpse collector.

Qi Tiezui was sleeping without a care in the world. He was also a master who was long used to working in the field, so he was able to sleep soundly in this kind of place. Zhang Qishan squatted down and looked at him. He must have felt Zhang Qishan’s presence, for he opened his mouth and rolled over. Zhang Qishan was afraid waking him up would startle the others, so he wrapped him in the blanket and threw him on the donkey's back.

As their group led their horses down the mountain in the dark, Zhang Qishan ordered: "Mobilize all the Zhang family members nearby to find out if there have been frequent funerals and epidemics in the Miao villages recently. See if all the sick people have the same holes. Get someone to go back and inform Changsha to strictly check any merchants from Xiangxi. And have two companies form a perimeter around these mountains for me. No living creatures go in or out."

Qi Tiezui didn’t know when he woke up on the donkey’s back or what had happened, but he didn't dare speak up for fear he had been captured by someone. When he heard Fo Ye’s voice, however, he immediately shouted: "Fo Ye, you can't send troops to surround this place. If the others in the Nine Gates think you're abusing your military power to take the goods here, Changsha would descend into chaos."

"It doesn’t matter. Something like that is a mere trifle in front of state affairs. We’ll blow up all the mountains here and trap this bug in the tomb." Zhang Qishan glanced at the caterpillar-like Qi Tiezui, "Do you want to get down and walk yourself?"

"No, no, my ass hurts after riding all day." Qi Tiezui could only move his neck since his hands and feet were wrapped tightly in the blanket. He tried to poke his head out, only to find that they were on the edge of the abyss. He immediately shrank back in fear and said, "Fo Ye, don't worry about it. I made a divination before going to bed. You won't believe me, but I might as well tell you anyways. The divination showed Leishan Xiaoguo (1). The birds aren’t singing loud, rain isn’t falling from the dense clouds, and the thunder is diminished because it’s blocked by the mountains. It’s inauspicious to let this matter become a big event. This hexagram is also obscure and difficult to understand, which means that what we see now isn’t necessarily the truth. Fo Ye, my family's expert didn’t send that kind of message just because of a disease. You have to send people into the mine to check. We can’t miss anything."

Zhang Qishan quietly responded with, "What you said is reasonable, but the war is more urgent. You’re unwilling to help me, so what's the use in believing whether your divination is accurate or not? You can only watch me ignore the divination for now, so all those ‘merits’ will fall on your head."

Qi Tiezui was rendered speechless and his face turned red. After a long time, he finally managed to get out, "Ok, Fo Ye, I'll help you. But if I reveal any heavenly secrets and lose a few years of my life, you have to give me a few years of yours."

Zhang Qishan looked back at him: "If I can really do that, then you're actually doing me a favor."

Qi Tiezui reared back indignantly, fell off the donkey, and was immediately caught by Lieutenant. He broke free from his blanket, flung his jacket back dramatically, and put on a very serious face, which meant he was in his feng shui master mode.

He took out his compass and said to Lieutenant, "Take a hundred steps towards Sirius. It’s very close to the tail of the Big Dipper. The feng shui master didn’t have a proper burial, and the fortune teller is going to die by the side of the road. Since ancient times, geomancers have lived in poverty. Your family’s ruler only needs me because I know the secrets of heaven. Your sign is a snake, so you'll do the work and lead the way—ah!"

Before he had finished speaking, he looked up, slipped, and fell off the nearby cliff. When Lieutenant grabbed him and placed him back on his feet, the terrified Qi Tiezui patted his chest.

Zhang Qishan completely ignored them and got lost in thought as he looked at the other two "corpses" on horseback. Qi Tiezui's words already had his mind wandering back to the scene when they had fled the northeast before coming to Changsha. He had lived like an ordinary person, and managed to make a lot of friends after so many years. He had really forgotten who he was and the suffocating past he had experienced before.

Leishan Xiaoguo… birds not singing loud… dense clouds without rain…

Was Qi Tiezui really talking about what was in front of them? Or was there another power behind this matter that he was more reluctant to touch?

"Old man, find a place to interrogate these two people. Rishan, you guard Ba Ye and try to find where the underground railroad track is. I have other things to check. I’ll come back as soon as I’m done.” Zhang Qishan turned his horse and headed back the way they had come, soon disappearing into the darkness.

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TN Notes:

(1) It’s the 62^nd of the 64 hexagrams in the “Book of Changes”. I think it’s all about finding balance? Like making small mistakes is ok but you don’t want to make too many or even make any big mistakes? There’s a comparison about how a bird doesn’t want to fly too high or too low if that helps. Lei (雷) means thunder, Shan (山) means mountain, Xiaoguo (小过) means little mistake, minor offense, or slightly too much. The upper part of the hexagram is the Lei hexagram representing thunder and the lower hexagram is the Shan hexagram representing the mountain.

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Me: Yay! It's the weekend! I can sleep in!

My cat at 4 am: *blergh*

Me: Shit, alright. No big deal. I'll clean it up and go back to bed.

My blood sugar at 6 am: Yooooo, think I'll take a little dive~~~~

Me: *blearily shoves granola bar in my mouth* Ok, this is fine. I'll just go back to bed.

My other cat at 8 am: *proceeds to run all over my stomach and shove stuff off the nightstand*

Me: (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ God fucking damn it. I'M UP! I'M UP!

Hope you all had better luck sleeping in than I did lol