The room was packed with men, and even with the front door wide open, it was thick with smoke and reeked of stale tobacco.
Nan Zhi quietly took a look at the man kneeling on the floor and realized something seemed off about him: his eyes were bloodshot, a layer of black qi invisible to ordinary people hovered over his forehead and cheeks, and his exposed neck and arms were covered in raw, bloody scratches gouged by fingernails—a crisscrossing mess of torn flesh that showed just how much force he had used.
“Isn't that the guy from yesterday...”
Zhang Qiuyu had clearly recognized him as well and poked Nan Zhi from behind. The latter shook her head and shot a look at Shi Hongjiang.
The three went to the back room, but instead of entering the kitchen, they circled around and returned to the main room from the front, hiding behind the crowd to watch the spectacle.
—Feigning compliance while secretly disobeying: Nan Zhi and Shi Hongjiang had done this countless times as children.
“You wouldn't recognize him. He's Chu Erpangzi’s uncle, a driver for a tour company. His wife is my grandpa's niece, so I have to call her aunt. See, you said on the bus yesterday that you can't eat a pregnant snake and ought to find a place to bury it, otherwise eating it would cause your mouth to rot. The driver didn't listen and even took it to a restaurant to stir-fry and eat. He even pulled out the snake eggs and boiled them! As a result, he fell ill in the middle of the night—vomiting sour liquid and screaming that someone was choking him so he couldn't breathe.”
Shi Hongjiang pointed at the driver named Chu, explaining earnestly to Nan Zhi and Zhang Qiuyu:
“There was another greedy guy from your company who ate the boiled snake eggs too. When he woke up this morning, a huge sore had grown on his mouth—it looks hideous! I told him the hospital couldn't cure this kind of illness and advised him to see my grandpa, but he stubbornly refused to listen. Once that sore scabs over, I bet he's going to end up with a harelip.”
Nan Zhi was startled when she heard this, but after asking for his name, she calmed back down:
“Oh. We ought to believe in modern medicine. If he wants to go to the hospital, can we really stop him?”
—It was the guy who always loved making vulgar jokes at the girls in the company.
“That satisfies me to no end! Isn't that basically like growing a hemorrhoid on his mouth? Serves him right! That's called heavenly justice and divine retribution—a trashy person like that deserves a rotting mouth.”
Zhang Qiuyu was delighted, but even while gloating, she didn't forget to ask: “Grandpa just mentioned ‘extracting the black’—what does that mean?”
“‘Blackened’ is local dialect for being frightened or spooked. You can also understand it as being offended by or running into something unclean. Extracting the black is basically like doing a spiritual reading to resolve a problem. When we were little, if a kid went up the mountain to play and got their soul scared out of them by something in the woods, Grandpa Shi would burn an egg in the brazier—a ritual called ‘burning the embryo.’ Then he'd tell us kids to eat one, saying it was good for the body.”
Nan Zhi stared at the driver, casually adding:
“Some forms of extracting the black are actually just using Chinese herbal medicine to treat illnesses, having nothing to do with spirits or ghosts. Plant ash itself is a form of Chinese medicine that can disinfect and sterilize. An egg roasted in ash tastes just like a boiled egg, only with a bit more of a charred aroma. When I was little—”
As she was speaking, she saw Shi Hongjiang squeeze over to the brazier, expertly fishing out three roasted eggs with blackened shells, and squeeze back out under Grandpa Shi's scolding glare.
“I knew you loved these, so I buried a few early on. Once everyone leaves later, we'll bury a few sweet potatoes in the brazier. My mom bought some long, slender sweet potatoes—they're real sweet when roasted.”
“Aren't you afraid of Grandpa Shi scolding you... Throw a few tangerines in to roast later, too—eating those is good for the throat.”
Nan Zhi peeled open a warm roasted egg, took a bite, and continued listening to the conversation between Grandpa Shi and the driver's family.
...
“Puff, puff.”
Grandpa Shi stooped low, taking a puff from his water pipe. Suddenly remembering something, he set the pipe down on the ground before finally narrowing his eyes to size up the driver:
“What a sin! Even a three-year-old toddler in our village knows that a pregnant female snake shouldn't be caught. Your brother didn't just run the snake over—he even boiled and ate it! A mother beast protects her young, let alone when you ate her babies too. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Tormented by pain all night, the driver was already on the verge of collapse, forcing himself to stay kneeling on the floor. Hearing Grandpa Shi's words, the man hurriedly crawled a step forward and wailed in a raspy voice:
“Grandpa, Grandpa, save me! As long as you can stop this agony, I'll do whatever you say—really, I swear! My whole body is itching so badly right now, like ants crawling over me. If this keeps up, I'm going to be tormented to death!”
As he spoke, the man didn't stop scratching himself frantically, his nails digging into his skin and tearing open the surface to leave gruesome blood trails. Yet he seemed to feel no pain, wearing a look of blissful relief instead.
—If this went on, he wouldn't have a single patch of intact skin left on his body.
“What a sin! Her head was crushed flat, yet she wasn't even angry at you at first. But you had to go and boil her babies too—how could she not haunt you?”
Grandpa Shi smacked his lips. Ultimately unable to bear leaving him to suffer, he narrowed his eyes and stared at the man's neck for a long moment:
“Haunting him now won't bring your babies back to life. In a moment, I'll have him take your bones and bury them in the mountain. On the first and fifteenth of every month, I'll have him burn incense for you. If you agree, I'll send you off. Otherwise, if you keep clinging to him like this, no good will come to you either.”
As soon as these words came out, everyone inside and outside the room shivered.
Although Grandpa Shi was speaking toward the man, his gaze was fixed on the man's neck—more precisely, on the empty air just above the right side of his neck.
Nan Zhi, however, saw it clearly.
It was a faint, long, black shadow, loosely coiled around the man with the tip of its tail drooping down. Every time it swept across his skin, an agonizing itch pierced through him.
After sweeping a few dozen times—causing the man to scratch madly until he was practically covered in blood—the snake finally seemed satisfied, flicking its shadow tongue loosely toward Grandpa Shi.
She could see it clearly, but the old grandpa couldn't. He simply called for someone to fetch a brand-new piece of red cloth and a bowl of rice. Covering the rice with the red cloth, he circled it around the man's neck before lifting the cloth to inspect it.
“She agreed. Go back and find someone to bury the snake's bones, and your body won't itch anymore.”
Grandpa Shi looked at the rice in the bowl with a sigh of relief, then instructed the driver:
“Bury it at the spot where you ran over the snake. Dig a pit one meter deep—too shallow won't do. Then burn incense there on the first and fifteenth of every month. After a year, you don't need to go anymore, but whenever you pass by, offer a bow. Also, from now on, you must never hit a snake or eat snake meat. If anyone in your family was born in the Year of the Rat or the Year of the Snake, take extra care not to let them eat snake meat either.”
—Nan Zhi noticed that the snake spirit on the man had visibly begun to dissipate, though it was still hovering around him.
It seemed Grandpa Shi was similar to He Xiaoyi, whom she had met before—both could use physical objects to communicate with spirits.
Only, Grandpa Shi seemed even more capable, able to understand the thoughts of a snake.
The driver had long since passed out from the pain. The relatives beside him nodded repeatedly in agreement, then glanced at the wounds on his body and asked cautiously:
“What about these wounds? If they leave scars, it's going to look terrible.”
“Of course you take him to the hospital! I don't give shots or prescribe medicine. At most, he can buy some pig liver to replenish his blood.”
Grandpa Shi gave him a strange look:
“His life is saved—what more do you want? Hurry up and get him to the hospital for a tetanus shot. Otherwise, if those wounds get infected, it'll kill him.”
Nan Zhi: “...”
Her feelings were a bit complex.
Grandpa Shi was actually pretty sharp, knowing that wound infections could be fatal.
They always said that at the end of science lay theology, but as it turned out, theology occasionally had to rely on science too?
Lesson learned, lesson learned.
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