In the dead of night, the sudden sound of a woman’s weeping echoing through the woods sent a chill down one’s spine.
Zhou Dalang felt a sudden tightness in his lower belly, nearly wetting himself again.
Steeling himself, he pushed aside the branches and peered toward the source of the sound.
Under the flowing moonlight, a rustic woman clad in coarse hemp robes was seated upon a stone platform in the forest.
She sat cross-legged on the ground with a bamboo basket beside her feet, and large red jujubes were scattered all over the ground around her.
She appeared to have sprained her ankle, clutching her face as she wept sorrowfully without pause, her voice melodious and lingering like the song of a mountain oriole.
“Sob, sob, sob... sob, sob...”
Turns out it was a person.
“Damn it! Scared the hell out of me.”
Zhou Dalang breathed a faint sigh of relief and barked harshly at the woman:
“Hey, woman! Why are you weeping like a ghost in a desolate place like this? Could it be that bandits are lurking in the woods with you, lying in ambush for passing travelers?!”
The woman seemed startled upon seeing Zhou Dalang and quickly wiped away her tears to explain:
“Sir officer, my husband’s surname is Ma. He is a stonemason from Changhuai Village in Wen County.
Originally, when I married into his family, life was peaceful enough. But who could have known that after eight years of marriage, I would still bear no children?
My mother-in-law has a cruel heart. In August, she craved big red jujubes from the mountain trees and ordered me up the mountain to pick fruit, saying that if I couldn’t fill a whole basket, she wouldn’t let me return.
Pity this lowly woman—married to him for eight years, filial to my in-laws, affectionate to my sister-in-law, never once disrespectful—only to be driven into the mountains to do such torturous labor.
My mother-in-law even said the jujubes must be big and round, larger than human eyeballs, before she would deign to give me a bite of food.”
The woman lifted her face, unable to stop herself from sobbing again:
“Just now, I finally managed to find a jujube tree, but while picking them, I broke my ankle. Now, I can neither gather a full basket nor make my way back down the mountain.
Grief and resentment filled my heart, which is why I was weeping here. I never expected to disturb you, sir officer. I truly deserve death.”
Under the moonlight, Zhou Dalang got a clear look at her face. The woman was fair and delicate, and even beneath coarse hemp clothes, her shapely figure was obvious.
Zhou Dalang was a frequent visitor to brothels with several regulars at the pleasure houses, and had seduced a few decent women in his time.
Seeing the woman’s beauty here in the deep mountain forest, wicked thoughts immediately stirred within him.
“It’s merely a matter of a few jujubes, yet she torments a sweetheart like you so mercilessly. That mother-in-law of yours must be an unreasonable old hag.”
His lust rising, Zhou Dalang crept a few steps closer, paying no heed to his missing front teeth as he coaxed her gently:
“Good sister, I’ll pick some jujubes for you. There is no one around here, so why don’t you and I take the sky as our quilt and the earth as our mat to have some fun?
Rest assured, I am not the sort of scoundrel who abandons the old for the new or tricks women out of their bodies.
I am the cousin of the young master of the Wang Family Distillery in Dingyuan County, named Zhou Silang. Once we consummate our union here in the wilderness, you will be the Wang family’s young mistress! What Zhao family or Li family would you ever have to fear again?!”
As he spoke, fearing she wouldn’t believe him, he even untied the jade pendant at his waist to show her:
“Good sister, the moment I laid eyes on you, my heart was thumping wildly! Surely, you and I share a fated bond decreed by the heavens; otherwise, how could we have met in a place like this?
Have pity on me and let me give you some affection. Tomorrow, I will personally carry you down the mountain on my back. What do you say?”
Driven by sheer lust, Zhou Dalang’s mind was in a daze, not stopping to wonder why a woman would appear out of nowhere in these deep mountain woods.
All he wanted was to bed her as quickly as possible. As for the promises he had made?
How could they possibly be true? They were mere deceit.
If she refused, he would simply take her by force—this was a remote wilderness, after all, where no cries for help would ever be heard.
The woman hesitated for a moment, lightly biting her lower lip with her pearly white teeth. Seeming to ponder it over, her cheeks flushed crimson as she nodded shyly:
“You look so dashing and strong, sir, that my heart stirs with joy. But since childhood, I have always been terrified of blades. With that big saber on your back, my heart goes—
Thump, thump, thump... It truly frightens me to death.”
The woman pulled open half her collar, revealing a patch of fair skin that made Zhou Dalang’s eyes bulge wide.
Without another thought, he hurriedly unclasped his official saber, tossed it aside, and moved toward her.
Frowning delicately, the woman said in a coquettish voice:
“Mmh... I won’t allow it. That official uniform of yours is stinky. If you want to touch my body, take it off first.”
Without needing to be told twice, Zhou Dalang stripped off his yamen runner uniform until he was left only in his white undergarments. Rubbing his hands together, he leaned in:
“Sweetheart, you’re making me impatient. Come, let me feel those little feet...”
He reached under the woman’s skirt, but felt nothing at all—it was completely empty.
As bewilderment struck him, the woman draped her arms around his neck, and two fingers slowly traced downward around his eye sockets.
“Fool, fool. With your official saber cast aside and your uniform stripped away, you are nothing more than a naked lamb.
Though your yang energy is severely depleted, you’re still a decent meal.”
The woman gave a charming chuckle and said sweetly:
“Aren’t this pair of big, round jujubes just right? The Mountain Lord will surely love them, and perhaps he might even reward me!”
Before Zhou Dalang could react, the world spun around him.
It was as though he had shrunk and was being pinched in someone’s palm.
He saw the woman’s fair face contort into a soul-reaping evil ghost, her long tongue plunging through his eye sockets into his skull, cradling his corpse as she greedily slurped his brain matter.
Oh.
It wasn’t that he had shrunk.
His eyeballs had been gouged out, shifting his field of vision.
—This was Zhou Dalang’s final thought before he died.
...
...
Nearly half an hour passed without Zhou Dalang returning, and some among the yamen runners noticed something was amiss.
Two runners who were on good terms with Zhou Dalang and often drank at brothels with him ran out first to look for him.
To their dismay, those two disappeared without a trace as well.
Combined with Zhang Long’s prolonged absence on his hunt, panic immediately spread around the campfire.
The wounded were especially terrified, fearful of being abandoned.
“What do we do? Should we still search for them?”
“Could Constable Zhang have been carried off by the tiger?!”
“Or did they take advantage of our injuries and abandon us to flee on their own?”
The remaining eight men were barely able to look after themselves, their gazes filled with mutual suspicion.
Just as chaos threatened to erupt, a figure came stumbling out from the bushes to the west. It was none other than Chunsheng, the hunter who had been carried off by the tiger earlier that day.
Seeing that he was still alive, everyone was utterly shocked.
Without waiting to explain, Chunsheng shouted hoarsely:
“Run! Run! That tiger has become a demon and keeps countless chang ghosts to scout its path and kill for it! If we stay in these mountains any longer, not a single one of us will survive!
I escaped earlier by playing dead and only just woke up by the stream. I followed the firelight to find you!
That beast had its chang ghosts devour Zhou Dalang and the others, and then transformed into Constable Zhang’s likeness to deceive me, ripping away a huge chunk of flesh from my leg!
Run! Run! That beast hasn’t had its fill. If we don’t leave now, it will be too late! I know the way down the mountain—follow me quickly!”
A large chunk of flesh was indeed missing from Chunsheng’s leg, looking as though it had been savaged by a beast. His face, neck, and forearms were covered in scratches from branches.
Everyone instantly believed most of his words.
—Though Chunsheng was short of stature, he possessed an exceptional talent for navigating paths and was a renowned hunter across the surrounding villages; otherwise, Zhang Long would never have hired him as their mountain guide.
Furthermore, hearing about ghosts and that Zhou Silang and the others had already been eaten, the men lost all composure, hurriedly gathering their belongings to flee in panic.
Just then, a familiar figure leapt out from the eastern woods:
“Don’t leave! He is the chang ghost kept by that tiger!”
Flushed with exertion, Constable Zhang sprang out from the thicket:
“While hunting just now, I discovered fresh tiger tracks nearby. Following them, I found the beast lying wounded in the woods.
Having devoured countless people, the beast breathed mist from its maw and spat out three chang ghosts!
This Chunsheng is one of them! The beast fears fire, so it wants to lure you into the woods so the chang ghosts can strike. You must not believe him!”
Constable Zhang’s beard and hair were soaked with blood, looking increasingly sinister and terrifying in the blazing firelight.
To the west was the local mountain hunter who claimed to have escaped the tiger’s jaws and knew the mountain paths intimately.
To the east was Constable Zhang Long, their righteous leader who had worked alongside them day and night.
Which one should they believe?
The men stood frozen in place, not daring to make a single move.
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