The Wang family had been haunted recently.
At first, it was a young worker at the distillery who, while going out to use the latrine at night, passed by the wine cellar and heard the sound of a woman singing.
The voice sounded distant one moment and close the next, faint and indistinct.
Late at night, the distillery was closed to visitors, and everyone living in the back quarters was a vigorous, red-blooded man—how could there be a woman?
The worker simply assumed some unreliable brother in the distillery had brought a lady from a brothel back for drinks, so he didn't take it to heart.
Yet when he finished using the latrine and walked back, he heard that voice again.
“The moon in the heavens, seen from afar, looks like a bundle of clouds. As the night grows deep and the hours late, the wind picks up, blowing away the clouds by the moon for me, to reveal that faithless man...”
The voice was sorrowful and plaintive, yet melodious and moving. The lyrics sounded refined and poetic, but the more he listened, the more chilling the young worker found it.
He listened closely and followed the sound, only to discover that the voice was coming from inside the wine cellar.
The worker panicked immediately.
—Since ancient times, there had been an unwritten rule in distilleries:
During brewing, women were not allowed into the wine cellar; otherwise, the entire cellar of wine would surely spoil and stink.
Right now, a fresh batch of “Immortal Drunk” had just been moved into the cellar. If anything went wrong, he couldn't afford to pay for it even with ten lives.
Thus, the worker immediately called loudly for the distillery manager, unlocked the cellar door, held up a lantern, and counted the wine vats one by one.
One, two, three...
Four, five, six...
Exactly ninety-nine jars of Immortal Drunk sat neatly in the cellar, and the singing had vanished without a trace.
The group searched all over, but far from finding any singing woman, they didn't even spot half a ghostly shadow.
The manager assumed the worker had most likely misheard, didn't think much of it, took the key to lock the door, and went back to sleep.
Little did anyone expect that this was only the beginning.
Ever since that night, the distillery heard a woman singing in the wine cellar every single night.
As she sang, she would start to weep, and as she wept, she would burst into laughter.
The sounds were piercing and eerie, just like a cat in heat.
As fate would have it, it was this same worker again.
He happened to be turning vats in the fermentation room when he heard the noise. Suspecting his peers were playing tricks on him, anger surged within him.
He grabbed the key to the wine cellar at once, held up a lantern, and made another round through the pitch-black cellar.
One, two, three...
Four, five, six...
...
Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred...
Only after finishing his count did the worker realize something was wrong.
The wine recently moved into the cellar was accounted for—how could there be an extra jar out of nowhere?
Refusing to believe it, the worker counted again from beginning to end, but there were still one hundred jars.
Just as he was puzzled, an eerie gust of wind blew in from nowhere, extinguishing the lantern in his hand.
In that very instant, from the corner of his eye, the worker caught sight of a “jar” in the corner rotating ever so slowly.
By the moonlight streaming in from outside the cellar, he saw it with crystal clarity.
That was no jar.
It was a ghastly pale, beautiful woman's head covered in long hair.
The cellar was dim, and the worker had mistakenly counted this head as the hundredth jar.
The beautiful woman opened her mouth, countless strands of hair gushed forth, and the singing started once again:
“...As the night grows deep and the hours late, the wind picks up, blowing away the clouds by the moon for me, to reveal that faithless man...”
Scared out of his wits, the worker scrambled on hands and knees, practically howling as he crawled out of the wine cellar.
After news of this spread, every single worker in the distillery was terrified.
No one dared to take the night watch anymore. Once night fell, all the workers huddled inside their rooms like loaches, refusing to step out even on pain of death.
Yet a distillery required work during the night.
Fine wine was not something that could be brewed in a single night; it required ingredient selection, distilling, making yeast, fermenting, and blending, before transferring the new wine into the cellar to age. Only after waiting for some time could fine wine be harvested.
Fermentation involved mixing steamed grains with yeast, adding water into wooden vats, and waiting ten days to half a month until the contents in the vats developed their fragrance—only then was it considered complete.
This step alone demanded immense manpower and resources.
If it was too cold, the yeast in the wooden vats would remain inactive; if it was too hot, the wine in the vats would turn sour, and the resulting brew could only be thrown out as swill.
Therefore, distillery workers had to keep a constant eye on these wooden vats daily, turning them regularly and gauging the temperature by hand.
If the temperature rose too high, they had to find ways to cool it down; if it dropped too low, they had to burn firewood in the fermentation room to warm it up.
Because of this, experienced veteran brewmasters could tell with a single touch when the wine would be ready.
Yet after this incident occurred, every worker at the distillery feared for their life and spent sleepless nights.
Let alone going to the fermentation room in the middle of the night to turn the vats, even if they had a bladder full of urine at night, they had to hold it in until daybreak, terrified that they would be the next victim.
“If it were only this, we wouldn't dare trouble Little Immortal Nan.”
The distillery manager wore a bitter face, worry etched across his brow:
“For some reason, rumors of the distillery being haunted leaked out. Customers coming to buy wine all say that since the distillery is haunted, the wine can't be drunk either.
And that's not the end of it—a few days ago, in a batch of wine delivered to Saichun Tower in the north of the city, a huge clump of a woman's hair was actually poured out!”
“A woman's hair? Are you sure it's the work of ghosts or spirits, and not someone deliberately framing you?”
Nan Zhi couldn't help but frown, instinctively questioning him.
—She pulled up the map, which was densely covered with small dots representing living beings in Dingyuan County.
Among the vast sea of green friendly dots were quite a few yellow dots signifying neutrality.
Red hostile dots were exceedingly rare, but near the Wang Family Distillery, there were no ghost types at all.
“Who says it isn't? When we first found the hair, I was terrified too. I had people open several wine vats in a row, but found nothing.”
The distillery manager sighed:
“Yet as soon as this wine was delivered to the patrons' residences and opened right in front of us, what poured out was clump after clump of a woman's hair.
Over the past half month, hair was found in more than thirty jars of wine. Tell me, if this wasn't done by demons using sorcery, who could have so much hair?”
Fearing Nan Zhi wouldn't believe him, the distillery manager also summoned the distillery workers.
Over a dozen men lined up and babbled all at once to Nan Zhi about their ghostly encounters.
“Aiya, I heard that voice clear as day! It was a woman pinching her throat to sing opera, shrill and sharp, but all fuzzy-like, so you could never hear it properly.”
“Yes, yes, yes, hearing that sound makes one's heart ache, makes you wanna cry!”
“No, how was that crying? That woman was clearly laughing! My ears are sharp, I heard it plain as day!”
“If it really is a ghost, it must be a crazy ghost—crying and laughing, and tossing hair into our wine vats.”
After listening to these men, Nan Zhi did not give an immediate answer. Instead, she requested the distillery manager to take her to see that haunted wine cellar.
Who could have known that as soon as she spoke, the old manager—who had been full of anticipation just a moment ago—shook his head like a rattle-drum, refusing to lead the way no matter what:
“No, no! This is a rule handed down from our ancestors. Women are unclean and cannot enter the wine cellar. If a woman steps inside, this whole cellar of Immortal Brew will be ruined!”
Three question marks slowly rose above Nan Zhi's head.
Wasn't it your Wang family that invited her to resolve this matter in the first place?
Women are unclean?
Then by that logic, did all of you spring out of rocks?
Rate on N.U.
