Chapter 1: The Republic of China's Lu Nan

  My name is Yang Zhen Dong, and my nickname is Da Dan. At that time, it was said in the countryside that having a humble name would bring good fortune, so the more humble the name, the more promising the future would be. Therefore, at that time, there were many humble names such as Lu Zi (donkey), Gou Dan (dog egg), and Da Fen (big dung). I was born in 1917, which is the sixth year of the Republic of China, and my family lived in a small village in the southern mountains of Shandong Province.

  In the past, there were many old houses in the village. My era was bitter, to say the least, more bitter than Huanglian (a type of Chinese medicine). It was an era of warlord strife and natural disasters, with countless deaths, so in the surrounding cemeteries, all sorts of evil spirits and monsters would often be encountered by people. There were wild dog spirits, undead zombies, black giants, yellow immortals, hanging ghosts, snake spirits, tree demons, goblins, small ghosts, and black and white road gods, among others. They would either scare people, harm them, seek revenge, play tricks on them, or follow people to avoid disaster, with all sorts of strange and bizarre occurrences.

  As for seeing these things, they've already become nothing out of the ordinary. Take "ghost hitting the wall" for example, it's not commonly seen nowadays, but back then it was a common occurrence. There are generally two types of ghost hitting the wall: The first type is when those animal spirits play tricks on people. When encountered, no matter how you walk, you'll always end up back at the starting point. This type usually won't harm people and is just those fox, yellow, white, willow, etc. spirits teasing humans for fun. To break the spell, it's generally not difficult - just learn to roll like a donkey or mimic a donkey's bray and you can walk out of it. So if you hear a donkey braying in the middle of the night, it's definitely someone who's encountered ghost hitting the wall.

  The second is called "ghost hitting the wall" or "ghost blowing the lamp". When encountered, it's like walking on a road in the underworld, where nothing can be seen around, and the surrounding air is filled with eerie winds. You can clearly feel someone blowing cold air down your neck, or someone crying non-stop beside you, or that faint, ethereal voice calling your name. When encountering this, never look back, nor respond, because humans have three life-preserving lanterns on their body: one on the top of the head and two on the shoulders. If you turn your head, one lantern will be extinguished. If all three lanterns are extinguished, the consequences will be severe. As for being called by name, it's even more forbidden to respond. According to old folks' sayings, these are all done by lonely ghosts and wild spirits trying to find a substitute body. When encountering such things, one can only rely on luck.

  I want to write down all the strange things that have happened since I was born. Our village has a long history, and in the past, there were imperial historians who lived here and prospered for a time. However, they encountered war and their family was destroyed, leaving behind only some old, broken-down houses. The year I was born was a chaotic time, but ordinary people like us just wanted to farm the land and didn't care who was emperor - whether it was the Qing dynasty, the Republic of China, or Yuan Shikai becoming emperor again. All these things had nothing to do with ordinary people.

  My family has two mu of thin land, and after harvesting the crops, we can barely make ends meet by adding some wild vegetables. In my spare time, I would go to the village's private school to learn from Mr. Er, who taught me how to recognize a few hundred surnames and characters. I remember that Mr. Er wore glasses and was invited by Landlord Ge to teach at the school with a bag of wheat as payment. Landlord Ge's name is Ge Renyi, but despite his talk about benevolence and morality, he has a belly full of evil intentions. To show off his benevolence, he allowed us poor children to attend the private school. I actually learned many characters from Mr. Er, which made my illiterate father extremely happy. When I returned home, I would recite what I had learned, and if I was lucky, I might even get a chicken egg as a reward - a rare delicacy at that time.

  We've had a severe drought here, and it hasn't rained all summer. It looks like we're going to have a famine again. Rumors started circulating that the "drought ghost" or "dry spirit" had appeared in our village's chaotic graveyard. At 15 or 16 years old, I was at an age where I didn't know my place in the world. One day, I took my brothers, Dumb Egg and Skinny Monkey, to ask Mr. Er what a drought ghost was. Dumb Egg and Skinny Monkey were my childhood friends. Although Dumb Egg was younger than me, he was taller and bigger, with a name that suited him. Skinny Monkey had a big head, thin neck, and thin legs, but was very timid. Dumb Egg's full name was Li Baoguo, and Skinny Monkey's full name was Yu Tianning. Our names were all given by Mr. Er, which was something to brag about back then, so we didn't have to be called Zhang San or Li Si.

  We walked to the private school, watching Second Master stroking his beard and looking at the sky. The only one studying in the private school was Jia Mingzhu, the young master of the landlord's family. We poor people couldn't even afford to eat, how could we have the energy to study? But Jia Mingzhu's family was wealthy, they didn't worry about food or clothing at all. The Jia family was big and influential, but Jia Mingzhu was a good-for-nothing, he couldn't do anything except read books and write characters, catch fish, touch shrimp, grab birds, climb trees, nothing else. So we poor kids didn't want to play with him.

  We walked up to Mr. Er, and respectfully called out "Mr.", Mr. Er adjusted the wine bottle on his glasses and stroked his beard saying: "So it's you three naughty boys, why don't you come study?"

  "I said: 'Sir, we can't even afford to eat, how can we have the energy to study?'"

  The old man glared at them, then shook his head and said: "Foolish, you know that there are beauties like jade in books, and golden houses in books. You will learn many things when you read."

  I said: "Sir, is there any steamed bun in your book? Even a few mantou would be fine, I'm starving to death."

  The Second Master's face turned black with rage, his goat-like beard standing on end, and he said, "A rotten wood cannot be carved."

  I quickly said, "Sir, don't be angry. We also want to read books, but in these times, our family has been struggling to make ends meet, and we have no choice but to go out and find food. The people in the village all say that a drought demon must have appeared. What is this drought demon?"

  Mr. Er said: "The drought demon is transformed from a zombie, and wherever the drought demon appears, that place will be severely drought-stricken."

  I said: "Is the drought demon a zombie?"

  "Indeed, the transformation of a dead person within 100 days after death. The corpse of a dead person who has turned into a drought demon does not rot, no grass grows on the grave, and water seeps from the grave head. At night, the drought demon will go to the house to fetch water. Only by burning the drought demon can it rain."

  I turned around and left after listening, Mr. Er asked me where I was going, I said loudly that I was going to find the drought demon. Mr. Er angrily said behind me: "A child is not teachable, a child is not teachable."

  I don't care about these things, leading the silly egg and skinny monkey towards the chaotic tomb mound, Skinny Monkey took a look and said: "Big Brother, what are you doing?"

  I said, "There are many newly deceased people in the chaotic grave mound of Beiling. Let's go there and take a look to see if there are any graves without grass. If we find one, we can ask an adult to dig up the corpse and burn it, then it will rain."

  Skinny monkey said: "Brother, that haunted tomb is really scary. I heard that sometimes during the day it's also infested with ghosts, it's frightening. Let's not go there."

  I said: "Look at you, that's all your worth, this courage is even smaller than a chicken's guts. I ask you, have you seen it with your own eyes?"

  The thin monkey said: "No, I'm all listening to others."

  "I said, 'That's it, our Second Grandfather once said that we are all young men with strong fire in our bodies, and we don't invite those dirty things. We just go in to take a look, if we can't find anything, then we come out.'"

  Dumb egg despises Skinny Monkey the most, saying: "Skinny Monkey, if you're afraid, go home. I and Big Courage Brother will go to that messy grave mound, where there are a few peach trees, just right for me and Big Courage Brother to share, no share for you."

  The skinny monkey said: "Go ahead and go, who's afraid? I don't believe you can bite my bird away."

  The silly egg said: "Yes yes, when a man dies, birds fly upside down, if he doesn't die, it will be for ten thousand years."

  "Phooey, phooey, what are you two talking about? I've been there several times, and there's nothing. We're just going in to see if there's anything that doesn't grow grass, the wet graves on top."

  We passed through a persimmon forest, which was quite large and had many stone towers inside. It's a place where people used to abandon their dead children. We didn't want to linger here, so we headed towards the Northern Ridge's chaotic burial ground. I heard that in the early years, this burial ground was the cemetery for everyone's family. During the Daoguang era, an imperial censor emerged from there, but later on, the censor's clan had no descendants. People wanted to be associated with the censor's prestige and also because it was a piece of land without an owner, so whenever someone died in the village, they would bury them there, resulting in the entire mountain being filled with graves.

  Looking down towards the small hill, all I saw were towering trees everywhere. It was a burial ground, and back in those days, no one would use wood from the burial grounds to make furniture, so they grew lush and green, extremely luxuriant, making the entire northern ridge dark and gloomy. After gazing for a while, my head got hot, and I walked towards the small hill. In front of this small hill was a large persimmon forest, which belonged to the wasteland in the countryside, where people would abandon dead infants. There were stone pagodas everywhere, those stone pagodas were like small houses. Places like these didn't need us to look for them, now we had to find the new graves at the back. So, the three of us, a group of reckless kids, followed the path in the middle of the northern ridge and walked upwards. The road beneath our feet was said to be the spirit path, the road that the dead would take to get to another world.

  As we walked, a foul smell suddenly came over us. We quickly looked for the source of the smell and saw that a newly dug grave had been disturbed by something. Clothes and remains were scattered all over the ground, and the smell was coming from there.