Chapter Eighty-Six: Cursecraft

In the eyes of a layman it was all spectacle, but those who knew the craft could see the real marvels. Everyone in the courtyard was marveling at the snowstorm I had conjured in midsummer when Kong Guan and Wei Yu came over.

“This midsummer snowfall was already a defiance of heaven, and I truly did not expect you to be able to turn the snow back and bring out clear skies. Talent rises generation after generation; given time, you are certain to make your name known far and wide.”

I smiled absently. I would rather believe I had simply been lucky, that the snow had stopped when it should have stopped. Otherwise... At that thought I looked around the courtyard. To summon such a heaven-defying snowfall consumed an enormous amount of power. With my own cultivation, I should never have been able to do it unless someone was helping me.

If such a person truly existed, then his mastery of the art was beyond imagination. With power of that degree, why would he not compete himself, but instead help me?

The final contest was set for the night of the following day. Gu Xiaotian specially rearranged the seating: Yue Leiting, Xiao Lianshan, Yue Qianling, and Gu Anqi sat at a separate table with me; Ouyang Cuo, Su Lengyue, and Miao Renhuan sat at another.

The rest were seated a little farther away from us.

Gu Xiaotian lifted his gaze to the night sky and said casually, “The rules of the last round are very simple. At two in the morning, whichever of your two tables still has people left wins.”

I froze. He made it sound so easy, but what he really wanted was for me to duel with Ouyang Cuo. By seating Yue Leiting and the others with me, he was unquestionably increasing the difficulty. Not only would I have to contend with Ouyang Cuo, I would also have to protect Yue Leiting and the others. Naturally, the same held true for Ouyang Cuo’s side.

Gu Xiaotian gave both me and Ouyang Cuo an hour to prepare. I hurriedly had Xiao Lianshan bring a rooster. After killing it, I took a bowl of blood, soaked long thin cords in it, and tied them around the table, enclosing everyone inside. On each cord soaked in blood, I hung a copper coin.

Then I found five bowls, poured rapeseed oil into them, and set them alight with wicks.

I told them that no matter what happened, the lamp before each person must not go out.

I understood the basics of dueling in magic, but I had never actually crossed hands with anyone before. More importantly, winning or losing was not the key issue now; what mattered was protecting everyone at this table.

Although Ouyang Cuo’s sorcery was far weaker than mine from today’s contest, he had far fewer scruples than I did. Besides, he still had Su Lengyue and Miao Renhuan at his side. Joined together, the three of them did not leave me with any certainty of victory.

I used the remaining chicken blood to draw a circle around the five people seated at the round table, and placed a basin of clean water in each of the four directions. Once everything was ready, I took a bundle of chopsticks made of peach wood. Peach wood is also known as dragon-subduing wood; it has the power to suppress calamity and ward off evil, and is called a sacred wood.

Since this was a contest of magic, I had to have at least one ritual implement. Gu Xiaotian had only given us an hour, and in the middle of the night I could not find anything more suitable. Besides, I had never dueled with anyone before, so I could only make do.

By contrast, Ouyang Cuo across from me looked much more relaxed. He had not even left his seat. Miao Renhuan merely spread a piece of yellow cloth over the round table and then produced an unusual statue, and at the sight of it my heart turned cold.

I had already witnessed Ouyang Cuo’s sorcery and Su Lengyue’s gu arts, but until now I had never seen Miao Renhuan make a move. Since he could remain at Su Lengyue’s side, how could he possibly be useless?

The patterns drawn on Miao Renhuan’s yellow cloth, along with that statue, were tools used by a sorcerer of the dark rites.

Sorcery was a form of witchcraft that spread through Southeast Asia. Legend said it evolved after the gu arts of the Miao regions traveled there and fused with local witchcraft. It could harm people invisibly, and the dark rites of the southern seas and the gu arts of western Hunan were known as the two great malign arts of Southeast Asia.

It looked as though Ouyang Cuo had no intention of dueling me at all. From his expression, he seemed to trust Miao Renhuan greatly.

Gu Anqi lowered her hand toward me, and I saw that the time on her watch was exactly midnight. I understood her warning: midnight was when yin energy was at its strongest, making it an ideal time for a contest of magic. Of course, orthodox methods of Daoist practice did not place so many demands on timing, but Miao Renhuan was using evil arts, and this hour suited him perfectly.

Sure enough, Miao Renhuan lit a brazier of fire before him. Ouyang Cuo sat in his chair with easy indifference, watching Miao Renhuan beside the brazier. Whenever the flame began to die, he would pour a few drops from the bottle next to him into the fire, and the blaze would flare back to life.

I noticed that Su Lengyue seemed to have deliberately chosen to sit opposite Miao Renhuan, the farthest position from him. Suddenly I understood: she truly did not want to come near Miao Renhuan, especially that small glass bottle beside him. The mere thought of it was enough to make one’s skin crawl.

A gust of wind swept toward us, and from Miao Renhuan’s brazier came a fragrance, though it was an extremely abnormal one, faintly mixed with the stench of blood and some indescribable odor.

I lowered my head in thought, then suddenly looked up, pulled a sheet of paper from the table, and held it in the air. After a moment, oil stains slowly began to seep through the pristine paper. I touched a bit of it with my fingertip and sniffed it at the tip of my nose. My face changed color as I cried out, “Corpse oil!”

The others in the courtyard who were watching the contest heard that it was corpse oil and immediately covered their noses in horror.

I saw black smoke rising from the brazier and drifting toward us. The fine cords wrapped around the round table had originally been dyed red with chicken blood, but in an instant they turned black, and the copper coins hanging below them clattered against one another nonstop.

Only then did I understand why even Su Lengyue would fear Miao Renhuan, or rather, fear the bottle beside him. What it held was the corpse oil refined by Miao Renhuan. Chicken blood was already a ward against evil, yet against something like this it could hardly withstand it. In my memory, only one method came to mind.

One had to find a pregnant woman who had died in childbirth, taking both mother and child with her, and the child inside had to be a girl. On the seventh day after burial, the woman’s grave was dug open, her abdomen split, and the infant taken out. Together with the umbilical cord and the uterus, it was roasted over white candles, and the fat dripping from the corpse became vengeful spirit corpse oil.

Because the baby never got to enter the world, its resentment was immense. It should have been laid to rest in peace, yet it was dug up on the seventh day, when its fury reached the extreme. Corpse oil refined in this way was not only drenched in yin energy, but staggeringly powerful.

The infant corpse, roasted by white candles, would have its fat rendered dry by the heat. The umbilical cord would wrap around the uterus, and the uterus around the infant, until it was reduced to a small lump of flesh. That lump was then left to dry under the sun until it became jerked meat, and finally ground into powder.

When Miao Renhuan lit the corpse oil, the vast resentment within it was unleashed. This yin-and-grudge laden qi would seek out its own flesh; whoever touched it would become its host. No wonder even a woman as poisonous as Su Lengyue kept her distance.

“Ah!”

I turned at once and saw Lan Qing clutching her chest in unbearable pain as she fell to the ground. The lamp before her flickered weakly. Yue Qianling saw Lan Qing collapse and rushed forward to help, but I shouted, “Don’t touch Aunt Lan!”

By the time Yue Qianling heard me, Lan Qing was already in her arms. In terror, I thrust the peachwood chopsticks in my hand toward Lan Qing’s nose. The pale yellow chopsticks instantly turned a withered black after she breathed on them.

Yue Qianling only felt a sudden tightness in her chest, as though pierced through by a thousand arrows, followed by a searing pain, and she too collapsed to the floor unconscious.

Seeing his wife and daughter struck down without warning, Yue Leiting panicked and tried to lift them both, but I gripped his hand tightly.

“Aunt Lan has been struck by sorcery. Whoever touches her will be cursed too!”

Lan Qing’s pain only worsened, and Yue Leiting stood by in anguish. I smeared the chicken blood from the bowl onto my hands and muttered under my breath, “Fire orders upheld, awe shaking the ten directions. The golden rooster subdues and binds, piercing straight through to the heavens.”

Then I helped Lan Qing up from the floor, warning everyone again that no one must come close or touch her.

I rolled up Lan Qing’s sleeve. The people present were all struck dumb. On her fair skin there were now countless tiny, sharp tooth marks, densely packed and horrifying to behold. These marks were emerging from within her body. Each time one appeared, it was as though Lan Qing had been bitten once more, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Lianshan, bring me the incense-burner ash!” I shouted, holding Lan Qing in my arms.

Xiao Lianshan hurriedly brought over the incense burner previously used to honor Guan Gong, just as I had instructed him to find. I let a drop of chicken blood fall into the burner, then handed it back to him.

“Scatter the incense ash around Aunt Lan!”

Once the incense ash had been spread thickly around Lan Qing, before long a winding line appeared on its surface. Then more and more followed, like countless slithering venomous snakes surging toward Lan Qing. Each time one of those lines drew near, two more tiny tooth marks emerged outward from within her body, accompanied by Lan Qing’s heart-rending screams echoing through the room.

Snake generals!

I was shocked. I looked up toward Ouyang Cuo’s side. Firelight cast an eerie glow across Miao Renhuan’s expressionless face.

Miao Renhuan reached into the basket beside him, and when his hand came out again it held a brightly colored little snake. Its triangular head showed at once that it was deadly venomous. There were countless such snakes in the basket, twisting around one another, flicking their tongues and writhing. The sight alone was enough to make one’s hair stand on end.

On the yellow cloth before Miao Renhuan were neatly arranged five woven bamboo figures. The cloth was covered with strange talismans that only a sorcerer could decipher, and scorpions, snakes, spiders, centipedes, and toads—the five poisonous creatures—moved back and forth across the bamboo figures.

Miao Renhuan slowly put the snake he had seized into his mouth. While reciting an incomprehensible incantation, he bit off its head, then inverted the headless body. The blood flowing from the snake dripped onto a row of steel needles before him. Once the snake’s blood was drained, he slowly inserted those bloodstained needles into the first bamboo figure.

Each needle he drove into the bamboo figure made another snake appear within Lan Qing’s body. Those snakes began biting from inside her, until at last they forced their way out through her flesh.