Chapter 137

In the study, the boy and the girl were both drawing.

Li Zhuiyuan drew faster, because all he had to do was reproduce the corpse driver’s appearance.

Ah Li, on the other hand, had to do a certain amount of artistic interpretation based on the boy’s description.

When the boy finished, he set down his pen, stood beside the table, and stared carefully at the Taoist in the picture.

Though the man’s messy hair covered his face, the Taoist robe he wore and the layered cloth shoes on his feet looked very clean, and not merely in the sense of being free of dirt.

In the painting, the Taoist was moving forward, his left foot stepping out and exposing the sole. The sole was very white, and the stitching could be seen, neat and orderly.

The yellow Taoist robe, especially at the collar and cuffs, also looked smooth and supple, without the slightest fraying.

Even the red-and-yellow tassel tied to the bottom of the bell in his right hand looked fresh and delicate.

These were brand-new clothes, shoes, and ritual implements...

So it was reasonable to guess that the corpse driver’s original body had been buried somewhere, and that everything used in the burial had been new.

When Granny Yu appeared, she had on thick makeup, yet one could still sense the feeling of a blind old woman. The facts later proved that her clay figure was only missing a pair of restored eyes.

When the great fish took the bait, its rotting, festering body was likewise a reflection of its real state.

Of the five Yin gods, all but the pig bore the appearance of severe injuries. Only the pig showed no obvious wounds. First, that meant the pig was in the best condition among the five; second, it showed the pig’s dominant position among the five Yin beasts, indirectly suggesting that the other four forms had been forcibly dragged out by the pig to appear.

So the appearances those things took in Ah Li’s dream corresponded to their real conditions.

Which brought up a question.

Since this corpse driver could appear in Ah Li’s dream, it meant he had once shared a life-and-death bond with the former Dragon King.

And yet he had been buried with dignity.

There were only two possible explanations for that.

One was that although the Dragon King had suppressed him back then, the Dragon King either respected him as a worthy rival or had some old connection with him, and so arranged for him to be properly buried.

The other was that although the Dragon King had suppressed him, someone later retrieved the remains he had left behind and handled them properly, including finding him a grave and laying him to rest.

The first possibility seemed unlikely, because an opponent with that sort of connection to the Dragon King, even if he had died by the Dragon King’s hand, probably would not have stooped to bullying an orphan girl at her doorstep.

Unless his purpose in coming out this time was something else entirely.

Just like the great fish before. It had not emerged from the mist to provoke anyone. It had wanted to borrow the Dragon King’s power to find a chance to perish together with Yuxuzi.

And this corpse driver had stepped out on his own, at a time when the river had not yet driven him forward and the other beings in the white mist had not dared show themselves.

Taking all that into account, it was hard to assign the corpse driver a clear label for the moment.

The second possibility was easier to understand. It would mean that this man still had a surviving lineage today, and if Li Zhuiyuan wanted to deal with him, he would have to face that man’s present-day successors.

Li Zhuiyuan would rather believe that possibility. The positions on both sides would be clear, the nature of the conflict would be clear, and everyone would be acting with the purest of motives, doing their utmost to kill the other.

But reality was not like the trendy TV dramas of the day, where good people and bad people could be identified at a glance from how they looked when they appeared.

Whenever Taigong watched television with Runsheng, the question he most often asked was, “Is this one a good person or a bad person?”

That thing Granny Yu was not even really a person to begin with, and neither were the great fish or that pig from recent days.

But this corpse driver... he really was human.

Wei Zhengdao had specifically mentioned in Strange Records of the Jianghu that dead sinkers formed from the corpses of evil cultivators were the hardest to deal with.

They not only understood your methods, they also retained some of the skills they had used in life, and they could even try to outsmart you.

Li Zhuiyuan closed his eyes and first wiped away all the complicated logic that had just formed in his mind. He went back to identifying the principal contradiction.

When he opened his eyes again, the boy’s gaze had become much clearer.

No matter whether you are good or bad, whether you have some unspeakable hardship or hidden meaning, since you appeared in Ah Li’s dream, and since I plan to use you as an experimental subject and actively build a karmic connection toward you...

Then my ultimate goal is simple: to kill you completely. I cannot go wrong with that.

As for whether, in the end, you die with deep contentment and final release, or with fury and unwillingness, that is something to talk about later. It is another seasoning added afterward, the kind people toss in while sitting around a grill eating barbecue after everything is over.

Li Zhuiyuan had not seen the “corpse” behind the corpse driver, so he did not draw it. But he paid special attention to the details of the yellow spirit money the man had scattered.

He even enlarged it separately in the two corners of the scroll, drawing one front-and-back pair in each corner.

Because customs differed from place to place, the design of spirit money also varied greatly.

Those underworld banknotes from the “Bank of Heaven and Earth” had already begun spreading in popularity, but they were not yet mainstream, and had not been around for very long.

In Nantong, the spirit money was mostly square yellow paper. When people attended a funeral meal, close relatives would often buy a vertical bundle of yellow paper to bring as part of the offering.

Many households in the village even kept that same yellow paper in the toilet basket to use as wiping paper.

It felt better than newspaper, thicker and less likely to tear, and it did not have a hole in the middle.

In many other places, though, spirit money was genuinely designed to resemble copper coins, with each region maintaining its own traditions in color, size, and form.

In some places, the more refined versions even had printed writing on them.

Fortunately, the spirit money scattered by the corpse driver did have writing on it.

The reason Li Zhuiyuan drew the spirit money in two separate corners was because there were actually two kinds. The design was identical, but the lettering differed.

On the left, the front and back of the paper read: For the dead to pass, let the living make way.

On the right, the front and back read: Bestowed by the Xie family, received in gratitude by little ghosts.

These two kinds of spirit money were probably stacked together in alternating layers, so that both were thrown out at the same time.

The meaning of the paper on the left was simple. It was basically a notice.

Corpse drivers traditionally traveled at night, because moving by day could easily alarm people and create all sorts of unnecessary trouble.

Also, people in that profession were generally seen by the secular world as unlucky, and they themselves could not be bothered forcing their way into the mainstream. They understood better than anyone how to keep a low profile and stay off to the side.

In that regard, they were a lot like corpse retrievers. Taigong’s household likewise saw very few outside visitors in daily life.

Even now, employees of public funeral homes often still received strange looks when introducing their profession to strangers.

But the wording on the spirit money to the right had a very different tone.

“Bestowed by the Xie family” pointed to the household name.

“Received in gratitude by little ghosts” pointed to rank.

It meant the Xie family held real status on the path of the shade. They were no longer begging little ghosts not to cause trouble on the road. They were saying: I’m giving you money. If you know what’s good for you, get out of my way.

The fact that they dared print words like that proved the Xie family truly had standing. This was not empty self-importance.

People in that line of work were normally deeply wary of that kind of thing. Most preferred to keep themselves humble. Even if they could do ten parts, they would only claim seven to the outside world, afraid of inviting trouble by boasting too much.

Without real foundation, if you dared scatter spirit money like that, those filthy things would come knocking at your door and wipe out your whole family.

That was also why the term River walk belonged exclusively to the Dragon King’s clan.

In artistic circles, insiders could flatter one another and inflate each other’s worth for fun, shamelessly entertaining themselves.

Throughout history, people in the mystical world had tried that too, but in the end, they all sank to the bottom of the river.

“The Xie family?”

Once there was a household name, the matter became much easier. No need to search like a needle in the ocean.

Li Zhuiyuan lightly tapped his temple with his fingertip. There really were two records in his mind that matched this Xie family.

One came from a travel account by an ancestor of the Yin Clan, included among the clan genealogy. During his travels, he once stayed overnight at an inn outside Dayong City.

That night, a corpse driver arrived seeking lodging with his “guests.”

An ordinary inn naturally would not dare house a corpse driver, but some inns had that kind of special background, and... some may simply have had business so bad they were on the verge of collapse. Bankruptcy was more frightening than corpses.

That evening, the innkeeper carried a lamp and quietly instructed the other lodgers not to go outside before dawn, hinting that a corpse driver was staying there.

That particular Yin Clan ancestor was naturally not among them. Not only did he go out, he sought the corpse driver out, and the two drank and talked, becoming “kindred spirits.”

Li Zhuiyuan felt that this phrase “kindred spirits” was probably somewhat exaggerated.

Ever since Yin Changsheng, the Yin Clan’s strength and status had been in a straight two-thousand-year nosedive.

But Yin Changsheng’s name was simply too great, and he was faintly associated with being the true form of the Great Emperor of Fengdu. So whenever later generations of the Yin Clan traveled and invoked their ancestor... they could usually manage to join the table for drinks and a banquet.

No matter how formidable the other party’s background was, no matter whether the current Yin Clan truly had the standing to sit and speak with them, people would still give Yin Changsheng some face.

Because of that, the travel writings of Yin Clan ancestors were actually quite entertaining. They always managed to slip into elite company.

For example, the corpse driver whom that Yin Clan ancestor proudly called a kindred spirit—his surname was Xie.

Unfortunately, the ancients wrote briefly. That Yin Clan ancestor treated the episode as a minor aside and gave no further detail.

So the only thing Li Zhuiyuan, reading it generations later, could learn from that record was this:

He had gone to Dayong, drunk with a Xie family corpse driver, and bragged through the night.

Dayong was present-day Zhangjiajie.

The other record in his mind came from Wei Zhengdao’s Strange Records of the Jianghu. In it, Wei recorded a dead sinker transformed from an evil cultivator. Before death, that man’s surname had been Xie, and he, along with the Xie, Bu, and Wang families, was listed as one of the Four Great Corpse-Driving Families of Old Tianmen.

Xue Liangliang had once said that Li Zhuiyuan’s mind was like an encyclopedia, and that really was not wrong.

In the past, he had read those records and simply stored them away in his head.

Only when the time came to take them back out and chew them over did he think about them in greater detail.

Xie, Xie, Wang, and Bu—the Four Great Corpse-Driving Families of Old Tianmen.

“Old Tianmen” here should refer to Tianmen Commandery.

In the year 263, Mount Gaoliang split apart, and a cave opened in the towering cliff face like a gate.

Sun Xiu, Emperor Jing of Wu—the sixth son of Sun Quan and the third emperor of Eastern Wu—took it as an auspicious sign. He renamed Mount Gaoliang as Tianmen Mountain, and split off the northwestern part of Wuling Commandery to establish Tianmen Commandery, with its seat in what is now Zhangjiajie.

In the year 555, during the reign of Emperor Jing of Liang of the Southern Dynasties, the court abolished Tianmen Commandery and established Lizhou in its place.

By the time Wei Zhengdao wrote his book, Tianmen Commandery had already long been renamed, so he referred to those four great families as Old Tianmen.

Most likely the four families themselves had continued using the old title as well. There was no deeper reason than that the old name simply sounded better.

Li Zhuiyuan rubbed his brow. In truth, there had originally been an easier method. If only the Qin Clan and Liu Clan had complete family histories passed down, things would have been much simpler.

He could have taken the life records of the various Dragon Kings and used those to search. That would have been far more efficient.

But the old lady had said before that the Dragon King’s clan never intentionally recorded such things. It was always other families who kept records for them.

The surface reason revealed the Dragon King family’s pride, but the deeper reason was that the family had produced too many Dragon Kings. Generation after generation, those Dragon Kings had acted on heaven’s behalf. If their lives were clearly and fully recorded... who would dare read them?

It would be like your family serving generation after generation as heaven’s white glove in the mortal world, and yet secretly keeping private ledgers on the side.

And if those records really existed, then imagine two such heavenly white-glove families intermarrying, becoming one household, and then combining their secret ledgers behind the scenes... the consequences would be unimaginable.

So what had been passed down in the Qin and Liu families were only stories and deeds transmitted orally by successive generations.

By contrast, a family like the Zhao Family of Jiujiang, which had produced only one generation of Dragon King, had it easier. Even so, the so-called Dragon King notes were certainly not something open within the family. Among the younger generation, only that boy Zhao Yi was likely qualified to read them, and even reading them would definitely come at a price. It amounted to peeking into heavenly secrets.

As for the Yin Clan... that family was basically at the point of having nothing left to lose, so it did not matter.

And the biggest problem with the Yin Clan genealogy was that it recorded Yin Changsheng’s life as if it were a myth, heavily distorted.

But now that Li Zhuiyuan thought about it, perhaps that too had been a kind of protective measure. If it had really been written in a realistic and detailed way, the Yin Clan would not merely have declined. It would have gone extinct long ago.

As for the things Li Zhuiyuan himself had written, they were only circulated within the team and could never be passed on to outsiders.

So now he also did not want to ask the old lady whether she knew anything about the Xie family. The fourth wave had not yet begun, but he was already preparing to go. Better not drag the old lady into this chain of karma.

If one day in the future the sky really collapsed and the old lady wanted to stand up and help hold it up, Li Zhuiyuan would understand and would not object. But in ordinary times, there was no need for him to wear her down little by little with soft cuts.

Li Zhuiyuan picked up his pen again and wrote beneath the painting: Xie family, Zhangjiajie.

Looks like there was going to be another team-building trip.

At that moment, Ah Li set down her pen and looked at Li Zhuiyuan.

“Finished?”

Ah Li nodded.

“Let me see.”

Li Zhuiyuan walked over.

What Ah Li had drawn was the ending scene of his third wave.

She had originally made an earlier draft showing the five Yin beasts side by side, but that was not the final version. If something better came later, that one was meant to be removed.

Li Zhuiyuan looked over. In the painting, he was tiny, standing with one foot on top of a pig’s head. The pig lay prostrate on the ground, its body stretching endlessly behind it like a small mountain.

Had this been a little too much artistic embellishment?

At the time, when that pig had been smashed out by him, it had already been on its last breath. The other three Yin beasts alongside it—the monkey, the ox, and the centipede—had all been tiny, half-transparent, and extremely weak in form.

When he had stepped on that pig’s head, the pig had been so small that in an ordinary farmer’s household, it would not even have qualified to be slaughtered for New Year pork. It would have been kept around to fatten up a little longer.

Still, Li Zhuiyuan understood why Ah Li had designed it this way, because stepping on an ordinary little pig... really did not look very good.

Granny Yu’s image had been sinister and eerie. The great fish had been fierce and enormous. If the third painting turned into a little pig, the contrast would be far too great.

Ah Li gently stroked the paper with her fingertips. Clearly, she was worried about the same thing.

“Ah Li, you drew this beautifully. I really like it.”

Ah Li looked up at the boy.

“I mean it. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This picture album is not going to be shown to outsiders anyway. Someday only the older versions of us will flip through it and enjoy it for the memories. Since it’s something we drew for ourselves to look at, what is there to be embarrassed about?”

Ah Li nodded.

And even if one day it was accidentally lost and someone else saw it, so what? I drew it for my own amusement in the first place. Whoever sneaks a look has no right to complain that the painting is exaggerated.

Ah Li pointed around the edges of the scroll, meaning that she still needed to fill it out more, for example by adding the images of the four Yin beasts as well.

“You can add those four, but there’s no need to make them look fierce or evil. And don’t put them on the same side as that pig. They’ve been doing good deeds all along, and now they can be considered part of our side too.”

Ah Li nodded to show that she understood.

Since they were now under their banner, then naturally they had to be drawn with kind and benevolent expressions, to create a contrast with the pig.

“Ah Li, this is for you.” Li Zhuiyuan took a design sheet out of his pocket. It was the diagram of the Seven-Aperture One-Heart Lock recorded in Wei Zhengdao’s book. “When you have time, make two locks. One for the study door, and one for that picture album of yours.”

Confusion appeared in Ah Li’s eyes. Then she looked up toward the ceiling.

She understood.

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