A blazing sun rose overhead, steaming the damp cobblestones into mist. Hejia Village lay shrouded in warm, humid heat like a great steamer.
The firecracker fragments piled along the street edges, dried and crisp under the sun, crunched beneath Ning Zhe's feet. After parting from Feng Yushu, he sprinted alone down the empty lanes, the faint scent of gunpowder on the humid air. Distant crackles told him why the streets had emptied: villagers were setting off celebratory firecrackers.
He reached an arched bridge upriver and peered toward the He mansion. Crimson lanterns hung over its broad lintel, and its three-story bamboo-and-timber structure rose from a stone foundation, dwarfing the one- or two-story houses nearby. Even its courtyard wall stood over three meters high, lofty among the low village skyline.
From the mansion came the popping sounds and a line of servants in blue gowns and caps lighting strings of firecrackers on the front steps. Red paper whirlwinds danced in the smoke. To the left, a set of lacquered tables and chairs held an elderly man with white hair, seated with a pen before a queue of waiting villagers.
Silently, Ning Zhe crept closer and watched a man remove the name-paper from his face—"He Renliang"—and place it before the elder. The old man wrote tiny characters on it, nodded, and the servant let him pass through the main gate into the festively decorated mansion.
Rows of villagers pressed forward, each handing in their name-paper—yellow squares with their surnames—for the elder's marking before entry. The scene struck Ning Zhe as familiar. As a child, he'd accompanied his grandmother to wedding banquets, handing over red envelopes to the village registrar amid firecrackers and chatter.
If this was a wedding procession depositing gifts and entering for a feast…
Ning Zhe scanned the crowd toward the vermilion main gate, which bore a red-on-white couplet:
[Welcoming the newlyweds, pure as white jade]
[Bidding farewell to old ties, the moon waxes and wanes]
[Contentment brings lasting joy]
A wedding feast? Someone in the He household was marrying. Even ignoring the eerie yellow masks and color scheme, the couplet itself felt inauspicious—he'd never post such verses outside his own home.
Hejia Village's strangeness extended beyond ghosts and rules; fog lay over every mystery.
Stepping quietly around the crowded main gate, Ning Zhe followed the high wall to the side of the estate. The He mansion's "回"-shaped layout had its main gate to the south, side gates east and west, and a back gate to the north. Rather than any of those gates, he scaled the adjacent single-story house, vaulted onto its roof, and peered over the wall.
Inside, the courtyard buzzed with guests scattered among tables from the main hall to side chambers. Firecrackers still hung unlit, tea and snacks were served before the meal, children raced on stone paths, and the kitchen bustled—an ordinary rural banquet, save for the yellow name-papers on everyone's face and the couplet on the gate.
Ning Zhe recalled Zhang Yangxu's text: "Ye Miaozhu died inside the mansion." Where was her body? And Zhang Yangxu?
With that question burning, he dropped from the roof onto a flowerbed, then crept to the side guest rooms. Empty spaces between groupings of tables allowed him to approach a door. Quiet voices drifted through its window:
"What? Someone ate your offerings too?"
"They were picky—left the rice, only the pickled plum was gone."
"Your kid was that bold? Eating the Serpent God's offerings?"
"Not the kid—they were playing by me the whole time."
"If not kids, then what…"
Their Hakka accents slowed his comprehension but he caught their meaning: villagers debated whether mischievous children, stray cats—or something else—had eaten the offerings.
He listened until the last firecracker popped and the feast began. A woman in a square headscarf stepped out and called for her child. In a fleeting chance, Ning Zhe seized a fallen brick and struck her at the nape. With a dull crack she collapsed, the name-paper—"He Yulan"—fluttered off.
He covered her wound with her scarf and hid her body in a lotus jar, camouflaging it with leaves and flowers. Then he tapped softly on the guest room door.
"Who is it?"
"Ah, my child ran off—I can't find them…" Ning Zhe's voice emerged in a trembling imitation. She opened the door to find a simple-clothed youth—his pale skin replaced by farmer-darkened limbs.
This was the ghost's rule in action: when everyone inside assumed the knocker was He Yulan, he truly became her.
Having stolen her identity, Ning Zhe walked into the banquet as another guest.
Chapters in advance there: patreon.com/Thaniel_a_goodchild