The old principal who had hanged himself slowly descended from the stage and moved toward the crowd jammed at the exit. It was more like floating than walking since his feet were invisible. At that moment, some of the more faint-hearted had already fainted from fear, while a few braver ones smashed windows with stools and jumped out to escape.
Just then, the old Taoist, who had been quietly sitting near the stage, suddenly moved. He first climbed onto the stage and stuffed several packs of cigarettes into his Taoist robe. Then he took a box of matches and a teacup belonging to someone nearby. He sipped the tea but didn't swallow it.
Next, he jumped down from the stage and walked a few steps behind the old principal. The Taoist bit his tongue, mixing the blood with the tea, and spat the reddish liquid onto the old principal's face.
"Ao!" The old principal screamed miserably, and half of the skin on his face seemed to burn off from the pinkish tea. The Taoist then struck a match and held the lit match near his mouth, blowing a breath onto the old principal. The breath turned into a fireball that engulfed the old principal's body. Within an instant, the fireball burned the apparition to ashes.
As the old principal turned to dust, the crowd at the exit fell silent. They saw the Taoist sit back down on a stool by the stage, lighting a cigarette as if nothing had happened.
After this incident, the locals finally recognized the Taoist's abilities. Items previously confiscated by the Red Guards were gradually returned. Though public worship in the temple remained forbidden, some villagers secretly brought the Taoist food and daily necessities at night. When strange occurrences happened nearby, the local Revolutionary Committee began asking the Taoist for help. The Taoist was not greedy — he only asked for two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of liquor as payment for solving problems.
Because the Taoist was already on the Black Five Categories' blacklist, he still faced public denunciations. However, he was treated with special leniency. While others were burdened with heavy placards that made it difficult to hold their heads up, the Taoist only had a small piece of paper stuck to his chest as a mere formality.
When Zhang Xiaolan arrived at the temple, she saw the Taoist squatting by the entrance smoking a cigarette. Despite the years apart, the Taoist immediately recognized her and said, "It's you, Xiaolan, isn't it?"
At those words, all of Zhang Xiaolan's pent-up grief, hatred, and shame burst out. Tears streamed down her face like broken pearls. The Taoist sighed but did not comfort her, only silently watching. After days of living like a fugitive, her strength had nearly drained. She cried until her vision went black and she collapsed.
After an unknown amount of time, Zhang Xiaolan woke up in the middle of the night, lying inside the temple. The Taoist sat by her bedside and spoke before she could say a word: "You've been through a lot, running alone and encountering a bunch of beasts. Consider it a destined calamity. The worst is over now — you're back."
Zhang Xiaolan was stunned by his words. She hadn't spoken, but the Taoist seemed to see through her thoughts. He continued, "You were talking in your sleep, crying out for that beast named Xie Pang to let you go."
Zhang Xiaolan had no memory of talking in her sleep, but the Taoist knew much. Even if it was only in her dreams, she had repeated everything. Still, Zhang Xiaolan didn't doubt the Taoist's insight.
With no home to return to, Zhang Xiaolan stayed at the temple. The Taoist did not oppose it and arranged for her to stay in a hidden scripture room. Due to the political climate, no one dared enter the temple for worship. Zhang Xiaolan's stay remained a secret.
Perhaps due to trauma, Zhang Xiaolan's nerves and body remained tense. Once relaxed, her body rebelled. After a few days, she suddenly fell ill. The sickness struck like a mountain — that very day, she began speaking nonsense. Luckily, the Taoist was knowledgeable in medicine. After taking her pulse, he went up the mountain to gather herbs and brewed medicine for her. He tended to her for a whole month before her life was finally saved.
Soon after recovering, Zhang Xiaolan's body changed again. Without warning, she began acid reflux and dry heaving. As a young girl in such a difficult era, she had no idea what was happening and thought her stomach was just unsettled after the illness.
The Taoist's gaze grew strange. Several days later, he told Zhang Xiaolan a fact she could never accept — she was pregnant. The Taoist had diagnosed the pregnancy during pulse-taking and said she was already over two months along.
The news stunned Zhang Xiaolan. There was no question of going to a hospital to have an abortion — it required official documentation and identity cards. Zhang Xiaolan's household registration was still in the small fishing village, and she had no way to terminate the pregnancy. Reporting the matter would ruin her life forever in those times.
The crushing fate made her nerves fragile and unstable. She became silent, staring blankly at the temple's main beam every day.
Finally, the Taoist comforted her and proposed a plan: "If nothing else works, give birth to the child. It will be my little disciple. I won't tell anyone. Pretend nothing happened. When you want, come see him; if not, just forget about the child…"
After much persuasion, Zhang Xiaolan reluctantly accepted the Taoist's idea — it was the only viable option.
From then on, whenever someone came to the old Taoist priest to "settle matters," his terms had changed. Two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of white liquor were no longer enough; now he demanded eggs and pork ribs. All the supplies he received were given to Zhang Xiaolan to help restore her health. In the blink of an eye, another six months passed, and Zhang Xiaolan's belly grew bigger day by day. With just over a month left before her due date, the time was drawing near.
One day, the old Taoist priest was "invited" by the rebels to a public denunciation session, and Zhang Xiaolan hid in a secret chamber beneath the main hall, waiting for his return. At that moment, two people sneaked quietly into the temple and headed straight to the main hall, where the Three Pure Ones were enshrined. They knelt and prayed beneath the altar. Zhang Xiaolan clearly recognized their voices — they were her biological parents. She had been missing for over half a year, and the local government only reported that she fell seriously ill after the New Year and then mysteriously disappeared. After searching for months with no luck, her parents had finally lost hope. Taking advantage of the temple being empty, they sneaked inside to pray for divine protection and hoped for their daughter's safe return. Overcome with emotion, the elderly couple wept bitterly before leaving the temple.
Zhang Xiaolan, who had long been unable to bear the weight of her secret, wanted to reveal herself and reunite with her parents. But seeing her heavily pregnant reflection in the mirror, she found it too difficult to face them. She bit her lip and waited until her parents left the temple before stepping out from her hiding place. Her mental state completely collapsed as she recalled the ordeal of the past six months. Not long after her parents left, Zhang Xiaolan found a beam in a side hall and hanged herself.
When the old Taoist priest returned to the temple, Zhang Xiaolan was already lifeless. Hanging beneath her was her umbilical cord, still connected to a newborn baby boy suspended in midair. During her struggle to hang herself, Zhang Xiaolan had triggered labor prematurely. The baby survived, but she was beyond saving. The old Taoist priest performed a ritual for her and then temporarily buried her behind the temple.
Next came the matter of the baby. The old Taoist priest told outsiders that someone had abandoned the infant at the temple gate, and that by fate he had taken the child in as his own disciple, naming him Zhang Rantian.
After telling this long story, Zhang Rantian rubbed his ears, reddened from the cold, and said, "Now do you understand why the Xie family all deserve to die?" His words hung in the air, provoking silence. Even the usually loose-tongued Sun Fatty was at a loss for words. Finally, Hao Zhengyi asked from another angle, "So, the way you killed the Xie family—did your old Taoist teacher teach you that?"
"If he had been willing to teach me, I would've avenged it long ago," Zhang Rantian sneered. "Until I was an adult, I lived under the care of that so-called master. He used the temple's incense money to support my university studies. He taught me everything he thought I could learn, but..." His voice suddenly became hysterical. Pointing to the sky, he shouted, "But he never taught me how to get revenge!"
Sun Fatty looked at Zhang Rantian suspiciously and asked, "Isn't that skill your master taught you?" Zhang Rantian took a deep breath and replied, "He thought that if he didn't teach me, I wouldn't learn it. He kept many things from me, even never telling me how my mother died. Guess how I found out?" At this point, I noticed something was off with Zhang Rantian. Despite the bitter sea wind chilling us to the bone, he was sweating heavily. His eyes seemed dull, and his cheeks flushed unnaturally — the red spreading all the way to his neck. It reminded me of a madman I once saw back home; sane one moment, and completely deranged the next.
Before Sun Fatty could respond, Zhang Rantian answered his own question: "When I just graduated from university, I went home to stay with my master for a few months. One night, when I got up to use the bathroom, I overheard my master talking to someone in the side hall. I pressed my ear to the door crack and..." He suddenly stepped close to Sun Fatty, eyes wide, and asked, "Guess what I saw?"
Zhang Rantian's sudden move startled Sun Fatty, who took a step back and cautiously said, "What did you see? Take your time, no rush."
Zhang Rantian stared blankly for a while, then trembled slightly as if coming back to himself. He panted heavily, then pulled a pill bottle from his jacket pocket. Pouring some tablets into his palm, he chewed and swallowed them without counting. After two or three minutes, the flush on his face faded, and he looked exhausted. Noticing our curious gazes, he took a deep breath and showed the bottle to Sun Fatty. "Don't worry, these aren't poisons, but sedatives. Without them, I'd have gone mad years ago. I wouldn't have lasted this long before acting."
Seeing him more composed, Sun Fatty tested the waters: "You haven't said what you saw through the door crack yet. Maybe wait a little before telling?"
Zhang Rantian waved him off. "It'll make me feel better to say it." He exhaled and spoke in a steadier voice: "My master was very old at the time — so old he didn't notice me outside. I saw him talking to a ghost hanging from a beam — a woman's ghost. I was terrified and my hair stood on end."
"I wanted to run away, but when I heard what they were saying, my legs felt nailed to the ground. I couldn't move." Zhang Rantian closed his eyes, took a breath, and continued, "I still remember every word perfectly. The master said, 'After all these years, Rantian has grown up. Are you still holding onto your grudges? Rantian is your own flesh and blood. You've watched him grow every day; no matter how deep your resentment, it's time to let go. The living and the dead must walk separate paths.' At the time, my mother said those words, but I didn't understand them."
"Though my master accepted me as his disciple, he never let me participate in any major rituals. The first ghost I ever saw was my own mother — whom I'd never met — but even after seeing her, I couldn't understand a word she said. Can you imagine how that made me feel?"
"After my master spoke, I sat on the ground in a daze. I made too much noise and alerted him inside the side hall. I couldn't hide any longer, but when I tried to find my mother's soul, she hid away and refused to see me."
"No matter how much I begged my master, he wouldn't tell me the truth about what happened all those years ago. Eventually, I knelt and begged until my head was bleeding. Seeing my blood, he finally relented and told me everything. He even taught me a method to find my mother's soul — but he refused to teach me how to understand ghost speech. He wouldn't teach me, so I learned on my own. I found a book called The Ghost Tongue Manual in the temple's library and used it to translate my mother's words. Do you know what she said?"
At this point, Zhang Rantian's excitement grew again. He looked sharply at the fallen members of the Xie family, then emptied the remaining sedatives in the bottle into his mouth and swallowed them all. When the last pill went down, a loud crack of thunder split the clear sky — a bolt of heavenly lightning struck.