Chapter 6

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She really wanted to walk away, but as soon as she looked up, her body was frozen again. In the roaring winter storm, an old man in black robes was approaching, his white hair and a face like a withered tree illuminated by a ball of flames he was playing with between his fingers. He was Suo Lang, the Great Wizard of Huotu Clan, the most prestigious wizard in the Western Wilderness. Before the person arrived, she already started to feel a fierce sense of pressure oppressing her chest.

When the Great Wizard passed by, he stopped beside her, with a trace of doubt in his eyes, and watched in her direction. Knowing how powerful he is, Zhu Yan immediately held her breath and huddled beside her Master, tugging at his sleeve, not daring to move. As soon as she will get out of this umbrella, she will certainly be discovered.

“Elder! Come and take a look!” fortunately, at this time, the eldest concubine, holding the bloody body, called him to come over. “The Princess was killed by the sand demons! Come and see if there is anything else you can do.”

The wizard turned his head and diverted his attention. Zhu Yan felt the sense of pressure on her chest lightening a bit and could not help but take a sigh of relief.

Even the head is gone, what else can be done?

However, as soon as Zhu Yan thought about this, she saw the Great Wizard walking over, leaned down to look at the mutilated body, stretched out his fingers and pulled at the flesh and blood, then said in a low voice: “There is only that little left? It’s a bit difficult, but if there is enough blood to sacrifice, we can have a chance to give it a try.”

What? She was taken aback and turned to look at her Master. In this world, is there actually a way to reverse life and death? So, isn’t this Great Wizard more powerful than the Master?

However, Shi Ying did not speak, but quietly looked at the Great Wizard of the Huotu Clan, and the knuckles of his slender fingers holding the umbrella seemed to tighten slightly.

Hearing these words, the Imperial Concubine suddenly recovered her usual composure. She raised her head and said to her son: “Ke Erke, you first step back and send someone to surround this place with a bridle. No one can approach it casually.” After a short pause, she added: “If the Emissary of the Emperor asks, you can say that the Wizard is rescuing the Princess. At the moment of life and death, it is not convenient for others to disturb. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Knowing his mother’s temper, Ke Erke dared not ask any more questions and immediately withdrew.

Soon, only her and the Great Wizard remained in the clearing, as well as the two corpses on the ground. The Wizard’s aura was so powerful that Zhu Yan was compressed under the umbrella and could only watch in horror, tugging at her Master’s sleeve from time to time, almost pleading him with her eyes to leave. However, Shi Ying ignored her and just stood firm in the storm, silently watching in stealth.

“You don’t want Ke Erke to see it, do you?” The wizard coughed in a low voice, and the fire in the palm of his hand almost got extinguished. “Alas, no matter who it is, it would be uncomfortable for anyone to see his wife resurrected from the dead and then live with her in a tent for the rest of his life.”

While talking, the Great Wizard leaned down, put his hand on the broken arm of the fake bride, closed his eyes slightly, and muttered something silently. The flame on the palm of his hand suddenly flourished! In that moment, Zhu Yan felt that Master’s eyes suddenly brightened.

Over there, the Great Wizard suddenly opened his eyes and exclaimed: “Strange! This Princess… doesn’t look like a living person!”

What? Have you been seen through so fast? Zhu Yan’s heart suddenly dropped and she almost stepped out from under the umbrella, but she was shocked to hear the old Concubine say: “Of course she is already dead. Why else would I ask you to come and help?”

“No, I mean, there is no anger in this pile of flesh and blood.” said the wizard, frowning, searching on the howling wind around him, and whispering: “What’s more, the person has just died but there is no trace of ‘three souls and seven spirits’* left. Incredible!”

(N.B. *Three souls and Seven spirits – 三魂七魄; that is, “three hun and seven po” – Daoism terminology; see description at the end of the chapter.)

“Ah!” At that moment, Zhu Yan couldn’t help but lose her voice. Yes, although the puppet has flesh and blood, it has no three souls and seven spirits! This kind of difference can deceive any ordinary people. But how can she deceive the Great Wizard with his high cultivation level? How could she forget about such important things?

“Who’s there?” As soon as she blurted out, the Great Wizard of Huotu’s Clan turned around instantly, his eyes burning like torches scrutinizing the night, while his palms started to summon out flames suddenly, shooting towards her like roaring arrows!

“Ah…” she exclaimed, hurriedly trying to evade, but before the word came out, it was already dark in front of her eyes. The Master standing next to her raised his sleeve to divert the magic then fast as lightning, grabbed her and covered her mouth with his warm hand. At the same time, he lowered the umbrella, tilting the handle to bring it in front and cover her head and face, then turned it slightly. A white rose bloomed quietly in the snow, instantly extinguishing the fire. At the same time, she saw the Master gently curling his finger, and the dead sand demon on the ground suddenly shook his whole body, as if he had been led by a string, sprang up from the snow and roared and pounced towards the Old Concubine of Huotu who was standing on the side.

“Be careful!” The Great Wizard was taken aback, and quickly turned towards her to help. However, the sand demon who came back from the dead unexpectedly doubled his fierceness. The bolt only slightly slowed its body; followed by another swoop, the beast threw the woman on the snow and tried to bite her throat. The concubine was also quick, with a “brush” sound she pulled out a knife and stabbed it deep into the demon’s heart with a single blow. Taking advantage of such a delay, the wizard quickly chanted a curse, waved his hand to summon another flash of lightning, and the bolt released smashed the sand demon with his head and body to pieces.

The demon’s sharp teeth had almost bit her throat, but the tough woman didn’t panic, she just got up from the ground and patted the snow on her clothes. However, as she watched the demon sand turn into powder, she could not help but turn pale and blurt out: “Oh no, too bad!”

This blow almost completely shattered the body of the fake Princess Zhu Yan. If before has been difficult to gather the pieces of the body together, now would have been impossible to do it again: the human corpse and the flesh and blood of the sand demon were already mixed together. The concubine stood dazedly on the snow, stunned for a while, then leaned over and pinched a wisp of long dark red hair from the pile of fuzzy flesh, then turned her head to look at the Great Wizard: “What else can we do now?”

“What was that all about? This sand demon was obviously been killed by me before!” The Great Wizard looked at the pile of flesh and blood with a sullen face, his eyes raised and flashing like flames while turning his head to look around vigilantly, as if he was about to sniff out something in the wind: “What made this thing suddenly come back to life?”

Shi Ying covered Zhu Yan’s mouth, lowered the umbrella silently, turned his wrist slowly, and the white rose on the umbrella grew slowly and meandered, winding them around and merging them with the heavy snow. The winter storm roared and the wilderness was empty.

“Strange.” The Great Wizard walked around but couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary. He felt relieved and murmured: “What happened just now is a bit abnormal.”

“Let’s hurry up!” However, the concubine held the strand of hair in her hand and looked at him anxiously: “This is the only thing left, can you still do it? In any case, we must not let Princess Zhu Yan die like this tonight! Otherwise, all our future plans will be ruined!”

The plan behind? What plan? Zhu Yan was suddenly full of questions, but had no time to indulge. She heard the Great Wizard coughing a few times, took his gaze back casting his eyes on the strand of hair, then said: “Go to the tomb and fetch twelve women out. It must be done fast, before dawn!”

Shi Ying’s hand holding the handle of the umbrella shook slightly, his delicate lips closed into a line.

“Okay!” The concubine took a breath and stood up at once.

What are they planning to do? What is the tomb? Zhu Yan looked curiously, but dared not make a sound, she just gazed at her Master with a mute question in her eyes. However, Shi Ying’s expression was very serious, retreated to one side and quietly watched the old concubine walking all the way towards the stables, his eyes almost as sharp as a blade.

She hardly ever saw her Master in this state.

The concubine walked around the stable and pushed open the door of the woodshed. In that moment, Zhu Yan subconsciously gasped at the thought of the terrible and poor mother and son in the woodshed, it made her stomach ache. She had cut off the shackles of the child. She wondered if the child had taken advantage of the opportunity to escape with his mother during the great chaos just now. However, in such a heavy blizzard, how can a thin child leave with a heavy wine urn on his back? She felt a little nervous and uneasy in her heart.

“Huh?” As soon as the concubine walked in, she let out a shout in a tone of great anger. “What’s going on? That little bastard and that bitch are gone!”

Zhu Yan breathed a sigh of relief in silence.

“I can’t believe they ran away! That slut!” In her fury, the concubine whipped the sundries in the room and crackled a piece of it. “Damn it. When I catch them back, I’m going to cut off that little son of a bitch’s hands and feet and turn him into a human urn!”

“Don’t worry about it now! What time is it? The wizard frowned, coughed slightly in the snow, and pinched the dark red hair between his fingers. “If you want to cover up this matter before dawn and give back to the envoy of Kongsang, a living princess, then bring me the blood food from the tomb right away!”

The concubine suddenly stopped, seeming to suppress her furious mood.

“Okay.” She gritted her teeth and said calmly: “Just a moment.”

She walked around in that small woodshed, Zhu Yan couldn’t see what she was doing, she only heard a muffled noise coming from the inside. Suddenly the hut vibrated slightly, and the whole ground cracked silently! A swarthy entrance appeared on the ground floor of the woodshed, like a secret wine cellar. Under the ground, there were neat rows of wine jars aligned. It’s just that there was a head sticking out of every single one of them.

Oh my God… There are so many human urns! Zhu Yan looked at the scene in surprise and horror and almost exclaimed again. Fortunately, Shi Ying kept her mouth covered so that she can’t have a chance to alarm the wizard.

“I want all women,” the Great Wizard whispered, “twelve of them!”

“Okay.” The concubine took the order, and selected a few young girls from the rows of urns, one by one, lifted them up from the cellar, and lined them up in a row on the snow. “Twelve of them are used at once, but you know, it really takes a lot of money to replenish them from Yecheng… you must know, now a very poor-looking shark is sold for as much as 5,000 gold baht!”

“What’s the cost of doing great things?” While examining the urn extracted from the cellar, the Great Wizard said: “The shark people live for a thousand years and have more spiritual power. If you want to use ordinary people to do blood food sacrifice, you have to take hundreds of them.”

“That’s not okay.” the concubine frowned. “If there are so many people missing in the flag camp, this matter can’t be covered and it will definitely cause riots.”

“So, don’t worry about the golden baht.” The wizard said coldly, tapping his fingers on the shark’s head in the urn: “As long as you marry Princess Zhu Yan, won’t the whole Western Wilderness be your heaven in the future?”

N.B. * Three souls and Seven spirits – 三魂七魄; that is, “three hun and seven po” – Daoism terminology

In Chinese Daoism, the seven earthly human souls as distinguished from the three heavenly hun souls. The distinction is based on the Chinese concept of yin-yang, the inescapable dual nature of all things. When the souls of a person are joined in harmonious union, health and life flourish; separation causes sickness and death. The Chinese assigned organic functions to po.

Although right order demands that the po (yin) souls be subservient to the hun (yang), in many cases the passions of po dominate people’s lives. Because the po souls can turn into a malevolent spirit (gui) if the deceased is not properly interred or sacrificed to, fitting burial rites not only ensure peaceful rest for the dead but further guarantee that the hun souls will impart special blessings to surviving family members.

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