His head was splitting with pain, his mouth was dry, and his body felt so heavy it seemed like it didn’t belong to him anymore.
Just opening his eyes took Hu Ma a long time, accompanied by waves of dizziness.
He was half-leaning in a room that resembled a hall.
In the center of the room stood a dusty Eight Immortals table, a few low stools, and a stove made of blackened stones against the wall.
A few paper effigies leaned against the wall, their faces painted with eerie smiles.
Yellow and red talismans, covered in twisted symbols, were plastered all over the room.
"Clang."
He instinctively tried to move, but his shoulders were heavy and painful.
A chain extended from the ceiling, splitting into two ends, each connected to a hook.
The two hooks had pierced through Hu Ma’s collarbones, the bloody tips protruding from his chest.
He had been locked here for six or seven days now.
But even now, he still didn’t know why he was being held captive.
He had just graduated from university and landed a promising job as a security guard in what was considered the world’s most advanced laboratory.
Then, out of nowhere, an explosion occurred, and he felt himself floating.
Dazed and drifting, he didn’t know how much time had passed until he was drawn by a strange sound.
Following it, he suddenly felt a rapid descent.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in this place, locked up.
Over the past six or seven days, every night, an old woman would sit in front of him, silently chanting scriptures, waving strange talismans, and sometimes subjecting him to tortures that felt like being boiled in oil or skinned alive.
Afterward, she would force him to eat strange meats and drink medicinal soups.
No matter what he asked or did, she ignored him completely.
With the hooks piercing his shoulders, he would often faint from the pain, unable to resist whatever she did to him.
"Why is she locking me up?"
"What is she chanting at me every night?"
Hu Ma had no answers to these questions.
During this time, he would often feel dizzy, as if he were floating, and the constant torment left him weak and exhausted.
When he occasionally woke up, his mouth would be dry, and his body felt completely drained.
The water jar was about three meters away, near the earthen wall.
The chain from the ceiling was looped around a beam, allowing him to move around the room in theory.
But moving came at a great cost of pain.
It took him dozens of seconds to endure the agony in his shoulders and slowly stand up.
Then, trembling, he leaned against the wall and inched his way toward the water jar.
The sound of his bones grinding against the hooks was eerily cold.
A little blood seeped out as he moved, but not much—perhaps it had already run dry.
Finally reaching the water jar, he saw the clear water inside, with half a gourd floating on top.
Hu Ma scooped up a small amount of water, as his arms couldn’t hold much, and gulped it down.
The heat in his body and the headache seemed to ease a bit.
But as soon as he quenched his thirst, his stomach growled with hunger.
Hu Ma instinctively glanced at the coarse porcelain bowl on the Eight Immortals table.
After hesitating for a while, he forced himself to move toward it.
Lifting the bowl, he saw a square piece of reddish boiled meat underneath.
For someone as hungry as he was, it was a strong temptation, but he resisted.
That strange old woman, besides chanting and torturing him, would often force him to eat strange things—herbs, talisman-infused water, and most importantly, this unknown meat.
Whether he had an appetite or not, she would shove it into his mouth, forcing him to chew and swallow.
Every time he ate it, it was an excruciating experience.
So, even though he was starving, he didn’t want to touch the meat.
"Take advantage of her absence and escape. I must escape…" Hu Ma silently reminded himself, realizing the urgency of the situation.
Making sure no one was around, he endured the dull pain, raised his right hand, and gripped the hook piercing his left shoulder.
He tried to push the hook out of his flesh bit by bit.
The intense pain shot through his brain, making his head throb.
The hook had already fused with his flesh.
But Hu Ma gritted his teeth and kept trying.
...
"Creak..."
Just as the pain intensified, a gust of wind blew the door open, dimming the light in the room.
"Is that strange old woman back?" Hu Ma’s heart skipped a beat.
He turned to look and saw a short, thin middle-aged man entering.
The sunlight from behind made his face blurry.
"A stranger?" Hu Ma’s heart leapt with hope.
Over the past few days, he had only seen that eerie old woman and a little girl in red with a red ribbon in her hair.
This was the first time he had seen someone else, and his desire to call for help surged.
But before he could speak, he hesitated:
What if this person was the old woman’s accomplice? If he called for help, wouldn’t it just lead to more torture?
Besides, even if he didn’t call for help, this person should have noticed the hooks in his shoulders.
If he were an outsider, wouldn’t he find it strange?
As Hu Ma stared at the man, trying to gauge whether he was worth calling out to, the man completely ignored his condition.
Instead, he turned stiffly, as if looking around, and asked in a wooden voice:
"Where’s the old woman?"
"Uh-oh, he seems to know her…" Hu Ma thought, his hope of rescue fading.
But maybe he could try to get some information from this man?
"The old woman went out," Hu Ma said, trying to sound calm.
"What do you need her for?"
The man’s voice was lifeless: "I’m here to settle a score with her."
"Settle a score?" Hu Ma’s hope reignited.
"Is this person the old woman’s enemy?"
"She’s out. She often goes out during the day. She should be back soon," Hu Ma said, suppressing his excitement.
"You..."
"If she’s coming back soon, then I’d better hurry," the man suddenly turned to look at Hu Ma.
He was no longer backlit by the sunlight, but his face was still unclear.
His voice was thin and broken, as if he lacked strength:
"I was doing just fine in the forest, but the old woman suddenly sent someone to chop me down. They cut me into pieces and turned me into a coffin. Tell me…"
"...isn’t that a deep grudge?"
"..."
Hu Ma was about to agree with whatever the man said, but the meaning behind his words suddenly struck him as odd.
He froze.
"I was just a year or two away from achieving enlightenment," the man continued, his voice now carrying a shrill, tearful tone.
"But the old woman ruined my future. I was wrapped around the corpse of the Cui family’s old master, smelling him rot and decay. I felt the maggots crawling inside him, the putrid fluids seeping into my body. Tell me, don’t I have a blood feud with the old woman?"
Hu Ma’s scalp tingled, and he stumbled back a few steps.
Only then did he realize that the man’s walking posture was very strange.
His knees didn’t seem to bend, and he moved stiffly, as if sliding on the ground.
As the man grew more agitated and slowly approached him, Hu Ma’s vision blurred, and he finally saw the face under the black robe and hat—it wasn’t a face at all.
It was a board.
A dirty, black board.
At that moment, Hu Ma began to smell the foul stench emanating from the man.
A coffin board.
But this coffin board was now screaming at him in a shrill, angry voice:
"I’m here to settle the score with her."
"She ruined my path to enlightenment, so I’ll take her grandson…"
Hu Ma instinctively wanted to run, but his body was too weak, and his legs gave out.
He felt dizzy, watching as the coffin board pressed closer to his face.
The stench of decay and the shrill voice filled his ears and nostrils, making him almost pass out.
"Cough!"
But just then, he heard a light cough from the doorway, followed by a hoarse voice:
"You gained a bit of power and started causing trouble in the forest, even harming pregnant women. I thought I’d let you guard the corpse of the Cui family’s old master for twenty years and spare your life, but you didn’t appreciate it. Now you’ve come to harm my grandson…"
"Then this time, I’ll just burn you!"
Hu Ma heard a terrified scream, and a cold wind swept through the room, brushing past his face.
When he could see clearly again, a smooth coffin board lay on the ground.
A little girl with two pigtails was crouching on it like an animal, grinning at him.
And the stern old woman stood hunched by the door, silent.
(End of Chapter)