Chapter Twenty-Two: The Sealed Stele Cliff

The village chief’s intentions were clear to me—he was afraid that if he spoke too much, I’d see through him and refuse to help them any longer.

In fact, while they were worried I might run away, I was even more afraid they would disappear on me.

I deliberately raised my voice, “Uncle, at a time like this, whatever you know, you’d better not keep it from me! If we make a mistake, someone could die!”

Now it wasn’t just the village chief who hesitated—the people who’d come with him lost their composure as well. “Uncle, what Xiaoxie says isn’t wrong. We’ve come this far, no need to keep things hidden from us.”

The people who followed the village chief up the mountain were all quite young, and they knew very little—only the chief truly understood what was going on. All I needed was to stir things up; even if I didn’t press him, others would.

After a moment’s hesitation, the village chief finally spoke. “Actually, I don’t know much myself.”

Back then, when the Taoist arrived, he immediately saw through what was happening with Old Guo’s family.

The Taoist said that Old Guo’s family wasn’t suffering retribution for driving game to extinction through hunting, but that they’d become entangled with a dead spirit. Before Old Guo’s family had their child, they must have gone somewhere and brought something unclean back with them. “Think carefully—was there anything strange that happened before the child was born?”

The villagers racked their brains for a long time but couldn’t come up with anything. Finally, someone remembered, “Didn’t the village fool say he saw Old Guo carrying someone back that day?”

The “fool” and the “madman” were actually the village guardians. Whenever there were weddings or funerals, they were always invited, even given their own table, and after eating and drinking, they would quietly leave, never causing any trouble.

By today’s standards, a “village guardian” wasn’t a single person, but a type of person—those with disabilities, unable to leave the village. No matter how many people left, they stayed behind, hence the name.

Folklore, however, had a different explanation. There were two kinds of village guardians: one, a person of great spiritual cultivation in a previous life, born again as a fool or a madman to repay a debt or fulfill a vow, living among the villagers in a daze, but actually more clear-minded than anyone. Because they had no passions or desires, their eyes were purer than a child’s, allowing them to see things others could not; they spoke rarely, but whenever they did, their words could save lives.

The second kind were simply fools or madmen. The village kept them fed, and if misfortune came, everyone would push the blame onto the fool, whom the authorities, seeing his condition, would not trouble too much.

To tell which type a fool was, you brought him to weddings and funerals. Before the meal, someone would tease him into talking. If what he said was accurate, he was the former; if not, the latter.

That day, Old Guo’s family was carrying a pregnant she-wolf back to the village. The village fool followed right behind, pointing at Old Guo’s family and shouting, “A person, a person…”

We asked, “Where’s the person?”

The fool lay on his side on the ground, hands and feet twisted behind him, arching his body as he kept shouting, “A person, a person…”

No one understood what he meant at the time. We all thought he was just acting up again and didn’t pay him any mind.

Looking back, wasn’t he saying that what Old Guo’s family was carrying on their back was a person? And that person’s hands and feet were bound behind them, their head twisted to look at the fool.

But all we saw was a pregnant she-wolf!

The Taoist, hearing this, asked, “Where’s the fool now?”

The villagers told him, “The fool died the next day—he drowned in the river. His corpse’s eyes were wide open, as if he’d seen something terrifying before he died.”

“Maybe the she-wolf went after him.”

“Could Old Guo’s daughter Qiushuang have been that she-wolf transformed?”

The Taoist replied, “No. That wasn’t a wolf demon, but a kind of malevolent spirit.”

“She must have been injured under some circumstances and needed to be reborn to heal. So she crawled into the belly of a pregnant she-wolf. Old Guo’s family, not knowing, brought the wolf home, and the spirit was reborn as their child.”

“When the spirit entered the she-wolf, she couldn’t have gone far. You know where wolf packs roam, right?”

Old Guo’s family was the only one in the village who made a living hunting pelts, and where to find the best hides was their trade secret—they wouldn’t reveal it lightly.

The Taoist thought for a moment. “Are there any big temples, solitary graves, or stone monuments on the mountain?”

Someone remembered then, “There is a place called Sealed Stele Cliff up there, though I’m not sure if it’s the sort of place you mean.”

Sealed Stele Cliff was said to be a stone outcrop, but in fact it rose more than a man’s height from the ground. The cliff jutted out about half a meter from the mountain wall, forming a platform hanging in mid-air.

But if you walked under the cliff, you’d see a stone tablet set into the mountain wall.

“Set” was no exaggeration. If a stele is inlaid into stone, there should be seams around it, no matter how well it’s fitted. But this one had none; if you looked closely, it was as if the stele had been pressed into wet clay, the cliff wrapping around all sides.

The Taoist drew a sharp breath. “Are there any carvings or writing on the stele?”

The villagers replied, “No carvings, but there is some writing. Unfortunately, we’re illiterate and don’t know what it says.”

The Taoist pressed further, “Are the characters written in red or black?”

When he heard that the writing was black, the Taoist said, “This is bad.” The villagers asked him what was wrong.

He explained, “If the characters are red, it’s a warding stele; if black, it’s a eulogy stele. There are many kinds, praising gods, dragons, or spirits. Simply put, there’s something powerful and temperamental in the area. If you can’t subdue it, you have to placate it with flattery. If such a place is destroyed, you’ve offended something you really shouldn’t.”

“You must take me up the mountain at once. While that thing is still weak, we can destroy it. Once it gains strength, it will be impossible to kill.”

That day, the Taoist led the villagers to Sealed Stele Cliff. Later, someone did return alive, bringing back a map showing the Taoist’s path. He said, “Before he died, the Taoist told me to tell the village: visit these marked places regularly. If anything there is broken, it means the thing has escaped—hurry to his sect for help.”

At this point, I asked urgently, “Where is that map?”