Chapter Thirty: Entwined in Autumn Frost

I listened as the sound of hooves drew nearer and nearer, no longer caring whether I’d be discovered. My hands worked swiftly to cut the rope, while I stealthily bit through the tip of my tongue.

The idea of blood from the three tips dispelling evil is a folk belief, yet its roots lie in Taoism. Taoists believe that the blood from the three tips of the body—the fingertips, the tip of the tongue, and the tip of the heart—contains the strongest vital energy, powerful enough to ward off demons and banish evil. However, only those born into the Taoist tradition dare use the blood from the three tips; in addition to drawing the blood, one must also employ incantations, especially when it comes to the elusive blood from the heart’s tip, which is not something an ordinary person can obtain.

The folk method of using the three-tipped blood is much more crude: simply bite the tip of the tongue, hold the blood in your mouth, and spray it at the evil spirit.

Does this method work? In truth, yes, it does. But its power is far inferior to the spells of a Taoist disciple.

By this point, all I could do was gamble on whether my own tongue’s blood would prove effective.

In just a brief moment, the hooves were at my feet. Before I could even look up, someone grabbed my arm and forced me onto my back.

Qiu Shuang turned her head sideways, using one eye to scan my face up and down. Then, she pressed a hand to my chest and, with the other, fiercely tilted my chin upward, exposing my throat. I struggled desperately to lift my head, but her grip was unbreakable. I could only watch as her lips moved closer to my throat.

I could even feel the cold breath from Qiu Shuang’s nostrils on my neck. But just as she was about to act, she suddenly stopped, grasped my head in both hands, and straightened my face, still tilting her head to stare at me.

I felt her ten fingers slowly traveling up my face, until her fingertips paused along the rims of my eye sockets, gently pressing down along the edges.

Qiu Shuang was about to gouge out my eyes, yet in doing so, she gave me a chance to get close.

I had kept the blood in my mouth and not moved, simply because she was too far away before—no matter how hard I tried, I might not have reached her. But now that Qiu Shuang was right before my eyes, how could I let the opportunity slip by?

Catching her before she could fully exert her strength, I suddenly spat the blood into her face.

Qiu Shuang screamed in agony, clutching her eyes and stumbling backward. Taking the chance, I snapped the rope I had nearly cut through, freeing my arms. As I untied the rope around my feet, I shouted, “Uncle, do it now! If you wait any longer, it’ll be too late!”

I saw the village chief hesitating, so I snatched a stone from the ground and hurled it at a villager’s eye.

When I was learning martial arts from Hu Sanqi, he told me that all that talk of throwing weapons and secret techniques was mostly nonsense and far too tedious to master. If you could throw an iron plowshare quickly, accurately, and with force, hitting whatever you aimed at, that would be enough. If you were fast and strong, even a stone could become a deadly weapon. I could hit sparrows out of the sky with a stone; hitting a grown man was no challenge at all.

The stone I threw struck the man’s eye with a crack, blood spurting over a foot from his socket as he rolled on the ground in agony. The village chief, realizing he could hide no longer, shouted, “Get the ropes! Tie her up!”

The remaining villagers rushed at Qiu Shuang with coffin ropes, determined to snare her.

This wasn’t Inner Mongolia; though there were shepherds here, there were no horse herders, and certainly no one who could lasso from a distance the way the grassland nomads did. They had to get close before trying to throw the noose over her.

But the villager tasked with tossing the rope flinched as he neared Qiu Shuang, squeezed his eyes shut, tossed the rope blindly, and ran off without looking back to see if he had managed to ensnare her.

In truth, the rope merely landed at an angle across Qiu Shuang’s body, missing her head entirely. The villagers at the other end, without checking where the rope had landed, immediately began to drag it back, pulling the coffin rope to the ground.

Just a moment ago, Qiu Shuang had been clutching her eyes and wailing, but as soon as the rope fell, she pressed her foot down on the noose. Despite four men tugging with all their might, the rope didn’t budge under her foot.

“Let go!” the village chief shouted, seeing the murderous light in Qiu Shuang’s eyes. But before he finished, Qiu Shuang grabbed the noose with one hand and flung it outward. A villager who had wrapped the rope around his wrist was yanked off his feet and slammed against the cave wall, blood splattering as I shook off the rope from my feet, dashed to the corpse, and snatched his bag. From it, I grabbed three iron plowshares.

Though I’d been deceiving the villagers the whole way, I never lied about the tools for fighting ghosts and evil spirits. After all, I might need to use them myself in a pinch. Lying to them would be lying to myself.

Most of what the villagers had prepared was useless, but these three iron plowshares were the real deal.

I hurled all three at Qiu Shuang’s face. The fist-sized iron chunks struck her with a dull thud, tearing a patch of skin from her face, yet not a drop of blood flowed.

Qiu Shuang screamed again, a red welt rising on her face as if she’d been seared with a branding iron.

Iron plowshares are especially effective against things from the earth. In my two close encounters with Qiu Shuang, I realized she was something like a half-corpse; the iron plowshare might not subdue her, but it could certainly inflict pain.

After that blow, Qiu Shuang went berserk, lunging straight at me. I dodged and sprinted into the crowd.

The village chief panicked, raising his gun and shouting, “Stay back! If you come any closer…”

I saw the chief’s finger tightening on the trigger, but at that moment, the footsteps behind me suddenly ceased, and a shadow loomed overhead. I knew Qiu Shuang had leapt up, aiming to pounce on me from above.

I sprang forward, yelling, “Shoot!”

The chief had already prepared to fire at me. As I dove, he didn’t have time to do anything else—he instinctively raised the muzzle and pulled the trigger. The burning red shot whistled over my head and struck Qiu Shuang in midair.

Though her attack was fierce, the gunfire sent her tumbling through the air. I scrambled to my feet and smashed two more iron plowshares into her face, then turned to flee toward the crowd.

After being struck three times, Qiu Shuang went into a frenzy, charging at us through the villagers’ gunfire.

These villagers had never truly faced the supernatural. After firing a shot, they were so rattled they couldn’t even reload the old foreign rifle.

Though the old rifle could only fire one shot at a time, someone experienced could reload it in a matter of seconds. But the villager, hands trembling, spilled most of the powder on the ground and barely managed to get any in the barrel. By then, Qiu Shuang had rushed up to him and, with a swipe, tore open his belly.