Chapter 56 – Joy City (2)

That night, Zhan Changfeng felt a stirring in her heart. She rose, draping her robe over her shoulders, and stepped out to walk the streets. Because of the Ghost Festival, the road was utterly deserted—cold moonlight scattered across everything, casting a dim and eerie pall over the scene. The sound of a watchman’s drum reached her ears, like a call from some other day, entirely unreal.

She did not know how many streets she had passed through before voices drifted up behind her. When she turned, she found herself plunged into a riotous, clamoring world.

Red lanterns hung high beneath every eave. Men and women in fine garments paraded and made merry. At her side, a group of children carved from jade and rosy as peach blossoms held hands and hummed an unknown folk tune.

Suddenly, one little girl ran up to her, lifted her head, and stared at her with hollow, empty eyes. “Elder sister, elder sister, are you hungry?”

Then the child spoke with aggrieved sorrow, “Father and mother didn’t want me. They traded me for Little Huzi.”

A great crowd of children swarmed around her, all clamoring at once: “Duoduo too, she was boiled until she fell apart.” “The water was so hot, Erya turned red all over.” “Gousheng isn’t crying, it doesn’t hurt at all.” “Will father and mother want me again?”

Zhan Changfeng lowered her eyes and gave them a dish of incense sticks. The children laughed and scattered to play elsewhere.

Child spirits were at once the most innocent and the most wicked—it all depended on what they had suffered in life. But from their words, it was plain that they were the products of war and destitution: children traded and eaten, bones broken for firewood.

She feared she had entered the Northern City.

She shifted her gaze elsewhere, only to see a woman of incomparable, dazzling beauty standing beneath a tree, smiling vacantly. She swayed her hips and peeled off her garments one by one, then paraded through the street holding up her own blood-drenched skin and flesh, asking everyone she passed, “Hehe, do you want it?”

From the far end of the sky came shouts of “Make way!” and “Silence!” In the blink of an eye, a procession of people dressed as yamen runners appeared, surrounding a black and gold-trimmed palanquin at their center. Behind it followed all manner of beings—humans, cats, dogs, tigers, and leopards—in shapes too grotesque to describe.

Souls kept joining the procession unceasingly, until at last that long river of spirits, swathed in noise and life, disappeared at the far end of the street.

Zhan Changfeng found she could not break away from this place no matter what. She had no choice but to follow.

Before long, she looked up and, through a haze of dim mist, saw a city wall rising like the edge of heaven. Yet the ghostly wailing and bone-chilling yin winds all around left one in no doubt: this was a tomb for the living, a mound for the dead.

The city wall was pitch-black and ice-cold. Ghosts within struggled and howled in fury, as though straining to break free.

Above the gate was written: “Joy City.”

Once they had entered, a commanding voice rang out from the palanquin ahead: “Those bearing wrath, remain. All others, follow me!”

The moment she stepped inside, Zhan Changfeng felt her body refuse to obey her, as though spirit and flesh had been separated—she could no longer control herself, and could only move in accordance with the palanquin ahead.

Some souls stopped in place. They tried to rejoin the procession but could not catch up no matter how they tried, and could only watch helplessly as the column moved away.

Passing through a veil of mist, the voice called again from within the palanquin: “Those bearing hatred, remain. All others, follow me!”

Through another veil of mist: “Those bearing obsession, remain. All others, follow me!”

Through yet another veil of mist: “Those bearing greed, remain. All others, follow me!”

That commanding voice seemed to carry the power of a word-spirit, capable of automatically detaining the souls that should be detained and taking away those that should be taken. Whether one stayed or went was not under one’s own control.

When Zhan Changfeng first realized this, she felt a flash of irritation—after all, no one wishes to be at another’s mercy. But when she found she truly could not break free, she grew calm instead, and found herself marveling at such a mighty power.

They walked on. The sky gradually brightened, and sounds of laughter, cheer, and the cries of street vendors filled the air—a bustling scene no different from the mortal world.

The souls passing to and fro no longer looked as wretched and terrifying as they had at the moment of death. Each one had a proper form, chatting and laughing as normal. Had they not lacked shadows, one might have thought them all still alive.

Then again, death itself is simply another way of living.

“Those who are good and virtuous, remain. All others, follow me.”

Zhan Changfeng’s feet followed the palanquin without her control.

The wrathful, the hateful, the greedy, the virtuous—all had been left behind. What kind of souls could possibly remain? She let out a sigh. This journey was going to be dangerous.

Counting on it, her last remaining recourse was to hold on until the cock crowed and wait for Ghost City to disappear. Ghost City could not take the living with it.

Ahead of Zhan Changfeng was the spirit of an infant, its umbilical cord still attached to its belly.

Behind her was a tiger with spotted fur. Its jaws were still clamped around a man’s neck, while the man’s blade was buried in the tiger’s skull—truly, they had killed each other in life and would not let go even in death.

To her right was a hollow-eyed, gaunt figure, his complexion a ghastly pale-green, his crimson tongue lolling down to his chest.

To her left was a short, stocky brute in a prisoner’s garb, carrying his own severed head in one hand. Apparently sensing her gaze, the head swung around and leered at her with a wicked grin, its hair twisting into braids as it dangled.

By rough count, there were still a hundred or so souls here. In this world, the wicked run rampant.

They shuffled into a dilapidated street lashed by a cold, miserable wind, and in an instant, countless malicious gazes fell upon them.

“Those with deeply rooted evil, remain—once you have reformed yourselves, you may leave!”

The palanquin vanished. Zhan Changfeng finally regained control of her own body.

“Little kid, how many people have you killed?” The stocky brute cradled his own head and stared at Zhan Changfeng with a sinister gleam.

“Mind your own business.”

The stocky brute bared his teeth. His spirit-form was so frail it might dissolve at any moment, and his instincts drove him to devour his own kind to replenish himself—yet he was puzzled by Zhan Changfeng’s perfectly intact form, and remained irresolute.

“Clang, clang, clang!”

“Newcomers, proceed at once to Fortune Hall to hear the teachings—we will not wait past the appointed time!”

At the northern end of the street, the gate of a small green-stone hall burst open, the words “Fortune Hall” carved above its entrance.

What was Fortune Hall? The gathered souls looked on in bewilderment. Then, once more, came three clangs, and again: “Newcomers, proceed at once to Fortune Hall to hear the teachings—we will not wait past the appointed time!”

At the southern end of the street, the gate of another small green-stone hall burst open. The words carved above its entrance were also “Fortune Hall.”

From the northern hall floated out a pale-faced young man who planted his hands on his hips and shouted furiously, “Ren Xing, have you no shame?! This street has always belonged to our Hungry Ghost Path. What business does a bald head like you have stirring up trouble here? If you’re so capable, go to the Incense-Offering Path next door!”

From the southern Fortune Hall, a bald, cherubic infant poked out half of his face. He wheezed and crawled over the knee-high threshold on all fours, then pressed his palms together. “Amitabha, ghost patron, do not be hasty. You preach your Hungry Ghost Path, and I ferry those with a karmic connection—we need not interfere with each other.”

“If you ferry them away, how am I supposed to preach!” The pale-faced young man’s black hair flew into a frenzy, his eyes green and his lips red. He produced a golden gong and struck it—”Clang!”—and ten thousand ghostly shadows wept and chanted in low, cursing tones, sweeping toward the bald infant like a blast of black wind.

The souls standing in the middle of the road were not the target of the attack, yet they nearly had their forms scattered by the force of that sound assault. At that moment, the infant produced a golden bell—”Clang!”—and a pillar of radiance several zhang long sliced across and cancelled out the black wind.

The pale-faced young man flung his sleeve in fury. “To walk the ghost path is the natural order of things. Those who seek eternal life and undying existence, enter!”

With that, he clasped his hands behind his back and went into the hall.

“Good, good,” said the bald infant, cradling the golden bell. “Life is hard, and death brings no rest. Yin and yang are full of suffering—why not seek liberation? Those who wish to walk toward the light, enter.”

The bald infant also turned and returned to his hall.

While the gathered souls looked on in astonishment, the doors on both sides of the street suddenly flew open all at once, releasing a bone-chilling ghost energy.

The ghost cultivators cackled with sharp, eerie laughter, a restless hunger stirring within them.

Among the hundred or so new souls, a sudden ten or more rushed headlong into the southern Fortune Hall.

But these “ghosts” were no ghosts at all—they were plainly living people carrying Yin Pearls.

Could the southern and northern districts the Coachman had spoken of refer to these two Fortune Halls?

Zhan Changfeng also walked toward the south.

Those who squeezed into the small hall were mostly living people, with one or two wandering souls.

Among the living, there were several she had met in passing before: Sun Xingyi, He Yuntian, and Gao Song the Northern Flying Blade of Yan. The others were Daoist monks who had left secular life.

Zhan Changfeng realized she had held a somewhat skewed view of Daoist cultivators. Her earliest impression of them had been shaped by the Long-bearded Daoist—unmoved by external things, unafraid of life and death, with a clear and tranquil spirit, broad and open in temperament. Now it seemed that what she had seen was merely one kind of person among Daoist cultivators.

Why did she say this? Because the souls that entered Ghost City were the karmic souls—unburdened by sin. They had solidified their soul-forms through powerful obsessions, which was precisely why the figure in the palanquin could not sort them by their sins, and could only separate them by their innate natures.

And those who had been left here—every single one of them bore immense malice or a ferocious killing intent.

That Zhan Changfeng had been assigned here was no surprise to her, nor was it a surprise that martial cultivators carried a heavy killing nature. What she had not expected was that fully half of those present were Daoist cultivators.

It seemed that the Dao was not the path of pure, unsullied cultivation.

(End of Chapter)