Gan Tang groggily returned home.
From the back mountain to his house, if he didn’t want to take a detour, he had to pass through the main road of the village. Yu Huai was fine, his old, dilapidated two-story earthen house was at the village’s edge. The boy bent down and quickly disappeared inside, leaving Gan Tang to nervously walk through the long street alone, heading home.
As he walked, Gan Tang couldn’t help but think that Grandma was right about telling him not to get involved in things outside. It was probably because of Uncle Zhang’s accident, but the whole village felt unusually oppressive, to the point where Gan Tang could hardly breathe.
Gan Tang had always been most afraid of being seen in the village; no matter whether he understood the local dialect or not, people would always come up to him chattering away.
But today was different. Most of the villagers Gan Tang encountered had strange expressions and dark eyes, and when they saw Gan Tang, they would only nod their heads and quickly leave… Yet, instead of feeling relieved, Gan Tang felt even more anxious.
Especially as he walked, he passed several households where loud, hoarse cries of poultry could be heard coming from within the tightly shut courtyards—everyone seemed to be slaughtering chickens today. When Gan Tang realized this, his skin crawled, and he hurriedly quickened his pace, almost feeling as if something ghostly was chasing him, running toward Grandma’s house.
Finally, when he saw the familiar gate, Gan Tang let out a sigh of relief, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and pushed open the gate…
But then he noticed a horrifying, ghostly figure standing in the living room.
As the old door bolt creaked open, the ghostly figure slowly turned its face toward Gan Tang.
With a dark blue face, blood-red eyes bulging out of their sockets, and a long tongue hanging down almost to its chest, the ghost’s tongue swayed as it turned its head…
Gan Tang’s face turned deathly pale.
In that instant, he even forgot to scream and instinctively turned to run out.
But as soon as he took a step, he realized his legs had gone soft, so weak that he almost couldn’t lift them over the threshold of the farmhouse. In the process of lifting his leg, he almost fell flat on his face.
By this time, the ghost was already swaying toward him.
As it got closer, Gan Tang could even smell the disgusting, sweet, and rancid odor coming from the ghost’s body.
“Ugh—”
Gan Tang was so scared that tears welled up in his eyes, but just then, he heard a familiar voice coming from the inside of the ghost.
“Where have you gone?!”
…It was Grandma’s voice.
Gan Tang slowly turned his head. Once he calmed down and looked again, he realized the ghostly figure was actually just a poorly carved, rudely colored mask.
And the person wearing the mask was none other than his Grandma.
*
Grandma had returned home from the village chief’s house, only to find that her grandson, who was supposed to be at home playing on his phone, had already disappeared. The lunch she had prepared was untouched. No one in the village had seen the delicate, naive boy from the city.
Only one person said they had seen Gan Tang heading toward the Dragon King Pool at the back of the village.
“…Kid! You scared me to death… The water looks clear, but who knows how deep it is?! Twenty years ago, that small place used to drown several people every year. Once the bodies went down, they couldn’t be retrieved!”
Grandma took off the mask and, through his clothes, pinched every part of Gan Tang’s body, as if trying to confirm that he wasn’t an illusion.
Gan Tang could tell that Grandma was really angry.
However, Gan Tang had been so frightened by Grandma earlier that she couldn’t scold him, so in the end, she just muttered a few words without much bite.
Gan Tang curled up on the hard, wooden chair, his face and lips still pale, but his eyes kept darting around.
“…I wasn’t alone; I was with Yu Huai.”
Gan Tang muttered a couple of sentences, then his gaze fixed on the wooden basin near the faucet in the corner of the yard.
In the basin, there was a rooster, its head hanging limply, its throat slit. There was also a large porcelain bowl with red, slightly coagulated chicken blood.
Next to it was the mask Grandma had been wearing earlier, and the tongue and several other parts of the mask were soaked in chicken blood.
The blood smell Gan Tang had smelled earlier was the scent of chicken blood.
The act of smearing chicken blood on the mask was something Gan Tang had never heard of or seen before. He was so curious it almost drove him mad, wanting to ask, but he hesitated, recalling Grandma’s earlier attitude.
Seeing that Gan Tang kept glancing at the mask, Grandma quietly moved it further away.
“…Your Uncle Zhang will need it later. The chicken blood has strong evil-warding properties. It’s used on the mask to ward off evil spirits.”
Grandma spoke vaguely.
Ward off evil? Was it to ward off evil at a funeral? Or… was it for when they “borrowed flesh”?
After seeing the chicken blood, Gan Tang immediately thought of the strange sounds he had heard coming from the various households on his way home. Clearly, his family wasn’t the only one slaughtering chickens for this purpose today. He almost blurted it out, but before he could speak, Grandma suddenly leaned in close to him.
The old woman slightly bent forward, placing her hand on Gan Tang’s shoulder, her cloudy eyes gleaming with an unreadable, unfathomable light.
“Tang Tang, Grandma knows you’re the most obedient. Things are really chaotic outside these days. Just listen to Grandma and stay at home, okay?”
It was as though Grandma had forgotten that Gan Tang was almost old enough to take the college entrance exam. She spoke to him as if he were still a child.
Gan Tang swallowed hard and responded awkwardly.
Only then did Grandma seem to relax, loosening her grip on him.
Gan Tang vaguely felt that Grandma wanted to say more, but after hesitating for a long time, she remained silent.
Not long after, there was another knock on the door. The old woman, Xi Niang, poked her head in, looking even more flustered than during the day.
Probably because Gan Tang was nearby, Xi Niang spoke in very old dialect, speaking quickly and urgently. Even though Gan Tang strained his ears to listen, he could only make out a few phrases like “not soft enough” and “can’t break the skin, so don’t know how to handle it.”
Grandma listened intently, her expression unchanged, not saying a word.
She just took out a hand-rolled cigarette from her pocket, lit it, and began smoking.
Gan Tang, watching her, immediately realized that Grandma was probably in a very bad mood.
So, when Grandma greeted Xi Niang and left the house again, Gan Tang obediently stayed at home, not daring to step outside the courtyard.
No internet, no phone, no games—the long summer days felt suffocating.
Gan Tang slowly lay back on the uncomfortable bed, staring out the window at the bright sky, lost in thought.
Unconsciously, he closed his eyes again.
Then, he dreamed of Cen Zibai.
In the dream, he had skipped evening study because of a slight discomfort and returned to the dorm early.
No matter how much Gan Tang screamed and resisted in the dream…
In the dream, he, just like in reality, opened the dorm door without any suspicion.
Then he saw the person lying on his bed, shamelessly using his pajamas to… ahem.
Gan Tang still remembered that the scene was so shocking that he froze completely.
He even foolishly asked, “What are you doing?”
The boy, much taller and more muscular than others his age, trembled at the sound of Gan Tang’s voice.
Then he slowly turned his head, looking at Gan Tang in the doorway.
Though they were roommates and best friends, the face that was so familiar to him seemed strangely unfamiliar at that moment, as though it were possessed by a ghost.
The boy’s eyes were dark and hollow, sending chills down Gan Tang’s spine.
“Ah, you found me out,” Cen Zibai said, slowly grinning and laughing.
…
Gan Tang was once again jolted awake by the vivid memory of Cen Zibai.
This time, it was purely a replay of the memory, but Gan Tang felt the cold sweat on his body was even more intense than when he had dreamed of Cen Zibai turning into a snake, a dog, or a female ghost.
“Damn—”
He jolted upright from the bed, covering his face, and after a while, his heart, which had been racing in fear, finally began to calm down.
But the next moment, a loud “thud” came from the glass window by his bed.
Turning his head, he saw a dark, shadowy face pressed against the window outside.
*
Gan Tang: “…”
Gan Tang felt that he was lucky to be young, with a strong heart, or else, with the frequency of scares, he would have long since dropped dead.
*
The person outside the window wasn’t anyone else, but Yu Huai.
The boy was still wearing the T-shirt he had on when they last met, but it was covered in dust, with black and white streaks all over it. Gan Tang furrowed his brows, even wondering if Yu Huai had been crawling through rat holes.
However, Yu Huai didn’t notice Gan Tang’s subtle distaste, nor did he care about the furrowed brows of the latter. He directly jumped into the room from the window.
“Hey, Tang Boy—”
Yu Huai’s eyes were bright with excitement, and he was about to move closer to Gan Tang.
Gan Tang, seeing the dust on his head, almost wanted to dive under the bed. Just as he was about to ask him to leave, Yu Huai, full of enthusiasm, spoke up.
“I figured it out! I know what ‘borrowing flesh’ is! You’ll never guess what it is!”
“Uh, Yu Huai, can you get off the bed? You’re covered in dust—”
“Rebirth! ‘Borrowing flesh’ is about making someone come back to life!”
Now Gan Tang couldn’t care less about the dust on Yu Huai. His attention was completely caught.
“Rebirth?” Gan Tang mumbled, then frowned slightly, “Come on, can you at least make up something that makes sense?”
“I’m not making it up! I’ll be struck by lightning if I’m lying!”
Yu Huai’s face was serious.
“I’m serious! I asked around and found out. ‘Borrowing Flesh’ actually means borrowing life. That’s why they used this term to avoid the underworld noticing. The well at the back of the mountain wasn’t originally called the ‘Borrowing Flesh Well,’ it was called the ‘Immortal Well.’ It’s said that if someone suddenly dies or has an accident and their body is brought back, but there are still many things to take care of, the villagers would figure out a way to send the body to the Immortal Well. As long as the body is thrown into the well and they ask the immortal for a few days of life, the person will soon come back to the village alive…”
“But the person who is brought back to life has to return the life. When they return, they have to pay interest. Not only does the person who was resurrected have to go back, but they also have to send more chickens, ducks, cows, and sheep into the well. Oh, and that well, no matter how many animals are thrown in, it never smells rotten, and it can never be filled up. People say the well is special. The ritual of borrowing flesh stopped for many years, so only the older villagers know about it.”
“Why?”
Hearing this, Gan Tang couldn’t help but ask.
Yu Huai scratched his head.
“I don’t know… It seems that a government official came to the village and said throwing the country’s resources into the well was a waste and that it was a mess of feudal superstition. So they banned it. The well was sealed after that. That’s why our village is called Sealed Well Village.”
“…I see.”
Hearing this, Gan Tang couldn’t help but curl his lips. His previously burning curiosity instantly extinguished.
Rebirth? It really sounded like nonsense.
If Yu Huai wasn’t making things up, Gan Tang really didn’t understand why Grandma and the others took such a ridiculous superstition so seriously, causing so much fear among the villagers.
