The Fangshi of Hu village: Teaser

In the middle of the night when the moon was at its dimmest and clouds threatened to further cloak the world in darkness, a man ran through a muddy road, torch in hand flickering, barely holding a spark against the wind. He ran and ran, falling several times face first into the ground and his clothes told a story of many more falls over the course of several days such as this one, and yet the man still ran and checked the map he had been given when he had left the village an eternity before. He wore the straw hat of a farmer and the same clothes as any other country peasant as the rest of the country, though they were soiled and crusted with half-dried mud. Just as his lungs began to burn even more fiercely than before and his legs wobbled and made him fall one last time into the dirt, the lights that told that a village was nearby made his energy return and the man resumed running. His eyes were red as the fire that guided him, dry despite the humidity in the air and the rain of the days before, sunken in because of the lack of sleep and food, and still he ran until the met the doors of the first house and knocked on the wooden frame of the door. He collapsed on the very steps in front and massaged his aching legs to the best of his ability while he waited for someone to open the door. He couldn't afford to go to another house not even the next door because the brief moment of rest and the realization that he had reached the village marked on the rough map he had made his body relax and his ankles were slowly swelling and there was little doubt whether he could get up on his own and walk anywhere. The man knocked on the door again and again until he heard someone move about inside and slam it open.

"Who's there?" Moments later, a middle aged man with a butcher knife in his hand stormed out, teeth bared to assault any intruder stupid enough to come into the village so late at night. He looked down and saw the wreck of a man resting on his porch, holding a torch that just then gave up the last spark and died in a trail of black smoke. "Who are you?"

"I'm... I'm searching for master Li."

"What for?" The older man frowned and took in his hands a long roll of bamboo strips, hidden inside a leather pouch that the stranger had on his body, on which there were written dozens of symbols that the farmer had no way of reading. "Young man, I can't read." He tossed the roll back to the struggler and made to close the door but the way was blocked by a leg covered in mud and blades of grass in a layer so thick it was impossible to know whether the man was well built or skinny.

"Give it to master Li then." The roll was tossed back to the middle aged man. "Look at the back of the roll." There was silence for a long minute as the two stared at each other, one hell bent on meeting this Master Li and the other even more hell bent on going back to sleep because the next day was the one in which he'd have to harvest his fields. The man sighed and turned the roll on the other side, where he saw a picture: there was a man dressed in rich garments, the son of a noble perhaps, nothing weird, but when the older man looked at his face, the painting depicted a mangled visage. "What..." The face was not the only thing that looked out of place: the legs and arms missed pieces of flesh with weird patterns etched onto them. "Where did you get this?"

"My father... he was attacked, by something... he described me the appearance of the creature as he laid dying on his bed, coughing black blood." The young intruder was shivering from the cold and the fear, the memory of what had happened and the sight of his father inches from his life. "I drew it and he died in fear when he saw it." His eyes lost focus for a moment and he clutched his arm so tightly his knuckles turned white.

"Are you sure?" A woman popped from the door frame, looking down at the young man next to her husband: she looked worried and afraid because she had seen the picture and she knew what that thing was. "Can you tell us something more?"

"Yes, he was a soldier of the imperial army, he trained hard yet he died with his legs bitten off and choking on rotten blood one day after going to hunt in the woods near our village." The couple standing over him stared at each other for long seconds, thinking about what to do. "I saw him die just like that, slowly bleeding and begging the gods for help but no help came. Then another person died, our neighbour who went in the forest to look for the animal that caused his injury because no one believed that a man did this. He died too the next day but he was missing an arm and his eyes. They sent men with axes and sickles, armed with spears stolen from bandits, swords made out of bronze and they all came back missing something. Teeth, limbs, one returned clutching his guts that were spilling out of his belly. We don't know what to do and the dead keep piling up. There are rumours that the old tomb of the governor has been opened and monsters came out to seek vengeance and that we will all be killed for that. The Daoist priest that blessed our homes was arrested months ago because he offended a noble and now we don't know what we are up against but... but he always spoke of a Master Li that can fight demons and fly in the sky like an Immortal. Tales of how he saved his life years ago and how noble and pious he is. Please... we need his help or we're all going to die." The young man screamed and attracted the attention of many other people from the village and as doors and windows opened to let them look at the commotion, the old woman held him up, easing his fatigue with her support. "Please." His tears left wet marks on the mud that caked his face and the sheer desperation in his eyes made the old man make a decision.

"Son, you came to the right place." The middle aged man frowned but his tone couldn't sound more joyous to the tired man at his doorstep. "Follow me and try to keep up." Shambling and cursing the weather for the thousandth time as well as his own powerlessness, the man followed the other along the main road of the village with an ever growing mass of concerned people and curious children that wanted to know what was going on so late at night. They stopped in front of a modest looking home that had a garden full of plants and pots of powders and various items scattered all over the place. "Master Li!" The man knocked five times, waited, then knocked three more times fast. Before anyone could say anything, the door swung open and a man in his early thirties with a pestle and mortar in his hands came out, looking quite annoyed and tired himself. The scent of herbs and a million other things wafted from the interior of the house, invigorating the young man's body with but a whiff and that allowed him to stand on his own, limping to the front of the crowd. "Master Li, I believe the young man has found a jiangshi and it's attacking his village. Many are dead already and he worries that more will keep dying." The roll of bamboo was handed over to the master with reverence and incredible respect. Silence fell over the crowd for a while as the man read the characters on the back of the bamboo slips. "He said that someone opened a tomb." Master Li raised his head and faced the young man, staring into his very soul with a pair of eyes so piercing they felt like spears, making him imagine of the legends of Immortals and the Yellow Emperor that his own parents had told him when he was young. Was the man an Immortal himself?

"Tell me everything from the beginning. Do not spare the details or we'll have to deal with a lot more angry spirits than I'd like to." As the mysterious master flicked his hand in the air and turned around to enter the house, a wind with no source sprang forth from under the pleading man's feet, lifting him up gently. He wanted to scream but a wave of medicinal herbs' scents calmed him down and his mouth closed gently. The villagers knelt on the cold floor and prayed to the gods and the man in the house while he learned of the situation of the village.