Chapter 1: The Skeleton Monster
On the eighth day of the first lunar month, it snowed all day in Bianjing. The snow stopped when the city gates were closed at night.
In the northeast corner of the inner city, there was no one to be seen in the shabby streets and alleys under the gloomy Kaibao Pagoda.
The dilapidated shops on Yulin Street were blown by the northwest wind all day, and most of them had little business. In fact, it was not just here. During the New Year, there were no lanterns and decorations on the Imperial Street in front of the Imperial Palace, and the emperor did not bring his concubines to Xuande Gate to celebrate with the people as in previous years.
There was no grand celebration in the palace, which inevitably affected the business of the theaters, brothels, restaurants, and various incense, candles and grocery stores in and outside the city.
Rumor has it that the palace has been busy preparing for a water and land ceremony since the New Year, and has also performed Nuo rituals for several days. In order to exorcise evil spirits, they have even specially invited a Taoist priest from Mount Longhu. Regardless of whether the rumor is true or not, it has added a bit of bad luck to this first month of the lunar year.
At three quarters after the evening , Lu San, a clerk at the Ugly Grandma Plaster Shop on Yulin Street, walked tremblingly outside the shop to close the door, only to see a man in black sitting cross-legged under a half-broken ancient stone tablet at the end of the alley. A carrying pole was thrown under the jujube tree next to it. A layer of snow accumulated on the pole, and there were no footprints near the stone tablet. It seemed that the man had been there for a while and the footprints were covered by the snow.
The man in black was wrapped tightly in a black cloak, with his head down and his back against the stone tablet. The shadow of his hat brim blocked his face, and only his bony protrusions could be vaguely seen through the cloak. The man was a little curious and looked at him a few more times. When the bell on the tower rang, the man seemed to be awakened and coughed a few times. From the sound, it was an old man.
Judging from his clothes and the load he was carrying, he looked like a member of the Seven Saint Swords Zoroastrianism troupe.
The Zoroastrian temple is just outside the old Fengqiu Gate, not far from here. The monks there are good at tricks and magic, mostly breathing fire, blowing smoke, swallowing daggers, levitating, or playing with skeleton puppets. They usually carry a load full of strange tricks.
Lu San thought to himself: "He is really blind. He doesn't go to the crowded Imperial Street in front of the Palace, or to the circus in the tile house in the southeast of the city, but has to go to this remote place where even dogs can't find shit. Let's see if he can open a business today?" Thinking to himself, he slammed a door panel shut.
Seven or eight children chased each other from the street, the leading child holding a string of firecrackers in his left hand and a burning incense stick in his right hand. It was too dark, and he rushed to the stone tablet and saw a person sitting in the shadow. He was really scared, and the children behind him stopped one after another. The old man in the cloak was as steady as a rock and did not move at all. There was no heat coming out of his mouth, and the children whispered to each other. The leading child said, "Is this puppeteer frozen to death?"
A shorter man said, "If he really froze to death, why don't we divide his luggage? We're afraid that if we're slow, the bald neighbors who are collecting the body will get there first."
The boy holding the firecrackers in the lead sneered, "You said you wanted to divide his property, but you didn't dare to step forward. You just tricked us into doing it. If we take it away, the parents will be punished as well. I say, why not tie these firecrackers to this jujube tree and light them to see if this old man is faking his death? If he is, it would be good to scare him off."
As they were talking, a sharp-eyed child turned around and saw a few green lights rising from the west wall of the palace like will-o'-the-wisp fires. He pointed to the other children and said, "Look, the palace is setting off prayer lanterns again tonight!"
The leading child stared at it for a while and couldn't help laughing.
"My sixth uncle does business outside Donghua Gate. He heard from the eunuch that the emperor's favorite lady Zhang has tuberculosis and is asking the Heavenly Master Zhang Zhenren to pray for him. He said that in order not to disturb the ritual, no business is allowed in front of the Imperial Street in the first month of the year, and no fireworks or firecrackers are allowed. Only these sky lanterns can be lit every night."
"Is it the lantern that carries the birthday prayer written by Tianshi Zhang?"
The children were talking about the rumors on the street these days. The lifeless old man under the stone tablet coughed lightly, and the children turned around. They saw that the old man raised his right arm at some point, but the sleeves of his robe were too wide to see his hand, and then a fine skeleton puppet fell out of his sleeve.
The skeleton puppet was about a foot high, hanging an inch from the ground. The old man didn't even stretch out his sleeves, but the hanged ghost-like puppet skeleton under his sleeves jumped up and down with its claws and teeth bared. The hanging wire couldn't be seen in the darkness, but the skeleton moved nimbly, and held a long spear in its right hand like a dead branch.
The children jumped up and cheered and clapped.
Perhaps inspired by the audience, an old voice came out from the cloak, chanting to the beat:
"Driving the bones and corpses of heroes,
Send the hat monster into the deep palace.
The concubine who was in a hurry to die died early.
Collect the resentful souls and put their bodies in a cage.
Swallowing the light, the true dragon bows down.
The hidden fire dog's country is shaken.
There are troubles, fights, and quarrels.
A ghost hero emerged, leading a group of monsters.
When the king regained his glory,
The Demon Lord Song’s reign will come to an end.”
The old man finished singing this strange nursery rhyme, paused for a moment, and then started singing it a second time...
The children found that he had no other lyrics, just these ten sentences over and over again. Although they didn't quite understand it, they felt it was quite eerie, not like auspicious words. The skeleton in his hand was waving a long spear and jumping around , and it looked more and more ferocious. The shop assistants and bosses in the nearby shops also gathered around, with their hands in their pockets and their necks shrunk, watching this weird street puppet show. Someone threw a few copper coins in front of the old man, but the old man didn't stand up to pick up the money, nor did he say thank you, but just kept repeating those words.
Finally someone understood what was wrong.
Sha Laosi, who was buying sheep's head offal at Zhangloujiaodian, stepped forward and shouted.
"You Zoroastrian monk, you don't know what's good for you. What's the end of the Song Dynasty? What's the real dragon bowing down? To me, it sounds like a lie to confuse people."
The old man in black sneered and said nothing. The hanging skeleton puppet also stopped dancing.
"I see that you are an older person who understands the situation. You should pick up the copper coin, carry the load and walk away quickly. We will just pretend that you didn't say anything and we didn't hear anything. If something happens again, there will be people in the Kaifeng Prefecture or the Imperial City Bureau on the street who will take you to court."
The old man remained motionless, only the small skeleton more than a foot long under his sleeve was still swaying gently in the wind.
Seeing that the old man was not leaving, Li Dabao, a gambler at Cao's gate, rolled up his sleeves and went over, wanting to grab the old man and pretend to take him to see the officials so as to extort some copper coins. However, he did not expect that a cold wind blew and the old man's hood fell down.
However, there was no old man in the cloak, but a skeleton, sitting cross-legged on a cushion, with his right hand stretched forward, and his five fingers connected to the puppet skeleton below. These two skeletons, one big and one small, one standing and one sitting, what a horrifying scene!
Who would have thought that the one controlling this foot-long skeleton puppet is actually a life-sized skeleton?
Even though Li Dabing had killed pigs, slaughtered dogs, beaten his wife, and scolded his father-in-law, he was so scared that he sat down on the snow.
The skeleton actually came to life. A faint green light appeared in each of its two dark eye sockets. When it sat on the cushion, white mist rose. The white mist quickly enveloped the skeleton, and only the green light could be vaguely seen flickering in it. From the white mist came a shrill and strange laugh, and the onlookers were awakened from their endless fear. Adults and children cried and scattered, only regretting that their parents had not given them two more legs.
This evil cloud actually rose slowly into the sky and stopped in the air just within reach of Li Dabing's head. It looked like a flat bowl or plate, and also like a Fan Yang hat.
Li Dabing, who was sitting on the ground unable to move, watched the cloud slowly float past two or three feet above his head and head towards the Donghua Gate of the Forbidden City in the west.
After a long while, Li Dadan, who looked ashen, finally got up and walked towards home like a lost soul. He stumbled and didn't notice that he had wet his pants. He just thought to himself: People say that the area around Kaibao Temple is not clean. I didn't believe it at first, but there really is evil. It's all the fault of that damn monk Huai Bing. What kind of tower did he move? The underground palace was disturbed and evil spirits came out.
