Morning light streamed through the carved window lattices, casting spiderweb-like cracks on the red silk of the new house.
I touched the blood-stained cloth that Ah Xiu had stuffed in my hand last night; my fingertips still had a putrid, sticky residue on them.
When Liu Sandao pushed the door open, he was carrying a bowl of steaming hot oil tea: "Drink up, it's made by my cousin-in-law, to drive away the bad luck from last night."
"What happened last night..."
Before I could finish speaking, he suddenly reached out and pressed down on the back of my neck, his fingertips gently tapping the "Soul-Stabilizing Talisman" location.
"Do you know why I gave you the 'Youth-Preserving Powder'? The earth veins of this village can accelerate the depletion of yang energy. The younger you are now, the more likely you are to lure that female ghost into your trap."
He lowered his voice, and the gold chain brushed against my wrist, as cold as a snake.
"But remember, never eat the 'wedding candy' they give you—it's made with glutinous rice mixed with mugwort ash, and they're afraid you'll have too much internal heat."
I shuddered, and a sudden sourness rose in my back teeth: "Wednesday candy mixed with mugwort? Didn't my cousin-in-law and her family ask us to exorcise the ghost? How come they're doing this..."
Liu Sandao pressed his index finger to his lips, revealing half of a yellowed copy of "Maoshan Chronicle" in the inner pocket of his suit, its edges stained with fresh mugwort juice.
“Last night I went to the kitchen to get some water and saw my cousin-in-law grinding mugwort.”
He pulled a wad of oil paper from his pocket, inside which were a few dusty sugar granules.
"The mountains are very humid, and the older generation often mixes mugwort into sugar to ward off evil spirits, but this method is... a bit too elaborate."
I leaned closer and took a sniff; sure enough, beneath the sweet frosting was a fresh, herbal scent.
Liu Sandao scraped the surface of the sugar granules with his fingernail.
Inside were tiny fragments of mugwort leaves, with a dried datura petal nestled between the veins.
"This flower is poisonous."
He lightly touched the petals with his fingertips: "These flowers are in the vase on the altar in the ancestral hall. I asked my cousin, and he said they were picked from the foot of the back mountain."
I remembered seeing Ah Xiu catching a dead rat last night; her palm was covered in these purple petals.
Suddenly, Liu Sandao tugged at the red silk on the roof beam, and the Soul-Suppressing Bell made a soft, tinkling sound.
"My cousin and his wife were worried we'd think the village was too poor, so they wanted to make the wedding candy more expensive, but it contained datura mixed with mugwort..."
He pulled an old pharmacopoeia from his inner pocket and turned to the page on "psychic powder": "While it won't kill, it can make people lose their minds."
"They said that when Ah Xiu had an attack, she would always grab datura, so Zhou Guilan would make sugar from mugwort to calm her nerves."
"Ah Xiu isn't crazy, she's been poisoned by the back mountain."
The sound of Zhou Guilan calling for dinner to be served came from outside the window, mixed with the aroma of steamed cured pork.
Liu Sandao quickly stuffed the sugar granules and pharmacopoeia into my pocket, and drew a circle in my palm with his fingertip.
"When we eat later, pay attention to how your cousin holds his chopsticks. He has rheumatism in his right wrist, so it shakes when he lifts heavy objects."
The door was pushed open, and Zhou Guilan came in carrying a tray. The wedding candies in the bowl glowed with a warm yellow light under the candlelight.
A wild chrysanthemum was tucked into the white hair at her temple, and her smile was full of apology: "You city kid probably won't be used to coarse sugar. After things are settled, I'll fry some peanuts for you."
I clenched the mugwort candy in my palm and saw Liu Sandao nod at me.
When Zhou Guilan put down the bowl, I noticed a crescent-shaped callus on the inside of her thumb—a mark from years of holding a sickle to cut mugwort.
The wedding candies were slightly warm in the bowl.
I suddenly remembered what Ah Xiu had said to me, and the strip of cloth she had stuffed into my hand.
The character for "lie" in the phrase "They are all lying" is missing a radical.
It's more like the "艾" in "艾草" (Artemisia argyi).
The pharmacopoeia cover on Liu Sandao's suit pocket had been replaced with "A Collection of Folk Remedies" at some point.
The title page reads: "Datura poisoning can be countered with mugwort, but it must be taken for seven consecutive days."
A cacophony of noise rose and fell outside the courtyard, mixed with the suppressed sobs of the girls.
I peered out the window and saw Chen Dashan directing the villagers to hang white lanterns in the ancestral hall.
Zhou Guilan grabbed a little girl in a red coat and smeared white powder on her face.
The girl was at most sixteen or seventeen years old, with a vacant, puppet-like gaze and white foam, possibly from a sedative, sticking to the corner of her mouth.
"Master Liu! It's time to give the groom a celebratory ceremony!"
Aunt Wang swung in a rusty razor, the blade stained with dark red dirt.
Liu Sandao suddenly blocked my way and pulled out a pair of silver scissors from his suit pocket: "Use these, they've been blessed."
He made a hand gesture on the scissors with his fingertips, then turned to me and winked: "Don't be nervous, it's just a token gesture, shaving three strands of hair as a 'betrothal gift'."
As the silver scissors grazed behind my ear, I heard the sound of chains being dragged from the corner of the yard.
Ah Xiu was tied to the millstone, a faded red paper flower pinned in her hair, staring at the girl tied to the locust tree not far away.
The girl was wearing the same red wedding dress as Ah Xiu from back then, with half a lotus flower embroidered on the lapel.
"Sister-in-law, please untie Ah Xiu, she looks so pitiful."
I said, clutching my sleeve.
Zhou Guilan's hand, which was applying lipstick to the girl, suddenly trembled, and the rouge box fell to the ground with a "thud".
"Don't untie her! She'll bite if she goes berserk!"
Before she could finish speaking, Ah Xiu suddenly struggled violently, making a strange "hoarse" sound from her throat.
He spat out a mouthful of blood.
Liu Sandao glanced at Ah Xiu without saying a word, and then paused his scissors in my hair.
"After we finish this business, I'll take her to stay at the Guanyin Temple in town."
In the afternoon, when the villagers brought seven girls into the village, I realized that the so-called "selection of a wife" was actually a farce.
The girls were blindfolded and tied up under the eaves of the ancestral hall.
The youngest was no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, and their wrists and ankles were tied with red ropes engraved with talismans.
"According to the rules, the groom has to choose the bride by her face."
Chen Dashan handed over a lantern covered with red gauze, his smile carrying an unnatural obsequiousness.
“If you take a fancy to someone, put a cinnabar mole on her forehead.”
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