Chapter 1

My grandmother had always valued boys over girls. Yet when she died, she left her entire fortune—tens of millions—to me alone.

There was just one condition: I had to keep vigil beside her coffin for three days, without sleep, rest, food, or water.

I obeyed. Alone, I knelt in the mourning hall for three days and nights.

Late on the final night, as I struggled to keep my eyes open, my mother suddenly shook me awake. She dragged me into a corner, staring at the coffin in terror.

“Zhaodi, run! Your grandmother wants to come back to life in your body!”

I looked where she was pointing.

Somehow, the heavy coffin lid had opened a crack.

1

Mother quickly pulled me beneath the Eight Immortals table, piled high with offerings, and clamped a hand over my mouth.

“Not a sound. Hold your breath! She's coming out to find someone to die in her place.”

I barely understood. Instinctively, I obeyed.

The moment we crouched beneath the table and I closed my mouth, a sound came from the coffin.

Rustling. Scraping.

When Grandmother died, Father and his three brothers had saved money by dressing her in paper burial clothes. Made from joss paper and painted with longevity motifs, they tore at the slightest touch and rustled whenever they moved.

For three days, the mourning hall had been silent.

Tonight, that rustling was unnaturally loud, as if Grandmother really had sat up inside her coffin.

My palms ran with sweat. I didn't dare move.

The candle in the ever-burning lamp flickered twice in a gust, then went out.

But every door and window was shut. Where could a gust come from?

In the wan moonlight, I could just make out two feet hanging beside the coffin.

The heels hovered above the floor.

She wore the dragon-and-phoenix shoes I had put on her myself.

Those feet moved back and forth through the hall.

Step by step.

No footfalls. Only the rustling of paper clothes.

I had put those shoes on her. When they stopped before the table, my heart nearly leaped into my throat.

The paper shoes were less than three feet away.

“How strange…”

Grandmother's voice.

She had been a heavy smoker, worse than any man in the village. It had ruined her throat. In her final months, her voice sounded like a cracked gong dragged across concrete, harsh enough to scrape the ears.

“Where did that wretched girl hide?”

The voice came from directly above me.

Mother pressed harder over my mouth.

She was trembling so much that the offering table shook.

“Damn it. Nearly dawn…”

Grandmother's muttering drifted near and far, as if she were circling the room.

“I must get back…”

At last, the shoes moved away, slowly approaching the coffin.

The movement stopped.

So did the rustling.

I had just let out a breath and begun to crawl out when Mother yanked me back.

She shook her head, eyes stretched wide enough to show the whites, and jerked her chin toward the side of the table.

I turned.

A head hung over the edge.

Grandmother's face pointed down. Gravity dragged her wrinkled skin loose, like an old, stretched sweater.

Her narrow, ratlike eyes glinted green in the moonlight, shifting as they searched beneath the table.

“I could smell the living!”

Her nostrils flared.

“Why has the scent gone again? Where did that damned girl run off to?”

Mother kept one hand over my mouth. With the other, she caught the back of my neck and pressed my face into her shoulder.

I didn't dare breathe or blink.

I could feel those triangular, ratlike eyes fixed on my back.

Only when the paper over the eastern window began to pale and the first rooster crowed did Grandmother jerk her head away.

Her paper clothes rustled furiously as she swept back toward the coffin like an icy wind from the underworld.

The heavy lid scraped slowly shut.

Silence returned.

Flour covered the floor of the hall. People said it would show whether an ancestor had returned. When I checked three days earlier, it had been spotless.

Now little footprints led from the coffin to the table, circled the hall, and returned to the coffin.

Mother crawled out through a dog hole in the storeroom behind the hall.

Before leaving, she pressed a blue-gray jade pendant into my hand.

“Don't eat anything your father gives you. Don't believe anything they say.

“They mean to make you die in your grandmother's place.”

Only when it was fully light did Father arrive with relatives and open the large padlock on the front door.

He looked first at the footprints, then at me.

Tentatively, he called:

“…Mother?”

“Dad!”

Everyone's expression changed.

Father rushed over and slapped me, unable to contain his rage.

“Why is it still you? What did you do last night?”

I hid Mother's pendant deep inside my clothes. My cheek burned. I couldn't stop crying.

“Dad… I fell asleep under the table. I don't know anything.”

Second Uncle gave him a meaningful look.

“Stop hitting her. Get someone to find out what happened. We've done this ritual so many times. This is the first time Mother hasn't taken possession.”

Father locked me in the storeroom.

A thin shaft of light came through the door.

I crouched behind it, pressed my ear to the wood, and heard every word outside.

They had set an Eight Immortals table in the main hall.

The Daoist wore a blue-gray robe. On the table stood an incense burner, yellow ritual paper, and a bowl of clean water.

Father and his three brothers sat around it, smoking one cigarette after another.

Daoist Wang examined the footprints first.

He crouched, touched a little flour with his fingertip, and sniffed it.

“She… came out herself?”

Second Uncle answered quickly.

“She did. But she didn't take possession. My niece is still alive.”

The Daoist went to the coffin, felt the inside of its lid, and took a red cord from his sleeve.

He tied one end to the head of the coffin and the other to the incense burner.

Then he told Father to write my birth date and time on the yellow paper.

Father wrote quickly.

He knew the eight characters of my birth chart better than his own birthday.

The Daoist held the paper up to the light and studied it.

Smoke suddenly rose from the burner in a perfectly straight line, without a tremor.

His eyes widened.

“This child's birth chart is both formidable and inauspicious. She bears the Seven Killings—the fate of the Lonely Star of Heavenly Doom.”

Father sprang up.

“What does that mean?”

The Daoist slapped the paper onto the table.

“It means your mother cannot take her body.

“This child's fate is fiercer than your mother's.

“Just by kneeling there, she not only prevents possession—she suppresses your mother and traps her!”

Second Uncle dropped his cigarette onto his trousers.

He hurriedly put it out, ignoring the burn, and turned to Father.

Father was white.

“Then… what do we do?”

Third Uncle shot to his feet. No one bothered to pick up his fallen chair.

“If we can't find a substitute, Mother won't be able to return on the seventh day.”

The Daoist packed his things and left.

Before going, he gave them one final warning.

“If you want her to live again, you must find another blood relative to die in her place.

“Otherwise, she'll become a murderous spirit and wipe out the family.”

The door closed.

Father and his brothers sat in silence for almost half an incense stick's burning time.

Youngest Uncle spoke first.

He was the youngest, and the most direct.

“Brother, are we still going to keep extending Mother's life?”

Father didn't answer.

Second Uncle stubbed out his cigarette.

“My property development is at a critical stage. Without Mother, I won't get the permits. If it fails, I'll lose tens of millions. She has to come back.

“Without her, we're all finished.”

Third Uncle nodded.

“Don't take this the wrong way, Brother. You've been the least successful of us for years. Without our help, you couldn't even have got yourself a wife.

“It's your daughter causing trouble this time. You find a solution.”

Only then did I understand.

Grandmother carried an “immortal” inside her.

Our family's prosperity came from its guidance.

Whenever she died, her sons' businesses began to suffer one disaster after another.

While Grandfather was alive, he had brought in a master who devised a forbidden method to prolong her life.

A descendant would go to the underworld in her place.

She would borrow that child's remaining years and live another ten or twenty.

But it was an unholy practice.

The first time, she gained more than twenty years. Even her cancer vanished.

The second time, the benefit was halved.

The third gave her only a little over three years.

Apart from Father, my uncles had damaged their spiritual merit through it.

They married one wife after another, but none could give them a child.

My parents had four daughters and one son.

Only my younger brother and I were left.

“Brother, Second, Fourth, and I have sent money to your account every year.

“Your factory, your car—which of them didn't we pay for?

“Mother needs her life renewed.

“If you can't bear to sacrifice your son…

“Then take care of that girl yourself.”

Smoke seeped through the door and made me want to cough.

I bit my lip until it bled.

A long time passed.

The door creaked open.

Father stood in the light, carrying a bowl.

He smiled at me.

“Zhaodi, you've always wanted some of your brother's powdered milk, haven't you? I've made you a little.”

Father had never mixed milk before.

Two round pink tablets still floated in the bowl, not fully dissolved.

He advanced, talking all the while.

“Come on. Drink it.

“I won't hit you.”

I shrank away, shaking my head.

At last, there was nowhere left to go.

He caught my throat and tried to pour the milk into my mouth.

“DRINK!”

His hand tightened like a vise.

Just as the milk laced with rat poison reached my throat, I screamed with all my strength.

“Dad!

“I know where the immortal inside Grandmother came from!

“Please don't kill me!”

Father and my uncles knew only that Grandmother had an immortal inside her.

Only that it brought them wealth.

They had never known what it really was.

I did.

Because in that old house, the person who actually stayed by her every day—

Was me.

After she began advising them, Father and his brothers spent most of the year doing business in the city. They came back only for holidays.

Mother and I were left in the village with Grandmother.

Grandmother said Mother brought bad luck. She wouldn't let her enter the main rooms.

When her work was done, Mother had to sleep in the woodshed.

Once, Grandfather returned from the city to collect some things.

Mother happened to be airing quilts in the courtyard.

Grandmother rushed at her, shouting.

“You shameless whore! Who are you parading around here to seduce?”

Her insults grew fouler.

“When that old man is home, you don't set foot outside the woodshed!

“Who are you showing that temptress face to? All you produce are useless girls, and you still have the nerve to show yourself around men!”

Mother bit her lip, gathered the quilts, and quietly returned to the woodshed.

Grandmother forbade her to appear before Grandfather.

That rule lasted until he died.

Because Grandmother herself had once been unable to hold her head up in her husband's family.