Chapter 4

Then, before everyone’s horrified eyes, he opened his mouth and took a small bite from the rusty saber.

Crack!

Hard as steel, the blade broke between his teeth like a chocolate bar. He chewed it with obvious enjoyment.

7

The armored ghost stood utterly frozen.

It looked at the broken saber, then at Shen Shuyan crunching away. For the first time, something like fear appeared in its hollow eye sockets.

“What... what are you?”

He ignored it. Swallowing his “snack,” he smacked his lips, apparently finding it quite tasty.

Then he raised his head. His dark eyes regarded the ghost as though it were a delicacy.

“You... look even tastier.”

His figure vanished.

An instant later, he stood before the ghost, one hand around its throat.

Black vapor roiled frantically over it as it tried to escape. But the cultivation it had built over a century, the strength it was so proud of, was as flimsy as paper before him.

“No... impossible... Your divine soul was shattered...”

Shen Shuyan tilted his head, childishly curious.

His hand tightened.

Crack!

He twisted off its head as easily as opening a bottle.

No blood came. Streams of black vapor gushed from its neck.

He opened his mouth and drew them all in.

Then he burped and tossed the headless armor aside. It crumbled to dust.

Finished, he became his old foolish self again.

He ran to me and opened his hand as though presenting a treasure.

A pitch-black bead lay in his palm: the armored ghost’s core.

“Wife. Candy.”

I looked at the ominous bead, then at his face, so clearly waiting for praise.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The ancestral hall was silent as death.

The villagers, Zhou Decai included, stared at Shen Shuyan as though he were a monster. They shook uncontrollably.

Before, they had feared his power to subdue ghosts.

Now they feared his very existence.

Someone who looked so harmless...

Could eat ghosts.

When I didn’t take it, he looked hurt. He popped the core into his mouth, chewed twice, then spat it out.

“Ptooey. Not nice.”

Taking my hand, he led me out without a backward glance.

We left behind the survivors and the wreckage.

Moonlight stretched our shadows along the way home.

I watched the man ahead of me, his hand wrapped tightly around mine. My thoughts were a tangle.

Grandmother...

What kind of husband had you found for me?

8

I began investigating Shen Shuyan’s past.

He wasn’t from the village. Apparently, many years ago, his parents had brought him here while fleeing some disaster.

Within two years, both had died of illness, leaving him alone.

The villagers had pitied him. One household gave him food, another clothes. Between them, they raised him.

But nobody could say clearly when he had become simpleminded.

The trail ended there.

I turned to Grandmother’s belongings.

She had left so suddenly. All she left behind was an old, locked wooden chest.

I found a hammer and broke the lock.

Inside were some clothes from her younger days and a yellowing diary.

I opened it. Her graceful handwriting appeared before me.

The entries began on the day I was born.

“Xiaoyu is here. So small, so lovely. Only... there seems to be something ominous about her.”

“I invited a Daoist priest to examine her. He said Xiaoyu has a constitution coveted by a hundred ghosts. Her soul was born incomplete, her yang energy weak. Spirits find her irresistibly alluring. Without a powerful protector, she will not live past twenty.”

“I cannot let my granddaughter die. The priest says there is only one way. Find a guardian capable of suppressing all ghosts and bind it to Xiaoyu in marriage. Let one life protect the other.”

My hands began to shake.

So my lifelong frailty wasn’t simply an unlucky birth chart.

It was this damned constitution.

I read on.

“I searched for ten years, traveling through mountain after mountain. At last, behind Qingshui Village, I found the guardian the priest spoke of.”

“He is not human. He is the god of this mountain, asleep for who knows how many years. For some unknown reason, his divine soul has shattered. His mind is like that of a three-year-old. Even so, the divine power he gives off is enough to drive all ghosts away.”

“I made a bargain with him. I would give the rest of my lifespan to help mend his soul and awaken part of his understanding. In return, after my death, he must marry my granddaughter and protect her for the rest of her life.”

At the end of the diary was a letter to me.

“Xiaoyu, when you read this, I will be gone. Forgive my selfishness in forcing you to marry a ‘fool.’ Shen Shuyan is not truly foolish. He has only forgotten who he is. He was the god of this land. For you, he stepped down from his altar and became mortal. This is all I can do. Remember: whatever happens, never leave him. The thing that has always hungered for you... is about to break its seal...”

The paper slipped from my hands.

I stared through the window. Outside, Shen Shuyan was playing with a kitten.

The mountain god...

My husband was a god.

The revelation overwhelmed me.

Grandmother had planned everything from the beginning.

She had traded her own life to give me a god for a husband.

But what was the thing in her letter that hungered for me?

While I was still struggling to understand, Shen Shuyan cried out.

I hurried outside.

A moment ago, he had been playing with the cat. Now he clutched his head, his face twisted in unbearable pain.

The aura around him was violently unstable.

One presence was pure, the presence of Shen Shuyan.

The other was cold and majestic, impossible to look upon directly.

Divinity.

They collided inside him, tormenting him.

“Shuyan! What’s wrong?”

I rushed to support him.

He raised his head. Those clear eyes were half innocent confusion, half a deep, fathomless gold.

Looking at me, he forced out the words.

“He... is here...”

9

Who was “he”?

Before I could ask, the whole village shook as though struck by an earthquake.

The sky darkened in an instant. Thick black clouds swarmed toward our house.

From deep in the mountain behind us, a surge of resentment a hundred times stronger than the armored ghost’s shot into the sky.

The villagers screamed and scattered.

I knew.

The thing Grandmother had mentioned in her letter had come.

Shen Shuyan writhed on the ground, the two forces inside him struggling more violently than ever.