Chapter 3

Before leaving, Grandpa Feng warned me repeatedly.

“Don’t try to be clever. Hide and stay hidden. Whoever calls, do not come out! It’s all the Earth God’s deception. The moment you step out, you die!”

I paced anxiously through the village, searching for the best hiding place.

In the end, I chose the place where I had always hidden during childhood games.

A hollow beside the great banyan west of the village.

A broad stretch of woodland lay there, its ground thick with weeds. That hollow had been my secret base.

I had told nobody about it. I hid there every time we played hide-and-seek, and nobody ever found me.

I had never imagined returning to hide from a god.

The spot was secluded, covered with weeds. Even a careful search might miss it.

Darkness slowly closed around me. The village was unnaturally quiet, broken only by an occasional bird or insect.

I dimmed my phone to its lowest setting and checked the time.

Eleven thirty.

“Xiaochun…”

My name drifted through the wilderness, softly, in a terribly familiar voice.

Xu Miao!

They had found my hometown!

“Xiaochun! I know you’re here! Come out. Stop hiding!”

“The Earth God forgives you. Come out now, and he’ll forget what happened. He can make you as rich as us! He’s merciful. Come out!”

I dared move even less.

Merciful?

It was an old demon wearing the Earth God’s shell.

And something puzzled me. Had neither of them ever wondered why he helped them for no reason?

There was a reason for everything. Nobody treated someone well for nothing, and those two were not complete fools.

Unless an enormous price lay behind that kindness.

“Xiaochun, I was wrong! I know you really like me, don’t you? Come out and we’ll get back together. Forget the mayor’s daughter. I never liked her!”

Lu Xiaoyu’s voice.

Why were they so determined to find me? Would helping the Earth God bring them some benefit?

Or had they made a bargain with it?

The thought turned me cold.

8

“Aaah!”

Xu Miao’s scream tore through the night.

My heart clenched. I flinched.

“Aren’t we friends, Xiaochun? Come out! If you don’t, the Earth God will kill us! You don’t want to watch me die, do you?”

Her screams continued, mingled with Lu Xiaoyu’s sobbing.

“Please. Come out, and all of us can live! Otherwise, don’t think you’ll survive alone! The Earth God can do anything. Sooner or later he’ll find you! He says he’ll skin you, tear out your sinews, eat your flesh, and rip your soul apart!”

From promises to threats, they tried everything to shake my resolve.

But I would not believe the Earth God was so kind. Old ghosts were the most cunning creatures of all.

I did not know how long passed before their voices faded. They seemed to leave.

I did not relax. I stayed in the hollow.

Later, I checked the time again.

Past four.

If I could just hold on, I could get through this night…

A cold breath brushed my ear.

My body locked. I almost forgot how to breathe.

It had come from behind me.

“Do you know why the Earth God is called the Earth God?”

His mouth curved into a grotesque smile, his gaze venomous.

“Because he rules the earth. Did you really think I couldn’t see you in a hole in the ground?”

“Aaah!”

My scream tore through the night. I sprang up and fled the hollow.

Stumbling through the wilderness, I saw Xu Miao and Lu Xiaoyu running ahead of me, their faces terrified too.

Xu Miao sobbed and screamed back.

“Xiaochun! The Earth God is a ghost!”

Had these idiots only just worked it out?

There was no time to say more. I ran with them.

“Earth God. Earth God…” I muttered.

Earth controlled water. Wood overcame earth. Water extinguished fire.

At that thought, I scrambled up the great banyan at the village entrance like a monkey.

The bark was slippery. I clung to it with all my strength and climbed until I could crouch on a thick branch.

The banyan was lush and green all year.

Unless someone below deliberately looked up for me, they would never see me.

In a blink, Xu Miao and Lu Xiaoyu were almost out of the village.

Then the motionless Earth God statue suddenly twisted its neck. Two stone pieces fell from its sockets.

The old ghost had gouged out the god’s eyes again!

Clack. Clack.

It leaped, its bloody mouth closing over Lu Xiaoyu’s head. The mouth stretched into an impossible, grotesque shape.

Holding his head in its jaws, it began to suck.

Soon his healthy body shriveled into a dried corpse. Wrinkled skin clung to bare, thin bones.

But he was not dead. He spotted me in the tree and fixed his eyes on me.

He strained to make a faint sound.

“Xiaochun…”

The Earth God released him and turned to bite Xu Miao, whose legs had given way. She knelt, unable to move.

Within minutes, it drained two healthy people of flesh and blood, leaving only bones wrapped in human skin.

Xu Miao lay on the ground. Her eyes happened to meet mine among the branches.

“Chun…”

The Earth God bent and looked around, but found no trace of me.

Then it noticed that both of them were looking the same way.

At the old banyan.

9

It tilted its head as though thinking. Raising one finger, it traced their line of sight and turned.

Dread stirred inside me.

The next moment, I looked straight into empty eye sockets.

It grinned. Its mouth was a bottomless blackness.

I started, my heartbeat pounding so loudly I almost thought I could hear it.

“Where are you?”

Its voice was shrill and rasping, like a rusty axe splitting wood.

But I kept my head. I gave nothing away.

No sound. Even my breathing was barely there.

Its gaze began to move. It paced beneath the tree.

“Where are you?”

I let out a silent breath of relief.

It had not seen me after all.

Wood overcame earth. As long as I stayed in the tree, it could not find me.

But it was clever. It did not leave. It knew I was nearby.

So it began circling the banyan, round and round, apparently puzzled by my disappearance.

It muttered as though reasoning with itself, constantly calling for me.

“Where are you?”

“Where are you?”

“Where are you?”

“Where are you?”

…

The sound chilled my spine. I gripped the trunk and did not move, afraid of making the slightest noise.

“She was just here… she was just here…”

Round and round it went.

I checked my phone.

Five!

If I held on, I could hide from it…

“Xiaochun!”

Grandpa Feng had appeared without my noticing. He met my eyes.

“Hurry! If we don’t leave at five, it’ll be too late! It hasn’t caught you yet. Come with me. We must burn incense in the ancestral hall. Only then will you have escaped it!”

My heart tightened. I almost climbed down.

Then reason prevailed.

Why would Grandpa Feng suddenly appear here?

“Come with me! We must burn incense at the hall for the escape to count. I burned pomelo leaves, so it can’t see me now. Come out!”

There was a local belief that patting your body with burned pomelo leaves could temporarily hide you from ghosts.

I hesitated. What he said was true.

“Come, Xiaochun! It’s Grandpa Feng. Have you forgotten me? Come here! Come with me!”

I began to waver.

Then I noticed something wrong.

If this was Grandpa Feng, why did he keep saying “come here” and “come out”?

Why was he deliberately avoiding “come down”?

Because he did not know I was in the tree!

I looked closely.

There were no pupils in his sockets.

Holding my breath, I pressed motionless against the trunk.

At six, the sun rose in the east. A red gleam lit the distance.

The Earth God still muttered, circling the tree furiously.

At six thirty, it gritted its teeth and cursed.

“I’ll be back! Just you wait!”

Then it became a stone statue again, rigid where it stood.

10

I had successfully hidden from the god.

I was not the first to do it. But none had made it so persistent.

Grandpa Feng said, “I’ve never seen it fixate on anyone like that. Good thing you thought to climb a tree. Otherwise, the consequences…”

He told the other elders what had happened. They drew sharp breaths of fear.

One old man cursed. “Cunning old ghost! It was baiting you!”

An elderly woman who could read fortunes felt my palm and asked my date of birth.

“No wonder. No wonder…”

She considered for a long time.

“Your birth signs belong to Wood, already Earth’s natural enemy. And your name is Lin Senchun. All three characters are associated with Wood. One counteracting force on top of another! You’re that old ghost’s natural enemy!”

“Unless it kills you, it cannot break through and become a god. After living so long, it refuses to stay trapped between ghost and minor immortal. It wants godhood. First, it must kill the one blocking its path. You.”

Cold sweat broke out. Fear still lingered.

“What do I do? It said it would come back…”

“Don’t panic. It won’t dare.”

She patted my shoulder and pointed to the old banyan.

“You don’t know this, but it hasn’t much time left.”

“That’s why it was desperate. It wanted godhood and eternal life before its span ran out. Last night, it spent all its strength on that trap. If you didn’t take the bait, it would die.”

“A trap…”

At last, I understood. I slapped my forehead.

“Lu Xiaoyu and Xu Miao!”

No wonder they had taken the bait so stupidly. No wonder they trusted the Earth God for no reason. No wonder they invited me hiking.

They were the trap it had set for me!

They were its manifestations!

But the old woman explained that a manifestation which existed too long could forget what it was. Lu Xiaoyu and Xu Miao could indeed be considered two independent “people.”

Thinking carefully, I realized I had no real memories of either of them.

Only blankness and haze. Their thoughts and actions lacked logic. Everything they did was like a decoy fish luring me into the water.

Inside the Earth God’s trap, these two characters conjured from nothing had constantly guided me toward asking it for something, just as they had. Money or status—it did not matter.

The moment I asked, it would have an opening.

It could kill me and attain godhood.

“Thank goodness. I never dared ask it for anything.”

So the eyes it turned on me that night had concealed murderous intent all along.

“Don’t worry. It’s barely hanging on now. It can’t stir up trouble. Old ghosts still die of old age in the end!”

I stayed in the village for several days. Every night, too frightened to close my eyes, I crouched in the banyan and watched the Earth God circle below, muttering vicious curses.

On the final night, it did not come.

The next day, Grandpa Feng said the statue in the ancestral hall had returned to normal.

Round, lively eyes filled its sockets.

We pooled our money and labor to restore the eyes of the other Earth God statues too.

Back home, I asked every friend around me.

Not one knew who Lu Xiaoyu or Xu Miao were.

After that, I returned for every festival and New Year to honor the Earth God. Just a little more incense, so he would guard our land and keep lesser ghosts in awe.

After that, I became particularly afraid of the words “Where are you?”

I always felt an eye watching me, a chill behind my back.

To become a god, an old ghost must first kill its natural enemy.

Yet among countless millennia, only a handful of wandering ghosts had ever attained godhood.

Almost as hard as reaching Heaven itself.

My name is Lin Senchun.

I did not die.

The old ghost did.