Chapter 3

5.

My heart jolted.

I remembered Master Shan's words: "He can't leave this place."

A frightening possibility took shape.

Had the mountain wraith killed Old Zhong's wife too?

Was that why he'd stayed here, looking after the inn?

Watching his grief-stricken profile, I swallowed my questions about the recorder.

Perhaps I was overthinking it.

Lin Wan might have meant somebody else.

That afternoon, following Master Shan's instructions, I found an open patch of ground outside the inn and burned all her belongings.

The flames rose, consuming the memories we'd shared.

In their flickering light, I seemed to see her face.

There she was on our balcony, angrily taking down the clothes I'd hung badly, muttering that I'd ruined all her sweaters.

Then she was sitting opposite me at a buffet, gulping down two bottles of soda with a mountain of fried chicken, giving guilty little burps because she'd eaten too much.

In a daze, I felt us curled together on the sofa one afternoon, murmuring embarrassingly sweet things like, "Do you love me?"

At some point, my eyes had filled with tears.

Old Zhong stood a short distance away, watching without a word.

Firelight played across his face.

It made those deeply wrinkled features look darker still.

That evening, I couldn't face sleeping upstairs again. I settled for the lobby sofa.

Old Zhong stayed with me.

He lit the soul-steadying incense, filling the room with a haze of smoke.

Perhaps the wolf's fang and incense worked. That night passed without incident.

The next morning, I decided to leave.

I'd found a clue in the recorder. Staying here would achieve nothing.

I would go down the mountain and report it to the police, let them investigate.

I said goodbye to Old Zhong.

He seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

"Young man, some things... are better forgotten."

Those were his last words to me.

I paid them no mind. Shouldering my backpack, I set off downhill.

The trail was long.

I walked for nearly an hour before the road at the mountain's foot came into view.

Just as I thought I'd finally escaped that sinister forest, my phone vibrated.

I took it out.

My heart went cold.

Lin Wan's number again.

One photograph.

Old Zhong's wrinkled face filled it.

His mouth was stretched into the same grotesque smile I'd seen on "Lin Wan" last night.

Behind him was the inn's lobby.

I spun around and looked toward the inn halfway up the mountain.

I couldn't see it.

Only dense forest.

I began to wonder...

Had the mountain wraith replaced Old Zhong?

Or...

Had he been the wraith from the start?

I didn't dare follow that thought. I quickened my pace.

Then I heard singing behind me.

That hoarse, warped, tuneless melody...

Lin Wan's favorite song.

It drifted from the forest at my back.

Coming closer.

Growing clearer.

My scalp went numb. I broke into a headlong run.

I wouldn't look back.

I was afraid that if I did, I'd see "Lin Wan" with that hideously wide mouth...

Or "Old Zhong"...

Silently following me.

6.

I ran all the way to town and straight into the police station.

I told them everything, including the strange messages and photographs.

The officer who received me was young.

When I'd finished, he looked at me as though I were out of my mind.

He checked Lin Wan's number and told me it had been disconnected. It couldn't possibly send messages.

As for the photographs, he thought I'd imagined them or made them myself in Photoshop.

"Young man, I'm sorry for your loss. Don't let missing her turn into delusions."

He patted my shoulder.

Nothing I said could make him understand.

And he was right.

How could a buried phone send messages?

It was all too strange, too far beyond reason.

Nobody would believe me.

Could it... really be a hallucination?

I left the station in a daze.

It was getting dark.

Afraid to return to the inn, I found a small guesthouse in town.

I locked the door and wedged a chair against it. Only then did I feel a little safer.

Clutching the wolf's fang, I stayed awake all night.

I listened to the recording again and again.

"He's not human... He's been lying to me all along... He wants to offer me to..."

To whom?

To the mountain?

Or to the wraith?

Who was "he"?

The next morning, throwing caution aside, I went back up the mountain.

I had to know the truth.

This time, I bypassed the inn and went straight to Master Shan.

I showed him the recorder and the photograph I'd just received.

His expression changed completely as he listened.

He stared at Old Zhong's twisted smile in the picture. A cold glint flashed in his clouded eyes.

"In the end... he couldn't resist."

He muttered the words to himself.

"Master Shan, what's going on?"

I couldn't hide my urgency.

He drew a deep breath and spoke heavily.

"Zhong was never some helpless victim."

"He's the mountain wraith's guide."

His wife hadn't been killed by the wraith all those years ago.

He'd sacrificed her to it himself.

Ever since, every few years, he'd had to bring it a new "offering."

Usually an innocent outsider traveling alone. Someone like Lin Wan.

"He's been lying to you all along," Master Shan said.

"Playing the victim to win your sympathy. In fact, he wants you to replace Lin Wan as the next sacrifice."

My hands and feet went icy.

That kindly, friendly old man...

Was a monster.

He'd arranged everything that led to Lin Wan's death.

"If you knew all this, why didn't you call the police?"

I shouted in anger.

If he'd told me sooner—or told Lin Wan—or even just gone to the police, she wouldn't have died.

Neither would the innocent people before her.

My voice shook with fury. Blood seemed to surge into my chest.

He sighed.

His withered frame seemed to age before my eyes.

"Because... I used to be... a follower of the mountain wraith too."

7.

Master Shan said the mountain wraith's true form was a fungus growing in damp, dark caves deep in the mountains.

It released spores that bewitched people, drained their vitality, and eventually sprouted in their brains, controlling their minds.

Thinking it over, I supposed it might be something like opium, addictive and destructive to the nervous system.

Years ago, he and Old Zhong had stumbled across it in a cave.

Taking it for an ordinary wild mushroom, they'd brought some home and made soup.

"I'd never felt anything like it in my life."

"A comfort that soaked right into your bones."

"Like sinking into warm water. Like falling into soft cotton."

As he spoke, his eyes seemed to grow dreamy.

That only strengthened my conviction that the stuff had to be some kind of narcotic.

"What happened then?"

He pulled himself out of that distant memory and slowly continued.

"Once my head cleared, I knew I must never touch it again."

"But the craving was hard to shake. To put an end to it, I hid away deep in these mountains and made my life here. I haven't touched it in all these years."

I asked cautiously, "Old Zhong's been eating it all this time?"

He nodded heavily.

"He's eaten so much of it that his mind's completely gone."

"Over the years, he's come to me again and again, asking me to go to the cave with him, gather mushrooms, grow them. I always refused."

"I think he may believe that watering them with human blood makes more of them grow."

"I thought his life was his responsibility. I never imagined he'd commit so many crimes!"

A tear slipped from his clouded eyes and rolled down the deep furrows in his face.

"Young man, it's not that I didn't want to tell you. It's just... I only understood what had been happening all these years when you brought me those recordings!"

He buried his head against his knees. His whole body shook.

With remorse...

Or with pain. I couldn't tell.

A thought struck me.

"Then what about Lin Wan? The one I saw at the inn?"

His throat was so hoarse he struggled to speak.

"Zhong doesn't just eat those mushrooms. He must have a considerable stockpile at the inn."

"After years of accumulation and fermentation, there'd be traces of them in the air too."

"You've been poisoned!"

No wonder I'd felt dizzy these past few days.

I'd been exposed to the toxin from the day I set foot in that inn.

The eerie messages. Lin Wan appearing again and again...

All hallucinations caused by the poison.

"Then... when he brought me here, was he trying to get you to gather mushrooms with him too?"

Master Shan nodded.

"Yes. That's why I wouldn't let him inside. It was my way of refusing."

Cold sweat broke out over me.

If he'd failed to resist that temptation...

By now, I might have become fertilizer in that cave.