CH 8

The noise finally receded, and with it went the tight-woven blackness that had cast itself across Xue Xian's vision. But something was wrong –– 

The ground beneath him was now covered with stone tiles from which patches of dark green moss grew. It seemed that he had been dropped onto the ground, and the bald donkey who had been holding on to him previously was now nowhere to be seen. 

It wasn't just the bald donkey. Xue Xian's head swivelled as he took in his surroundings. Liu-shiye was gone, too. The shack was still there –– it was behind him –– but it was now a building with a proper facade. Above the doors, there was even a set of intricate wooden carvings. This was definitely not Liu Chong's [a] home, and Xue Xian highly doubted he would find Jiang Shining and the others inside. 

In fact, this place was dead silent. Xue Xian couldn't make out even the vaguest hint of a human voice. It was as though he had been transported to some vast, empty mansion –– lavish and luxurious, yet completely deserted.

"Where the fuck is this?" Xue Xian muttered to himself.

His situation was rather frustrating. Anyone else, when finding themselves dropped in some strange and quiet place, would be able to get up and walk around, see if they could figure something out. But Xue Xian couldn’t; he couldn’t walk.

The paper man form certainly wasn’t helping Xue-daye. [b] He decided to spread himself out and give the folded creases of his body an opportunity to relax. He propped himself up on his hands, leaned back lazily, and looked around, admiring the scenery –– 

Apart from the building behind him, there was now an ivy-covered wall to his left, as well as a tree casting shade onto the courtyard. Part of the tree’s branches extended beyond the wall. To his left was a corridor and the courtyard wall. Through a narrow door, he could see part of a small garden. 

Just from a cursory glance, it was clear that this was a tastefully designed compound. But there was absolutely nobody around to admire the compound’s beauty, which was quite unnerving.

Thankfully, Xue Xian was a dragon lord [c] who had once pierced the heavens. No matter how unnerving a situation was, it couldn’t ever faze him. But he did, of course, know to be careful. 

"South is in front of me, north is behind me..." Xue Xian wasn't just admiring the scenery. Based on the way that the moss and ivy grew along the cracks of stone, Xue Xian could deduce the directions that the compound was facing. 

If he'd gotten it right, he was currently in the northeast section of the compound. 

Northeast...

Xue Xian gasped. "That sounds familiar..."

If this was still Liu-shiye's compound, then the northeast section was the home of Liu-shiye's younger son Liu Jin, the one who had almost drowned in the well. 

That weng sound from before had also seemed to come from here. 

What he was looking for… Could it really be here?!

Suddenly alert, Xue Xian sat up. Holding his breath and keeping absolutely still, he listened carefully, but found that he could detect no sound at all, let alone that special weng noise. 

He pursed his lips with irritation. Brushing away some of the moss in front of him, he lowered himself face-down onto the ground. This time, he could finally hear the tiniest bit of movement. Strangely, the noise was sometimes close, sometimes far –– he couldn't pinpoint its position. 

The noise darted in and out of his ear, too subtle to be followed for long. Every time he thought he could hear it again, it disappeared. After some time struggling to follow the annoying noise, Xue Xian was angry. He wished he could simply cut through the stone and barge down there to confront the noise. 

Unfortunately, with his paper body, he did not have the strength to even lift a single tile. 

Just as Xue Xian was beginning to lose it, a breeze flitted in from one of the decorative windows in the wall. Even the slightest winter wind has some gusto to it –– Xue Xian was not going to let this opportunity go. He braced his paper body and let the wind pick him up.

In the blink of an eye, he was flying.  

As he passed by the wall, he grabbed onto a thin stalk of ivy, which he used as leverage to swing himself up onto that shade-casting tree.

This tree trunk stood straight and tall, and had been pruned so that not a branch stood out of place –– except for the branch that extended beyond the wall. Because of this, Xue Xian couldn’t go any further: this was his destination.

Not only was his paper body in danger from being blown off the branch, but the point of view from the tree wasn't great, either.

So Xue Xian decided to revert to his original form, too. As the wind rustled lightly through the leaves, a flesh-and-blood human suddenly appeared in the tree. With one arm hugging the tree trunk and another gripping a nearby branch, Xue Xian settled down comfortably on the ledge of the wall.

In daylight, his face looked bright and pleasant. Those two pools of shadow beneath his eyes resembled winter ponds: beneath a thin layer of ice lay a sharp and driven spirit. 

The first thing he did once he was settled was look out to the other side of the wall. 

Having taken a look, he turned around to peer at the inside of the compound for a moment, and then back outside again. 

As he swivelled back and forth, his neutral expression seemed to crack under pressure, like a porcelain vase right before it shattered into pieces. 

“...”

Both sides of the wall looked exactly the fucking same!

Now this was interesting. 

If Xue Xian was correct, he had ended up in some kind of 'Ghost Pounding on the Wall' situation. [d]

A ghost who dared to pound on his wall –– now this was a first.

Of course, this kind of thing never just happened: there was always a root cause. Xue Xian rifled through his memory, but all he could come up with was that ‘Direct the River into the Sea’ array that the bald donkey Xuanmin had mentioned. 

It seemed that someone had interfered with this feng shui array. Some crisis had been triggered, which had dragged them all in here?

So the silence in the compound... Was this the effect of ‘Ghost Pounding on the Wall’, or was it because Xue Xian was the only person left?

The view from the wall was slightly better than the view from the ground, but still not that much better. Much of Xue Xian's view was blocked by rows of uneven fire-protecting inner walls. All Xue Xian could really see were white walls, black roofs, and stone tiles –– as well as several narrow doors, which he wasn't sure if he would even be able to get through. 

He studied the narrow doors that led in all directions: north, south, east, west. Then he looked at the uneven walls. Things began to come together a little.

To happen upon ‘Ghost Pounding on the Wall’ in such a tranquil, ordinary compound... If you wanted to break out of the array, you had to abide by the cosmological rules of the Eight Doors. [e] 

Open door, rest door, life door, harm door, delusion door, scenery door, fear door, and death door. Each door was different. If you went through the wrong door... Best case scenario, you wouldn't be able to get out of the array. Worst case scenario was grave injury, if not death.

This compound had a tricky relationship with the four cardinal directions, so its Eight Doors were likely to be complicated, too. Solving this array was going to take a lot of effort.

Not being an ordinary human, Xue Xian wasn't used to having to think about the random problems of mortals. When he'd been a dragon, [f] none of this stuff was useful to him, and he had certainly never expected that he might one day come across ‘Ghost Pounding on the Wall’ himself one day.

So to ask him to sit here and calculate which door was the life door and which door was the death door was akin to giving him two knives to stab himself with.

"Am I supposed to drag myself around [g] the compound trying to find a sign of life?" Xue Xian scoffed indignantly. I don’t hate myself that much! 

He was far too proud for that. Unless he had no other choice, he would rather die than create hassle for himself. And if he really had no other choice... Well, he'd still rather just die. 

This stupid compound didn't even have proper air circulation. There was no wind Xue Xian could use to transport himself. Even if he figured out which way to go, how was he supposed to get there? Crawl, or slither?

Just the thought of it made Xue Xian's teeth hurt.

In your dreams! He was not going to crawl!

As he leant against the tree branch on the wall, Xue Xian gnawed the tip of his tongue in frustration. He patted the pocket of his robe and took out a piece of yellow paper.

The yellow paper had been twisted up and folded in all kinds of manners. It had clearly lived a life of misery and neglect ever since it had entered Xue Xian’s possession. With a sense of disdain, Xue Xian pinched the upper corner of the paper with two fingers, and shook it loose –– revealing that the inside of it was entirely covered in indecipherable scribbles written down in appalling calligraphy.

But Xue Xian could read it.

He had stolen this from a Daoist fortune-teller when he'd passed through Raozhou Prefecture. 

The Daoist had had a mustache composed of two long, straggly whiskers and had been wearing a battered cloth hat. By his eye had been a dark scar –– it could have been a birthmark, or perhaps an injury. His domain was the side of a bridge, where he sat all day long, running low-level fortune-telling tricks and selling yellow talismans that he'd made himself. And this guy was certainly odd: since he was selling talismans, he should have made sure that his calligraphy looked the part. Instead, the old Daoist’s products looked as though they’d been inscribed by a dog –– and he hadn’t seemed embarrassed about it at all! Wasn’t he afraid that no one would want to buy them?

Xue Xian had loitered beneath the Daoist’s stall for a few days and had peeked at his talismans. They were mostly weak ones that could only really be used as decoration, but one or two were well-inscribed and did have some use. 

Just some use, though. 

For instance, the talismans that were supposed to ward against evil only actually worked to repel tiny creepy crawlies; and the talismans that were supposed to extend one's life could only soothe the most minor health issues. 

The talisman that Xue Xian had fished out of his robe was one he’d watched the Daoist make.

"For the southern dragon lord [h] who resides amongst the thunderous clouds." Xue Xian squinted as he idly read the text on the talisman. These words had been distorted countless times, and tunnelled their way across the paper like a series of earthworms. They were so messy that it was a miracle Xue Xian could remember what they said. 

Just by the text, it was easy to guess that this talisman's function was to pray for lightning. [i] It was unclear what had compelled the Daoist to make it.  

If you truly wanted lightning, a simple talisman like this would not be enough for the southern dragon lord to hear your prayers. The most it could do was bring you a couple of grey clouds that might blot out a bit of the sun. But the same talisman could have a vastly different effect in Xue Xian’s hands.

Because the southern dragon lord that the talisman was praying to? Why, that was none other than Xue Xian himself. 

Although he wasn’t able to do much [j] in person while he resided in this paper body, he could try using the talisman as an intermediary.

He reached into his robe again and took out a tiny ceramic bottle. He lifted the stopper and a strange, subtle fishy smell escaped into the air. 

Xue Xian frowned as he sniffed it and ascertained that it was his own blood. It wasn't the best smell, he had to admit. 

He smoothed out the talisman against his palm and let a small drop of crimson blood drip out of the bottle. The drop seeped into the yellow paper. 

Xue Xian put the bottle away and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the talisman flying.

As the talisman left his hand, a bright flame ignited right where the blood stain had been. The talisman was instantly swallowed by the fire.

Immediately, a savage wind appeared, and tempestuous clouds began to roll in from the horizon.

The sky turned black, as though a bucket of ink had been spilled across it. Spiderwebs of snow-white lightning flashed down from the heavens, accompanied by a chilling roar of thunder that clapped against Xue Xian's ears. 

Xue Xian wasn't sure whether he had merely hit the boundary of the haunted compound, or if he had managed to strike at the compound's heart. 

There came another earth-splitting noise, and a zigzagging flash of lightning fell down from the sky. 

Still perched against the tree at the top of the compound wall, Xue Xian watched, bored, as the lightning crashed into the ground at his feet, shattering a piece of the stone tiling and sending rubble flying. He did not even blink.

The entire compound rumbled and shook precariously. Only after a long time did things slowly calm down.

Xue Xian lifted his eyes and looked up at the sky with a disappointed expression. Even with the talisman's aid, he had only been able to conjure a single strike.

But there had been some use to all that thundering commotion. It seemed to have created a hairline crack in the array. That previous uncanny silence was now being broken by a small draft: it brought with it faint noises from an unknown origin, noises that quickly blanketed the entire courtyard.

Clearly, Xue Xian was not the only person in the compound.

There was someone else stuck inside the array. It was just that, when they had been brought into the array, they had been flung in different directions, and weren’t aware of each other’s presence.

Xue Xian tugged a curly stem from the ivy creeping on the wall. Leaning back on the branch, he idly wound the stem against his fingers. He shut his eyes and concentrated on the noise that was drifting toward him from the hairline crack. Among the confusing layers of sound in the compound, he seemed to make out something that stood out from everything else. 

After some more time, he thought he knew what it might be...

A bell? 

"No..." Xue Xian clicked his teeth and frowned.

The noise wove itself among the whimpering of the wind, as though it had come from far away –– or it had been elongated, somehow, by the hairline crack.

It sounded a bit like the four-sided copper bells that farmers attached to ox carts, and yet part of the sound was also different.

A copper bell...

A copper coin? 

Suddenly, the profile of the sound became clear. Indeed, it was definitely the sound of a copper coin pendant, its coins clinking against each other softly. 

“...” Xue Xian's eyes flew open. In his hands, the ivy stem he had been torturing snapped in half.

In that brief instant, the sound of copper coins knocking against each other seemed to have gotten much closer. 

From what Xue Xian could hear, the sound now seemed to be coming from right beyond the compound wall. 

The narrow door at the end of the corridor suddenly creaked. Still playing with the destroyed ivy stem in his hand, Xue Xian looked up.

The young monk, draped in that set of white hemp religious robes, was walking silently toward him.

Xue Xian felt cold just from seeing the monk wearing such a thin robe in the middle of the freezing winter –– and on top of that, the robes seemed themselves to be wrapped in a layer of frost. It wasn't until Xuanmin had walked all the way to the wall and strapped his copper coin pendant back onto his hip that Xue Xian realised: this bald donkey never made any sound when he walked. 

So... that copper coin noise from just now. Had he been making it on purpose? 

Xuanmin stood in front of the wall and scanned Xue Xian up and down with a disinterested gaze.

The person perched on the wall was highly attractive, like a sword shafted cleanly into its scabbard. But he was on the skinnier side, and his black robes made him seem uncannily pale, giving him the air of someone who was deathly ill. This was in sharp contrast with the vivid sharpness of his demeanor. All together, his aura was one of contradiction and mystery.

When Xue Xian's expression was neutral, it made him seem deceptively calm. 

Maintaining that neutrality, Xue Xian stared back at Xuanmin for a moment. Finally, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. "Why is it you..." he said.

He scrunched up the broken ivy stem into a ball in his hand and crushed it angrily.

This one was the kind of person to go around touching things he ought to keep his hands off of. He had managed to clamber all the way to the top of the wall, but still seemed restless, and, after glaring at Xuanmin for some time, he insisted on throwing the crushed ivy stem at Xuanmin. 

Xuanmin shook his head. He caught the 'weapon' in mid-air and studied it. "What was the thunder about just now?"

Xue Xian made a face. "Aren't you going to ask who I am?" 

When the bald donkey had captured him, he had first been a patch of moss on the ground, and had then become a paper man. The monk had never seen him in his human form before. 

Xuanmin opened his slender palm, where he still held the damning evidence of Xue Xian’s actions –– that balled-up ivy stem. 

Xuanmin was naturally inexpressive and hated to speak, and always wore an icy, impenetrable expression. But that one gesture had a clear meaning: such mischief could only come from one person. Even if Xue Xian had been burnt to ashes, Xuanmin would still recognise him. 

Xue Xian: “...”

Xuanmin threw away the ivy stem. He asked Xue Xian again: "You have not explained the thunder." 

"Oh," Xue Xian said. "Nothing much. I was just letting everyone know where I was, so you could come find me."

Xuanmin: “...”

That bout of thunder had been powerful enough to bring the heavens crashing down onto earth. It had been deafeningly loud, and mighty enough to strike fear into any observer’s heart –– as though whoever had summoned it had wanted to utterly demolish the Liu compound.

But it turned out that all that was just to make a simple noise and alert others to his presence. 

As the bald donkey heard this, his rigid, frosty expression seemed, for the first time, to show a sign of breaking.

This was hilarious to Xue Xian. He relaxed his expression and teased, "Eh? So you followed that lightning all the way to me? Then it wasn't a waste of time at all. It's a good thing you came so quickly. I was wondering if I should summon another one."

Xuanmin stared at him silently for a moment, then coldly said, "Then there would be no need to find our way out of these Eight Doors. We would even be able to save money on our coffins."

"How could a religious man [k] speak of earthly things like money? You bald...." Xue Xian grimaced and stopped himself from saying ‘donkey’. With a serious face, he said, "Isn't that offensive to the Buddha?" 

Xuanmin: “...”

This niezhang had sent thunder across the heavens, yet had the audacity to say something like this.

"Just now, you were talking about finding the Eight Doors. Have you found them?" Xue Xian was asking now. "If you have, then great. Take me with you. If you haven't, then forget your fear of getting struck by lightning. Let me try summoning another bout of thunder. Hopefully I can force this array apart."

As he was saying this, he was really thinking: Oh, bald donkey, please tell me you've found it. I only had that one lightning talisman, and it's gone now.

Thankfully, Xuanmin didn't disappoint. He nodded and said, "You can come down from the wall now."

He turned and walked away. 

His white monk's robes fluttered behind like a wisp of cloud. In only a few steps, he was already quite far from the wall. 

After some time, Xuanmin stopped and turned to look at Xue Xian, who had not yet moved. 

Xue Xian slapped his legs nonchalantly. "I can’t walk," he announced. [l]

Xuanmin lifted an eyebrow, thinking that Xue Xian was acting out again. Without changing his expression, he coldly said, "You were quick to run earlier, niezhang..."

Back when he'd grabbed onto the young servant's collar, he'd been as swift and nimble as could be.

“...” Xue Xian scoffed. "Are you blind, bald donkey? Back then I wasn't running with my own legs, was I? I was using someone else's."

The merciless monk and the ill-behaved niezhang stared at each other for a long time. Finally, the former gave in, and walked back toward the wall. 

The contour of Xue Xian's legs and knees could be seen through his black robes. Most bedridden, handicapped people had knobby, thin legs as a result, but not Xue Xian. His legs looked quite ordinary –– not at all like they were paralysed.

Xuanmin took a look, then reached out to grab Xue Xian's ankle.

Xue Xian jumped in surprise at that. If only he had control of his legs, or even just one of them: he would've kicked this bald donkey in the face and sent him flying.

What kind of person just goes up to a dragon and starts grabbing at his claws?! Huh?! Do you have a death wish?! 

Xuanmin took note of Xue Xian's reaction. If Xue Xian had only been pretending to be paralysed, there was no way he would've only moved his upper body –- the lower body would definitely have reacted, too. 

So it seemed that this niezhang was telling the truth. He really was paralysed from the waist down. [l]

Xuanmin raised his eyes and made a Buddhist greeting with his hand. The other hand, he extended toward Xue Xian with his slender palm spread. "Come down,” he said.

---

[a] Musuli uses 傻子 (sha3 zi), which means “idiot”. Sometimes when I use this footnote, she is using 傻 by itself, which is an adjective rather than a noun, meaning “idiotic”.

[b] Daye: see glossary. Here, the narrator is using “daye” sarcastically to suggest that Xue Xian is arrogant, or high-maintenance: he behaves as though he were everyone’s elder/patriarch. (He really is older than everyone, though!)

[c] Musuli uses 主 (zhu3), meaning “master” or “lord”. It’s rare for one-character nouns to be used in Chinese because two-character or four-character phrases are seen as more pleasing; here, the straightforward use of 主 is an unapologetic, brash, and slightly arrogant assertion of Xue Xian’s power and status. 主 in this case isn’t necessarily saying that Xue Xian is master/lord of something or someone, but more to emphasise his general dominance as a mythical creature; because of this, I used “dragon lord” in English to steer the significance away from ‘lordship’. 

[d] Ghost Pounding on the Wall: 鬼打墙 (gui3 da3 qiang2), literally “ghost builds wall” (where 打, “to build”, more commonly means “to pound on/hit”), is a figure of speech that refers to when someone is lost in a strange place and unable to find their way out –– as though invisible ghosts have built walls around them. This is a psychological fallacy. It is also used to describe someone being stuck in their ways of thinking, figuratively rather than literally. 

Contemporary artist Xu Bing, trained as a printmaker, began a project in 1990-1991 entitled Ghost Pounding the Wall / Gui Da Qiang, where he created large-scale rubbings from the Great Wall. Rubbings were historically used in China to record, copy, and distribute carved inscriptions on stone; but Xu Bing’s rubbings here do not contain any legible information. Instead, he records the ‘writing’ of the stone itself, the ridges and textures of this ancient monument at that specific point in time; the only reason the rubbing is important or of value is that it purports to come from the Great Wall, which has become a hugely important symbol of national belonging. (The second thing that lends the rubbing value is Xu Bing himself: by then, he was already a famous enough ‘Chinese’ artist to exhibit in the United States, thanks in great part to Gao Minglu’s promotion of the “‘85 New Wave”, a generation of “avant-gardists” that Gao had invented.) A lot of Chinese artists have engaged with the complex significance behind the Great Wall; I really like He Chengyao’s extremely nuanced 2001 performance, Opening the Great Wall. 

Anyway, my choice to translate 鬼打墙 here as “pounding” rather than “Ghost Building a Wall” is a wink at all that. In Copper Coins, 鬼打墙 is a magic spell or array that someone has intentionally created, or that was unintentionally engendered as a consequence of ignorant people messing around with magic. It causes people to be literally trapped in an infinite, labyrinthine space.

[e] Musuli uses 八门遁甲 (ba1 men2 dun4 jia3), literally “eight doors divination”. It is a less-used synonym for 奇门遁甲 (qi2 men2 dun4 jia3), a traditional Chinese school of divination that combines various Chinese metaphysical concepts including yin and yang, the five elements (which are relevant to wudiqian, the copper coin pendants), the eight trigrams, and more (Wikipedia). 

The Eight Doors are also specific components within Qimen Dunjia and can be mapped onto the Eight Trigrams and the cardinal directions. Qimen Dunjia is concerned with the heavens, the earth, and humans; according to Baidu, the Eight Doors are specifically concerned with humans affairs.

The doors are labelled: 开 (kai1) open; 休 (xiu1) rest; 生 (sheng1) life; 伤 (shang1) harm; 杜 (du4) delusion/stop; 景 (jing3) scenery/view; 惊 (jing1) fear; 死 (si3) death. Open, rest, and life are positive; harm, fear, and death are negative; delusion and scenery are neutral. 

[f] Musuli uses the phrase “In the first/previous half of his life”. This sounds awkward in English, so I went for a more literal phrasing; but it’s an interesting way to word it, because it means the second half of his life ‘begins’ now.

[g] Musuli uses the phrase “drag my two lame legs around”, where 废 (fei4), literally “waste/wasted” is used to characterise Xue Xian’s disability. 

[h] The phrase here is 南方龙君 (nan2 fang1 long2 jun1), “dragon jun of the south”.

[i] The character used here is 雷 (lei2), “thunder”. However, throughout Copper Coins, Xue Xian is seen summoning 雷 down on people or generally wielding 雷 as a tangible, precise attack, and it would be more appropriate in those instances to translate 雷 as “lightning”.

[j] Musuli uses 作妖 (zuo4 yao1) here, literally “commit yao”, i.e. to do evil things, or to make mischief. It’s hard to do this in English without making Xue Xian summoning thunder/lightning sound like an actually evil or merely mischievous thing –– it’s in his nature as a dragon.

[k] The Chinese phrase is 出家人 (chu1 jia1 ren2), literally “person who has left home”. This specifically means a monk or a nun.

[l] Here, Musuli refers to Xue Xian’s legs again as 废 (fei4), literally “waste/wasted”.