According to Zhang Guozhong, the most urgent matter at hand was to come up with a strategy to deal with the spirit haunting Li Daming. But Master Ma didn't seem to have heard a word about it. Instead, he secretly stewed and ate the captain's prize rooster, then spent his days wandering aimlessly around the village, nowhere to be found. Zhang Guozhong was beside himself with worry. To make things worse, Captain Li often strolled over to pester him:
"Mr. Zhang, don't be so anxious about Daming's case. Anyway, my second daughter already fancies you. Sooner or later she'll be yours. What are you so worked up about?"
Nine days passed like this. One evening, Master Ma came back humming a tune, looking as if he'd forgotten the whole business with Li Daming. Zhang Guozhong couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Master, Daming's body can't take much more. If we don't save him soon, there'll be nothing left to save!"
Master Ma acted as if he hadn't heard. He looked around the room, then pointed at the roof.
"Go scrape me some dirt from up there."
Zhang Guozhong sighed, fetched a ladder, and handed down a clump of hard-packed earth with no small irritation.
"You little bastard, getting snappy now? Don't you worry—I know when to save him. What are you fussing about?"
He crumbled the dirt into powder, scattered it evenly across the floor, and with his finger drew a few mysterious lines in the dust.
"Go tell Captain Li to gather all the able-bodied young men in the village. Bring shovels. But remember—no one born on this very day must come. Tonight, you and I are saving a man!"
At the mention of finally taking action, Zhang Guozhong's spirits lifted. Captain Li wasted no time either. He grabbed the village loudspeaker and bellowed:
"Tonight, Daoist Ma will perform a ritual to save a man! Anyone with strength, except those born today, report to my house with shovels and ropes! Each helper earns five work points! If you're not born today and don't come, five points will be docked!"
(Back then, work points determined the grain and money you got from the commune—one day's work earned only five points, worth about seven cents each.)
The loudspeaker carried over the fields, repeating again and again. Even the young educated youth living in the village could hear it. Zhang Guozhong could only smile wryly.
Within half an hour, more than fifty villagers had gathered at Captain Li's home—nearly all the strong men of the commune. Master Ma climbed onto the roof, effortlessly springing up without a ladder, something even twenty-year-olds couldn't do. Zhang Guozhong and the rest stared in awe.
"You twenty on the left, follow me. The rest, follow my apprentice. Got it?"
The crowd nodded, waiting for instructions. Instead, Master Ma hopped back down, shoved a cracked piece of jade into Zhang Guozhong's hand, and said:
"Take your men to Daming's house. Tie him up. Post someone on the roof. Once you see fire rising by the riverbank, shove this into his mouth. If he won't open up, pry it!"
Zhang Guozhong set off at once with a bundle of ropes. Halfway there, he bumped straight into Li Erya, who came running from the other direction. They collided, chest to chest. Her face flushed bright red like a sheet of scarlet cloth.
"Mr. Zhang… my father… he's having another fit. Worse than ever this time. Please… hurry…" Her voice faded to a whisper, barely audible, before she darted away in embarrassment.
Captain Li, trailing behind, grinned ear to ear.
"See, Mr. Zhang? Didn't I tell you she likes you? I wasn't lying, was I?"
The villagers chimed in, laughing and teasing: "Second girl's a good one—hardworking, knows how to keep a house, wide hips, plenty of children in her future!" Zhang Guozhong wanted nothing more than to crawl into a well and disappear. If not for the urgency of saving a life, he might have done just that.
When they entered Li Daming's house, a sickly stench hung in the air. Not quite foul, but nauseating the longer one inhaled. Daming himself was thrashing like a headless fly, crashing against the walls. Oddly, he seemed desperate to get outside, slamming into the doorway until his head bled—but he never actually went out. On the ground he writhed and vomited yellow mucus, the source of the revolting smell.
The villagers pounced and bound him. This time, though, the man no longer had his former brute strength. He trembled as if in withdrawal, twitching like an opium addict. He struggled, but weakly, unable to break free.
No one dared take chances. They wound rope around him until he looked like a silkworm cocoon, barely a scrap of skin visible. If you cut all those knots loose, you'd probably have a full kilometer of rope on the floor. Most of the ties were knotted by Old Cripple Li, the village sack-tyer—nearly impossible to undo without a blade.
Sniveling and weeping, Li Daming writhed at Zhang Guozhong's feet.
"Sir, please, spare me! I admit my wrongs! I was wronged too—have mercy!"
But mercy was the last thing on Zhang Guozhong's mind. He fingered the cracked jade, thinking hard. Why had Daming suddenly grown so weak? Surely his master had done something these past days, but he'd only been wandering around, never carrying anything strange… Wasn't an exorcism supposed to require all sorts of odd ingredients?
Meanwhile, Master Ma had led the other group to the riverbank. Pointing to the spot not far from where Daming had dug up a coffin days earlier, he dropped his usual grin and roared with fury:
"Dig!"
And dig they did. With so many strong arms, within fifteen minutes they were two meters down. Then a shout:
"We've hit something!"
At once, panic broke out. Villagers scattered like startled frogs, tossing aside their shovels and leaping back five or six meters, huddling behind Master Ma. They had unearthed a massive stone coffin.
Master Ma nearly ground his teeth to dust.
"What the hell are you afraid of while I'm here? Keep digging! Faster!"
Sheepishly, the men returned to work. After another twenty minutes, the stone coffin was fully exposed. They heaved the lid open—and inside lay a waterlogged corpse.
A "wet corpse." Unlike dried mummies, these bodies retained unnaturally high moisture content, even more than the living, yet never decayed. Sometimes they were found submerged in water, flesh as fresh as if newly drowned. No rot, no putrefaction—just a faint fishy odor. To this day, science can only wave vaguely at soil and climate to explain them. Novelists like to say they look "lifelike," but that's poetic fancy—no corpse lying in a coffin for centuries looks like it's merely asleep. If one did, the living would die of fright on the spot.
Peering inside, Master Ma saw that the corpse wore Qing Dynasty official robes. A clean cut marked the neck—clearly beheaded, then reattached and buried. A criminal, no doubt. Yet the coffin was filled with burial goods fit for a magistrate. How this contradiction came to be, no one could tell.
Just then, Captain Li arrived with two men, dragging great bundles of firewood as instructed. Seeing everyone too scared to touch the corpse, he grew impatient.
"It's just a damn body! I'll do it. Who'll give me a hand? Five yuan each!"
Five yuan! Half a month's worth of work points. Enough to tempt even ghosts, let alone men. The crowd wavered. Captain Li saw the hesitation and shouted again:
"Four yuan!"
At once, a few men stepped forward, scrambling to earn the money before the price dropped further.
They hauled the corpse out, doused the firewood in kerosene, and at Master Ma's order, flames roared skyward, turning night into day. Just then, from the direction of Daming's house came a thunderous crash. Shovels clattered from shaking hands.
"Don't tell me Daming exploded?" someone muttered, pale with fear.
From the rooftop lookout came the shout:
"The fire's up!"
As if it needed saying—out here, the blaze could be seen for miles.
Inside the house, Zhang Guozhong yanked open Daming's jaws, trying to shove in the jade. But even in his weakened state, Daming clamped down tight. His jaw strength was terrifying.
"Bring a shovel! Pry his mouth open!"
This was Zhang's first time in a real exorcism, and his heart pounded like a drum. If the jade didn't go in, all might be lost.
The shard wasn't large enough to choke him, but it could fit inside his mouth. Finally, after forcing it between his teeth, Zhang and the others held his jaw shut, preventing him from spitting it out. They pressed down for ten long minutes until, at last, Daming fell still.
Zhang began to relax—when suddenly Daming gagged and vomited a gush of foul black liquid, the jade tumbling out with it. The stench was overwhelming. Several villagers nearly retched on the spot.
Zhang's stomach dropped—had the ritual failed?
But then Daming sat up, wiped his mouth, and croaked with relief:
"Ahh, that feels better. I'm starving! Somebody get me a bun!"