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Inside the thatched cottage.
Gu An sat on a bed made of straw, gazing at the familiar cramped surroundings.
"Dead again... but I'm getting close to killing that demon."
He muttered to himself, his jet-black eyes resembling the surface of a rippleless, cold pond. Such a gaze shouldn't appear on a farmer's face, yet here it was.
As he spoke, Gu An rose to his feet and pushed open the door, stepping out of the thatched cottage.
After exiting, he walked leisurely toward a small water vat nearby.
Hiss—
Something eerie happened. Behind him, the wooden door of the cottage silently split in half, as if sliced by an invisible sharp sickle.
Then something even stranger occurred. The cut edges visibly decayed and gathered dust, the wood rotting away, even sprouting cobwebs—as if the dwelling had been abandoned for decades.
If Gu An hadn't walked toward the water vat just now, but had instead gone straight out the door, this eerie slash wouldn't have landed on the door panel—it would have landed on him. He would have been split open vertically by the supernatural force.
This eerie scene was all too familiar to Gu An.
Today was Mangzhong (Grain in Ear).
The tenth day of the fifth month.
He had experienced this day seventy-two times already.
He knew clearly what would happen today, whom he would meet, what sounds he would hear.
On this day, he had died many times.
After each death, he would wake up again on the morning of Mangzhong, reliving the day's events all over again.
Gu An glanced back at the dilapidated thatched cottage that now looked decades old, and the split door panel.
The culprit behind this slashing and decay—the thing that had nearly cleaved him in two—was a demon.
He scanned his surroundings.
Dawn was breaking in the east, dew still fresh. Wisps of cooking smoke rose from various households in the village. Amid the bustling human presence mixed the peaceful tranquility of a rural village. He could hear dogs barking and see birds flitting about, but he couldn't see any so-called demon. Forget the demon itself—he couldn't even see its shadow.
Yet Gu An knew better.
It wasn't that the demon wasn't there—it simply couldn't be seen.
[Demons have no fixed form; demons cannot be glimpsed by mortal eyes or touched by ordinary flesh. Yet if one draws their gaze, nine deaths out of ten await.]
This saying was known to everyone in the Great Qian Dynasty.
Elders would recite it from time to time.
The meaning was clear: ordinary people's eyes cannot see demons, nor can they touch them. But once you encounter a demon and catch its attention, you face almost certain death.
"How did I provoke this demon, and why does it only target me?"
This question was one of many Gu An hadn't solved despite dying so many times.
Gu An turned and performed a strange action.
He spread his legs apart.
Then bent over!
Looking backward through his legs, the scenery behind him appeared upside down in his vision. The objects remained the same, but the scene became utterly eerie. What he saw through his legs was not the world of the living, but something resembling the road to the Yellow Springs—a ghostly crescent moon casting a bloody hue on the dirt path.
The scene was unsettling.
At the center of his view through his legs, on the dirt road, was a figure wearing old gray clothes—a middle-aged farmer swaying as he approached from nine zhang away.
He looked like an ordinary farmer similar to Gu An, but he wasn't. Instead of a human head on his neck, he had the head of an ox. The ox head was grotesque—where eyes should be were two horrifying mouths instead. In his right hand was a sickle embedded with blood and flesh, used for cutting rice.
Everyone in Great Qian knew that demons existed in the world and had no fixed form.
But this wasn't absolute.
Ordinary people could see formless demons by bending over and looking backward through their legs.
This was one method for seeing demons.
As long as a demon had marked you, using this method would not only reveal the demon but also show you a different, eerie landscape.
No one knew why such scenes appeared.
Some said that humans and demons don't actually exist in the same place—which is why ordinary eyes and hands can't see or touch demons.
But while mortals are mortal, demons are not. They have ways to see and touch people.
What exactly demons were, the people of Great Qian couldn't say for certain.
No one could explain it definitively.
Why demons enjoyed harming people—that too was unclear to everyone.
That eerie farmer figure was the demon that wouldn't leave him alone!
No matter where he went, the ox-headed farmer could always find and kill him.
Gu An straightened up.
He continued walking toward the small water vat.
Along the way, he bent down to pick up an old gourd ladle leaning against the corner of the thatched cottage wall.
Hiss—
The familiar slashing sound rang out.
Another eerie cut appeared. As Gu An bent over, it passed through where his neck had been moments before, striking a small tree ahead. The tree was severed, visibly withering before his eyes, its leaves falling.
Being struck by the blade energy from the demon's swinging sickle didn't just split things open—it caused decay and aging.
Gu An paid no attention to the slash.
He used the gourd ladle to scoop up some water and walked outside, tilting his head back to drink while walking.
This series of movements allowed him to dodge successive sickle slashes.
What seemed like perfectly normal walking was actually the result of seventy-two cycles of life and death—he had long since memorized the demon's attack patterns by heart.
Every step, every movement was precisely timed to avoid the demon's assaults.
"Glug glug... Ptui!"
He tilted his head back to rinse his mouth, then lowered his head to spit out the water, once again dodging a slash.
He had avoided the demon's attack, but a poor butterfly wasn't so lucky. Its body decayed and withered, turning to dust in a gust of wind.
Gu An raised his sleeve to wipe his mouth, then took another sip of water and swallowed.
After finishing these actions, he splashed the water from the gourd ladle backward.
Woooo—
Something eerie happened.
The water twisted unnaturally in mid-air before spilling onto the ground.
A drag mark appeared on the ground, as if some heavy object had been pulled across it.
That was the demon dodging the water—it feared water!
Splashing water could keep the demon at bay, maintaining distance between them.
There were several butterflies around. Gu An raised his hand and caught another one.
Then, holding the butterfly in one hand and the gourd ladle in the other, he walked outside.
"Ah An, what's that noise over there? Why all that banging?" came the honest voice of an old man from next door.
That was his neighbor, a fellow farmer like Gu An. Sun-darkened skin, looking quite old but actually around sixty years of age, his body hardy from years of farming. His surname was Hong, and the younger generation around here liked to call him Old Man Hong. He was also the elder who had taught Gu An to read and write.
Hearing this, Gu An turned to look, his face bearing a bright smile. "Old Man Hong, I've encountered a demon."
Old Man Hong was momentarily stunned, unable to process the information conveyed by both Gu An's words and expression.
What he said was no joking matter—the content was bone-chilling. Yet Gu An's expression didn't match the content at all.
Before he could ask anything, Gu An walked toward him.
At the same moment, the neighbor's fence was suddenly slashed open, the vines on it withering and dying.
"Ahhh!!"
Old Man Hong screamed, his expression shifting from astonishment to terror.
He panicked and turned to run into his house, but Gu An grabbed him with one hand.
Young people had strength—with this grab, the old man had no way to escape.
Old Man Hong looked at Gu An's smile, his sun-darkened face turning deathly pale. No matter how you looked at it, it seemed Gu An intended to drag him down as well.
"Ah An... this old man has no grievance with you, why would you harm me?!"
Old Man Hong said in a trembling voice.
"Old Man Hong, what are you saying? I have no intention of harming you—I'm helping you." Gu An still smiled, though a careful observer would notice his smile was like dead wood meeting spring—his eyes held not a trace of joy.
Having died so many times, if he could still smile as genuinely as before, that would truly be ghostly.
Old Man Hong wanted to bend over and look through his legs to see where the demon was.
He had once heard from a wandering Daoist that looking through a child's legs could see the yin realm and break through demons' illusion techniques.
He often told this to the village children.
He also knew that demons enjoyed harming people, and their methods were endlessly varied.
The specific method depended on the demon's particular supernatural ability.
Whatever supernatural power a demon possessed determined how it liked to kill people.
This demon seemed to favor slashing people apart.
Just then, Gu An picked up Old Man Hong. Due to this movement, the butterfly in his hand was released.
The slash came again.
But this time, Gu An didn't dodge.
Something eerie happened—when the slash reached the butterfly, it disappeared.
Seventy-two cycles of life and death had taught him many things. One was that this sickle could only cut one thing at a time. If it encountered a living thing, it would only take one life.
A butterfly's life was still a life.
He had used the butterfly to block one calamity.
Gu An carried Old Man Hong and then walked leisurely toward the old man's house.
He could walk leisurely and avoid the demon because he had experienced this before. But Old Man Hong couldn't. For others, one day was just one day—unlike him, who could start over after dying.
As for why he could revive after death...
That question, Gu An didn't know the answer to either.
He had never died before.
Not until Mangzhong when he was inexplicably targeted by a demon. Only after dying did he discover he could do this.
This question, like why he was targeted by the demon in the first place, was one of the mysteries he hadn't solved.