The lamp oil was bought on credit from the village grocery, a full bowl of it.
Chen Wangtian's hands trembled as he held the bowl. Not from the cold—this was a tremor that seeped out from the marrow of his bones, unstoppable. Oil spilled over his fingers and soaked into the collar of the figure beneath him. He dared not look down. If he did, he feared he would never be able to finish what he had started. That was his son. Chen Nian'an, nine years old, the only child he and Xiulan had managed to conceive after ten years of marriage. When Xiulan gave birth to Nian'an, she had nearly bled out. The midwife's hands shook as she said they could only save one—the mother or the child. Xiulan had bitten through her lip and said, "Save the child." In the end, both survived. The midwife said it was the ancestors' blessing. Chen Wangtian had knelt before the ancestral tablets and kowtowed three times, leaving bloodied imprints on his forehead.
Now he was about to send that child onto a pyre with his own hands.
The incense ash was scraped fresh from the shrine by Old Immortal Wu, three layers deep from the censer. The ash was mixed with unburned incense stems, gritty as sand in the palm. Old Wu pinched a small clump and pressed it into Nian'an's nostrils—left first, then right—with a steadiness that surpassed a woman embroidering. His hands were gaunt as old branches, yet his nails were neatly trimmed, each one an unnatural waxy yellow, like aged paper. Around his left wrist hung a string of black prayer beads. When the beads clicked together, Chen Wangtian, standing close, heard it clearly—a sound like countless thin, hard objects scraping against one another.
"Enough." Old Wu straightened up. "Lift him up."
The pine pyre had been built that afternoon, set in the hollow behind the village. Old Wu had chosen the spot himself, saying it was the center of the hollow where all malevolent energies converged—the cleanest place for a burning. Four able-bodied men carried the body onto the pyre. One of them, Chen Dazhu, couldn't help muttering under his breath, "Still warm."
No one answered.
Chen Dazhu straightened Nian'an's legs. His fingers brushed the boy's ankle, and through the fabric, he could feel warmth. That was not the temperature of a dead body. He withdrew his hand, stepped back, and hid his trembling fingers in his sleeve. He remembered five years ago when his own daughter had a high fever for three days and nights, her body burning hot. He had carried her thirty li over mountain roads to the town doctor. The warmth he felt now was exactly the same. The warmth of the living