Chapter Fourteen: The Mountain-Moving Method

Gui Yuxiu saw, on my late squad leader’s coffin, not a ghost but a mouse—a gray mouse, quietly gnawing at the offerings set out for him.

It was a small creature, simple and almost endearing, climbing onto the offering table in front of the coffin and crunching sunflower seeds. Strangely, it seemed to fear nothing at all; even when it saw us, it kept staring with two tiny black eyes and kept eating.

It was all for nothing, a needless scare.

Women are born to love certain small creatures and fear others, and this sister-in-law Gui Yuxiu, it seemed, was one of those afraid of mice.

When we saw the mouse on the spirit dais, we all understood at once where that earlier howl had come from.

Xian Hongye looked at the gray mouse and, with the same uncertain little expression, said to me, “So it was just a mouse. I thought your old squad leader had risen from his coffin.”

“Don’t talk nonsense! And don’t frighten it,” I said in a low voice. “There is significance in a mouse eating offerings.”

Unfamiliar with such things, Little A-si turned to me and asked, “Even this has meaning?”

I nodded, about to answer, when Lei Ren cut in.

“Of course it does! How could ordinary people know the hidden arts of the Five-Ridges Temple? A mouse that eats tribute is a great blessing the heavens have given us!”

Lei Ren’s words were abrupt and puzzling; I suspected that no one except me and Zhao Haikun could really understand him.

But when we waited with our eyes wide open for him to explain, it was not Lei Ren who spoke next. It was Zhao Shuihe, the young mistress of the Zhao household.

She gave a soft laugh. “I know you don’t understand, but that’s all right. Think about it: what things are offered on altars? And to whom are offerings meant to be eaten?”

In one stroke, her remark awakened most of us, and I realized she was also one who knew many of these hidden rules.

Offerings, by name and custom, are for spirits to eat. During ritual mourning, only souls are supposed to eat them.

By superstition, that mouse feeding on my squad leader’s offering was no ordinary mouse. It was a mouse inhabited by his spirit.

Whether that omen was good or ill, no one could say.

I looked back at Lei Ren, who was standing proudly behind me, and asked respectfully, “Master Lei, you can perform the Five-Sons Carrying the Mountain rite, can you?”

The old man nodded and smiled with quiet pride.

Seeing his face, I felt stirred—partly because of his skill, and partly because of my own good fortune. I understood that the strange death of my old squad leader might be understood, even in part, through this mouse that had eaten his tribute.

Though such thought was superstitious, what choice did we have? His death was so unclear.

At that moment, Zhao Hong and Little A-si almost at once asked, what exactly was this Five-Sons Carrying the Mountain, and why was this such a rare opportunity?

Lei Ren did not answer immediately. He waited until the mouse had eaten and slowly moved down from the offering platform, then he gave a faint smile and explained the secret of this rite as practiced in Five-Ridges Temple.

The cuisine style associated with Five-Ridges Temple is among the strongest in regional character in China. Its origins are far from the ancient Zhou rites, yet its spread has been astonishingly rapid.

In its swift growth, it absorbed and borrowed from many outside systems, forming a culture rooted in Lingnan traditions and infused with Southeast Asian flavors, as well as Taoist and Buddhist dietary elements.

Of course, its hidden customs are very different from those of the Temple of the Sage.

Lei Ren told us that in some Hakka Han settlements in Guangxi, some people prepare a special rice gruel for divination among the dead. After being shaped, it resembles a small three-hill mound, so it is called Three-Mountain Stew. Legend says it can summon back a trace of a resentful spirit of one newly dead, and one can then ask questions and secure vows.

Such a method is treacherous and must not be used carelessly.

Only those who died by violent wrongful death are fit for this kind of divination, and the questions must concern only the deceased: what wishes remained unfinished, what grievances were unresolved, what debts were left unpaid.

A sign of such a death is this: during mourning, a creature like a mouse is seen eating the dead person’s offerings.

To believers, that is a sign from heaven.

Once those questions are brought out, the family may ease the spirit’s lingering resentment; the vengeful ghost will no longer cling to its loved ones. If fortune is kind, even luck may turn afterward.

In plain words, it is a kind of spirit-calling technique.

I had some understanding of this, but not the exact method of questioning, because these were the arts of Five-Ridges Temple.

Still, from Lei Ren’s sure manner, he did not seem to be lying.

I had also heard from my old squad leader that this Five-Sons Carrying the Mountain had scarcely been practiced since the founding of the nation. The general political climate had much to do with it, but there was a deeper cause.

After the founding, ecological conditions worsened in China, and certain animals and plants became scarce. One essential main ingredient needed for the rite became hard to find.

That was the true reason this “food-incantation spirit-calling” practice disappeared.

I had not expected that this rite, lost for decades in Five-Ridges Temple, was still known by Lei Ren, and from what he implied, that he could still prepare the required Three-Mountain Stew.

There is always someone better than oneself.

Hearing him, everyone present grew excited, and Xian Hongye, who had studied such matters, leaned forward most of all and asked, “Why can it only be used on the violently wronged dead?”

Lei Ren chuckled gently, still kindly. “Listen: after death, reincarnation has an appointed hour. If you summon spirits recklessly, wouldn’t you disrupt that timing? Many things, you can only understand when you see them yourself. But still…”

He suddenly turned sharply toward Zhao Haikun, whose face was dark.

I knew this old fox was about to state his conditions.

Then he stepped quietly before Zhao Haikun and spoke to the coffin:

“Brother Haikun, you saw it too! That mouse was clearly Ah Peng’s spirit. Ah Peng died under unclear circumstances. As his elder brother, do you not want to know why he returned? Do you not want to ask what wish he still has unsaid?”

Lei Ren stroked his blood-smeared white beard and sighed, “Ah, rather than scattering Ah Peng’s soul apart with chicken blood, better let him speak his wish first and pass into rebirth in peace. Amitabha Buddha…”

His words had a tinge of manipulation, yet I could see each one struck Zhao Haikun deeply.

After all, the dead man was his own younger brother, and who would not want the dead to find rest?

And my squad leader’s death was far too strange. No one knew what had happened before it. Why did he keep going repeatedly to the Zhao ancestral graves? What was meant by the anonymous letters he had received?

In any case, Zhao Haikun wanted the truth just as I did.

Lei Ren’s words finally moved him.

After clearing his throat, Zhao Haikun confirmed, “You truly can do this Five-Sons Carrying the Mountain? Can you help my second brother fulfill his wish?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Lei Ren nodded. “If my ‘food-incantation’ fails, I will myself accompany Ah Peng in burial.”

Hearing this, Zhao Haikun gave a cold, faint smile. “You didn’t come out of kindness alone, did you? Tell me if you have any conditions.”

His words did not surprise me.

A man like Lei Ren, making his living in such shadowed rites, must be seeking some gain from the Zhao family, otherwise he would not have gone to all this trouble—having Zhao Shuihe broker him, having me argue in his favor. It exhausted me just to watch.

As expected, right after Zhao Haikun spoke, Lei Ren laughed abruptly—an awkward laugh, as if he were revealing a private agitation.

Finally he said, “I… I only came to see the relic Ah Peng left behind.”

Had he traveled all that way for nothing but the relic?