(Sakhyulations translations)

He looked as though he were joking, but there was an inexplicable all-knowing serenity in his face. Although he had the voice of a young man, his voice was slightly deeper than that of a boy of his age, and it was very pleasant to listen to. Xie Lian sat upright in the bull cart, thinking for a moment, and said, “Blood Rain Tan Hua sounds quite impressive. Could you tell me how that name came to be, my friend?”

To show his respect, Xie Lian didn’t add a “young” to his address of “my friend”. The youngster languidly hooked his elbow on his knee, fiddled with his sleeve, and said rather indifferently, “Not really impressive. He just put an end to a nest of demons on a mountain and caused a storm of blood rain. [When he was walking], he saw a flower beaten up by the bloody rain, and opened an umbrella to protect it for a little bit.”

Xie Lian tried to imagine such an act of softness amidst such a scene of carnage. He also recalled the stories of this red-clad demon burning down the worship of thirty-three heavenly officials and asked with a smile, “Does this Hua Cheng like to go around picking fights?”

The youngster answered, “Not everywhere. It depends on his mood.”

Xie Lian asked, “What was he like when he was alive?”

“Probably nobody good.”

“What did he look like?”

At this, the youngster lifted his eyes to look at him, cocking his head. He stood up, came to Xie Lian’s side and sat down, their chests side by side. He asked in return, “What do you think he looked like?”

Upon a closer look, he felt that this young man was even more astonishingly handsome. Moreover, he had this deadly look about him too, like an unsheathed sword, quite dazzling to the eyes, though it also made one unable to look at him too closely for too long. Holding his eyes for only a moment, Xie Lian felt a little unnerved. Moving his head slightly to the side, he said, “Considering he’s a great demon prince, he probably has too many forms to count.”

Seeing his head turn, the youngster raised his eyebrow. “Mm. But he sometimes he’d use his true colours. We’re talking about his original body.”

He didn’t know whether or not it was his imagination, but Xie Lian felt as though the distance between their two bodies had grown a little larger. He turned his head back. “Then I think, perhaps, his original body would probably be similar to that of a young man, like you.”

Hearing this, the youngster lifted the corner of his mouth. “Why?”

Xie Lian said, “No why. This is a casual conversation, I had a casual thought.”

The youngster let out a laugh. “Maybe not? However, he is blind in one eye.” He pointed to his own right eye, and said, “This one.”

This wasn’t too much of a surprise. Xie Lian had heard about this before. In some rumours, Hua Cheng had a black eyepatch that covered up the eye he’d lost. “Do you know how he lost it?”

“Mm. A  lot of people want to know the answer to this question.”

Most people wanted to know how he’d lost his eye because they wanted to know about his weakness. Xie Lian simply just wanted to know. Before he could say anything in reply, the youngster said, “He dug it out himself.”

Xie Lian blinked. “Why?”

“In a crazy fit.”

To go so crazy as to dig out his own eye… Xie Lian felt even more curious about this Blood Rain Tan Hua. He thought it couldn’t be that simple. But since he’d said it like that, Xie Lian probably couldn’t pry out any more details. So he continued to ask, “This Hua Cheng, does he have any weaknesses?”

Xie Lian didn’t really expect any answer to his question, and had only asked rather casually. If the weakness of Hua Cheng could be so easily known by the layman, then he wasn’t Hua Cheng at all. Who would have known, however, that the youngster would answer without hesitation, “The ashes of his dead body.”

If one could possess the ashes of a demon’s former human body, then one could control that demon. If the demon refused to listen to its master, then the demon would perish forever, its soul scattering into smithereens. This was common knowledge. However, there didn’t seem to be any meaning applying this knowledge onto such a demon as Hua Cheng. Xie Lian said lightly, “Truly? It seems to me that we should be more afraid no one would ever be able to possess the ashes of Hua Cheng. I don’t think that really counts as a weakness for him.”

The youngster replied, “You never know. In some situations, a demon would give away his own ashes.”

Xie Lian said,” Like, how he’d bet he’d lose his own ashes to those thirty three heavenly officials?”

The youngster scoffed. “How?”

Though he hadn’t said anything more than that one word, Xie Lian could hear what he wasn’t saying: how could Hua Cheng have possibly lost? He continued, “In the demon world, there is a custom. When a demon has chosen somebody, they would entrust their own ashes to that person’s possession.”

[translator’s note: this “chosen somebody” is a “life partner”, I assume, and I think in this case he also meant “a human”]

For a demon, that was equivalent to giving someone else their life. There was something strangely and poignantly romantic about it. Xie Lian felt captivated. “So there are customs of such extremes in the demon world.”

The youngster replied, “Yes. But there aren’t many that have the courage to do it.”

Xie Lian thought that was to be expected. In this world, not only were there many demons that cheated humans, there were also many humans that cheated demons, and so there were many tales of betrayal. He said, “If such infatuations did exist between the two, it would definitely end in heartbreak.”

The youngster laughed. “What’s there to be afraid of? If it were me, sending out my ashes, what do I care if [they threw it into the wind or played with the dust]?”

Xie Lian smiled, and then suddenly realized that, though they’ve talked for so long, they still didn’t know each other’s names. He asked, “My friend, how should I address you?”

The youngster lifted a hand against his brow to block the red of the setting sun, squinting, as though he didn’t quite like sunlight. He said, “Me? At home I’m third in rank, so everyone just calls me San Lang.” [Note: it means “third in rank/status”]

Since he didn’t offer his name, Xie Lian didn’t pry. Xie Lian replied, “My surname is Xie, given name is just Lian. Are you also headed in the direction of Pu Ji Village?”

San Lang leaned back on the rice straws, head pillowed on his hands, legs crossed. “I don’t know. I’m wandering.”

Hearing an unspoken story in those words, Xie Lian asked, “What’s the matter?”

San Lang took a deep breath and let it out, and said, after a long time, “Family’s fighting, so I got kicked out. I didn’t really know where to go. And today I was so hungry I was about to faint, so I just randomly found a place to lie down.”

This youngster wore clothes that looked casual at first, but the quality was actually quite excellent, and adding that to the impressive manner with which he talked and how knowledgeable he was, Xie Lian recalled again his first impression of him – a young master from a noble family, running away from home to play. A young master who had probably lived like a prince his whole life, trying to find his way around in the common world – he’d probably experienced a lot of hardships he never had before. Xie Lian could empathize with that. Hearing that he was hungry, Xie Lian rummaged around his bag and found a mantou. He was glad that it wasn’t hardened yet. He said to San Lang, “Do you want to eat this?” The youngster nodded, and Xie Lian gave it to him.

[note: in Chinese, San Lang speaks in a somewhat high class, educated language style that doesn’t exist in English]

San Lang looked at him, and asked, “There’s no more for youself?”

Xie Lian said, “I’m all right. I’m not really hungry.”

San Lang returned the mantou to him. “I’m all right too then.”

Seeing this, Xie Lian took back the mantou and broke it in half, giving one half to him. “Then you’ll have half, and I’ll have half.”

Only after this did the youngster take the mantou, and they sat and ate it together. Seeing him sitting beside him, biting into the mantou and looking for an inexplicable moment like an obedient child, Xie Lian somehow felt like he was depriving him of something.

The cart clunkered slowly through the up and downs of the mountain, the sun slowly setting in the west, and the two of them sat and chatted side by side in the cart. The more they talked, the more Xie Lian felt that this youngster was truly a fascinating character. Despite his apparent youth, there was something like a natural disdain to the way he spoke and behaved, and he really seemed to know about everything, like an old soul in a young body. Sometimes, however, the young man would let slip a hint of a preference or phrase that revealed his youth. Xie Lian told him that he was the master of the Pu Ji Temple, and the boy asked, “Pu Ji Temple? Sounds like a lot of water chestnuts. I like them. Who does the temple worship?”

Not this question again. Xie Lian answered in a rather quiet voice, “The Crown Prince of Xian Le. You probably don’t know about him.”

The young man laughed quietly, and was about to say something when suddenly, the cart shook and swayed.

The two of the swayed along with the cart, and Xie Lian was worried the youngster would fall off. He reached out to grab him. However, just as he touched San Lang, the youngster pushed his hand away as though he’d been burned by it.

Though his expression didn’t change much, Xie Lian realized that perhaps the young man actually despised him? But they seemed to have gotten along fine this whole trip. He didn’t have time to mull over this, however. He stood up and asked, “What’s going on?”

The old master of the cart said, “I don’t know what’s going on either! Old Huang ah [note: name of the cow], why aren’t you moving? Move!”

At this point in time, the sun had set, twilight had fallen, and the cart was in the middle of a dark forest. The old cow stayed in its place, stubbornly refusing to move no matter how much its master tried. It just kept mooing, its tail skipping up and down like was a frantic jump rope, and Xie Lian felt something was not right. Just as he wanted to jump down from the cart, the old master suddenly yelled at something in front of him.

Only to see that, in front of them, there was a horde of emerald balls of fire floating about everywhere. They were carried by a band of white-clad people that were slowly making their way towards them.

Seeing this, Xie Lian suddenly called out, “Protection!”

Like a cursed snake flying out from his wrist, his white bandage made a circle in the air surrounding the cart, protecting the three people and the one cow inside its radius. Xie Lian looked back and asked, “What day is it today?”

Before the old man could speak, the young man answered behind him, “It’s the Ghost Festival.”

Mid way through the seventh month of every year, the door to the demon world opens. He’d left without checking what day it was, and it just so happened to be the Ghost Festival!

Xie Lian said in a deep voice, “Don’t wander around. We’re crossing paths with evil today. If we walk on the wrong road, we’ll never be able to return.”

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