Volume Two: The Secret Burial in the Cliff Valley — Chapter 94: Delivery from Five Mountains Hall

“Please, I have money. I’ll pay you...” The little girl was crying herself hoarse, both hands raised, a few banknotes pinched between her fingers.

Seeing her like that, my heart almost softened on the spot. But I knew all too well that in these times, plenty of people who try to do a good deed and lend a hand end up being extorted for it instead. I took out my phone, snapped a photo of them first, and then tried to call an ambulance for them. But who could have guessed that there would be no signal at all.

Damn it to hell, I muttered, holding the phone up and looking around for reception.

But tonight was really cursed. I circled the intersection twice, and my phone was as dead as if it had fallen into a blind zone, not a trace of signal.

In the end, I decided I would just use the electric tricycle to take them to the hospital first.

Just then, I suddenly felt a fierce, chilling gust rise behind me, as though something heavy had struck my back, only to be bounced away by my own body.

Startled, I spun around abruptly, only to find that the woman’s eyes were fixed on me. The moment she saw me looking at her, she actually got up from the ground and, with the little girl supporting her, started crossing the street.

“Hell,” I cursed under my breath, and it all clicked. This really was a scam. Good thing I’d kept my wits about me, or I would have been cheated out of my skin today.

This little episode left me thoroughly annoyed. I climbed back onto the electric tricycle with a sullen huff and kept driving toward Evergreen Street.

Evergreen Street was lined with old, established shops, and I knew it had a rule: once night fell, the storefronts closed. But someone was always inside the shops around the clock. If you wanted to buy something, you had to knock.

I rode the tricycle to the entrance of the street and stopped. Looking in from the mouth of the lane, everything beyond was pitch-black, yet in front of every shop hung a white paper lantern. The bulbs inside cast a dim, yellowish glow, and at first glance they looked almost like ghost fire.

A chill ran over my skin. Even by day this place felt deserted; let alone in the middle of the night. This job really was no easy task.

After a moment’s thought, I drove the tricycle into Evergreen Street. Thankfully, the headlight was pretty bright and lit up a long stretch of road ahead.

Every shop had a number plate above the door, and I found my way along one by one until I reached shop number eighteen without any trouble.

I looked up. The shop sign was half-lit, half-swallowed by the white lantern’s wavering glow. On it were written the words Five Mountains Hall. That had to be the shop’s name. It sounded like an antique store.

I got off the tricycle and was about to knock, but just as I lifted my hand, my phone suddenly rang.

The street had been quiet, and that sudden ring nearly made my heart leap into my throat. I hurriedly pulled out the phone and saw that it was Third Uncle calling.

I answered, and his anxious voice came through at once. “Yangzi, what’s going on? I figured you should have been back by now. Did something happen?”

“It’s nothing, Third Uncle. I ran into a bit of trouble at the intersection just now, but I’ve already found the address. I’ll head back after I deliver this.” I quickly explained. If I hadn’t been delayed by what happened at the crossroads, I really should have been back already.

To my surprise, Third Uncle paused over the phone, then immediately asked, “Hold on. What did you say? The intersection? What exactly happened?”

“Nothing much. I ran into a little girl and her mother. Her mother was hit by a car, and I was going to call for emergency help. But then they left on their own. Probably trying to pull a scam, I guess.”

“Hell!” Third Uncle yelled. “Don’t tell me you turned around at the intersection...”

“I... I did turn around. The little girl was crying pretty miserably, and I...” I tried to explain.

“Yangzi, listen to me. What are you doing right now?” Third Uncle’s reaction on the other end of the line was completely beyond my expectations. He was unusually agitated, his voice growing even more hoarse, threaded with a tremor.

I was a little dumbfounded too, and for a moment I didn’t know what to say. I only told him that I was still at the door of shop number eighteen and hadn’t finished the delivery yet.

Third Uncle kept shouting, “Stop delivering it, damn it. Hurry and—”

He didn’t finish the sentence before the line went dead with a burst of static. I looked at the phone and found that, once again, there was no signal.

Standing at the door, I wondered whether I should head back to the company first and ask Third Uncle what the hell was going on. And just then, the door of Five Mountains Hall gave a creak and opened.

Someone squeezed out through the crack.

I say squeezed because the door had only opened a narrow slit, and yet that person had somehow wriggled through it. That was enough to show just how thin they were.

The person looked to be in his forties, tall and spare, nothing but skin stretched over bone, like a stripped bamboo pole. He looked almost malnourished.

“Are you here to buy something?” he asked, sizing me up.

His voice was weak and spent, too.

I quickly answered, “Oh, no. I’m here to make a delivery.”

“A delivery?”

“Yes. Li Dongbin sent me.”

The man looked me over from head to toe and nodded. “Give it here.”

I hurriedly turned around, lifted the square parcel out of the cargo box, and handed it to him.

He took it, nodded at me, and squeezed back into the shop. With a thud, the door shut again.

I shook my head. What in the world was going on tonight? If it wasn’t some bizarre encounter, then it was some bizarre person. When I got back tonight, I was going to lay it all out for Third Uncle: from now on, he’d better stop sending me on these damned jobs. Even if he asked, I still wouldn’t do them.

I climbed back onto the electric bike and was just about to head home when a thought suddenly flashed through my mind. I seemed to have forgotten something.

Before I left, Third Uncle had repeatedly warned me that after making the delivery, I absolutely must not forget to have the other side sign for receipt. How could I have forgotten something so important?

I had already broken his warning by turning back at the intersection, and he had cursed me out for that. If I failed to get a signature on the delivery, there was no way he’d let me off either.

Thinking of this, I hurried back to the door and knocked again, wanting to get that bamboo-slim man to sign for it.

I didn’t expect that when I pushed harder, the door wasn’t locked at all. I accidentally shoved it open.

As soon as the door opened, a face suddenly appeared right in front of me. It was deathly pale, with not a trace of color in it. But the mouth was a vivid, bloody red, and a pair of dead fish eyes were staring straight at me.

I shuddered and quickly stepped back.

Right before my eyes, the person in front of me toppled backward, light as paper.

Only after I saw clearly what it was did I let out a long breath. Damn it, a perfectly normal shop, and they’d put a paper effigy at the door? It nearly scared the life out of me.

Pressing a hand to my pounding chest, I steadied myself and looked through the crack in the door again.

Inside the shop, a table stood in the center, one of those old eight immortals tables. Two people were seated across from each other, and one of them was the same bamboo-slim man who had just come out to collect the parcel.

Both of them were doing the exact same thing now: they were staring fixedly at the middle of the table, their eyes thick with greed.

I followed their gaze and saw that this eight immortals table was different from the ordinary kind. The center of the tabletop was actually hollow. And the wooden crate I had just delivered happened to fit perfectly into that empty space.

The end.