owlsbooks Chapter 30 Mountain Temple Storytelling
Chapter 30 Mountain Temple Storytelling
The crowd was irresistibly drawn to the man drinking yellow wine. Some touched their faces, others scratched their heads, and the man with the hairless monkey-like expression couldn't contain himself any longer and said anxiously, "Tell us, tell us, what did you see? We're so impatient!"
"There are quite a few things hidden in that palace. The emperor is old and nearing sixty, and his mind is far from his beautiful wife. His harem is in such a chaotic state that it is truly a scourge on the court."
"Didn't the emperor notice?"
The man with yellow wine grinned and said, "That old emperor was no human either. He was obsessed with the daydream of immortality, using honey dolls from ancient books to cut off flesh to make elixirs. And this was just a common and easy-to-find medicinal ingredient."
Like a foot-long cordyceps, a five-foot-long loach, the bones of ancient ancestors, and the placenta of concubines in the harem, he threw them all into the alchemy furnace in his study, which he had converted into an alchemy room, to refine the elixir and wait for the pungent aroma of the elixir.
We saw it clearly from the sidelines, and we never imagined that the bustling streets and alleys outside would be so filthy inside the palace.
We didn't want to leave; there was plenty of food and drink there. But then the old emperor fell ill and invited monks and Taoist priests from outside, saying that a great master had entered the palace and that he should host a banquet.
The emperor complied and chose a palace. The guests in the front hall drank and chatted happily, while the banquet in the back hall was deserted. Only incense was being burned at each table. The food on the tables was even more abundant than that at the front table, with all sorts of delicacies. How could a nobody like me have ever seen such delicacies? I could only recognize the fish, turtles, chickens, and ducks on the table, and I didn't recognize anything else.
The banquet was extremely elaborate, even just in terms of the plating. Unfortunately, I've never seen anything like it before, so I couldn't really explain it. I only knew that the food and wine on the table were delicious. Before I knew it, I was so full of food that I just lay on the table and didn't want to move at all.
While we were still quite tipsy from eating, the group of monks and Taoist priests, chanting scriptures and ringing bells, led over a series of old yellow oxen and placed us on their backs. They danced and scattered flowers along the way, using ornate banners to shade us from the sun, and carried us to the riverbank we had come from, placing us on a raft piled high with flowers. The raft drifted away downstream until we awoke to find several of us fast asleep in the thick fog.
The hairless, monkey-like man took a deep breath and said, "Brother, have you stumbled upon a ghost town?"
The man drinking yellow wine shook his head. But the round-faced, closely-toothed man said with great certainty, "This ghost town is a bit absurd, but at least there aren't any ghosts that harm people."
Song Quyou was amazed by the magic in the story, but still shook his head slightly and tore at the rice cake in his hand, not knowing whether the rice cake was too hot or something else.
The man, who looked like a hairless monkey, took a swig of wine, smacked his lips, and said, "Brother, your story is so wonderful, we can't tell it wrong. But our story isn't anything magical; it's just an extremely absurd custom."
"Our family can't be called rich, but we're definitely well-off. My parents treat me like a precious gem, afraid I'll melt in their mouths or break in their hands. They don't ask for us to be extremely wealthy; they just want us to inherit a few mountains from the family."
But I'm not one to stay put. I have mountains at home, but I don't want mountains. I want to go and see the harsh, cold plains to the north.
That year, I was rebellious. I stole my father's wine gourd, filled it with his treasured wine, pocketed a few taels of silver, and hurriedly headed north.
Heading north, we crossed several mountains and a muddy river. There lay a landscape we'd never seen before: a vast, desolate expanse that made us feel incredibly small. The further we walked, the colder and more desolate it became. I don't know how long we walked, but I remember the snow falling from the sky, heavier than silver ingots, a white blanket covering everything. It was eerie, as if the heavens and earth were cruelly tearing us apart.
By then, we had run out of dry rations, and all that was left was the wine in the gourd at our waist. We weren't afraid of the cold, but we were afraid of being hungry. There was everything around us, which put us in a difficult situation. Fortunately, heaven took pity on us and, when we were at our wits' end, I saw a cluster of colorful, mushroom-shaped houses with smoke rising from them and the aroma of meat.
We stumbled through the waist-deep snow towards the houses.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear that the colorful houses were not mushrooms at all, but rather tents made of whole birch logs driven into the frozen ground, covered with a thick layer of felt, dyed in various colors by some unknown dye.
We went in, paid the money, and ate a whole lamb because we were so hungry. The meat was so tender it melted in our mouths, the bones crumbled with a chew, and our mouths were full of milky flavor.
The family was very hospitable. Seeing that we could eat a lot, they brought us a pot of piping hot milk tea, which was salty, fragrant, and rich. After drinking it, I felt completely revitalized.
After we had eaten and drunk our fill, we looked around. The people there all had squinty eyes, and their faces were similar to mine, somewhat thin and pointed. Their skin was wrinkled, dark, and greasy, and they all wore whole sheepskins. Every household had two large flatbreads placed in their houses.
I don't know why, but they all call those two big flatbreads "Father Wang" and "Mother Wang," and whenever they eat beef or mutton, they always offer it to those two big flatbreads first.
The family we're temporarily staying with has two elderly parents and three children. They have a ridiculous custom at night: they believe that the sex of a child is predetermined.
The man chuckled, took a sip of his drink, and grinned, saying:
"They wanted to invite us to join them, but of course we refused. We know what propriety, righteousness, integrity, and a sense of shame are, and we didn't want to experience such an absurd thing."
The snowstorm outside was fierce, and we were trapped in that family's house. Coincidentally, an elderly person in their family passed away. We thought that since the elderly person was gone, we should at least pay our respects to them, no matter what. We went out of the tent, thinking of finding some tools to help the elderly person dig a deeper pit, since it was freezing cold and the soil was hard to dig.
We went out for a walk but couldn't find any digging tools, so we thought we'd go back to the tent and ask the host family. But to our surprise, the family was sharing food, which really scared us. We rushed south overnight and dared not go north again.
On the way back, we met some people from our country. We went up to talk to them, and they turned out they were looking for that tribe with absurd customs. According to them, the people were from the far north, and we forgot what they were called, but their customs were extremely unique.
All I remember is that they said that the tribe lived in a harsh and cold place. Because the frozen soil was difficult to dig and food was scarce, their funerals were very special. To show their care for their parents, the children would often bury their elderly parents in a place called "Fuzhong".
As for what they wanted to do with those people, they looked flustered and remained silent.
This reminds me of those people in the far north, who worship two large flatbreads as their "King Father and King Mother"—or perhaps they should be called "Dead Father and Dead Mother" instead.
The round-headed, closely-toothed man spoke up: "The people of this far north are truly unique. Even if those storytellers racked their brains, they couldn't come up with such bizarre customs."