Chapter 8.2: The Deathday Rite

Li Zhuiyuan stepped into the house and saw Aunt Liu painting a paper figure. She smiled and waved him over.

“Little Yuan, want to come play?”

“No, Aunt Liu, I’ve got something to do right now.”

“All right, you handle your business first.” Aunt Liu smiled. She thought the boy’s serious demeanor was truly adorable.

Li Zhuiyuan carefully moved aside a paper house blocking the stairwell and headed down, where he found a rusted iron door.

There was a pair of cloth shoes on the ground in front of it. Li Zhuiyuan bent down and found a key inside one of them. He slid it into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. A wave of musty, stale air immediately rushed out.

It was pitch black inside. Li Zhuiyuan felt around the wall near the door until he found a string and gave it a pull.

“滴嗒.”

Nothing happened.

He tugged a couple more times.

“啪!”

The light didn’t come on. The string snapped.

With no choice, Li Zhuiyuan ran back upstairs and rummaged through a drawer in the cabinet by the door until he found a flashlight.

The back was open and the batteries were missing, but luckily, he found two big fat batteries in the drawer. He popped them in, twisted the cap shut, and tested it—the light flicked on.

He returned to the basement and shone the beam around. The space wasn’t very big—it hadn’t been dug out under the entire footprint of the first floor—but it was packed with stuff, all neatly arranged and categorized.

Clearly, his great-grandfather had put real effort into organizing it back then. But it also hadn’t been touched in years; the dust on everything was thick.

Li Zhuiyuan walked up to a shelf, his eyes immediately drawn to a peachwood sword. He picked it up and blew on it, sending dust flying.

“Cough... cough, cough…”

Once the coughing stopped, Li Zhuiyuan used the flashlight to examine the sword.

It was covered in strange carvings he couldn’t understand, reflective metal pieces, and some ancient seal script characters.

All in all, it had an archaic design and a lot of detail.

He was thoroughly absorbed in admiring it, until he shone the flashlight on the base of the hilt and read out loud:

“Shandong Linyi Furniture Factory.”

Li Zhuiyuan: “…”

He put the peachwood sword down and picked up a nearby coin sword instead.

This time, he was more careful. He checked the hilt first, then the sides, making sure there were no manufacturer labels before examining the blade.

“Kangxi Tongbao, Qianlong Tongbao, Jiaqing Tongbao…”

Though the coins weren’t terribly old, they seemed authentic.

But as he continued to inspect the sword under the flashlight, he noticed something odd—mixed in among the coins were objects of noticeably different size.

He tried to pry one out with his fingernail but couldn’t. So he searched other parts of the sword and soon found another one, identical in size.

This time, he saw it clearly…

It was a one-fen or five-fen coin!

The outside of the sword was made of old-style coins, but the inside was stuffed with modern coins—no ten-fen pieces, not even one.

Sure, they were still currency… so maybe not “fake,” but the mixture made him feel weird.

He put the coin sword back and kept exploring.

He found two large banners—or rather, “spirit flags” was the more accurate term given their long, narrow shape.

They took up a huge chunk of the table space. One was entirely black, the other purple.

The black one was embroidered with skulls and dragons—brimming with sinister energy.

The purple one had birds, flowers, and a golden dragon—radiating righteous authority.

Li Zhuiyuan tried to lift one but found it too heavy for one hand. He leaned closer, flashlight in hand, and kept searching.

He didn’t know what he was looking for—but he was sure something was there.

Sure enough, on the wooden handle of the black flag, he found a crooked line of ink-brushed characters: “Li’s Funeral Troupe.”

Not even traditional script—simplified.

Li Zhuiyuan remembered that when a funeral was held at the bearded man’s house, Little Oriole’s funeral troupe had brought loads of ritual tools. They counted them in bundles and tossed them all into the truck afterward.

Soon, he found writing on the purple flag too. This time, it was in traditional characters, and had an extra line:

“Xue’s Funeral Troupe—Take the Wrong One, Have a Kid Without an Anus.”

“Sigh.”

Li Zhuiyuan let out a long breath and rolled the flags back up.

The thrill and excitement he’d felt upon entering had faded. Now, a calm settled over him.

His great-grandfather hadn’t lied. He really had collected a whole bunch of… junk.

As a kid, his mother often brought him to her work sites. Back then, artifact protection wasn’t so strict—many relics weren’t even in glass cases, you could touch them up close.

So he had seen all kinds of ritual tools—Buddhist solemnity, Daoist antiquity, the mystery of Tibetan rites.

He’d seen so much that he’d even grown bored of it. But no matter what, those objects were far beyond comparison to what he saw now. At least… they didn’t have price tags.

That’s right—he found tags on the Daoist robes next. They even listed sizes.

One bright yellow robe had a sticker on the back that hadn’t been peeled off. It read: “For Production Use Only.”

Li Zhuiyuan also discovered three large baskets of talisman paper. He picked one up and examined it—it felt smooth, the strokes were indecipherable but clearly done in one fluid motion, very beautiful.

He was intrigued and began flipping through the rest. There were many types.

But then he noticed something off. When he laid two of the same type side-by-side, he couldn’t tell them apart—not even the slight cut at the bottom edge was different.

So… these were printed?

Li Zhuiyuan rubbed his eyes, which were starting to ache. He even suspected that his great-grandfather had stockpiled all this stuff in preparation to start a funeral troupe. With the chairs, bowls, and paper figures upstairs, it could’ve been a full funeral industry setup.

He stopped inspecting the items and moved to the back of the room, where a dozen or so boxes were stacked.

He remembered his great-grandfather saying these were left here by others for safekeeping. They were full of books.

“Hm?”

Li Zhuiyuan bent down and shone the flashlight on a box. The material looked nearly identical to a box in old Grandpa Zhou’s place—he was a collector in the family compound.

That time, Grandpa Zhou had been so excited over acquiring a box like this that he called all his old friends over to gloat. Li Zhuiyuan had been there too, sipping tea.

Now, in front of him were three such boxes.

The others were made of different materials and colors, but all were of fine quality.

A sense of anticipation stirred again. Books stored in boxes this exquisite surely couldn’t be from a regular publisher, right?

Besides, a state-run publisher back in the day would never dare print something like The Sutra of Golden Thread and Silken Spiral—considered feudal superstition.

There were traces of seal tape on the boxes, long torn off. They had locks once, but those were pried open.

Probably his great-grandfather’s doing. So, were these really left by someone else?

Even so, opening the lid took considerable effort. When he finally got it open and shone the light inside, Li Zhuiyuan gasped.

Books. Books. Books. Nothing but books!

And not printed. The covers clearly showed they were handwritten.

In school, every semester came with a new set of textbooks, but only the first read-through ever felt interesting.

Now, for the first time, he felt a kind of happiness—being surrounded by books.

He picked up several in a row and checked the covers. All were titled Records of River-Lake Anomalies, with numerous volumes.

This “river-lake” didn’t mean martial arts—it meant actual rivers and lakes.

Li Zhuiyuan clamped the flashlight in his armpit and opened Volume One. Inside were not only texts but also illustrations—including one of a man walking in water.

This book… actually described the Dead Sinker?

This wasn’t the right place to read. He closed it and spent a while searching the box, finally locating the full set.

Records of River-Lake Anomalies—a total of forty-two volumes.

It was a lot, but understandable. After all, it was handwritten in large brush script.

Li Zhuiyuan decided to finish this set first. It was probably a sort of encyclopedic guide to eerie phenomena in rivers and lakes—an entry-level read.

He didn’t open the other boxes. He wanted to save some of the anticipation.

Then began the book transport operation. It took him three trips to carry the full set of Records of River-Lake Anomalies to his room on the second floor.

He also locked the basement door again. This time, he kept the key on him instead of hiding it in the cloth shoe.

“Little Yuanhou,” came Li Sanjiang’s voice from outside. “Little Yuanhou, come out quick.”

Li Zhuiyuan opened the door and stepped out.

“Whoa… kid, did you just go rolling in the mud?”

“Great-Grandpa, I’ll go wash up and change now.”

“Hold on, check this out first, haha. Li Hou, set it here—we’ll sit side by side, grandson and grandpa.”

“You got it.”

Uncle Qin came up the stairs carrying a wicker chair.

A warmth bloomed in Li Zhuiyuan’s heart. Just yesterday, he’d told his great-grandfather he wanted a wicker chair—and today, here it was.

“Great-Grandpa, I also want a desk lamp.”

The lightbulbs in the room were bright enough for general use but made reading a bit of a strain. He’d seen kerosene lamps in the house, but there was no need to make things harder than they had to be.

“A desk lamp, eh? For reading?”

“Yeah.”

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