The Deity of Joy

Chapter 34: The Deity of Joy

Just as Li Huowang felt he was about to lose consciousness, he reached into his waistband and pulled. The instant the ear-splitting ring of the bell sounded, that horrible sensation receded rapidly.

Crash!

The back of Li Huowang’s head slammed hard against the ground, leaving his brain ringing. Ignoring the pain in his skull, he gritted his teeth and kept shaking the copper bell with all his might. That thing had almost gotten him.

The edges of the Eight Immortals table, the bamboo poles holding up the canopy, the rims of the Hu family’s ancestral tablets—all the lines in the room began to twist, rapidly coalescing into grotesque agglomerations. As his splitting head throbbed, Li Huowang pointed a finger. The Wandering Lord lunged toward the retreating fake Lü Zhuangyuan.

Seeing its opponent had backup, the thing tried to flee. But it was already too late. The Wandering Lord was upon it. Yet it didn’t go for Lü Zhuangyuan’s body. Instead, it dove straight into the black shadow cast on the ground by the lantern.

As the lines of the Wandering Lord’s form cut like knives, shredding the small-footed woman’s shadow into fragments, the thing let out a screech like a wild beast, collapsing to the ground in a desperate struggle.

“So the thing’s true body was its shadow all along? No wonder cutting its actual body in half did nothing.” The thought flashed through Li Huowang’s mind.

Under the Wandering Lord’s attack, the false Lü Zhuangyuan deflated like a punctured air bladder. The human-shaped shadow on the ground spread rapidly, eventually pooling into a puddle of reeking, sticky black liquid. When Li Huowang thought it was over—

Shhhhht!

The Wandering Lord shot back, circling around him in a blur.

“What now? There’s another one?” Li Huowang’s hand, which had been about to slow its shaking of the bell, redoubled its effort.

Seeing that concealment was useless, the small-footed woman emerged from a writhing line in the distance, standing there with a dark, fixed stare.

“That wasn’t the one that turned into Lü Zhuangyuan. There are two of them.” Even as Li Huowang thought this, another small-footed woman split off from her, and they began to split further—more and more, smaller and smaller.

Not just two. Several small-footed women leaped out from the twisted lines all around, also starting to divide. Li Huowang pointed, and the Wandering Lord charged, attacking the small-footed women that were now only the size of a palm. But it couldn’t match their speed. These identical women, surrounding Li Huowang, splitting as they moved, opened their blood-red cherry mouths and began to writhe their bizarre bodies, singing in piercingly high, thin voices:

“The Deity of Joy is pleased, the Deity of Joy smiles, robes and courtesies gentle and kind.”

“The Deity of Joy leaps, the Deity of Joy stirs, red paper on the doors fresh with ink.”

“The Deity of Joy rages, the Deity of Joy grieves, fragrant skulls for lanterns bright as the sea.”

“The Deity of Joy hungers, the Deity of Joy starves, left hand holds the heart and liver, right hand holds the guts. Come out to the village and welcome the Deity of Joy~”

The instant they finished singing, their entire bodies exploded. A black substance splattered from within them, dyeing the entire writhing, twisting space into an absolute darkness.

He didn’t know what they were doing, but Li Huowang sensed something was deeply wrong. He stopped shaking the bell and prepared to retreat first. But the next second, his feet were nailed to the ground. A vague, faint, directionless pull lifted Li Huowang’s gaze straight up to the sky overhead.

There was nothing there but utter blackness. Yet Li Huowang sensed it—something immense was moving within that darkness.

“The Deity of Joy?”

The moment the thought came, Li Huowang saw outlines, both large and small, begin to emerge from the dark. “No. It sensed my thoughts! I have to get out of here right now.”

Li Huowang thought this, but his body did not obey. His body began to grow excited. His breathing quickened. The veins on his face bulged. He tore open his Daoist robe with both hands and raised his arms high, reaching out to welcome the thing in the darkness.

The black outlines grew clearer, more distorted. Li Huowang could already see it! The blood vessels in his pupils burst from the strain. Two trails of bloody tears slid slowly down from his eye sockets.

“I can’t look anymore! I absolutely cannot look anymore! Close my eyes, now!” He struggled with every ounce of his strength, but it was completely useless.

Li Huowang could already see the head of the Deity of Joy, if that chaotic, sticky mass could indeed be called a head. Just as it was about to fully emerge from the darkness, a very peculiar clattering sound suddenly rang out.

The thing in the darkness halted. It lurched backward, shrinking a great deal back into the pitch-black sky, as if something within the darkness was pulling it. Then, an extraordinarily loud rooster crow split the air. The darkness in the sky shattered like a mirror.

With the crack of bone, Li Huowang, his neck bent back, regained control of his body. He snapped his head down, propped himself up on his hands, and stared at the stone bricks on the ground, panting heavily.

“What did those small-footed women summon? What the hell just happened?” Endless, unanswerable questions exploded in his mind.

Leaning on the Eight Immortals table beside him, Li Huowang struggled to sit up. He looked up. The sky was empty, as if none of it had been real. The sky was growing light. The fifth watch was over. The Hu family would be coming to collect their ancestors soon.

The opera stage in the distance was still clanging. Lü Zhuangyuan and his troupe had truly performed the entire night. Even though they looked unsteady from the effect of the bell, their voices hoarse, they didn’t dare stop for a moment.

Looking at the black ancestral tablets all around, Li Huowang realized belatedly: that clattering sound just now seemed to have been these very tablets all striking the table at once.

Li Huowang stared at the Hu family ancestral tablets in shock. “Did… did they just help me?”

He thought about it more carefully, and the more he did, the more likely it seemed. He quickly straightened up, faced the half-immortal table holding the tablets, and performed a Qingfeng Temple Daoist salutation. “Thank you all for your assistance.”

The moment he finished the bow, the tablets began to tremble slightly, and the tremor grew louder and louder. Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter.

Watching this eerie sight, Li Huowang took a cautious half-step back, holding his Daoist bell at the ready. “What’s going on now? Did saying ‘thank you’ cause something bad? It’s almost dawn. Aren’t you going back? What are you waiting for?”

But just as Li Huowang thought this, whoosh, all the tablets on the Eight Immortals table in front of him fell backward as one. Then, a familiar, ethereal voice whispered by Li Huowang’s ear, making his entire body feel as if it had been plunged into an icy grave.

“Child…”