Exclusively published in an authorized edition
“Pfft—”
The bright flame suddenly went out in the pitch-black room with a terrifying hiss, plunging the entire room into darkness.
Lu Yao pressed her back tightly against the wall, her trembling body shaking with fear. Her eyes widened as she tried to make out how quickly the figure across from her was approaching.
Perhaps her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness. A hunched figure holding a bowl slowly advanced toward her, scaring her so badly that her heart nearly leaped out of her throat.
At the critical moment, the terrifying darkness before Lu Yao’s eyes vanished. Instead, several bright beams of light appeared, forming a table.
The topmost column was marked with words she knew all too well—
Today’s Intelligence
Below it, one piece of information after another scrolled into view.
[1. The cooperative has received a shipment of defective cloth that doesn’t require ration coupons.]
[2. Granny Zhang has been banging things around and cursing all morning, furious that someone—some starving glutton, apparently—stole the eggs her hen had just laid.]
[3. Old Man Liu saw someone running half-dressed through the alley in front of his house early this morning.]
[4. Zhang Changping, Lu Qiangjun, and their friends have arranged to go collect bits of coal beside the railway today.]
[5. Wang Erma plans to take a large shipment of goods into the black market. To do so, he has no choice but to dig up the gold and silver he buried beneath the latrine in Zaoshu Alley three years ago.]
…
At that very moment, Lu Yao’s mind was filled with one thought: this was her chance to verify whether the strange “ghost thing” that had suddenly appeared before her was real.
Just this once. If it proved false, she would… she would listen to her mother.
Before anyone could react, Lu Yao sprang to the door, flung it open, and vanished into the courtyard with several nimble leaps like a cat.
Only her deliberately lowered voice remained behind.
“Mom, I don’t need to drink it. I’m going home to find Grandma and Grandpa.”
The open door illuminated the dim room, revealing the guilt and embarrassment covering Zhang Guizhi’s face. She didn’t know how to explain her child’s rudeness.
Granny Ma, who was standing nearby with the bowl in her hands, looked even more forbidding. With her distinctive eye that lacked an iris, her sharp glare added an extra chill to the bright morning.
Zhang Guizhi immediately apologized. “Granny Ma, I’m so sorry. My child really doesn’t know any manners. I prepared this gift especially for you. Please, you must accept it.”
As she spoke, she produced a small packet of brown sugar and six eggs and desperately tried to press them into Granny Ma’s hands.
Her daughter might not understand, but Zhang Guizhi couldn’t pretend not to see.
This was the spirit medium she had finally managed to find after asking around. Granny Ma was said to possess extraordinary powers and to be highly skilled at dealing with demons and ghosts.
Sure enough, when Granny Ma saw the gift, the tension between her brows eased slightly, and her attitude softened as well.
“Put it down. The water in this bowl contains a talisman I spent forty-nine days drawing. Once you take it home, you must make the child drink it within half an hour. Otherwise, it won’t work.”
“All right, all right!” Zhang Guizhi hurriedly agreed, panic rising in her heart.
She eagerly took the bowl from Granny Ma and rushed toward the door, hoping to catch up with her daughter.
Just as she stepped over the threshold, Granny Ma’s voice suddenly sounded behind her.
“Remember to return my bowl.”
The single sentence nearly made Zhang Guizhi stumble and fall.
For some reason, the lofty spirit medium who had seemed so mysterious moments ago suddenly appeared to have tumbled back down to earth. The urgency with which Zhang Guizhi had wanted her daughter to drink the potion immediately subsided.
She glanced at the gray-black liquid formed when the ashes of the talisman dissolved in the water, then looked back at Granny Ma, whose mysterious aura had completely vanished. With a stiff nod, she said, “I’ll return it.”
Meanwhile, Lu Yao was running down the country road as if her life depended on it. She passed quite a few villagers who had risen early to go to work.
She nodded to each of them as a greeting and hurried toward her family’s home.
Lu Yao’s family was well-known throughout the village, so plenty of people recognized her at a glance.
When the villagers saw her running back from somewhere so early in the morning, they praised her one after another.
“Kids from the city really have energy. They eat government-supplied grain, so of course they’re well fed.”
“When Lu Yao was little, she was a real expert at climbing trees to collect birds’ eggs and diving into the river to catch fish. Looks like she’s grown even quicker on her feet.”
There were also people who disliked her and hurled filthy insults at her.
“A girl shouldn’t be coming home after dawn without a good reason. Who knows where she’s been fooling around all night? City people, my foot! Everyone knows there’s still mud on that whole family’s shoes.”
The moment those words were spoken, the entire group gathered at the crossroads fell silent.
Soon, voices of reprimand rang out.
“Stinky Egg’s Grandma, how can you say something so vile?”
“Lu Yao went out with her mother this morning. I saw them when I got up to use the toilet.”
“That’s right. I heard from her grandparents that Lu Yao has the best grades in her class—even better than the city kids. She’s a good, decent girl!”
…
With clear-sighted villagers speaking up for Lu Yao, and Zhang Guizhi soon appearing among the crowd, everyone realized that the accusation had been nothing but a rumor. Before long, they put the matter out of their minds.
Still, some people were curious about why the mother and daughter had left before dawn.
Zhang Guizhi could only pull out the wild greens filling her bulging bag and show them off. “I’m heading home now, aren’t I? Wild greens are at their freshest in the morning, so I thought I’d pick some for us to eat while they’re fresh.”
Most people glanced at the greens and quickly looked away.
It was early spring, and every household could go up the mountain to gather wild greens. No one cared much about this small amount picked by Zhang Guizhi.
However, a sharp-eyed person noticed that there wasn’t a single drop of morning dew on the greens in the bag. They realized that the mother and daughter must have gone somewhere they couldn’t openly talk about.
Once everyone’s curiosity had been satisfied, Zhang Guizhi quickly slipped away from the crowd and continued home.
By then, Lu Yao had already returned. Faced with her grandparents’ anxious questions, she said with perfect seriousness, “It’s fine now. I can’t see anything anymore.”
At those words, Grandma Lu finally allowed the heart that had been hanging in suspense to settle back into her chest.
“That’s good, that’s good. You’re still young, and your soul is light, so you’re more likely to encounter all sorts of strange things. Granny Ma is famous throughout the villages for ten li in every direction. It seems that although the authorities have banned feudal superstition in recent years, she hasn’t completely forgotten her old trade.”
Lu Yao muttered a few perfunctory replies. It had nothing to do with Granny Ma’s miraculous skills. Lu Yao herself had found the breakthrough.
Besides, she hadn’t encountered some random supernatural thing.
She had encountered table tennis.
News had arrived that Chinese players had won the World Table Tennis Championships for the third time that month, once again igniting the public’s enthusiasm for the sport. Lu Yao was no exception.
What was more, she was an excellent table-tennis player. In Zaoshu Alley, she had never met an equal among the younger generation.
And now, in order to show off Zaoshu Alley’s strength, her side had taken on the residents of the railway bureau compound next door.
They were all children of railway bureau employees, young and full of pride. Once the challenge was issued, people from both sides came out in force.
As the terror of Zaoshu Alley, how could Lu Yao possibly cower?
She directly challenged Ma Yuanchao, the strongest player from the railway bureau compound.
The two of them went back and forth, neither willing to give an inch. With the cheers of the boys around them, their match was no less intense than anything seen at the world championships.
After a fierce exchange, the score reached 3–3.
There was only one game left. Lu Yao naturally gave it her all, and Ma Yuanchao was thinking the same way.
But just as Ma Yuanchao served, Lu Yao suddenly froze for some reason. The fast-flying ping-pong ball shot straight toward her left eye.
Lu Yao only felt everything go dark, then bright, then dark again.
When she woke up, she was lying in a hospital bed. In her ears, she heard Ma Yuanchao’s mother apologizing and her own mother offering words of comfort.
“It’s all our Yuanchao’s fault. They were only playing ball, but he didn’t even know to go easy on a girl and ended up hitting her. It’s all our child’s fault. We brought a few gifts especially for her—something to help her regain her strength.”
“No, no, there’s no need. It was only a ball to the eye, and the doctor already checked her. They said it was nothing serious. It was just a game. The ball doesn’t have eyes, so it’s normal for something like this to happen.”
“No, no, you must accept them. Otherwise, when the child gets home, Old Ma won’t let him off easily.”
After a long round of refusing and urging, Zhang Guizhi finally accepted the gifts.
Lu Yao did not open her eyes until after Ma Yuanchao’s family had left. The burning pain in her eyelids and the discomfort in her eyeball both told her that everything that had happened before she closed her eyes had been real.
The very next morning after the ball struck her eye, Lu Yao woke up and suddenly found countless grids of glowing text floating before her eyes.
Who hadn’t dreamed of riding the clouds and becoming an immortal?
Lu Yao did not mind that the information concerned only things near her home. She immediately took out the private savings she had hidden away and prepared to go to the supply cooperative to buy the sea fish that had arrived only the previous night.
Information like this was impossible to obtain unless someone in the family or neighborhood had an acquaintance at the supply cooperative.
And this was fish that had arrived just the night before. Without a second thought, Lu Yao believed it. After all, these messages had come from a divine sign.
What’s more, the shipment included rare seafood and meat—just what her father and eldest brother, who worked hard on the railway, needed to replenish their strength.
Who could have guessed that she would make a wasted trip? There was not only no sea fish at the supply cooperative—there wasn’t even a small fish to be found.
Only then did Lu Yao realize that what she had seen was no divine sign at all. Something was clearly playing tricks on her.
The next day, she tried again, refusing to believe it was a coincidence. The result was exactly the same.
Only then did Lu Yao become certain that some unknown ghost had deceived her and toyed with her sincere trust.
The information provided by the ghost was false, but the glowing grids that appeared before her eyes every morning were real.
Lu Yao told her mother some of what she had been seeing. Zhang Guizhi immediately became convinced that her daughter had encountered something supernatural. She quickly arranged to have someone cover her shift, exchanged for a free family-visit train ticket, and took her child back to their hometown. She planned to find a capable spirit medium there and have her daughter’s curse removed.
That was why mother and daughter had appeared at Granny Ma’s house early that morning.
At first, Lu Yao had placed her hopes in Granny Ma. Being jolted awake every day was truly unbearable.
But when she saw Granny Ma take out a talisman from somewhere, wave it up and down while muttering a string of incomprehensible incantations, then set it alight and dip it into a bowl of water, her distrust of Granny Ma’s mysterious ritual instantly overwhelmed her fear of the unknown grids.
The neighborhood and the school had both said that feudal superstition was unacceptable. Wasn’t it just that a few extra things had appeared in front of her eyes? Lu Yao wasn’t afraid.
Especially since today’s information had suddenly begun to include times and dates. She felt that rather than pinning her hopes on some unfathomable magic, she might as well verify it herself.
If she really found gold or silver in the public toilet near her home, she would be able to confirm that the information before her eyes was at least from within the next three years.
Now that she had a way to solve the problem, Lu Yao suddenly felt her stomach growl. The delicious aroma of Aunt Yu’s cooking drifted over, and she immediately headed toward the kitchen.
Before she even reached the doorway, her praise had already reached the ears of the person busy cooking inside.
“Auntie, your cooking really is the most delicious. Uncle must have done something wonderful in his past life to be lucky enough to marry a woman with skills like yours.”
The moment Yu Chunhua heard this, she beamed. Without realizing it, she began working even faster.
“What aroma? It’s only some sweet potatoes and coarse rice simmered together. You little girl are just too good with words.”
“Auntie, I mean every word. Little Mian, don’t you agree with me?”
Lu Yao turned her head toward Lu Mian, who was helping tend the fire.
Little Mian nodded shyly and murmured, “Mm.”
The smile on Yu Chunhua’s face grew even wider.
Outside the door, Grandpa Lu and Grandma Lu heard the commotion and couldn’t help raising the corners of their mouths. They thought Lu Yao was truly a little ray of sunshine. Whenever she came home, the whole family was filled with happy voices.
As for the other person mentioned in her praise—Uncle Lu—he was secretly delighted as well. He quickly worked the willow branches in his hands, eager to finish weaving the willow basket.
Only Lu Jinshan, who knew all too well that Lu Yao changed her words depending on whom she was speaking to, quietly curled his lip.
Just then, Zhang Guizhi, who had been walking behind them, returned as well. The family set out breakfast in the main room and prepared to eat.
Nothing.
