A Xia in Fengdu

by Long Zhongke

Fengdu, the legendary city of ghosts and where Yama, King of the the Ten Courts, conducts his business.

Tradition has it that in the past, when using silver dollars or copper coins, shops would have a wooden basin at the shop entrance filled with clear water. When a customer made a purchase, the coins were tossed in the water basin. If the coins sank, that was natural. If they floated on the surface, then, that customer was a magically transformed ghost…

Actually, Fengdu City is a real-life city. It is situated in the southeast corner of Sichuan, a mountain city near the left bank of the Yangtze River.

Since it’s a mountain city, its market is not very bustling, but because it’s a transportation city for water and land routes, naturally it’s not desolate.

* * *

A snowy night.

By the side of the government road in the western outskirts of Fengdu City, bodies lay in disarray, reeking of blood.

Patches of reeking blood on the pure white snow, plus twelve corpses of those who died in singularly brutal fashion with heads and arms missing It was a ghastly sight.

Next to this ghastly scene three people stood stupefied—a man around fifty years old dressed in a short-robe and trousers, a man of letters around forty wearing a blue-green robe, and a beautiful woman of twenty dressed in red.

These three people, though differing in sex, age, and dress, they all held swords and were covered with blood.

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