Otherworldly Merchant

I listened attentively.

The old shaman gave me a feeling that she was a secluding master who didn’t want to get involved with mortal life.

The aura from her body slowly calmed my restless heart.

Thirty years ago, Baisha Village was just a remote, desolate area. There was only a cottage on the mountain where a married couple dwelled, who was so laborious that they started working from dawn and only rested when the sun went down the mountain.

The man farmed and the woman wove fabric. Although they were poor, they were very happy. The husband loved his wife a lot. Every day, they would sit together and watch the sunset.

The woman thought that this happy life of theirs would continue this way.

However, when a horde of refugees came, her ideal life was shattered.

Since the wife pitied them, she gave them food and water.

She thought that they would remember her favor and leave. However, those refugees had liked the fertile land there so they forced their way to stay.

The couple was helpless because this piece of land didn’t belong to them. They could only open one eye and close the other. The couple had even given the refugees some seeds and taught them how to farm.

The woman was born with a gift of beauty, which made her far prettier than the other women. A wicked refugee had laid his eyes on her. He seized the chance and killed her husband when he went to work in the fields, and claimed her.

The woman had then lived the rest of her years in grudge and resentment.

Since she was pregnant, she didn’t resist much for the sake of her child.

Later on, she had struggled and given birth to a baby girl.

Sadly her daughter wasn’t able to escape her mother’s destiny, either.

She had given birth to a daughter and the girl had inherited her mother’s gift. She grew up a beauty. In this village, she was like a crane in a flock of poultry. Later on, she was raped, and no one from the village was willing to save her.

However, she was a strong young woman. She didn’t cry or make a mess but instead decided to marry the bastard who had raped her.

Afterward, she used the wicked magic she had learned from her family to kill her husband and become a widow.

The mother and daughter thought that they could finally live in harmony with the other villagers. After a long time, their resentment had faded away.

Perhaps the villagers had also pitied the two women or felt guilty for their sins, they had helped the two in their daily lives a lot. The mother and daughter had then used their ancestral methods to cure the villagers with herbs.

However, no one had thought that the villagers would ever stop their hands from doing dirty deeds. It had become worse as their attention was now toward the mountain!

To the shaman, that mountain was more important than even her own life. It was her belief. Her family had stayed here for generations and struggled with a life in poverty because of that mountain.

That mountain was her ancestral graveyard. If they destroyed the place, she wouldn’t be able to face her parents when it was her time to go.  

The shaman felt so helpless. Eventually, she decided to use evil magic, trying to create some spiritual phenomenon to scare the villagers.

However, the villagers didn’t buy it. They continued to exploit the mountain.

In the end, they decided to put an end to everything. They were prepared to kill all the folks here to bring peace back to Baisha Village!

Originally, she didn’t want to deal with me since I was just an outsider. That was why the shaman wanted to let me go tonight.

Later, she was enraged because I was about to expose her scheme.

However, my efforts had changed her mind. She suddenly felt that the people involved had a biased opinion but an outsider had a clear view. As such, she let me, an outsider, support her justice.

I could see that the old shaman and the young widow were nice people. The folks here had pushed them onto this and left them without a choice.

I asked the old shaman, “The stone grave behind the mountain, whose is it? And why does it only have a clay jar holding a kneecap?”

The old shaman became sorrowful. She looked at the mountain in the distance with desperation. “My ancestor has rested there for several thousand years, and now people have come to disturb him. I’m so incompetent.”

It turned out the shaman belonged to a special profession, which was as unique as otherworldly merchants.

She was a ‘Ghost Doctor’!

I had heard about ghost doctors before. Due to their special treatment methods, which required dead people’s bones, they were boycotted by the other traditional doctors. Eventually, they had created their own school, calling themselves ghost doctors.

The one who had established the school of ghost doctors was the ancient and outstanding strategist Sun Bin.  

Sun Bin had a great mind. Not only was he better than the others in applying military strategies but he was also a man of great ideas. Many professions had acknowledged him as their patron such as shoemakers, or charcoal miners, etc.

However, the most mysterious profession amongst them all was the one about ‘ghost doctors’.

Legend said that Sun Bin and Pang Juan had accepted Gui Guzi as their teacher, learning the arts of war from him. Leaving the teacher, they had become assistants of the King of Wei. As Pang Juan had been jealous of Sun Bin’s talent, he had falsely accused him of joining hands with the enemy. They took his kneecap and threw him to a wasteland.

At that time, the agony Sun Bin had to endure was terrible. Since it was summer, his wound was infected, and worms began to fester.

He decided to use poison to treat poison. He took the worms living on a rotten corpse, burned them and ground them into powder. He used that powder to treat his wound and wrapped his wound with a bandage he took from the corpse. His wound was healed after three days.

Sun Bin then paid attention to such natural medicinal ingredients. He studied and improved those treatment methods. Eventually, he had created a school of medicine that used human bone, poisonous insects and herbs.

Later on, Sun Bin became the Qi State’s military advisor. He promoted and spread out this special treatment method. Eventually, he helped the State of Qi defeat the State of Wei.

Due to the extremely strange treatment method that could save people from death, this profession was later known as ‘ghost doctor’.

Sun Bin had become the founder and the patron of the ghost doctor profession.

His descendants wanted to worship and remember their great patron so they used his kneecap and bones from his legs to make a specimen and a clay jar. They worshipped the items in this mountain.

The other skeletons belonged to the guards who had watched the tomb for generations. At first, they were all distinguished guests or soldiers, but now they were just common folks.

The shaman had used the pinnacle of her ghost doctor knowledge to deal with the villagers here.

It was an extinct creature called the ‘fire worm’, which hibernated in the clay jar. When the villagers opened the clay jar, the fire worm’s eggs were released. The worm’s eggs spread out fast, but they were parasites that lived only on men.

At first, only a few villagers were infected. To threaten the villagers, the old shaman had taken control of a dog and sent the kneecap to the lake. Since the underground water of the well was connected to the lake water, the water in the well also got infected.

She wanted to do this just to scare the villagers and make them shift their target away from the mountain. However, the stubborn villagers had invited me to help.

The shaman’s story almost matched with my assumptions.

I had guessed that the reason for the villagers’ poison cases was the well since I saw several water tanks in the shaman’s house. She had stored a lot of water so she wouldn’t have to use the well water.

I had also determined that the infected water well could be related to the clay jar and the kneecap. I intentionally told Niu Dazhuang to tell the others that I had fished up the jar.

As the clay jar was fished up, the well water wouldn’t be affected anymore. The old shaman would go out and take the water from the well because her tanks did not have much water left.

If the old shaman went there to take water at night, I could conclude that she had caused the problem. But I didn’t expect to see the shaman’s arrangement for tonight. It was beyond what I had imagined.

Afterward, the old shaman didn’t speak further. The young widow snorted. “Now you tell me, should those men die?”