March 31

In the evening, a knock came faithfully from the door. Hua Ning was fanning himself quite serenely. "Are you ready?"

"...I'm not going."

The fan was smacked loudly in his palm, "Huh?? You're not participating in the Ancestral Rite? Have you lost your mind?"

"..."

The door was shut later and General Gu returned to his designated table. He seemed to be waiting for someone as his tea has already turned cold. On the table was an open thick book of some sort. Soon enough, the awaited wind chime made a sound. Gu Changming left swiftly through the window into the heart of the ancestral rite festival in town.

The event usually took place around the evening before the moon rose. That day was a full moon thus it was expected to rise before sunset. In the meantime, everyone in town was still crowding outside the giant ancestral temper waiting for the big event to start and vying for their turns to stick incense and pray to the dead.

In his appearance as Yang Yue, he was standing apart from the crowd and people did not acknowledge his presence. Only when it suddenly started to rain that those people scramble for shelter.

"The sky has been clear all day! What the heck!" An old man grumbled as he could not run because of his old body. "The ancestors are upset! I tell you! It must be that murderer's fault!"

His dark satin hair was starting to soak into the rain but he had not made a move to seek shelter. He had just known that he was supposed to stand there like a dumb person until he was picked up by someone.

His eyes searched around before he noticed a figure poking out behind a wall across.

"You are quite crafty with your ability."

"I do not like crowded places," Wan Mingyue ran his eyes down the other's face. "Let us go before your disguise is gone."

As he followed the other man, the downpour ceased but sprinkles of rain continued to shower his damp clothes. The air smelled sweet of dirt and the sky was like a hand covering the sunset.

Wan Mingyue had taken him to the town hall where officers and several town heads were busy preparing for the ceremony. Instead of sneaking from the front door, he took him to a secret passage that was camouflaged into the wall. He pushed in the brick easily and suddenly, a person-length hole was opened up to them.

"What is this room?" General Gu was no stranger to the town hall nor its interior. He has been stepping into this place long before he was the General. But, the room he was standing in was of no familiarity.

"It's a secret room," he spoke sarcastically. "Light a fire."

Gu Changming was quite slow to react to the crowded thoughts in his mind. However, once his palm was lit in an orange glow, his head was immediately cleared up.

Around the wall were silhouettes of people that lined up perfectly aside from each other or should he say, these were stone statues. Each one of them was carved into the figure of a person, but their faces were almost identical to that of a human except for the red paint on their eyes and the small side-to-side horns displayed on their temples. They were all statues of demons. Real demons. Not a half one he saw at Meijin.

"We will hide inside these."

Gu Changming's lips opened but they closed again when Wan Mingyue touched something around the shoulder of the statue. It must be a lock because noiselessly, the standing stone opened up its lid like a door. He turned to the other sharply.

"What is this??"

Before the strong smell of odor could hit his nose, he had stepped back in shock. A body had just slumped out of the statue and smacked on the ground. It seemed to be a guy dressing in a rag and bloodied clothes.

"Do not tell me you don't recognize them, General. It is one of the prisoners you had put in jail." Before Gu Changming could protest, he was pushed inside by a grumpy voice, "You must go in. Otherwise, our plan will fail. Do not worry. You still can breathe."

Clenching his jaw with a sigh, he allowed Wan Mingyue to shut him inside. Darkness has welcomed him in its arms.

Then a muffled voice addressed the midnight blue eyes man, "Are you also doing this? I'm not the only one surely?"

"Yes. Now stay quiet until I get you out."

A tail of voices then began to echo off the wall from outside. It must be near the start of the rite. As the brick was pushed and whoever came inside, General Gu felt a strange string pulling at his heart like it was being unraveled. He heard the voice loud and clear and he knew who it belonged to.

"Have you checked each one of them?"

"I have placed them all according to plan."

"Still, check them! What if they run away? Will you dumbo face the consequences?"

Silence fell before there was a movement to his right. Starting from the furthest of the twenty statues, the person started opening the door.
The clock that was ticking in his ears lasted like an eternity before someone yelled again.

"Stop! Just deliver these to the temple. These rats smell worse than shit!"

Not for long, one by one, the statues were beginning to be towed away. Gu Changming endured the occasional slam of his head and body against the rocky and hasty movement of loading him onto a cart and for once in his life, he could not complain out loud.

For what seemed like a hot time for an incense stick to burn, the cart stopped and he was carried out again into an unknown place.

At one point, his forehead slammed into the stone as he was hurled up from the ground ruthlessly. A trinket of blood tickled the tip of his nose and he could smell the lingering rotten stench in the tight space around his body.

The grating loud obnoxious sound of the metal gate scrapped against his ears because the rite has started.

A voice spoke after a set of drums played out, "All souls must die. All souls return. To the waxing moon and the deep earth. Today, the people of Liyuan have come to pray for the heroic souls of our ancestors that sacrificed themselves in the demonic war. Eight demons are presented here today for the souls of the four directions and to honor the four gods."

People hollered and repeated after the speaker who was no other than Mao Wu himself. General Gu imagined the evening sky that must have been filled with golden paper money and the overwhelming smell of incense sticks.

After a small performance of the defeat of the demons was rolled out, it was finally his turn to be moved. As a tradition, the demon statues were only used as representations of the real demons thus they must be rid of and dumped into the Red River.

Wan Mingyue, I will trust you this time only and no more.

"They won't be waiting for this early, right?" A man who was wheeling him away voiced out with a panic-sicken tone.

"Sect leader Mao already took care of the matter. How could he not? A man died of shock."

"Right. Right. It's not in our deal to take more than what we have agreed upon. If you're too loose on them, they will get greedy."

"I just want to hurry to my wife so we can pray for a child."

"Stop your nonsense. If the gods still listen to you, why have they not stuck you to death already?"

Silence befell them and they did not talk anymore for what appeared to be a very long time before the horses stopped.

"Hurry, roll these into the river before they come."

General Gu drifted down a slope and hit a solid obstacle that coincidently broke a piece of his statue and his left arm. The water was cold like a shower in the morning after rain. As he bit his lips in stupor and agony, he had the realization that if he was to not get out now, he would truly die in this forsaken place.

Putting aside the pain in his arm, he summoned forward his sword that he had left in his manor. It was an idea brought forth by Wan Mingyue and now he could truly understand why.

It took time to finish a teacup before there was a glow in the distance. It plunged bravely into the dark stilled water and cracked open the stone that was thicker than its blade. General Gu immediately held on to the long majestic red sword and it plunged back out into the shore under the moon.

He managed to land on his feet safely but he was suddenly crushed with panic. There was no one else. Wan Mingyue was not waiting for him.

He said he would get me out.

General Gu staggered to the water, "No way, he's still down there...Knowing him, he must have left me to save myself." His jaw clenched but not from the cold.

A hand clutching at his sword, he dived back in. And, the scene deep inside the water almost made him choke. Back when Wan Mingyue showed him the secret behind the statue, he had been convinced that it was the doing of the corrupted Mao Wu. However, it was beyond him to carve out the reason why he would go so far as to kidnap prisoners and stuff them inside these stones under the pretense of the ancestral rite.

Before Gu Changming was a multitude of broken demon statues of red eyes and wide smiles that laid askew on top of what was the skeleton remains of previous victims. Some were missing a head and some only had their heads.

Weaving his sword around, he searched among the unbroken ones for a familiar body. As it kept missing the right person, he felt more and more sickening in his heart to watch the freed prisoners that started to float soullessly up to the moonlight that was shining above as if it was a portal to the underworld.

On his seventh try, the sword had struck the right stone and a pale jade face peeked underneath the scattered stone pieces. He immediately swam forward forgetting the tremendous pain of his arm and clung onto the other's shoulders. Together, they rose up as the moonlight glared its unworldly glow from beside.

General Gu placed him among the fallen leaves and sticks. With a controlled strength, he struck his palm onto the unmoving chest. "Wan Mingyue?" His golden eyes flickered across those pale wet cheeks and the eyelids that trembled occasionally as if he was under a spell. "Wan Mingyue!" He struck his palm again, this time a bit more forceful.

Wan Mingyue finally woke up in shock. In his midnight blue eyes were so much fear that others would think Gu Changming, himself, was the bad guy. "Let me out...let me go..." He slammed his bloodied knuckles at his chest and he would not stop struggling even when General Gu lost his patience and strapped him down to the ground.

"Wake up! Wake up right now, Wan Mingyue!" He leaned in halfway, "It's me! Gu Changming!" He hoped he was loud enough to spit the others' ears in half because this guy was very strong despite how frail he looked sometimes. "I won't hurt you. I won't..."

At that very moment, a dagger was flying toward him.