I rubbed my eyes. In broad daylight, how could it be an illusion?
I could even see the beads of sweat on the foreheads of the two monks.
"Hey! Benefactor! Ah, no... Master!" I called out towards the temple.
The two monks looked up, wiped their sweat, and after searching for a while, they spotted me.
"What are you doing up there so early in the morning?" one asked.
"How did you climb up here?" the other asked.
They were local monks, and their accents were identical to the taxi driver's from yesterday.
As the saying goes, visiting monks chant better scriptures, but local monks are usually just professionals working their jobs.
Regardless of whether they were chanting monks or not, after a night of turmoil, I finally saw living people. I quickly walked down the sandy path. The back door of the temple was open, and the two monks came over, appraising me with reproachful eyes.
I bowed deeply and took out five hundred-yuan bills from my pocket: "Amitabha, two Masters, I have long heard of the fame of Han Yin Temple in Fucheng. I specially came to pay my respects yesterday, but I arrived too late, and there was no one in the temple, so I had to spend the night on the mountain. This is a humble offering from me. I hope the Masters will accept it."
"You don't hit a person who offers a gift," this saying is universally true.
The two monks exchanged glances. One bowed back to me and, with a subtle movement, took the money and tucked it into his robe, in place of Buddha: "Benefactor, please come inside for tea."
"...Is there any vegetarian food?" I asked shamelessly. I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday noon, having waited to attend Song Lei's banquet. Unexpectedly, this guy had died four years ago, and the whole village was attending the funeral feast.
"Yes, yes, Benefactor, please wait!"
One monk went to make porridge, while the other led me to their quarters. Along the way, I observed carefully. The ground in the temple courtyard was paved with rectangular blue bricks, and there were indeed no tombstones.
"Benefactor, when we came this morning, we saw a suitcase at the temple entrance. Is it yours?" the monk asked.
"Oh, right, I almost forgot. I left it there last night," I said.
The monk went and brought me the suitcase. My phone was almost dead, and they had a power outlet in their room, even WiFi. I plugged in my phone to charge, and while drinking tea, I searched for what "Liaodong Yebushou" meant, which was the only clue I remembered from last night.
I was wrong; it wasn't a brand of tombstone.
There was an introduction on Baidu.
Yebushou: A unique designation for scouts or spies among the Liaodong border defense forces in the Ming Dynasty.
They were primarily responsible for infiltrating Jurchen territory to gather military intelligence among the Ming border troops. If they encountered small groups of Jurchen forces or important military targets, they might even launch an attack, grab some profit, and leave. In this sense, they could be understood as a combination of modern reconnaissance soldiers and special forces.
But that was 400 years ago. What did it have to do with Song Lei?
Could it be that this "Yebushou" organization still exists today?
I remembered again that among the cluster of graves I saw last night, the birth and death years of most of the deceased were from the Qing Dynasty. Logically, after the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Qing, the "Yebushou" organization under the Ming military system should have been disbanded. Why would it span the entire Qing Dynasty? Wait a minute, perhaps what I saw last night wasn't real?
A monk brought millet porridge, stir-fried small greens, and pickles, along with steamed buns bought from town.
I had never been fond of Northern Chinese food, but because I was so hungry today, I ate ravenously.
After the vegetarian meal, I pretended to chat and tried to get more clues from the two monks. As locals, they knew quite a bit about the origin of Jiuxian Cave.
Legend has it that during the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, the Ming and Later Jin armies fought a battle on this mountain, resulting in many casualties. Because it was one battle in a series of campaigns, and the fighting was fierce, both sides had no time to clear the battlefield, leaving corpses all over the mountain. For days, they were exposed to the sun, some severely decomposed, melting into the soil.
It wasn't until nearly half a year later, when the fighting subsided slightly, that a Later Jin unit remembered this matter and came to handle the aftermath. Because they couldn't distinguish whose body was whose, or even which side the bodies belonged to, they could only gather them in one place and bury them perfunctorily.
After that contingent of Later Jin soldiers left, the local residents discovered that nine caves had appeared on the mountain.
From then on, the town at the foot of the mountain was often haunted, and the residents, unable to bear the disturbance, gradually moved away. The town became a village, and the village became a hamlet. Around the Yongzheng period, the hamlet also fell into disrepair.
It wasn't until the late Qing Dynasty, with the surge of "Chuang Guandong" (migration into Northeast China), that people began to settle here again. Because the surrounding land was extremely suitable for growing fruits such as grapes, apples, and apricots, more and more people came, and the small village became prosperous again. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the village was renamed "Fanshen" (Turnaround), and including areas in and around the mountain, it had nearly a thousand households.
However, in 1976, another supernatural event occurred here, causing the entire village to flee in terror...