Chapter 1 – Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin (1)

My mother died the third day after I was born.

Thinking back, it was quite a tragic story.

When my mother was young, she’d been a pretty girl known throughout the neighboring villages. She had a childhood sweetheart named Wang Jianghai. Both of his parents had died, so he was an orphan, but he was very studious. He’d wanted to leave the mountains and become a somebody, but this required money.

To help Wang Jianghai, my mother—who’d had top grades too—quit school to support Wang Jianghai’s education by scrimping and saving. In the end, Wang Jianghai didn’t let down everyone’s expectations. He’d gotten accepted at a university and was given a job.

Just as everyone thought that my mother’s hard days were finally over, news came that Wang Jianghai had gotten married in the city. He’d married the daughter of some government official who could help him rise to an even higher status. My mother couldn’t take this and lost her mind.

Then, one night, my mother put on the wedding dress that she’d made herself and went up Green Dragon Mountain to commit suicide.

She didn’t jump off the cliff or hang herself on Green Dragon Mountain. Climbing up the mountain itself already meant death without a doubt.

There was an ancient stele on Green Dragon Mountain with ten words on it: the living must not enter; the dead must not be buried. As one could understand from the words, the living would not be able to leave once they entered. It was bad luck for the dead to be buried there too.

Legends said that this stele was put here personally by Liu Bowen, the founder of the Ming Dynasty. The Fangshan County annals included the following records:

During the Hongwu Year of the Ming Dynasty, nine dragons pulling a coffin descended from the sky and landed in Green Dragon Mountain. All the powerful and supernatural men came flocking to climb the mountain and gaze at the strange phenomenon of nine dragons pulling a coffin. However, none of those who climbed the mountain returned. The government officials were shocked. They reported it up until Liu Bowen came personally. He lived at the foot of the mountain for one month. Without saying anything, he just ordered people to set up this stele and left.

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Legends were legends, after all. No one could give a clear answer about whether Liu Bowen had erected this stele or if nine dragons pulling a coffin really had descended from the sky during the Hongwu Year of the Ming Dynasty. I’d checked many resources too but never found records of the nine dragons in any other material.

One thing was true though. Just as the stele said, the living would not return; the dead buried would be unlucky. No one could leave the mountain alive. Thus, Green Dragon Mountain became an absolutely forbidden place to us.

My mom climbed this Green Dragon Mountain and everyone was sure that she would die.

My grandparents had already been ashamed because of Wang Jianghai’s matter. My mother’s death was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After she climbed the mountain, my grandparents used my mother’s old clothes to erect a cenotaph. Then, they’d committed suicide before her grave by drinking pesticides.

My uncle, Zhao Jianguo, had buried my grandparents beside my mother’s cenotaph. He’d chopped off three fingers and used his blood to write “eye for eye” on the gravestone and disappeared from the village.

Many people say that my uncle most likely died.

When he’d left the village in anger, he’d obviously gone to find Wang Jianghai for revenge. But Wang Jianghai was still alive and successful. Didn’t that mean that my uncle was already dead?

But three years after my uncle had left, my mother came back. She’d walked out of Green Dragon Mountain with a big belly. She was pregnant.

The villagers had all been sympathetic of my mother and grandparents, but that was just one thing. My mother had lived in Green Dragon Mountain for three years and was now pregnant too. This was too strange.

They had so many questions, such as: What exactly did Green Dragon Mountain have? How come so many powerful people had died there? How did my mother survive? More importantly, whose kid was she pregnant with?

But my mother refused to answer. Walking out of Green Dragon Mountain, she wasn’t crazy anymore, but she never said anything after that. No matter how people asked, she wouldn’t say a single word. At this time, someone started spreading a rumor: Could it be that Xiu’er was pregnant with a mountain ghost’s child?

After all, no one knew what exactly Green Dragon Mountain had. Everyone thought that there was a man-eating mountain ghost and this was why everyone who entered would die. People quickly believed this rumor and it grew more detailed too. They said that the ghost had thought my mother was pretty, so it had taken her and she’d returned to give birth to the child.

Faced with the siege of rumors, my mother didn’t refute anything. One week after she’d returned from Green Dragon Mountain, she gave birth to me.