Daomu Biji: A Thousand Faces

Ah Tou lay there trembling under the covers. Although she couldn't see it, she had a strong feeling that something had entered her house. 

She was relatively confident in her intuition, which she believed had come from the subtle changes in an environment she was familiar with. These changes were hard to spot directly, but were capable of making a person feel unconformable. If she was feeling so uneasy right now, then there had to be something wrong.

She was also very familiar with her cat, so if she was acting like that, then something must’ve followed her through the door and into the room.

She dug out her phone and tried to find a nearby friend to help, but she couldn’t find anyone. For the first time, she felt alone and helpless. She scrolled through her contacts twice, but there were only delivery and take-out numbers.

Don’t tell me I have to order take-out to get help? Eh, why not.

Tintin was very uncomfortable being trapped under the covers and ran away while she was ordering take-out. Ah Tou wasn’t fast enough to catch her, but she didn’t want to get out from under the covers either. She curled up even tighter as the cat landed on the carpet and started scratching it.

Fuck, this carpet is over three thousand yuan! If it weren’t for this ghost, you’d so be dead!

Ah Tou forced herself to calm down by concentrating on her breathing. Although her duvet cover was soft and nothing was touching it, she felt extremely insecure and wanted to have a turtle shell on her back instead. She started wondering if this was the right way to deal with the situation. Would she have to stay in this position all night?

But she soon found that something wasn't right. She felt Tintin jump onto the bed again and start moving around, but the scratching on the carpet didn’t stop.

Ah Tou broke out in a cold sweat. This time, she was completely covered in a cold sweat.

As the cat wandered around her occasionally, the scratching sound sporadically appeared under the bed. Which one’s the cat? What’s the other one?

Ah Tou immediately realized that the one doing the scratching was Tintin, because she had been targeting the carpet for several days now. She had caught Tintin countless times, so she knew how it sounded when she was scratching the carpet. And even if it was a ghost, there was no point for it to imitate a cat scratching a carpet, right? What was it, an actor?

This meant she was in the worst-case scenario right now. What’s beside me? What’s that thing walking around on my bed?

At that moment, the weight on her bed suddenly approached her and a “cat paw” stepped on her blanket-covered hand. Then, she immediately felt the cover start to lift up as if something wanted to slide in.

Every hair on Ah Tou’s body stood on end and she immediately pulled the covers tight until she had wrapped herself into a ball. The weight on the bed instantly disappeared and there weren’t any more sounds of the cat scratching the carpet. The room returned to dead silence.

Ah Tou was completely dumbfounded as she hid under the covers, her body bathed in a cold sweat. All of her senses were heightened to the max and even a minute felt like an hour. 

The darkness around her slowly turned into a black hole. Although she was hidden under the covers, her senses seemed to be able to feel the space surrounding her. She could feel that a tall object was standing by the end of her bed, looking down at her.

This trance was eventually broken by the sound of the doorbell.

Ah Tou instantly came to her senses, but before her fear could resurface, her instincts already had her lifting up the covers.

It was completely dark all around. Fuck, when did the power go out?Screw it. Ah Tou rushed downstairs in the dark and went to the door–the delivery person must have arrived. Regardless of the restaurant, she planned on giving them five stars. She just had to find some way to make the delivery person stay and help her deal with the problem. Or she could just go with them.

The doorbell was still ringing, so she slammed the door open. The streetlight outside filtered in and showed the silhouette of a woman carrying high heels.

"Why don't you turn on the lights?" The woman asked as she blew out a mouthful of cigarette smoke. "Go on, turn them on."

Ah Tou felt a stream of warm air follow the smoke into the room. Just as her goosebumps completely went away, all of the lights in the room suddenly came on.

Ah Tou froze on the spot. The woman had her hair tied up and was wearing a short trench coat over a white shirt and pencil skirt. If it had been any other time, Ah Tou would’ve easily discovered that this woman was wearing the same outfit as the first party. But right now, Ah Tou was too frightened to notice. The woman pushed her way in and glanced around the room before turning to look at Ah Tou’s tattoo-covered arms. She seemed somewhat nostalgic.

"Who are you? You’re not the take-out?" Ah Tou asked incoherently.

“Do you think you can afford take-out like me?” The woman took off her heels and coat by the first-floor sofa, “I’m Liang Yanyan. Xie Yuchen called me over to save you.”

Just as Ah Tou wanted to speak, Liang Yanyan motioned for her to stay silent, “Don’t move, don’t look back.”

With that said, she undid a few buttons on her shirt. As the shirt loosened, Ah Tou saw that Liang Yanyan also had a tattoo on her back. Only a portion of it was exposed, but it looked a lot like the one on her arm.

"Do you have faith?"

"No.”

"Then find it now."

****

Yvette’s note on timeline clarification: Logically, the story of “A Thousand Faces” began before Ah Tou helped Wu Xie put on Uncle Three’s human face mask, which was mid-2004. It’s unclear whether there’s a connection between the reporter/journalist Liang Yanyan that Ah Tou first met in 2007 (Part I Introduction I) and the Liang Yanyan in this chapter. Regardless of the year, the food ordering/delivery platform wasn’t popularized in the 2000s and I don’t think flip phones or slide phones in the 2000s had the flashlight function (Chapter 2), except for the flash when taking photos. Anyway, the author has to debug this. Also note that currently, readers only have access to the first draft of “A Thousand Faces” which the author posted on WeChat. He definitely has to come back to this story and fix things up before making an official publication. “A Thousand Faces” was written in 2020, so you may consider the technologies in the story to be concurrent with that year. But do keep in mind that the timeline should be around mid-2000s. Thank you all for liking my translations and thank you Merebear for editing!

Merebear note: Yvette's being all sweet and logical trying to figure out timeline stuff while I'm over here yelling at Ah Tou like: