We were alerted by the arrival of a line of oxen-drawn wagons that waited outside the encampment at nine the following morning. Each of the wagons was carrying a large crate, and the convoy was led by the agent who had tried, and failed, to secure an audience with Aunt Ulan. “The goods are all on the ox carts,” he said, “Feel free to inspect the goods, Chief Ulan!” Under orders from Aunt Ulan, some of the girls carefully pried open the lids of the crates and inspected the rifles and boxes of ammunition. Still wrapped in oil papers, the guns could be seen glistening with gun oil when the wrappers were peeled off! Satisfied, Aunt Ulan barked some instructions to her girls, ordering them to begin hauling the crates into the camp, but the agent came to her and stopped her immediately. “Wait!” he cried, “You can take the goods, but not the crates!”

“What nonsense is this?” Aunt Ulan glared at him indignantly and earned the agent’s hesitant answer, “I’m afraid this is my employer’s explicit instruction, that the goods are yours for the taking, except for the crates. The three persons that my employer wants are to be put into the crates and caskets are to be nailed tightly shut,” said the agent, before adding proudly, “Surely Murong Hai would least expect his son to be transported using these crates!” “Your employer is a shrewd man indeed!” Aunt Ulan hissed bitterly through gritted teeth. She yelled to her subordinates, “Very well! Bring them out!” Out we came, the three of us, all with our hands tightly bound and our mouths gagged with pieces of cloth. The agent made sure that we were properly restrained before commanding his people to put us into the crates before nailing them shut. He gave a curt bow to Aunt Ulan and said, “It’s been a pleasure doing business, Chief Ulan. Farewell!” With that, he gave the word for the convoy to begin moving away.

We kept silent during the rough ride in the wooden crates, in which the tight space we were trapped in was a rub of salt for having to endure the bumpy journey on rough terrain. With Xiao Qi and Xiao San squeezed together with me like sardines in a can, we could only hope for the journey to end as swiftly as possible. “What a devious scheme that bastard is capable of thinking,” Xiao Qi spat and said, “It’s just too crammed in here!” We lost track of time half-way through, feeling only unseen hands grappling on the side of the crates as men began unloading us off the carts, signifying the end of the ordeal. The wooden caskets that contained us were laid on the ground and we heard the shuffling of boots and shoes before light shone in when the curved end of a crowbar wrestled open the crates.

A gust of dark wind burst from within the caskets when they were opened, releasing the six Sisters into freedom! My companions and I were lifted from the box and had our gags removed. A hoarse voice with an insidious onset spoke, “My apologies for the unpleasant ride. I had thought that the son of Murong Hai might be an immortal with many limbs and heads like the gods we see in temples. But here we have demons! Three demons, in fact! I do not have any Ocular Magic that allows me to see the supernatural like the Spirit Sight your kind have. But my extensive experience tells me that what escaped from the box just now was dark and foul energy! Heh heh heh!” It seemed that the man did not notice that the dark energies that flowed out of the boxes were actually the Sisters! Then again, this was exactly the outcome that I had hoped for!

He held our chins and studied our looks before guffawing in laughter. “I had intended only for the son of Murong Hai,” he croaked, “But little did I expect that Heaven would send me the disciple of old senile Chen as an incentive! Hahahaha!” He motioned one of his men to come forward, and a burly and beefy man with a thick mane for a beard came forth. He wore a red bandana on his head, barechested, with a tray in his hands that contained an assortment of knives and torture instruments. I realized who the man was: an executioner and an interrogator. The man with the hoarse voice croaked, “I am Zheng Tong. This shall be your end; I will have you flayed alive! This is the retribution for what Murong Hai has done to my father, in addition to Senior Yan, the First of the Thirteen; Sister Hu, the Thirteenth; as well as the Third, the Fourth, and the Fifth of the Apostles that are now under arrest! So shall our dues be reckoned today?”

Zheng Tong’s father was a man called Zheng Haoshan; a man of pure evil during the heat of the Cultural Revolution. Widely notorious in another name, the Living Yama, Zheng Haoshan was infamous for having imprisoned a soothsayer from a clan of prophetic origins and tortured him incessantly in order to learn his skills. When the soothsayer had outlived his usefulness, Zheng Haoshan had him killed and disguised the poor man’s death as a suicide! In a time where only chaos and lawlessness prevailed, the poor soothsayer was one of the countless deaths that had occurred during the era of upheaval and anarchy.

This was the very same Zheng Haoshan from Old Man Chen’s past during the Revolution. He did not achieve any position within the government when the Revolution came to an ignoble end, instead, he became an atrocious gangster known for terrorizing the locals of nearby villages. Cheating, mugging, blackmail, and so on; there was no end to the extent of his barbarity. The woeful state of the countries economy following the revolution had driven many farmers and peasants to resort to home manufacturing of stone and mortar shelves and coffins. But the loathsome reprobate, through intimidate and force, made the peasants sell their wares through him. This allowed him to fleece the peasants for a fat slice of their profits!

During the huge earthquake in Tangshan in 1976, many people from nearby villages and towns lost their lives that day. To Zheng Haoshan, this was a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity that he could exploit to make more money. There was an old man, whose family name was Liu. He lost his wife in the earthquake and went to Zheng Haoshan, looking to buy a casket to bury his deceased wife. Due to the fatal calamity that had claimed many lives, Zheng Haoshan began raising his price aggressively. Without much money, he could not afford the cost for a mortar casket, so he asked his brother, a carpenter by profession, for help. Liu asked his brother to salvage any materials usable from the wreckage of his home and his brother made him a wooden coffin! Liu was a veteran from the civil war, hence his stoutness and hard-headed pragmatism. When his brother was called to take up arms against the United States in the Korean War, Liu said to his brother, “You know nothing of fighting! You’ll only go to your death this way!” Hence, despite having retired from the army since the Communist Party’s defeat of the Kuomintang force, he volunteered himself in his brother’s stead where he served with distinction, earning himself much acclaims and praises from his superiors, with plenty of medals and decorations as testaments and relics of his valor in battle. But he was illiterate; two of his relatives, both learned people, were promoted to high-ranking positions within the government whereas he had to return to the life of a penniless peasant. A friend once urged him to speak to his relatives and contact within the government for some help for his children, but being a stubborn person, Liu refused to accept any favors from anyone, staunch and headstrong in his beliefs that a man should live and breathe by the fruits of his own hands.

Despite having accomplices in the local government abetting his felonies, Zheng Haoshan could not lay a finger on Liu. Embittered at not being able to teach the old man a lesson, he cursed Liu loudly, saying that his deceased wife would return as an undead! That night, Liu noticed the corpse of his wife moving. Frightened out of his wits, the old man clambered up the beams of his house and grappled to it the entire night for dear life. The poor and modest tenement he lived in had no ceiling, hence he could directly climb up to the tie beams of the roof. The entire night, he watched with horror at the reanimated corpse of his wife ambling around in the house with a deathly lethargy, sniffing for him. The old man remained up on the rafters, safe from the monster which was once his wife. The next morning, Zheng Haoshan came to the old man’s house. He looked up at the tie-beams which had been Liu’s refuge the past night and muttered another curse, “Not even the beams of your house will save you tonight!” Ridden with fear, Liu went to his brother, the carpenter, and asked for help. Their conversation was heard by a passing young man who was a person whom Liu’s brother knew. Liu related his predicament to the young man, who said to the carpenter, “It’s easy. Just carve out five peach wood swords. Just put the sword to whichever parts of the corpse that begin to move tonight!” In the night, the corpse of the old woman began coming to life again. Liu placed a wooden sword at her head which moved first, and its movement stopped immediately. Then her left arm began to jerk and he placed another sword there. In a similar fashion, the swords were placed on the corpse’s limbs and head and the corpse remained lifeless and motionless until the next morning.

Zheng Haoshan was found dead the following day with a stake driven through him. Legends had it that traditional carpentry skills originated from Lu Ban, the patron deity for carpenters and craftsmen. But Liu’s brother was not a carpenter by family tradition, rather, his skills were learned from the carpentry production team he was part of. Hence Liu’s brother knew nothing of the arcane knowledge that ancient carpenters were trained in to subdue and suppress the foul and evil, lest eliminating Zheng Haoshan would have been but only a simple feat.

I could hardly resist the compulsion to erupt into laughter at the end of Zheng Tong’s tale. “What a fitting death for a man whose hands were drenched in blood!” I yelled. “Your father reaped what he sowed! The young man who came up with the idea; that was my father, was it not? My father has shown him mercy! I would have denied your father the chance to even reborn! His soul would only be ended up as ingredients for me to brew elixirs or medicine if I had my way! Hahaha…” Zheng Tong’s face squirmed with rage. “Good! I’ll kill you now and return the favor to you!” He spat hatefully through gritted teeth. His voice had barely faded when a series of gunfire resounded outside! Shocked, Zheng Tong screamed, “Who’s firing their guns?” One of his bandits hurried through the door. “Bad news, Boss! Ulan’s band of brigands are attacking!” “What about our men in the bunker? What are they doing?” Zheng Tong gasped, hardly believing what he had heard, as he overcame his shock and roared with anger, “Are they not holding the defenses? Why are they not firing back?”

Knowing that it was our cue to act, I gave a loud snort as a signal to the Sisters. With a “Crack”, the ropes that bound us snapped and fell loosely to the ground. Everything was nothing but a ruse to bide for time! The ropes that barely fell to the ground, when Lin Feng hurled himself and delivered a powerful kick that sent Zheng Tong crashing to the ground. Zheng Tong collapsed to the floor, nearly blacking out at the force of Lin Feng’s blow. The bandit next to Zheng Tong barely had time to draw his weapon, when Lin Feng’s whip thrust at him like a lunging snake baring its fangs! There was a deafening crack, and the bandit’s gun was thrown to the ground. Yuan Chongxi and I had not been idle; I cast forth my sword once I was free, and my sword drew a deadly arc, slashing mercilessly at the executioner as his blood spattered the ground with him screaming in pain. Yuan Chongxi took a knife off his tray and plunged it into his belly before releasing him, allowing him to fall backward. I made another attack to Zheng Tong and set my sword on him. The sight of my sword filled him with panic and fear, and Zheng Tong immediately bolted towards a little door to his back. He disappeared through the door, shutting it behind him quickly as my sword hacked at the door, nearly cleaving it into halves. We gave chase, entering through the door and reached a dark passage. After several twists and turns in the tunnels, we came to a half-opened stone door, where we saw the figure of Zheng Tong slipping through the gaps of the door before it closed, completely sealing off the entrance! There must be a mechanism behind the door that allowed Zheng Tong to seal off the door for good! The passage and the stone door was his means of escape in an emergency!

We doubled back to the main hall, dispatching as many of the bandits as we could as we made our way to meet up with Aunt Ulan’s assault team. The Sisters were instrumental to the success of the invasion. Zheng Tong had mistaken them for dark and foul energies emanating from us when the crates containing us were opened. When he was busy in his tale, it was the Sisters who had helped to defeat the brigands from the inside and the hidden sentry post outside, paving the way for Aunt Ulan’s team to attack the fort without suffering much opposition. Later when we had completely taken the fort, we had a small banquet there in the main hall to celebrate our triumph. One of the henchwomen suggested that Aunt Ulan move her headquarters here and Aunt Ulan whispered to me, asking for my opinion. “Even though his defeat today could be retribution for the atrocities he had wrought, we cannot deny that his utter defeat was a matter of Fengshui. This fort hardly on a strategically-superior position especially if the invaders know what they are doing. There will be much to do if you intend to convert it into your headquarters, lest you’ll suffer the very same fate as he did!” Aunt Ulan nodded to me. She ordered some of her henchwomen to guard this fort as an annex of the main encampment for now, while most of the resources and supplies would be moved back to the main camp. We returned with her to her camp where we lingered for two days. Zheng Tong had his fair share of plundering and pillaging the locals; so much that it took three days for his supplies and bounty to be completely transported back to Aunt Ulan’s camp!