Volume One: The Useless Sets Out—Blazing Demon Slayer Chapter Fifty-One: Overwhelmed by Fear, Contrary to Expectations

After everyone had eaten their fill, they lay down to sleep according to their previous arrangement. Chang Yu, being the only young woman, naturally took the bed in the inner room. The inner room was neither too big nor too small; besides the bed, there had been a small table, which Chen San tossed outside into the yard. He then spread a mattress and a bamboo mat next to Chang Yu’s bed, where he and Yang Chengzi kept watch and slept.

Given what had happened before, when Chang Yu was abducted, Yang Chengzi dared not let his guard down. Even though the village appeared deserted, he couldn’t risk leaving Chang Yu alone in the room, fearing something unexpected might happen again.

The outer room was more spacious. Monk Suichang slept on a reclining chair, having grown used to such arrangements after several nights on the road. The young men slept on the floor, where Chang Yu laid out the remaining quilts and found some bamboo mats from nearby houses. After cleaning them, she spread them on the quilts, making the floor nearly as comfortable as a bed.

After days of exhaustion and minor injuries, everyone soon began to snore. Lying on her hand, Chang Yu watched the sleeping Yang Chengzi by the dim oil lamp. His handsome face stirred many thoughts in her heart, and she would sometimes cover her eyes in embarrassment, her face flushed red.

Though it had only been a few days, to Chang Yu it felt like an eternity. She had experienced things she’d never imagined in her life. Since coming to Yang Chengzi’s side, she no longer felt like a young girl but rather a newborn child, learning anew the ways of the world.

Lost in her thoughts, her eyelids grew heavy. Outside, the night remained deathly still; not a single sound, not even the croak of a frog. Within the house, only the sound of snoring could be heard.

Several hours passed. Before dawn, perhaps from drinking too much soup, Chen San woke, his bladder aching. Scratching his head, he quietly stepped over the others, squinting as he made his way outside. He untied his waistband and began to relieve himself in the yard.

With all the soup he’d drunk, he urinated for ages, like a breached dam. Even he started to wonder if something was wrong, so he looked down—and nearly lost his soul from fright. Without bothering to pull up his trousers, he ran back into the house, still shaken.

Monk Suichang was roused by the commotion. Chen San rushed into the inner room and plopped down beside Yang Chengzi, panting heavily.

The monk lifted the curtain and asked, “What on earth did you see to frighten you so badly in the middle of the night?”

By now, Yang Chengzi and Chang Yu were awake, as were the young men outside, who poked their heads through the curtain.

Chen San, stammering and terrified, pointed outside. “A h-h-h-hand... a hand...”

Yang Chengzi smacked his back. “Speak properly! What hand? Next, you’ll say there’s a foot, too. Look at you, scared out of your wits.”

Chang Yu chimed in, “Yes, look at yourself.”

Chen San grew anxious, got up, and pointed outside again, repeating, “A hand, a hand!”

Chang Yu screamed, her voice echoing through the silent village. When Chen San burst in, he’d been so frightened he hadn’t fastened his trousers, and in his agitation, he’d exposed himself to everyone. Chang Yu covered her eyes and scolded him so fiercely that his scalp tingled.

Monk Suichang pressed his palms together. “Amitabha, my eyes are sullied so early in the morning. Are you itching for a beating?”

Ignoring them, Chen San clutched Yang Chengzi’s hand. “There’s a hand in the yard! I was scared to death. Let me catch my breath.” And he truly did, gasping for air.

Yang Chengzi, half skeptical, asked, “Are you sleepwalking? If there’s a hand out there, why didn’t we see it in daylight?”

Annoyed by the disbelief, Chen San slapped Yang Chengzi’s shoulder. “Who’s sleepwalking? I was just taking a piss, hadn’t even finished yet! The hand’s buried in the yard—go see for yourself.”

Sensing something was wrong, Yang Chengzi got up and went outside with the others. Sure enough, in the moonlight, a puddle was visible on the ground, and a hand protruded from the muddy water, as if trying to crawl out. Chen San’s urine had washed away the dirt, revealing the hand.

Yang Chengzi approached and examined it closely. The hand didn’t appear to be a severed limb. He fetched a firewood stick and dug at the soil, soon revealing an entire arm and shoulder. He stopped, thoughtful.

Chen San asked, “What’s wrong? Not going to dig?”

“Of course we have to dig. If it’s just one body, we can perform rites and move on. But if there are more, then things are far from simple.”

“What difference does it make if there’s more than one?” Chang Yu asked in confusion.

Yang Chengzi frowned. “When we first arrived, this village was devoid of life—not even frogs croak in the height of summer. If it’s just one body, perhaps someone died by chance and was buried here. But if there are several, then the disappearance of the villagers becomes a troubling question.”

Chen San’s lips twitched. “You don’t mean everyone died of a plague, do you? Don’t scare me! I heard plague is contagious. If we catch it, we could die.”

Yang Chengzi shook his head. “It can’t be plague. In a plague-stricken village without containment, corpses would litter the streets, and over time, only bones would be left. If the plague had been contained, all the bodies would have been cremated to prevent resurgence through soil or water. That’s been the practice for a hundred years; even chickens and ducks are burned if stricken. Bodies buried underground wouldn’t be plague victims.”

Monk Suichang nodded in agreement. “Yang Chengzi is right. Anyone with some age knows that plague bodies must be burned. This skeleton isn’t fully decomposed, and the dry soil suggests the death occurred only a few dozen days ago—about the same time as the bedding inside. If we find more bodies below, this is no ordinary matter.”

Chen San finally understood. How serious things were depended on how many corpses they found. A single body could be dealt with through prayers, but more might spell trouble—just the thought made his head ache.

“Then let’s just leave it. We’re only passing through, leaving tomorrow. One or two corpses—what does it matter? The dead are long gone; we can just rebury them and pretend we never saw anything. Let’s go back to sleep.”

Yang Chengzi shook his head. “You found it, so you’re already involved. What we do depends on the circumstances. There is one situation where we cannot walk away.”

He resumed digging, and the young men joined him, reluctantly, with their sticks. Chen San was disgruntled.

Chang Yu, curious, asked, “What kind of situation? Even if it’s murder, isn’t that for the authorities? We can’t do anything.”

Without pausing, Yang Chengzi replied, “Usually yes, murder cases are for the authorities. But if an evil sorcerer slaughtered people for some forbidden ritual, then the master and I cannot ignore it.”

“Amitabha, well spoken,” Monk Suichang intoned. “Where there are guardians of the common people, there are also those who bring bloodshed. Good and evil have always stood opposed. For us in the Buddhist and Daoist orders, it is our fate to face such matters; we cannot escape them. If this is the work of a sorcerer, we must remain vigilant. Should there be any trace, we must eradicate it, root and branch, to prevent future calamity.”

Chen San frowned in dismay. “Why does it always fall to us? There are plenty of monks and priests. We have our own affairs.”

“Saving one life is the same as saving another,” the monk replied. “There are strong Daoists in Chen Family Town—it will be safe for a while. But if we find a sorcerer here and let him go, other villages will suffer.”

Chen San wanted to argue but, lacking eloquence, grudgingly admitted the monk had a point. As Yang Chengzi often said, a bird’s life and a human’s life are equal; there is no difference in worth. Thus, the fate of other villages is as important as that of Chen Family Town.

Resigned, he grabbed a stick and joined in. In less than half an hour, they dug a large pit and hauled out four bodies, each in a hideous state—faces twisted, eyes rotted away, mouths gaping in agony. It was clear they had suffered terribly before death. Chang Yu, horrified, covered her mouth and retched.

Yang Chengzi and Monk Suichang both frowned deeply. The monk pressed his palms together, closed his eyes, and chanted prayers for the dead, while Yang Chengzi gazed at the corpses with a grave expression.

“We must dig in the other courtyards. It seems we have no choice but to get involved,” he said.

Chen San, now subdued, saw the corpses had been tortured, and with the whole village missing, realized the villagers were likely all doomed. Yang Chengzi’s resolve to dig further suggested the worst.

Chen San’s mind was in turmoil. He had no grand sense of righteousness, nor any duty to save the world, but the sight of these tortured corpses began to give him a sense of what an evil sorcerer truly was.

He’d never heard of such things before. Only after traveling with the master and being hunted by a female sorcerer, hearing Yang Chengzi’s explanations, did he learn that sorcerers’ arts often involved ghosts. But now he saw firsthand the cruelty—these ghosts were forged through such horrific means.

Following Yang Chengzi, Chen San grew afraid. He dreaded finding more bodies in other courtyards and hoped the villagers had managed to escape and were far from this dreadful place.

But hope was in vain. In each courtyard, they unearthed two or three corpses—some, heartbreakingly, were children. When Chen San dug up the remains of a child, everyone fell silent. He slumped to the ground as if his soul had left him, unable to recover for a long time.

Yang Chengzi approached and patted his shoulder. “This is why, when you encounter a sorcerer, you must eradicate them completely. Otherwise, you’ll witness scenes like this again.”

Chen San said nothing. Staring at the child’s remains, he picked up his stick and resumed digging. His gaze was eerily calm—a calm that chilled to the bone, with flashes of murderous intent flickering within.