Folklore and Strange Tales: At the Start, You Retrieve the Sea-Suppressing Black Iron

Around 2 a.m., the sound of banging on the door jolted Cheng Xiaojin out of his cot.

Zhao Defa stood outside the door, wearing baggy shorts and flip-flops, his face as gray as the wall.

"Cheng Xiaojin, my wife has stood up again."

Cheng Xiaojin grabbed a military flashlight and ran.

Half of the streetlights on Panjiayuan Back Street were out, the cicadas had stopped chirping, and the whole street was so quiet that the only sound was the patter of feet on the ground.

A figure can be seen in the direction of the wellhead in the eastern district.

Zhao Defa's wife, wearing a nightgown, walked barefoot on the cement floor. Her ten toenails were grayish-blue, and her footprints left a trail of wet marks on the ground.

In the sweltering heat of summer, the road surface is so dry it's practically smoking; there shouldn't be any water.

She was walking towards the well covered with a red cloth and weighed down with blue bricks.

When the flashlight beam shone on her, her eyes were half-open, her pupils dilated larger than a cat's eyes, and her lips were moving.

One hundred and twenty-three, one hundred and twenty-four, one hundred and twenty-five.

One count per second, the sound squeezed out from the throat, without any rise and fall of breath, without any interruption of airflow, the way of making the sound didn't sound like a living person speaking.

Zhao Defa lunged forward to grab him.

"Don't touch her." Cheng Xiaojin grabbed him by the back of his collar.

One hundred and twenty-six, one hundred and twenty-seven, one hundred and twenty-eight.

We were less than ten steps from the well, and the edges of the red cloth were fluttering in the night wind.

Cheng Xiaojin took three steps forward and pressed his hands on her shoulders from behind.

cold.

The temperature of the shoulders beneath her nightgown was ridiculously low; the coldness seemed to seep from deep within her skin and spread all the way to her fingers.

My ten fingers felt like little popsicles, prickly and cold to the touch.

But he didn't let go.

The scorching metal energy within her body surged up from her palms, colliding with the yin energy within her body. A sensation of alternating heat and cold coursed through her bones, and her knuckles cracked and popped.

Zhao Defa's wife stopped talking; the 128 was stuck halfway out.

She blinked once, then blinked again, her pupils slowly narrowing as her gaze shifted from the front to her feet and then to behind her, a thin line of gray drool trickling from the corner of her mouth.

"How...how did I get here?"

Zhao Defa rushed up and hugged her. The woman went limp and leaned against him, her breath smelling of rust.

"Go back, go back quickly." Cheng Xiaojin's arms were shaking when he let go, and the swelling and pain at the base of all ten fingernails had not subsided.

"Stop all the water in the house with towels, so she won't come into contact with water again tonight."

Zhao Defa helped his wife walk back. The hand that was sticking out from under his arm had its five fingers slightly curled in the air, as if it were holding something.

Cheng Xiaojin didn't look at them again.

Look down at your hands.

The bluish-black residue from the affliction, which originally only reached the fingertips, has covered the nails and spread beyond the nail edge in the past few days, stopping near the first phalanx.

That's not the case anymore.

As soon as the hand pressed down, the yin energy rushed in and was then crushed and forced out by the metal energy. In less than half a minute, the iron-blue color moved from the first finger joint to the second joint, covering all ten fingers of both hands.

Turning my hand over, the bluish-black color under the streetlight was the same as the oxide layer on the surface of iron. From a distance, it didn't look like a human hand, but rather like an old iron piece dug out of the ground.

The opening that was created that night wasn't properly closed.

The Yin energy recognized the entrance; his body was its most familiar passage, and it remembered the way after passing through it once.

When you rub your thumb against the pad of your index finger, you can barely feel the grooves of your fingerprints anymore; the two fleshy parts are pressed together, like there's a rubber glove between them.

There was a puddle of water on the road, with a shallow layer of water covering the pothole.

He glanced down at it.

His face was reflected in the puddles, and the yellow light from the streetlights shone on the water's surface, swaying back and forth.

His mouth was moving.

The opening and closing motion was exactly the same frequency as Zhao Defa's wife's earlier, one per second.

He closed his mouth tightly, clenched his teeth, and pressed his lips together.

The mouth of the face in the puddle was still opening and closing, counting.

He took a step back.

The face in the floodwater didn't recede; it remained in the same spot, its mouth still moving.

A tingling sensation ran through the back of his neck. He abruptly pulled his gaze away from the water's surface, and as he turned his head, his neck cracked.

My phone vibrated; this time it was Zhou Banxian.

"Uncle Zhou."

"You're at the wellhead? The compass needle doubled in speed five minutes ago. What did you touch?"

"Zhao Defa's wife got up again, and I stopped her with my hand."

There was a three-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"Look at your hands under the streetlights."

"I've already checked; the bluish-black color extends past the first finger bone."

The dull thud of the wine pot hitting the table came from above.

"Anything else?"

Cheng Xiaojin gritted his teeth and told her about the reflection in the puddles.

Ten seconds of silence.

When Zhou Banxian's voice came out again, it was hoarse.

"You need to come to Master Ma right now."

"It's already past midnight."

"Master Ma isn't asleep, come quick."

I rode my old bicycle through half of Panjiayuan. At 2:30 a.m., there wasn't a soul in sight. The wheels rolled over a puddle of water that splashed onto my calves. It was strangely cold; the water shouldn't be this cold in the middle of summer.

He didn't look down, and he didn't look at his feet the whole way.

The courtyard house was lit up, the door to the main room was open, and Zhou Banxian sat at the table with a copper compass next to his enamel cup, the needle slowly turning.

Cheng Xiaojin laid his hands flat on the table.

The entire body was exposed under the forty-watt light bulb, and all ten fingers were bluish-black from the fingertips to the second joint.

The light shone on it, giving it a cold, metallic sheen. When combined with the old bronze color of the bronze compass on the table, the two items were almost indistinguishable in terms of texture.

Zhou Banxian pinched his right middle finger and turned it over to look at it.

Cheng Xiaojin saw those two fingers wrapped around his middle finger, but the tactile signals transmitted back were almost blank; being pinched was the same as not being pinched at all.

"What about touch?"

"I wouldn't have known you pinched me until I saw it."

Zhou Banxian paused for a moment, then pushed the bronze compass over.

"Put your hand on it."

Place your right palm on the copper surface of the compass. The needle stops for one second, two seconds, three seconds, and then begins to rotate counterclockwise.

Zhou Banxian's wine pot fell over on the table, spilling wine all over the compass without him noticing. Under the glow of the wine, the pointer spun faster and faster, going in circles against the original direction.

"The metal element and the yin energy are intertwined inside your body."

Zhou Banxian's expression was somewhat solemn as he spoke.

"When the evil energy passes through the body, some of it is not completely expelled, leaving roots in the meridians. Your Xin metal energy is constantly fighting against those roots. Xin metal is forcing it outward, while it is also pushing it inward."

"How far should the needles be inserted before it's considered finished?"

"It's over once your Xin metal energy is completely depleted."

Cheng Xiaojin's Adam's apple bobbed slightly.

"Is it completely used up?"

Zhou Banxian stared at the reversed pointer and put it another way.

"If you return to your post too late, it's not that others can't get back, it's that you can't get back."

Master Ma came out from the inner room, wearing a thin cotton-padded jacket even in the middle of summer.

He glanced at Cheng Xiaojin's hand on the table, then at the reversed compass, asked nothing, picked up his phone, found a number, and dialed it.

It was a little after 3 a.m. when the other end of the line rang, and I answered it immediately.

"Come to my place tomorrow morning and bring the booklet."

He paused for two seconds and nodded.

"OK."

It's over.

Who did you call?

"Liu Bai".

Cheng Xiaojin opened his mouth, wanting to ask when Master Ma had gotten Liu Bai's number, but Master Ma's expression made him swallow his words.

"Your hands can't wait any longer."

A very faint, muffled sound came from the direction of the well outside the courtyard. It was muffled, deep, and short, exactly like the frequency of a heartbeat.

The three people in the main room remained silent.

After Cheng Xiaojin removed his hand, the pointer of the bronze compass on the table started spinning clockwise again, then stopped after a few rotations.

Cheng Xiaojin pulled his hands off the table and placed them on his knees, his bluish-gray fingers resting on the fabric of his trousers. The light bulb shone down, casting ten gray-blue shadows on his knees.

It's almost dawn.