Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Northeastern Spirit-Medium

With the whisper of the wind and the shrill rasp of cicadas, the black shadow cast by the lamp outside slowly slid along the wall and came to a stop beneath the windowsill.

At first, the shadow seemed to stand about four and a half feet tall. But as the cicadas grew louder and more frantic, it seemed to swell and stretch in time with the sound. In the end, it rose to more than six feet high. Its shape was grotesque, but one thing was certain: it was absolutely not the shadow of a human being.

A piercing cackle tore through the night sky. Even through door and window, we could hear that eerie sound clearly.

I forced myself to gather what little courage I had and crept toward the windowsill. Parting the curtain, I peered carefully through a narrow crack.

Outside the door, there was truly no person at all.

To be precise, there stood a gigantic insect, looming there with its head lifted high, more than six feet long.

Its body was entirely blue-green, with a red back. The whole thing seemed pressed tightly against the door, its legs lifted off the ground as though it were clinging to the iron gate. Its body resembled a cicada, and from its back spread a pair of enormous wings, yet those wings looked more like a bat’s than a cicada’s. Upon them were tiny markings, like strange runes.

Its abdomen was enormous, nearly the size of an adult man’s body, and it kept contracting and expanding in rhythm with that bizarre cackling sound. The blue-green belly, like its back, was mottled with red spots; anyone with even the slightest aversion to dense clusters would probably have fainted on the spot.

A belly small and fat like a moth’s; wings broad and folded like a bat’s; a head with compound eyes like a butterfly’s; a shell on its back, and a cry like a cicada’s.

What kind of monster was this?

Yet whatever insect it was, it should never have been able to grow to such an absurd size.

Seeing me stand there, dumbstruck and dazed, Old Liao kept calling out behind me.

"Hey, what is it out there?"

"Uh... a cicada? No, a butterfly? No, anyway, it’s an insect."

"Are you kidding me? An insect can get that big? Did it mutate or something?"

I knew no one would believe that description, so I walked back to his side, nudged him, and said, "It really is a giant bug. If you don’t believe me, go take a look yourself."

Old Liao’s curiosity was aroused as well. He copied my earlier behavior, lying flat on the floor and slowly inching toward the windowsill. He pulled the curtain aside and looked outside.

"Don’t you think this thing looks a bit like the legend of a jade cicada?"

After studying it for a while, Old Liao slowly spoke. Then he looked again and said in a tone of utter disbelief, "No... this thing looks like a green money insect."

Whether it was because Old Liao had raised his voice, or because the curtain had rustled too loudly, the giant bug resting against the iron door was startled. It flapped its massive wings and flew toward our windowsill.

"Shit!" Old Liao cried out, then scrambled back to where we were.

The insect seemed to have been thoroughly frightened. It began slamming its body, again and again, into the window glass with tireless, relentless force, as if it knew neither pain nor exhaustion.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The window bore blow after blow from that monstrous thing.

For some reason, the phrase "a moth flying into the flame" surfaced unbidden in my mind.

After repeated impacts, the glass—an inferior product from an old renovation after all—finally gave way with the brittle sound of cracking. If it kept at this, then in less than ten more strikes the pane would surely be shattered to pieces.

"If that beast gets in here, we’ll all probably end up like empty husks drained dry of blood..." A horrifying thought suddenly flashed through my mind.

The three of us were so terrified that we could only scramble desperately under the bed.

I had grabbed at Old Qian’s neck, trying to yank off the jade cicada hanging there, and that damned fool, not afraid of death in the slightest, actually started shouting that we were trying to steal his money.

"You’ve gone mad over money? Look outside! That monster was brought here by your jade cicada. You know that perfectly well, don’t you? If you want to die, don’t drag us down with you!" Seeing what Old Qian was doing, Old Liao hurriedly shoved him toward the window, and with that push, Old Qian was fully exposed to the insect’s sight.

"Aaaahhhhhh!!!!" Seeing that ghastly scene outside the door, Old Qian hurriedly tried to pull the jade cicada off his neck.

Whether because his neck was too thick or because he was too panicked in that instant, the jade cicada had somehow clamped itself all the way up onto his forehead, and no matter how hard he struggled, he could not get it off.

With a tearing crack, the glass finally shattered completely. Waves of cold wind surged in through the window. The insect outside fixed its eyes tightly on Old Qian, then opened a gaping maw and revealed countless jagged mouthparts within, ready to pounce and force its way into the room like a lunatic.

Old Qian kept lifting the jade cicada upward, and the skin behind his neck had already been rubbed raw and bloody. At last, after an immense struggle, he managed to tear it off. He then casually hurled it out the window. With a clear little clink, the jade cicada landed on the ground outside.

The insect outside paused, looked at the jade cicada on the ground, licked it a few times with its mouthparts, then opened its mouth and swallowed the jade cicada together with several stones in a single gulp.

Just as we were letting out a long breath of relief, those grotesque antennae groped their way back through the window. Old Qian let out another terrified scream and ran once more toward the bed, squeezing in beside us.

It was over. Was I really going to die here with Old Liao...?

We stared at the giant insect straining with all its might to squeeze through the window, and despair crept over us.

"A steed with wings beyond the Ninth Heaven, Iron Demon Mountain of the Eight Treasures and Cloud Light!" Suddenly I heard someone shout outside the door, and then the scent of a fragrant aroma drifted in.

The insect’s whole body jolted. It froze in place, not moving at all.

At that moment, two heads appeared beside the insect’s body. One was Hu Ji, and the other belonged to a stranger.

The stranger wore a short tuft of hair, a broad northern cap, and had thick brows and large eyes. He looked a little foolish, honestly.

"Three passes of the Ma family in the northeast, my master descends at Iron Demon Mountain. With the Lord of Heaven’s Teachings here to lend aid, the five lineages of the immortals come to save the living!" the big man chanted. Then he pinched the object in his hand, raised his index and middle fingers to his lips, and murmured an incantation under his breath.

Only then did I realize that what he held were three sticks of incense, neither thick nor thin.

The man quickly crushed the burning incense into powder, not minding the heat on his hands. Then he drew a talisman from his pocket, sliced the parchment across his fingers, and the pale yellow talisman instantly caught fire. He gave a cold shout and slapped it hard against the insect’s forehead.

With a thunderous boom, the enormous insect before us suddenly exploded on the spot. Countless black and blue cicadas flew out from inside its body, each one slamming into the incense ash suspended in the air.

That ash seemed to become a wall. Every flying cicada that struck the drifting gray powder dropped at once, falling to the ground. They flipped onto their backs, their legs flailing wildly, and before long they were all dead.