Book 2: Chapter 7


    The following content may be a hoax or false information.


    The ceremony was done in the ssroom after school. No one else was around and the school was very empty after everyone had left. The ssroom lights were gradually turned off as people left for the day, and the whole school building was dark. Only this one ssroom was still lit. They were on a tight schedule, because someone woulde by on patrol after a period of time and drive them away.


    The sorceresss daughter was in the ssroom, setting up the Chuma array.


    These details alle from a chumaxians narrative (1). As a matter of fact, the information provided by a chumaxian was only epted as court testimony once. Any other information was only valid among the masses, since there had never been any science to back it up.


    In the Northeast, chumaxian were generally considered to be strange life forms that were formed from animals and couldnt be seen by human eyes. Some Taoists said that they were the souls of certain things.


    As ordinary people, its difficult to understand how these supernatural forces exist andmunicate in ways that we can''t see.


    In the Beijing fifteen corpse case, this chumaxian was a powerful being that apanied the sorceress. Through the sorceresss daughter, the chumaxian disclosed some details about the scene of death at that time. It was hard to believe that this thing couldmunicate in such detail.


    Chumaxian couldnt activelymunicate with you, so you had to provide questions that were carefully worded.


    ck sses'' first question was, Did someonemit a crime or was there a ghost?


    The chumaxian''s answer was very strange, It''s not anything you would think of.


    "And what would that be?" ck sses asked.


    The Chumaxian replied, "I dont know. It''s not good. It doesn''t talk."


    "Can it be seen?"


    "You all can''t see it."


    In other words, only the chumaxian could see that thing that had killed people. ck sses was about to ask another question, when the chumaxian suddenly said, "You might be able see it."


    The chumaxian said that neither a person or ghostmitted the crime. In other words, it wasnt something that belonged to the Chuma system. There were very few things that chumaxian didnt recognize, so ck sses found it very interesting.


    "What was its purpose?" ck sses asked. "What was the ritual for?"


    "To go back," the chumaxian said. "It wants to go back."


    "Where does it want to go back to?"


    Here, the chumaxian paused for a while before saying, "It wants to go back below."


    ck sses asked for rification several times, but the chumaxian didnt answer.


    The young girl told him that the chumaxian probably didnt answer because it didn''t know.


    But ck sses didnt give up and asked several more questions, changing the wording each time. Eventually, the chumaxian said, "Below is the original one. It needs to revert back to the original one."


    It made even less sense now.


    "Then why kill people?" ck sses asked.


    The young girl''s eyes suddenly started flicking back and forth and her eyelids seemed to droop down.


    ck sses found that the movement of the girl''s eyes was very different from that of human beings. It almost seemed to mimic an animals way of looking at people.


    Her eyes seemed to be half-hidden behind her eyelids, flicking back and forth as she looked at him. He didnt know if it was some kind of technique she had learned since childhood to scare people.


    Then, the chumaxian said, "It doesn''t want people to know that its been here."


    "Is it gone now?" ck sses asked.


    The chumaxian shook its head.


    "There was a sixteenth person," the chumaxian suddenly said. "It didn''t finish killing. There was one person it didn''t kill."


    "There were only fifteen bodies at the scene."


    "It''s in the water. It was transported to the well from a distance, so it could have gone back. But there was one person who didnt die."


    "The sorceress took them to Beijing to set up this array. Did you teach her?"


    "Yes."


    "So, you designed this array to send it back, but it failed. And that thing didn''t go back because there was one person at the scene who didn''t die. It caused the array to fail, right?"


    "Yes."


    "If it was going to kill everyone, did you warn the sorceress?" ck sses asked.


    The chumaxian stopped talking, but ck sses continued asking questions, "Do you have to listen to it?"


    "Ites from below."


    The chumaxian didn''t answer directly, its eyes constantly moving back and forth as if it was trying to look at ck sses. Whatever happened at that time prevented the chumaxian from saving his divinepanion.


    "Did it tell you how to set up the array?" ck sses asked.


    "The array is a bridge." The chumaxian seemed to be a little unstable at this time. "It wants to go back to the bridge below. When it thunders, it can go back."


    "That thing since it hasnt gone back, where is it now?" ck sses asked.


    "The sixteenth person isnt dead," the chumaxian said. "Its on their neck."


    ck sses looked at the young girl. At this time, the girl''s movements were so exaggerated that she lookedpletely like an animal. In Chuma, people''s body movements generally didn''t change so much, but the young girl was practically crawling onto the table and her whole body was distorted.


    "You dont have to be like this," ck sses said after looking at the monster-like body.


    The chumaxian stared at ck sses before saying, "Be careful."


    "Are you saying that thing wille after me?"


    "Be careful. If you see a white house and children ying with red balls near you, dont go into that house. Especially if its a white house with a dome."


    ck sses narrowed his eyes and saw that the young girl''s eyes had started to bleed as they flicked back and forth.


    "That''s enough!" He said in a deep voice.


    This was ck sses first time asking a chumaxian for information, and it ended shortly after that. It took a lot of physical strength to summon a chumaxian, and the young girl couldn''t bear it anymore.


    Aftering back to her senses, the young girl exined a few things to ck sses.


    The chumaxians exnation was much clearer than usual, but the dialogues between the two worlds were very different, so the little girl suggested that ck sses choose to listen to what he believed in. Chumaxians eyes were different from those of humans, so the things they saw might not be clear or might only be one side of the story.


    The information ck sses had gained from those questions was so obscure that he didn''t even know whether it should be used or not. But the chumaxian did mention that another person had been at the scene and didn''t die. It was just extremely difficult to investigate because there hadnt been any surveince equipment around the building.


    But if he was being honest with himself, he knew that there was evidence of the sorceresss footprints at the scene showing that she may have been carrying a person.


    But wouldnt that person have been covered in mes when he left?


    If there really was another person who had made it out alive, then they could have only flown away.


    In addition, the young girl carefully reminded ck sses of the chumaxians warning towards the end.


    "Its because the chumaxian became very interested in you after seeing your past. You should listen to it and try to avoid that kind of house."


    When ck sses got ready to leave, he thought about whether he had seen that kind of house before. He hadnt. White houses were something you would see in the Middle East, and he wasnt nning on going there any time soon.


    He wasnt going to worry about it, but the young girl told him that it might not actually be a house, so he had to be careful and keep an eye out for anything simr. If he did see something, he had to be sure to avoid it.


    As ck sses was saying goodbye to her, he suddenly asked, "Can chumaxian lie?"


    The young girl stared at him, not knowing what he meant. When ck sses smiled, the young girl shook her head, "A chumaxian can''t lie. It will only remain silent. "


    ****


    TN Notes:


    (1) Chumaxian is basically the practice of shamanism in Northeastern China. They worship animals like foxes, snakes, weasels, etc. Chumaxian (), which means "the gods who take action" or more literally "riding for the immortals", is a definition which implies that the gods and their disciples act as an organic whole rather than mere channels ofmunication. Northeastern Chinese shamans are predominantly women. More info here. Per Tiffany: Chumaxian can be seen as both a verb and a noun in Chinese. The word can mean someone who chuma" (is being possessed by spirits). Xian means immortal, which might be a respectful way to call the spirits that appear in the ritual. In some cases, it might refer to someone who performs the ritual.