The house of life 2, p.1
The House of Life 2, page 1
part #2 of Celestial Battles of Hong Kong Series
The House of Life
Part II
Vann Chow
Copyright © 2018-2019 by Vann Chow
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Bandits
Dogs could hear lower and higher frequencies than human beings. That was a distinctive advantage Ken had over all of Master Siu’s talents in the Celestial army, but it also meant a lot of times, he was the first to spot any disturbance, the mad dog that would react to the source of danger first while everyone thought him rude and mannerless as he barked on deaf ears.
When he heard the mad tramples of hundreds pairs of hooves approaching, he went straight towards it without asking anyone for excuse. He could not care less about his reputation among the Celestial elites at a moment like this. And he hadn’t needed to go far to see what was coming. The huge dusts cloud that obscured the moonlight and the shaking grounds behind his four paws told him everything he needed to know. — The Manchurian Blue Banner bandits were coming, and in huge quantity.
Ken turned back around and ran as fast as he could. The bell on his collar bow, specially forged with amalgam of remolded metals objects blessed by high Buddhist monks in the hands of a two-hundred-year-old blacksmith, made a series of clinks and clanks at pitch high above the audible range of living humans. Its rattles reverberated everywhere within five-mile radius, alerting the standby army to the incoming threat. By the time Ken reached the head guards at the gate back to the entrance of the citadel, the gate was already shutting to the tunes of blood-curdling wails of hungry and scared ghosts that had arrived too late to the banquet. They panicked even more when they heard the prepare-for-battle chimes coming from the watch towers along the walls of the citadel.
“This is not a drill! Move away!” Ken barked at the poor spirits. But they were relentless. “Shut it! We can’t let any more people in!” He barked at the group of soldiers manning the gate.
An old man was pushed aside by the pushing herds of anxious ghosts wanting to be inside before the attackers come. They had all heard the rumors that the Blue Banner bandits had a very bad year this year, unable to scrap enough to feed their appetites by raiding small villages of ghost dwellings. They started to ransack monasteries as well, only to find the immortal monks living in the monasteries had very little to themselves, having given away most offerings from their pious believers constantly to the poor and the sick.
“The Blue Banner is coming…the Blue Banner is coming!” The old man mumbled, as he crawled his way around the wall to look for a place to hide. Above him, Ken’s brigade of Celestial army under his command had filled the top of the outer walls, each of the spirits armed with weapons and staring attentively at the incoming barbarians. They formed the first line of defense of the House of Siu.
“Come up!” Master Siu, Ken’s grandfather had appeared at the top of the closest bastion, but before Ken’s body could penetrate the thick stone walls and get to the stone staircases, the Master had used his magic spells to lift him into the air. Ken caught the eyes of the old man by the wall and leaped forward towards him, against the sweep of wind formed at the master’s will. The master sighed and mumbled another spell to send the old man flying into the citadel, bringing along Ken with him who had stopped resisting the spells.
“Focus! Ken!” He bellowed at the dog who was transforming himself back into the shape of man once again, in a long black traditional Tang jacket. Ken slicked his hair back with saliva.
“This is an emergency. The attack was large-scale, and unprecedented,” the master continued. “Prepare your army! This is the chance for you to show your worth!”
“Don’t you worry!” Ken nodded to the master then sprinted off to the commander’s tower where his brigade commanders were waiting.
“Should we evacuate the guests?” The chief military counsel asked as he looked up at the clouded night sky. Huge exogenous eagles circulated above them, making huge menacing shadows that forewarn their imminent descend.
“Do it by groups. Don’t cause any panic,” Master Siu said after he considered all possible scenarios in his head. “We can’t have a huge group of frightened ghosts pouring on to the streets of the living at once. It would cause chaos and panic in the world of the living.”
“It’s the night of the Yulan festival after all. Most people will be prepared, or fast asleep already.”
“Okay. Go!” Master Siu hurried him, as the bandits had arrived finally at the gate.
“Open the gates! We need to go in!” A hoarse voice shrieked. A lone man emerged from behind the dust of clouds on horseback. He spotted a long queue on his half shaven head. The thousands of studs on his Manchurian uniform shone in the distance. He was, as the old man said, an ex-Qing Blue Banner combatant.
“State your business here!” Master Siu voice boomed in the open space ahead.
“It’s none of your business. Open up and let us in! Or we would crush the gates and bring your walls down with it!”
“We have enough water and wine for everyone this year!” Master Siu proffered. “If you stand down, we could set up a feast for you and your men right where you are.”
“That’s great news!” The man turned around to consult with the others.
From among the enemy line came forward another man, but he was at least two times as big as the negotiator. It was clear that he was the true leader of the bandits, Chan-San, or the self-titled ‘Third Lord’ in their world. “But we want both the water and wine, and everything else in the city!”
Before Master Siu could digest the message in what he said, a sharp object flew directly at the master. It was not an arrow, but the ends of the Qing blue flagpole. It pierced through the master’s tall cap and nailed it on the other side of the stone wall. A menacing dragon slithered around on the blue banner and roared. The Master tumbled back and fell onto the ground, the flag of the enemy waving teasingly above his head.
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” Wuzha-Sam hooted. “Let’s go, brothers!”
“Shoot every single one of them,” Ken was heard shouting to his commander. “No mercy is needed for these imbeciles!”
As soon as his words were given, a rain of bullets pelt down on the incoming body of soldiers. While some hit their targets on its weakest points, the face and the hands, causing them to fall off their rides and drop their weapons which in turn broke into a million thousand pieces of dusts in an instance, many were stopped by the bandits’ ancient armors who continued to advance as if they were stung by mosquitoes.
“Impossible! How could they hold up against the bullets?!” A celestial guards exclaimed to his equally baffled neighbor. Bullets, a modern invention, was one of the most powerful weapons one could find in the history of men and ghosts. Their bullets were made with bronze, an alloy copper and small portion of tin, it was the metal that all evil spirits are afraid of since the time of the Yellow Emperor that ruled China around 2500 BC.
“Do you think they have chain mails underneath?” The questioner asked, but he knew it could not have been the answers. The group moved in motions to swift for heavy armory.
“Just shoot the horse then!” His neighbor proposed.
“Prepare to reload!” The commander shouted as the first round of bullets were almost gone.
But the enemy had spotted an opportunity in the brief moment. They hit back with their swarms of arrows, made of bronze metal head themselves.
“Argghh!” The two young soldiers who were just a moment ago conversing were shot and their spirits were cracking like glasses. As they fell to the ground, the structures of their spirits completely shattered into a million little pieces. Almost as if they had never existed, any trace of them was absorbed by the bricks of the citadel wall.
Many soldiers on the wall had fallen in the chaos. The guards behind the gate could no longer withstand the force of the impelling assailants and their battering Ram. The gate was forced open and the guards were crashed by the trampling hooves and boots of the bandits and their war horses.
“Pour it!” Master Siu gave the order to his commander, who gave the signal for his men to douse the incoming attackers with virgin’s urine.
When Wuzha realized what welcoming gift his men and himself had been given, he broke into a hysteria. With an easy sprung, he scaled the wall along a few protruding bricks and reached Master Siu before he could catch his breath. The stench was certainly making it an unpleasant experience.
“You are immune…?” The master gasped. Evil spirits were afraid of virgin’s urine, as per thousand years of tried and true folk wisdom, but in modern days Hong Kong, it was hard to come by, and even harder to store in large quantities. The batch his men had used was not only spoiled, expired, but also substandard. They were collected from the wastes of farm animals, as oppose to human boys as original recipe dictates. No one, of course, was there to explain this to the master.
“How dare you soil my glorious Manchurian Blue Banner uniform, you Han commoner!!!” Wuzha-Sam was hysterical, and he clasped his fingers around the master’s neck.
The black dog flung himself at the man who was trying to kill his grandfather and sunk his teeth into whatever he could reach. It worked briefly, and the master was let go. His man quick
Wuzha
“The Qing soldiers stationed in South Canton, most of them the Blue Banners, one of the lower houses of all Eight Banners of Manchuria clans, were abandoned when the Qing Emperor was dethroned. They had nowhere to go, no one to follow. The revolutionists’ army couldn’t reach this far either. In the brief lawless period. The commanders of the different squads started to split up the rural territories and there were lots of deaths from fights between the squad commanders. Eventually some got pushed out of Canton and spilled over across the border to Hong Kong. They attacked villages in the North like Yuen Long for spoils. Eventually, they were taken outs by the guns and rifles of the British army, but their spirits were vile, their hatred for revenge made them terribly brutal enemy and Master Siu’s Celestial army was no match for them. Their spirits roam free still to this day.”
“Was that why the army was on guard despite today’s festivity?”
“Of course! The bandits love festivities. The rich and the resourceful are all in one place. There is practically free flowing of food and wine for everyone. This is the kind of thing they wait all year for.”
“If there’s so much food and wine, why don’t we share with them? And everyone would surely be happy to put down their weapons?” Elise asked.
“Are you stupid?” Madam Siu said. “The bandits would not only eat our food and drink our wines. They would take the women to be their reluctant wives, steal our children to groom them into thieves just like them. After that they would burn down this whole place and kill all of us just for the heck of it!”
Chamomile nodded to Elise. She could not understand how ghosts could be burnt or killed, but she nonetheless felt a chill down her spine. It was then she noticed that the double door was burst open, giving way to a summer night breeze that carried with it the sounds of a thousand squeals and screams. A group of men had appeared at the doorway. At the front was their leader, a man — no, he was so huge he looked almost a beast. He spat out a lump of black feather ball from his enormous mouth and it skidded across the hall to Michael’s feet. The lump squirmed and groaned.
The black feather ball was none other than Ken, curled up in visibly tremendous pain. Chamomile almost jumped from her seat and squealed if Madam Siu hadn’t kept her down.
“Don’t move. It’s really him, Wuzha-Sam!” Madam Siu exclaimed, referring to the leader of the bandits.
“But Ken’s injured! He’s bleeding!” Chamomile bit her lips in concern.
There was a gaping stab wound on one side of Ken’s canine body, and dark red blood was flowing out of it. Instead of pooling and staining the floor, Elise saw it turned into a powdery of dusts and got absorbed by the floor boards, leaving no trace behind.
“That’s…that’s ‘black dog’s blood’!” Elise gasped. “I have heard of it before.”
“Ken himself is the most powerful weapon we have! All ghosts are afraid of ‘black dog’s blood’, supposedly.” Chamomile said. “Why didn’t it work on the bandits?!” They spoke in concern.
“Is that all you’ve got?” The head bandit who was identified by Madam Siu roared, followed by a round of sneers by his men. Elise could see drops of Ken’s blood dripping off the corners of his cavernous mouth lined with crooked teeth, some of them sharp as the tip of spears, some of the broken and chipped. Elise peered out into the courtyard behind him and his man to find nothing but chaos, a scene directly off of any apocalyptic movie. A blanket of dust was only slowly settling, revealing the trashed feasting ground littered with flickering apparitions of the fallen, injured or killed, celestial armies. Most of the banquet round tables had been overturned and trampled on by the reckless horse-riding bandits. The foodstuff on them split all over the ground, although like Ken’s blood, they were slowly turned into tiny specks of colors that filtered through the gravels, slipped in between the blades of grasses when they hit the ground and were absorbed by the earth, leaving nothing behind. Most of the guests had ran away and anyone still around were chased into a circle by a group of arrogant horsemen. All of them were wearing tattered Qing army dark blue uniforms and their distinctive red feather hats. Their long braids of hair that was typical of Qing subjects whipped behind them as the hooves of their horse shuffled around the scared spirits. Their leader, however, was spotting a golden metal helmet, unlike everyone else. A tassel of black threads decorated with shining pearls swing on the top of it.
“What is it that you want?!” Michael blared, aiming his revolver, an antique 19th century piece with handle made from wood, directly at the guy’s head.
“It’s in here, I sense it!” He blared at his men behind him, ignoring the question. They hooted animatedly and started to spread around the hall, encircling the celestial family and their guests.
“Search!”
Michael shot at the spot in front of Wuzha’s feet, who stopped in amused surprise and stared at him. “Nobody moves, or you will be shot, and your chance of redemption forfeited!” Michael roared, and cocked his gun. “These are not regular bullets,” he warned. “Your souls would be scattered forever, never to become one piece again for eternity! — You will cease to exist.”
There was a slit of smile on the monster’s face and with swift motions of his sword, he cut the gun cleanly in two halves.
If that had frightened Michael, he didn’t show.
“Fire!” Michael shouted. Rows of armed celestial soldiers appeared suddenly on the first floors of concrete modern commercial buildings that sprung out of existence on both sides of the banquet hall. The walls of the hall itself were dissolving away as quickly as they had appeared like huge curtains being pulled part. Elise realized with shock where she was — they had never left Nathan Road. In fact, they were sitting in the middle of the road this whole time, eating and drinking as cabs and late-night buses from the world of the living sped through them, with neither noticing or bothered by the other’s presence. It was no wonder the banquet hall could accommodate the thousands of hungry ghosts from all over Hong Kong. Nathan Road was one of the longest and widest road in Kowloon.
More soldiers were pouring out of the entrance of The Chamber of Life and Nutrition not far away. She noticed, however, by following Ken’s gaze, that a wounded Master Siu had been carried in to the Chamber on a stretcher.
“Duck down!” Madam Siu cried as pulled Chamomile and the others at their tables down with her to hide under the big round dining tables.
“Mistress! Stop ogling!” Jade had appeared from out of nowhere and grabbed her by the arm. They crawled under the table just in time when the first round of gunshots was fired from the soldiers standing guards on the first floors flanking both side of road at the bandits. Terrified as she was, Elise was curious. She poked her head under the fluttering tablecloths that were whisked up and down and left and right from the winds caused by the splashes of bullets and the reciprocating arrows by the Blue Banners.
“Your bullets cannot hurt me!” Wuzha-Sam declared, beating his chest and flexing his muscles that reminded one of the New Zealand Hakas. His men have less theatrical flares, but they too, seemed impervious to the special bullets that Michael had so much reliance on.
An elderly guest, Elise couldn’t look at his face clearly from where she was, and his wife tried to make a beeline for his carriage that was now just standing by an electric lamppost not far away. One of the bandits lunged forward to catch the tail of the madam’s long dress just in time. She fell forward, dragging her husband down with her. She cried out for him to run, but the man refused to leave his wife.
“The most respectable Third Lord,” the bandit called out, “Look who I have found!!”
Wuzha turned around amid the fireworks of bullets that scratched his armor only barely to look at the trembling couple huddled together.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t this Counsel Ho from Macau, and your beautiful first wife! What a lovely couple. Finally reunited in death.” It seemed that this Counsel Ho had only recently passed away. He looked ancient and was sporting rather clean, modern clothing. The woman, his first wife, as Wuzha explained, had died when she was rather young, Elise noticed, for she looked barely older than herself. Just by looks, no one would have thought them a husband and wife, but Elise understood that she was now in the world of the dead, and most of them were frozen in time and stayed as young, or as old as they were when they took their last breath, forever.
