The Qinling Mountain Guardian

My name is Long Jiu. I grew up in the mountains. Third Grandpa was the most famous hunter in the village. With one hunting knife, he’d once taken down a black bear, and the pelts from his annual haul could pile up into a small mountain. Then he went to Split Dragon Ridge. It was forbidden territory in our mountains: man-eating sparrows, two-headed black snakes, and giant rats as big as cats. When Third Grandpa came back, he snapped his hunting rifle in half and became a herbalist instead. No one knew what he’d encountered up there. People only said that something had bitten off a part of him. Third Grandpa really did have no children of his own. Don’t ask how I came to be his grandson. Anyway, I don’t look like him at all.

The winter I was three, a strange man with corpse spots on his face and the stench of a dead body about him pushed open our door. “Help me.”

Third Grandpa refused. The man pointed at me. “Help me, and you’ll save your grandson.”

Third Grandpa stared at him for half an hour, then shed tears for the first time in his life. After that, he left for Split Dragon Ridge.

Half a month later, he returned, covered in blood, his eyeballs gone, barely clinging to life. From then on, he went mad, facing Split Dragon Ridge as he alternated between laughing and crying.

Later, Third Grandma passed away. Third Grandpa entrusted me to the village chief and left me with one sentence: “Little Jiu, in twenty years, Grandpa and grandson will meet again.” Then he vanished into the mountains.

I’ve been waiting ever since. Twenty years are almost up.