"Writing a Pen to Lie"
Chen Yan was born as a ghost master, with a pair of yin and yang eyes and a judge pen. It was his destiny to make wishes for the dead souls. There are only two colors in his world: the red of cinnabar, and the translucent gray of undisturbed souls.
Until that snowy night, he met a young man holding an umbrella.
The man was wearing a faded old-style gown. There was no shadow under the umbrella ribs, but his eyebrows were astonishingly clear. The memories of other undead souls were all fragmented, but he remembered that his name was Shen Qingya, that he was a tablet rubbing apprentice of the Xiling Seal Society during his lifetime, and that he even remembered that he died in the winter of the 26th year of the Republic of China.
But he couldn't remember why he stayed in the world for more than eighty years.
"According to the rules, those with unclear obsessions cannot cross." Chen Yan flipped through the book of life and death with a calm voice.
"That's not clear." Shen Qingya smiled, and the snow on the edge of the umbrella slid down, "Can I see you rubbing the monument? My master said that my skill in rubbing the monument is excellent."
A strange "employment" begins. Shen Qingya stayed in his old study in exchange for teaching Chen Yan the skills of rubbing tablets. What Chen Yan was rubbing was the inscription, but what Shen Qingya was rubbing was time - the scent of ink, knife marks, and the touch of old paper were as clear as yesterday under his hands.
During the day, Chen Yan wrote for the world; at night, Shen Qingya taught him how to talk to the stone tablet. The undead's fingertips pass through the rice paper and cannot feel the temperature of the ink, but they can accurately point out the lack of charm in the rubbings. Their communication was separated by life and death, but it was more real than the touch of any living person.
Chen Yan gradually discovered that Shen Qingya was not without obsession. He just put his obsession into every inscription: a broken stele was retouched again and again, and a vague stroke was rubbed a thousand times, as if trying to grasp some specific existence in the void.
And the bigger secret is hidden in the oil-paper umbrella that Shen Qingya always holds tightly - the umbrella ribs are spliced together with broken carving knives. Whenever it rains, there will be a very light sound of metal and stone tapping under the umbrella.
"I seem to be... Waiting for someone to say something to me." Shen Qingya would occasionally look at the rain outside the window with a blank expression, "It's a very important thing to say. But I don't remember who said it, nor the content."
Chen Yan did not speak, but silently mixed the cinnabar thoroughly. Ghost masters who transfer souls never ask about the reasons for their obsessions. But when Shen Qingya gently touched the lifeline in Chen Yan's palm with his hands that had touched countless inscriptions, an unprecedented panic gripped him——
For the first time, he hoped that this soul would not cross over.
Because he began to be afraid, when Shen Qingya thought of those words, it was the time of farewell.
And a deeper foreshadowing is emerging: the material of Chen Yan's judge pen and Shen Qingya's umbrella rib have the same metal and stone spirit. Their encounter may have laid a rubbing of their fate as early as that heavy snowfall eighty years ago.
Intention: To be changed