Chapter Fourteen: Pecking at Earthworms

Liu Sanjun was indeed dead. Judging by the manner of his death, it was unimaginable that he could have been so confused as to hold the shotgun backwards and fire it into his own chest. Clearly, that was impossible. Even Liu Sanjun himself did not understand the reason behind it, which was quite strange.

What was strange? It was the intervention of the pheasant spirit, Hua Gu, from the Wild Chicken Cave, who had gone to the underworld and struck a drum to lodge a complaint before King Qin Guang of the underworld.

After his inspection tour and return to the palace, King Qin Guang immediately tasked the underworld messengers with investigating Liu Sanjun in the mortal realm.

Shortly after, the messengers confirmed that the details Liu Sanjun had submitted matched Hua Gu's complaint exactly.

The messengers requested that Ye Youxun accompany them back to the palace to report and testify.

Ye Youxun, addressing King Qin Guang seated solemnly in the hall, explained that ordinarily, a hunter killing a mother pheasant would not be considered a grave offense. However, hunting in spring was taboo, a severe depletion of one’s spiritual merit, and utterly unforgivable. Moreover, Liu Sanjun’s killing of the mother pheasant resulted in nine orphaned chicks starving to death without maternal care. This alone was a serious offense deserving of punishment—at least a significant disaster to teach him a lesson.

King Qin Guang found Ye Youxun’s argument compelling and asked what would be done if Liu Sanjun continued hunting recklessly during spring, unabated in his evil deeds.

Ye Youxun replied that if he committed the offense again, the king could sentence him to death, ending his mortal lifespan.

King Qin Guang said, “Your words align perfectly with my own thoughts.”

He then ordered Ye Youxun to cooperate with the underworld messengers to monitor Liu Sanjun’s actions in the mortal realm. If he were caught hunting again, they were to seize his soul and execute the death sentence.

Thus, the underworld messengers and Ye Youxun set out on their mission. They arrived at Liu Sanjun’s home at dusk.

Soon, they saw Liu Sanjun, drunk and holding a shotgun, emerge from the back door, and they followed him.

As Liu Sanjun staggered along the mountain fork, Ye Youxun flung a long iron chain to ensnare his soul and handed him over to the messengers to be taken to the underworld.

Deprived of his soul, Liu Sanjun felt unwell and dizzy. He slowly climbed the mountain and slipped into a thicket, where his body gave out and he fell asleep beneath a soapberry tree.

He awoke at dawn, still dizzy. When he opened his eyes, he saw a smear of bird droppings precisely on the muzzle’s sight of his long shotgun. As he turned over to wipe it off with a leaf, he somehow triggered the trigger.

Suddenly, a loud bang echoed, a spark burst forth, and a bullet lodged in his chest. Thus, he tragically fell beneath his own gun.

At that moment, Liu Sanjun’s spirit was being judged in King Qin Guang’s great hall, unaware that his body had been fatally shot. He angrily demanded to return.

When the messengers led him onto the Mirror of Sins, more than three meters high, to review the images of his misdeeds, he also witnessed the entire process of his death and his body being placed in a coffin.

He even saw his wife, Cai Zhongsheng, speaking with a man, her face devoid of grief, wearing a faint smile. Only then did he believe he was truly dead, overwhelmed by extreme loss and despair.

After forty-nine days of judgment in various courts, Liu Sanjun, who had no other faults in life, endured minor punishments in hell before being escorted to the Wheel King’s palace.

The Wheel King handed him a brilliantly colored wild pheasant feather. Upon leaving the palace, his intermediate soul was sent back to the mountain where he had hunted in a past life, temporarily residing inside a wild pheasant egg. Soon, he was hatched by a mother pheasant and became one of her chicks.

One day, the mother pheasant and her brood were foraging in the forest when she noticed movement outside the woods. Alert, she hid beneath a thorn bush, spreading her wings to shield her chicks.

Suddenly, loud crackling noises erupted just meters away. Frightened, the mother pheasant fluttered out of the thorn bush, abandoning her chicks and flying far into the mountains.

The chicks, still unable to fly, scattered chaotically in the woods.

Only the chick embodying Liu Sanjun’s soul stayed near the thorn bush, chirping incessantly.

Its calls caught the attention of a woman in the nearby graveyard—Cai Zhongsheng, kneeling at the newly dug grave where Liu Sanjun’s body rested.

The crackling sounds had come from the string of firecrackers she had just lit.

The air still held the scent of gunpowder.

Cai Zhongsheng rose and approached the thorn bush near the graveyard, spotting a small wild chick standing motionless on a blade of grass, seemingly unafraid.

When she reached out to grab it, the chick did not flee. Instead, its fluffy head nestled into her palm, evoking a strange feeling in her heart—like a motherless child mistaking a stranger’s touch for maternal care.

Moved, Cai Zhongsheng took the chick home and scattered some rice before it.

But the chick, being wild, ignored the white rice.

“What do you eat then?” Cai Zhongsheng wondered, somewhat frustrated.

At that moment, a middle-aged man named Wu Zidan, introduced to her by a matchmaker a few days earlier, stood at the door holding a bouquet of roses, hesitant to enter.

Unaware of how long he had stood there, Cai Zhongsheng only noticed him when she turned and spat, and saw him.

He glanced at the chick and smiled warmly, saying, “This little thing is quite interesting.”

Upon seeing her new suitor, Cai Zhongsheng felt a surge of excitement and momentarily neglected the chick, looking up to reply, “It’s not interesting. It won’t peck at the rice. It’s driving me crazy.”

She motioned him inside toward a chair.

Wu Zidan did not sit immediately. Instead, he handed her the roses, saying, “This expresses my feelings.”

Unlike young lovers, middle-aged men were less likely to utter the word “love” openly, even if they cherished the woman.

Seeing Cai Zhongsheng accept the roses—a tacit acceptance of him—Wu Zidan felt he belonged to her. He began to think and act with her interests in mind.

Noticing the chick’s refusal to eat the rice, he advised, “Wild chicks don’t eat rice like domestic ones. You need to catch insects for it, or it’ll starve.”

Cai Zhongsheng, troubled, said, “Where am I supposed to catch insects?”

Wu Zidan volunteered, “Take the chick with you. I’ll lead you to the countryside to catch some insects for it to eat.”

Though they failed to catch any insects in the fields, Wu Zidan’s practical mind quickly found a solution. He glanced at a dung heap near the village entrance and knew what to do.

He broke off a stick and crouched by the pile, digging briefly until beetles and other bugs crawled out.

But these hard-shelled insects were ignored by the chick.

Anxious, Cai Zhongsheng was about to pry open the chick’s beak to force-feed it a shell insect, but Wu Zidan waved her off.

He dug deeper, pulling out several pink earthworms.

Upon capture, the earthworms curled up defensively, but lacking the hard shell, they were vulnerable.

Cai Zhongsheng caught them in her palm, and the chick’s eyes darted excitedly as it pecked at the wriggling worms one by one.

Sometimes it grasped two at once; one slipped away, but the other was swallowed halfway down.

The earthworms, realizing their defenses failed, stretched out their slender bodies and wriggled wildly, hoping to escape.

But the chick, precise and unerring, pecked at the struggling pink worms relentlessly.

Though the worms fought desperately, they were powerless against the natural order of survival and predation.

The chick quickly swallowed an earthworm into its crop and then tilted its head back as if to ensure the food would not fall out.