Damp.
The smell of incense ash wormed through the cracks in the paper, laced with the sour reek of old wood bloated by moisture — cold as well water that hadn’t seen the sun in three winters.
Lu Xun tried to open his eyes. His lids felt like someone had laid a green brick across them. He tried to lift a hand — his arm wouldn’t answer. He wanted to curse whoever had left a window open in the dead of winter, but his mouth wouldn’t open either.
He lay frozen for a long moment before it crept up on him, wrongness settling slow and cold.
He was spread out.
His field of vision was impossibly low. All he could make out was a worn-down wooden threshold, grooved smooth by generations of footsteps, smeared with half-dried yellow mud. Outside it, a cluster of cloth shoes with holes in the toes pressed together — their uppers flecked with grass clippings and kitchen ash. A tiny patch of moss grew in a crack of the threshold, flattened from being trampled over and over.
The crying came through muffled, filtered through something, like people weeping with their hands clamped over their mouths.
A water droplet fell from a roof beam and smacked against the bluestone floor, the mark bleeding outward in slow rings. A thin shaft of white light slanted down through a skylight, cutting across a three-legged incense burner propped up on a black stone — the stone’s surface still smeared with river mud no one had bothered to scrub off. Three sticks of incense had burned halfway down; the ash held its curve, suspended, refusing to drop. Behind the altar stretched rows of ancestral tablets — the old ones lacquered so dark they were nearly black, veined with fine cracks; the newer ones still pale-grained, splinters not yet sanded smooth.
The ancestral hall.
Lu Xun placed it now.
He wanted to curse someone out.
And realized he didn’t even have a mouth.
Voices outside, kept low, drifted in through the cracks of the door:
“The patriarch woke twice. Passed out again.”
“We’ve been out of medicine for days. That herb broth Qinghe boiled up — he just throws it back up.”
“Leave the half-cake in the bamboo basket. Lao Er’s heading out past the mountains to find medicine. He’ll need something for the road.”
A small sniffle sounded — a kid sucking back snot.
Lu Xun followed the noise. Squeezed beside the threshold was a little boy, five or six years old, face so thin his chin came to a point. His eyes were locked onto a bamboo basket just out of reach, fixed on half a cold flatcake inside. A hand crept out, slow and sneaky, and the moment his fingers brushed the basket’s rim, his mother smacked the back of his hand. Her eyes were red. She pressed his hand back down. Her mouth moved, but no words came — she just jerked her chin toward the door. The boy pulled his hand back, shoved his fingers into his mouth, and bit down. The sound of him swallowing was loud and clear.
Lu Xun was starting to feel seriously lost.
His last memory was still stuck on that night road — rain hammering against his bamboo hat, a weight on his chest making it hard to breathe, sleeves sopping wet and plastered to his wrists. Then the world went black, and when he woke again, he was here.
He tried to feel out his own body and found only a thin, brittle texture — the edges curled, the cover scorched stiff like it had been licked by flame. The inner pages were riddled with tiny wormholes; when the wind slipped through them, the paper tingled with a fragile itch. On the charred front cover, a few mangled characters remained, worn so fuzzy he had to study them a long while before they came clear:
Genealogy Register of the Lu Clan.
Oh.
He was dead.
No reincarnation. He’d become a busted-up clan register, spread open on an altar.
He wanted to laugh. Couldn’t make a sound.
Outside the ancestral hall, everything suddenly broke into chaos.
Footsteps tangled together. Someone yelled at the top of their lungs: “Move! Slow down — watch the threshold, don’t knock it!”
The grinding scrape of a door panel dragged across earth came closer, and the smell of blood arrived first — thick and metallic, thinning the incense ash in the air. Several men muscled a door plank through the entrance. On it lay a gaunt old man, his face the gray of weathered brick. An old scar ran from his left brow to his ear, so dark it was nearly black. His chest was wrapped in rough cloth, bloodstains layered one over the next, the edges gone black. His eyes were half open. His breathing was shallow. The moment he entered, every sob in the ancestral hall cut off at once — like someone had reached out and clamped a hand over every mouth in the room.
The young man walking beside the plank was broad-shouldered and big-handed. His sleeves were soaked through with blood, stiff and dark. His lips pressed into a hard line. The veins on the back of his hands bulged like earthworms. Someone called him Mingzhu in a low voice. He didn’t answer. His eyes never left the old man on the plank.
The plank was set down in the center of the hall. The old man let out a soft breath. Everyone in the room held theirs.
Watching this, Lu Xun felt his heart drop.
That was the patriarch of the Lu clan.
The last roof beam holding this broken house up.
A short, heavyset man pushed through the crowd, clutching an account book worn glossy with use, its corners frayed to fuzz. Sweat covered his face. He leaned close to the old man’s bedside, voice trembling: “Brother Huaishan. The Chen clan is here.”
The ancestral hall went so silent you could hear incense ash sifting into the burner.
The old man on the plank coughed. “Who.”
“Chen Si. Brought two men with him. Says the old debt’s come due.”
Lu Mingzhu, standing right there, detonated. His voice barely held the fire: “Son of a bitch! Any day but today — he picks now?” He was so loud the child in a nearby woman’s arms flinched, mouth crumpling toward a wail before the woman clamped her hand over it.
“Let him in.” Lu Huaishan’s voice was thin as paper. But it landed hard as stone.
“Father!” Lu Mingzhu was frantic.
“Let him in.”
The second time came even lower.
No one stopped him now.
Chen Si stepped through the door. His gray-green long robe stood out like a silk flag in a sea of hemp and sackcloth. The jade pendant at his waist clinked against the doorframe — a delicate ting. A thin smile played on his face. His eyes swept the ancestral tablets first, then the altar, and finally settled on Lu Huaishan laid out on the plank. His mouth was saying “Please, Patriarch Lu, your injuries come first —” while his foot came down dead center on the threshold — that same threshold worn to a groove by the soles of countless generations, the one every clan member instinctively stepped over, careful never to scuff the face of their ancestors’ home. He planted his weight square on the middle of it, grinding mud from his shoe into the polished wood, leaving a damp, dirty print.
The clan elders’ beards quivered on the spot.
Lu Mingzhu’s hand went to his blade. The polished bronze catch of the sheath flashed cold — half an inch of steel gleamed free.
Lu Huaishan’s twisted fingers settled lightly on his son’s wrist.
Not much strength behind them. But they held steady.
Lu Mingzhu’s chest rose and fell twice. The blade grated back into its sheath.
Chen Si acted as though he hadn’t noticed the man’s expression. He pulled a contract from inside his robe and held it up with a flourish. The paper rustled. “Three years ago, the Lu clan borrowed twenty spirit stones from the Chen family. Agreed repayment was after the autumn harvest. Here we are well into winter. Let’s settle the interest — fair and square, by the book.”
The bookkeeper, Lu Tie, shoved forward a step at once. "We’ve paid back eight stones of the principal! We’ve paid interest three times! How are you still calculatin
…(truncated)…