The Unruly Immortals

"Hehe, you've broken the rules," said a voice that was very thin, almost like a woman's but not quite.

The moment Li Huowang heard that voice, he unaccountably thought of the small-footed woman who had summoned the God of Happiness; she had the same kind of voice.

When Li Huowang, with others on high alert, walked from inside the house to the courtyard, he saw a small head propped against the left wall of the house.

A little girl around five or six years old with yellow hair was hanging atop the tall wall, giggling as she looked inside. The goat horn braids on her head, tied up with red string, stood out stiffly and high.

"Red!" The moment Li Huowang saw the red string on her head, his heart suddenly skipped a beat.

"Could this child be from the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month?"

Watching the girl laughing hehe, Li Huowang thought for a moment before slowly asking, "I've broken the rules, but you're no better than me. Aren't you not allowed to go out at night? Why are you still outside?"

"I'm a child, after all. Adults aren't supposed to come out, but us kids can definitely come out to play," the girl replied to Li Huowang and the others without showing any hostility.

She moved her head to the side and continued with a giggle, "If you give me candy, then I won't tell anyone else."

As the others saw the little girl's head change its position, their eyes widened in awe. The walls of the Wu Family courtyard were very high, at least six meters.

And this girl was moving so easily atop the wall, which meant she wasn't standing on a ladder -- she was just standing there!!

Li Huowang looked at the small head and the high wall beneath it, dusty and grey.

He simply couldn't imagine what sort of body structure would allow a child with an ordinary-sized head to be six meters tall. Was she like a stick insect?

"Hehe, are you going to give me the candy or not? If you don't, I might start calling out," the girl on the edge of the wall continued.

"Sure, of course, don't rush. I'm not holding any candy right now, so I should go and get it first, right?"

Li Huowang continued her line of thought before then turning sideways and whispering some instructions to the boy called Doggie standing beside him.

Upon hearing Li Huowang's words, a deep sense of fear flashed across Doggie's face. But when Li Huowang stuffed a Taoist Bell into his arms, Doggie eventually nodded and turned towards the house.

"Alright, he's gone to get the candy. Let's wait for a while. Since it's boring to just stand around, how about we have a chat in the meantime?"

"Sure! Sure! I love chatting," the girl seemed very innocent.

In the face of this ambiguous entity, Li Huowang spoke in a very gentle tone.

"Which family's child are you? How come I've never seen you before at the entrance to the village?"

"I don't know who my parents are. Everyone says I'm the child of the God of Stove, but I clearly don't look a bit like the God of Stove painted on the wall," the girl answered.

"Oh? You don't look like the God of Stove? I think you do resemble him quite a bit; you both love sweets so much. I remember that when we used to worship the God of Stove, my grandfather would smear pastries on the mouth of his portrait."

As Li Huowang spoke, his right hand quietly rested on the red bamboo slips behind him.

The goat horn braids on top of the girl's head swayed back and forth with her shaking head, "You're talking nonsense. The God of Stove obviously has four pairs of eyes and five hands, and he doesn't even have feet. How could I look like him at all?"

Listening to the girl utter these words without a hint of guile, a chill went down the spines of everyone present; this was nothing like the God of Stove in their minds.

"Little girl, you must be making this up, right? How can the God of Stove have five hands, and besides, he has no legs, how does he walk?"

Upon hearing Li Huowang's deliberate questioning, the girl immediately became anxious.

"How am I making this up? I saw it with my own eyes. And who says you can't walk without legs? The God of Stove clearly can make his red sausages crawl out of his belly button to use as feet."

No sooner had her words fallen than from the other side of the wall came the voice of Gouwa, so terrified he was almost about to cry.

"Brother Li! This damn girl has no body! She's just a head!"

"Whoosh"—in an instant, the girl's head shrank back beneath the wall followed by Gouwa's scream, which was so utterly miserable.

"Ring the bell!" Li Huowang gritted his teeth and quickly rushed towards the entrance of the Wu Family compound.

When they got to the other side of the wall, they saw the trembling Gouwa crying and kneeling on the ground, kowtowing continuously, his pants soaked through.

Li Huowang looked around the pitch-black alley, pulled Gouwa up, and retrieved his bell. "Stop knocking! Speak up! Where did that head go just now?"

Seeing Gouwa tentatively point towards the east, Li Huowang threw him aside, took the sword in one hand and the lantern in the other, and chased after.

In the dark, everything around seemed to turn into man-eating monsters, baring their teeth between the darkness and the light.

However, after running madly for a while, Li Huowang did not catch up to the girl's head; instead, he arrived in an unfamiliar environment, seemingly at the edge of the village, with the Bamboo Forest in the distance.

With no findings, Li Huowang cursed under his breath and turned to regroup with the others who were catching up with their lanterns.

Whatever that girl was, one could guess she had a close connection with the eighteenth of the twelfth lunar month, even if it wasn't actually that date; Li Huowang hadn't been wrong, the eighteenth of the twelfth lunar month was here.

When Li Huowang approached the people with lanterns, he suddenly paused. They were all his companions, but they stood still, holding their lanterns and uniformly turning their backs to him.

"What are you all doing??" Li Huowang cautiously took a half step back and gripped the Taoist Bell tight.

No sooner had he spoken than all the people turned around simultaneously. Their faces had changed! All of their faces had turned into the girl's face!

These identical girl faces smiled at once, "Hee hee hee, you've broken the rules again. If you don't give me candy, I'll tell the others, and they will come for you."

"Ring, ring, ring, ring~~!!" The piercing sound of the bell rang out, and those figures, like darkness scatter by light, vanished swiftly.

The jarring sound of the bell in the darkness was undeniably alluring, and before long, Li Huowang saw other apprentices gather around, but this time their faces didn't swap for the girl's head.

After carefully confirming with them some information only the disciples of Qingfeng Taoist Temple would know, Li Huowang finally breathed a sigh of relief that these people were real.

"Brother Li, what happened just now? What was that all about?"

"Nothing much, just an illusion," Li Huowang shook his head, scanned the surrounding darkness for any abnormalities, and led the rest back the way they came.

However, not long after they left, a pair of blood-red eyes opened in the darkness.