Chapter 57 Wangliang (1/2)

Chapter 57 Wangliang

But Wen Jiubo fell silent, clearly not wanting to tell me.

I was slightly angry, glaring at him. “Is it a giant black bug?”

Wen Jiubo frowned, looking towards me. “How do you know?”

“I had a dream before you woke me, I dreamt of my deceased grandfather. He said a lot of strange things to me and then… I saw that there was a very big black bug on his back.” I said, a word at a time. “Wen Jiubo, what was that?”

Wen Jiubo and I looked at each other for a moment and then he finally sighed, showing a slight smile.

“That’s right, I almost forgot your special power. Looks like I can’t hide it from you even if I wanted to.”

I crossed my arms. “At least you’ve still aware of that.”

Wen Jiubo smiled, lowering his head as if thinking about how to clear things up.

“Have you heard about Wangliang?”

“Wangliang? Like in Chimei Wangliang?” I asked dubiously.

“Exactly right, that Wangliang.” Wen Jiubo said firmly. “That’s this demon’s name.”

“But… isn’t that name of four minor demons? Are Wang and Liang the same type of demon?”

“In terms of demons, the history books have different ways of describing it.” Wen Jiubo said confidently. “Firstly, this four-word phrase first appeared in《Commentary of Zuo: Xuan Gong, Year Fifteen》, ‘Do not cross the path of the Chimei Wangliang.’ But in the Commentary of Zuo, it never said how many different types of demons made up Chimei Wangliang. Not long afterward, 《The Records of the Grand Historian: Annals of the Five Emperors》 also recorded the two words, ‘Wangliang’. In the record, it stated ‘Wangliang has the facial features of a human, the body of a beast with four limbs, a crafty deceiver.’ This very clearly states that Chimei and Wangliang are only two different demons, unlike how most people who interpret it from the original phrase as four individual types of demons.”

I nodded, only understanding half of it.

“Within the first dictionary in Chinese history, 《Cloud Chapter》, there’s a separate explanation for Chimei and Wangliang. It is said that mountain spirits are Chimei and water spirits are Wangliang. From then onwards, Chimei became synonymous with mountain spirits and beast-form demons while Wangliang were described as demons of wood and stone.” Wen Jiubo continued explaining, “And then afterward, in the Qing Dynasty, Toriyama Sekien from Japan further explained Wangliang demons. In his illustrated scroll 《Demon Hordes from Past and Present》, he describes Wangliang all as the same type of demon, with the form of a three-year-old child, black of color, red of eye, long of ear and moist of hair. They enjoyed feasting on the livers of corpses.”

As I listened, I felt even more confused. I had to interrupt him, “What are you talking about? Can’t you explain in clearer terms?”

Wen Jiubo looked at me in a teasing manner. “Ha, and you call yourself a Chinese language student.”

“You’re so annoying!”

“Simply put, Wangliang is a sort of demon that consumes dead people’s corpses as food. In the countryside, there’s often mysterious cases where graves are dug up and bodies vanish. Most of the time, it’s a Wangliang’s doing. Under normal circumstances, Wangliang’s temperaments are rather mild and they’re not many in number. They consume human or animal corpses as food and are considered rather harmless demons.” Wen Jiubo crossed his arms thoughtfully. “Usually, they rarely attack a live human being, but there’s an exception to every rule. If there was a particular human that looked very delicious, then no matter what, even if they were still alive they would be chosen very early on by a Wangliang.”

I swallowed. “Then what would happen… if you get chosen?”

“They’ll die, of course. However, before they die, the flesh of their body will start to be chewed and consumed by the Wangliang Then they die slowly, confused and in pain.” Wen Jiubo said calmly.

I couldn’t speak for a moment, recalling in my mind the way my grandfather was before he died. He was quite mad and not in his right mind and right before he died, his entire body had already started to give off a bad smell and had also started to rot.