It was obvious that Henpecked Ho's warnings had been correct, and that the funeral of Fainting Maid had been attacked by demons. Only an immediate exorcism could save the lives of one and all, and Henpecked Ho was nothing less than magnificent as he led the Grand Master Wizard and the forty-nine assistants—who had fortuitously arrived with the hooded monks—and soon the cemetery was shrouded by rolling clouds of incense. Henpecked Ho bravely waved the banners that represented the five directions of Heaven, while wizards who wore cosmological mantles and seven-starred tiaras sprayed the graves with holy water. Drums nearly deafened us as Ho and the wizards grappled with invisible demons, swinging peachwood whips and swords that were engraved with the Eight Diagrams and the Nine Heavenly Spheres. They stuffed the nasty demons into jars and bottles, which were stoppered and sealed and stamped with closure decrees that forbade them to be opened throughout all eternity.
In the middle of all this a miracle occurred that could have converted the most stubborn atheist in the whole world.
An exceptionally saintly lacquered lohan was admiring the diamond-encrusted imperial sceptre that the Ancestress had placed at his feet, and apparently he feared that the other funeral gifts might be defiled by demons. So he stood up from the meditative mudra and began making a tour of inspection. Bonzes screamed and fainted in droves, and even the Ancestress, who had been screaming “Off with their heads!” turned pale and drew back in fear. The lacquer glinted like dull gold in the sultry light, and the saint appeared to be floating through the clouds of incense as he drifted among his fellow lohans and inspected each gift to make sure that it was safe. The last gift was inside a small jade casket, which the saint picked up and opened.
“Got it!” he exclaimed happily.
Unfortunately the light coat of lacquer had wiped fifty years of wrinkles from the lohan's face, and the Ancestress sat up straight.
“You!” she screamed. “You and your damned praying mantises nearly ruined me with Emperor Wen! Soldiers, seize this fraudulent dog!”
Master Li took to his heels, clutching the jade casket, and I hopped up from Fainting Maid's grave and raced in pursuit. The army of the Ancestress ran after us, and the diversion was a godsend to Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang, who emerged from the bushes and gathered his men and began stealing everything in sight, and confusion degenerated into chaos. Then the storm that had been hovering all day broke with a bang, and lightning and thunder joined the drums of the wizards and the howls of the victims, and blinding rain became an even better cover than rolling clouds of incense. We escaped quite easily and reached our hiding place, a small natural cave in the riverbank. Then we stripped and dried off, and Li Kao opened the casket and held it out to me.
Inside was the most magnificent ginseng root imaginable. No wonder the Ancestress had included it among her most valuable possessions, as Master Li had foreseen, and the aroma that came from it was so powerful that it made my head spin.
“Ox, this is truly extraordinary, but the Root of Power in no way resembles the Great Root that Henpecked Ho described,” said Master Li. “Of course Ho doubts that his root was ginseng, and we must pray that this will do the job.”
I was convinced that the children were as good as cured, and I cannot describe the joy in my heart. The rain soon ceased and the clouds drifted away, and we tiptoed through a thick swirling mist. Henpecked Ho was waiting for us at the entrance to the cemetery, and his eyes were sparkling as they had been when Bright Star passed safely through the door. We started off through the graves, and as we approached the mausoleum of the Ancestress we heard the faint sound of shovels.
“Ho, I rather suspect that some of the scum of the earth that Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang recruited are digging up your daughter,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Do you have any objection to having her coffin plundered?”
“None whatsoever,” said Henpecked Ho. “My beloved wife and her seven fat sisters provided some rather expensive jewelry, and I seriously doubt that my dear daughter deserved to take it with her.”
There was a good deal of iron beneath his meek exterior. We heard the sound of shovels striking the coffin, and then the sound of the lid being removed.
“This stuff any good?” asked a voice that was oddly familiar.
There was a pause for inspection, and then another oddly familiar voice answered, “First-rate.”
The mist cleared enough so that I could see a blade glint in the moonlight.
“You use the knife,” said the first voice. “I'm scared of corpses.”
“Ho, we can't let them desecrate your daughter's body!” I whispered.
“Hair and fingernails,” he whispered back.
“What?”
“Hair and fingernails,” Master Li said quietly. “It's a very ancient practice. Grave robbers dig up the bodies of ladies of quality and clip their silken tresses and flawless fingernails, which they sell for a high price to an expensive courtesan. The courtesan claims the hair and fingernails to be her own, and gives them as a fidelity gift to a wealthy lover. The lover assumes that the lovesick lady has handed him the power of life and death—any decent witch could use such things to destroy the donor—and is inspired to reply in kind with immensely valuable fidelity gifts, and thus many a departed beauty has continued to bankrupt lovers long after her demise. A rather interesting form of immortality,” said Master Li.
The shovels were pitching earth back into the grave, to delay discovery and pursuit, and I stuck my head through some bushes. My eyes very nearly popped out of their sockets.
“Who, pray tell, is shoveling earth so that it piles up neatly on the other side of the hole?” snarled Pawnbroker Fang.
“In answer to your question, my esteemed colleague,” hissed Ma the Grub, “I would advise you to piss upon the ground and examine your reflection in the puddle!”
Li Kao stuck his head out beside me, and his eyes narrowed as he examined the unlovely pair.
“Strange,” he said thoughtfully. “Destiny, perhaps, since Pawnbroker Fang is not the sort of man who would write down all he knows in his files. How do I look?”
“Look?” I asked stupidly.
“Lacquer holding?”
I examined him with a slight shudder. The lacquer was cracking, and he resembled a six-month-old corpse.
“You look ghastly,” I whispered.
“Careful with that shovel!” yelped Ma the Grub, leaping back in fear. “You almost trapped my shadow inside the grave!”
“Why don't you tie your shadow to your body with a cord, like a sensible person?” Pawnbroker Fang grumbled.
“Splendid. Superstition has its uses,” Master Li said happily.
Li Kao slipped from the bushes, and a lacquered lohan drifted eerily through the mist. “Oooooooooooooooooooo,” the horrible spectre moaned.
Ma the Grub toppled upon the half-covered coffin in a dead faint, and Pawnbroker Fang dropped to his knees and covered his eyes, and a hollow haunted voice with a thick Tibetan accent vibrated through the night.
“I am Tso Jed Chonu, the Patron of Ginseng. Who dares to steal my Root of Power?”
“Spirit, spare me!” howled Pawnbroker Fang. “I knew that the Ancestress possessed such a root, but I swear that I did not know where it was hidden!”
“Not the lesser root!” roared the Patron of Ginseng. “I mean the Great Root!”
“O Spirit, only one Great Root of Power exists in all the world, and no lowly pawnbroker would dare to touch it,” Fang sobbed.
“Who has my root? Where has he hidden it?”
“I dare not say!” Fang wailed.
Tso Jed Chonu lifted his horrible face to Heaven and extended his hand for a lightning bolt.