yellow weasel

Chapter 2: The Three Golden Beans

Zhao Baipi was not a man prone to nightmares. He was the nightmare. Yet, for seven consecutive nights, the same horrific vision had haunted his sleep.

In the dream, he was no longer a wealthy landlord. He was a beast of burden—a scrawny, gray donkey with a mangy coat and a coarse rope halter around his neck. He was hitched to a massive stone mill, forced to walk in endless, monotonous circles under the relentless lash of a whip. The face of the man holding the whip was always blurred, indistinct, but the laughter was crystal clear: cruel, mocking, and utterly inhuman. Every time the whip cracked, Zhao would jolt awake, drenched in a cold sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs, the phantom sting of the lash still burning on his back.

"What nonsense is this?" he roared at his servants one morning, hurling a delicate porcelain teacup against the wall. It shattered, leaving a dark, jagged stain of tea leaves. "Am I, Zhao the Magnate, to be frightened by shadows and bad dreams?"

Despite his bravado, a cold, slithering fear gnawed at his gut. He consulted a Taoist priest from a nearby temple, offering a generous donation of fifty taels of silver. The priest examined Zhao's palm, then his face, and finally, the direction of the wind. He stroked his long, white beard and sighed deeply.

"Master Zhao," the priest said gravely, "your wealth is built upon a foundation of bones. The resentment in this village is thick enough to choke a man. I sense a profound disturbance in the spiritual energy surrounding your estate. Beware the creatures of the earth. Beware the Yellow Immortal."

"Bah!" Zhao spat, his face contorting with disgust. "Superstitious nonsense. I'll not be frightened by peasant tales of weasels and foxes."

He dismissed the priest, but the seed of dread had been firmly planted. That night, he drank heavily to numb his nerves, consuming three cups of potent sorghum liquor. As the alcohol fogged his brain, he stumbled to his bedroom—a cavernous room decorated with heavy, imported mahogany furniture and thick, brocade curtains.

It was past midnight when the temperature in the room plummeted.

Zhao woke up, his tongue feeling like sandpaper. He reached for the water pitcher, but froze. On his windowsill, silhouetted against the bloated full moon, sat a creature. It was a weasel, larger than any beast he had ever seen, with fur that shimmered like spun gold. It stood upright on its hind legs, and its eyes glowed with an eerie, intelligent light—ancient, cold, and utterly devoid of mercy.

Zhao tried to shout, to call for Li Fu, but no sound escaped his throat. It was as if an invisible, icy hand was clamped over his mouth.

The weasel didn't move its mouth, but a voice echoed directly in Zhao's mind, dry and crackling like autumn leaves skittering across a grave. "Zhao Baipi, your sins are recorded. Your debts are many. But justice in this world is often slow. So, I offer you a choice."

The weasel raised a delicate, clawed paw. With a flick of its wrist, three objects arced through the air and landed on Zhao's silk pillow with a soft, resonant clink. They were beans. Not ordinary brown soybeans, but beans that glowed with a soft, internal golden light, as if they had captured a piece of the sun.

"Three beans," the voice continued. "Three wishes. For each wish you make, you must surrender a fragment of your humanity. Use them wisely, or suffer the consequences. Remember: Greed will forge your saddle."

Before Zhao could gather his wits to respond, the weasel vanished. One moment it was there, the next, it was gone, leaving only a faint, lingering smell of musk and damp earth.

Zhao scrambled for the beans. They were warm to the touch, pulsing with a strange, rhythmic energy. He was a practical man, a shrewd businessman. He didn't believe in spirits or magic. But here were these beans, glowing and undeniable. Perhaps it was a trick, a hallucination brought on by the liquor. But what if it wasn't?

"Three wishes..." he muttered, his eyes narrowing to slits. He looked at the ledger on his desk, filled with the names of debtors. He thought of Old Man Sun, whose daughter he had taken. He felt no remorse. Only a grim satisfaction.

"If this is real," he whispered to the empty room, "then I shall be the richest man in all of Manchuria."

He held the first bean in his palm. It felt heavy, heavier than any bean had a right to be. He closed his eyes, focusing all his greed, all his ambition, all his lust for power into that single, glowing object.

"I wish for gold!" he declared, his voice echoing in the silent chamber. "More gold than I can count! Enough to buy the loyalty of emperors and the silence of ghosts!"

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a low, ominous rumble shook the very foundations of the house. Dust fell from the rafters like snow. Zhao's eyes snapped open.

His storeroom—usually filled with grain and dried meats—was gone. In its place was a mountain of gold. Gold ingots stacked higher than a man's head, spilling across the floor in a glittering, yellow tide. The air smelled metallic and rich, a scent that intoxicated him.

Zhao Baipi laughed. It was a high-pitched, manic sound that echoed through the silent house. He plunged his hands into the pile of gold, letting the cool, heavy metal run through his fingers.

"I am a god!" he screamed, drunk on power.

He didn't notice that as the gold materialized, the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to deepen, becoming darker, more malevolent. He didn't notice that his reflection in the mirror showed a man with slightly narrower eyes, a face that looked a little less human, a little more like the beast from his dreams.

He had used one bean. Two remained. And the hunger in his heart, far from being sated, had only grown fiercer.