Heavenly Eyes 5: The Hall of Three Grains

My grandmother’s hometown used to have a forbidden practice of raising spirits called ‘San Li Tang.’ It involved signing a contract with a ‘Shan Xiao,’ a mountain spirit, using blood, in exchange for the ‘Shan Xiao’ guarding your wealth. Those who practiced this would often have three small stones in their homes. No one could take even a single needle from the house without the ‘Shan Xiao’s’ permission. When I was a child, I was mischievous and when playing at a neighbor’s house, I secretly took one of the stones. Later, all the chickens in the village were strangled to death. T/N: shānxiāo = mountain demon sān lì táng = three-grain hall