(Written on paper: My name is Yazhong — Mute Bell. Born without speech. The demon king didn't mind: what does a bell-keeper need a mouth for? So I became the bell-keeper yao.)
(In the cavern hangs an old bell, in the center of the Bell Hall. The den's whole routine runs on my bell: first watch, fires lit; third watch, patrols; fifth watch, work ends. When the bell sounds, the cavern moves.)
(Half a year ago, the king issued an order: at the ninth watch, add nine strikes.)
(The ninth watch. Forty years of keeping bells, and I'd only ever heard five.)
(I couldn't ask — I can't speak. I wrote on paper with charcoal: what is the ninth watch? The king read it, and wrote back two characters: the guest.)
(Since then, at the ninth watch, I strike nine. When the bell sounds, every candle in the Bell Hall dips half an inch, as if the whole cavern is listening.)
(Last month, something happened.)
(That ninth-watch night, I struck as always. At the seventh strike, my hand was stopped — by the bell.)
(You won't believe it. Forty years of striking, and the bell has only ever sounded. That night, after the seventh, my mallet would not fall — as if a hand, from inside the bell, held it up.)
(I stood frozen. After three breaths, the bell struck the eighth by itself.)
(No one struck it. The bell sounded the eighth on its own. Then, three breaths later, the ninth.)
(Nine, complete. The bell had stepped me aside and finished the sequence itself.)
(The next day the king summoned me, looked at me a long while, and wrote me a note: at the ninth watch, you need not come anymore.)
(I still go every day. A bell-keeper keeps the bell. If the bell can ring itself, what am I for?)
(But when I go, I stand at the door of the Bell Hall and dare not enter. Because now I know—)
(The ninth watch is the guest, announcing his own hour.)
(He has come. He is here. He is inside the bell.)
(If you enter the den and see a mute yao writing on paper in the Bell Hall, don't be afraid. Read what I've written. The last line is for you:)
(At the ninth watch, do not enter the Bell Hall. The bell is receiving.)