Bloodstained Clothes for Ghost Festival

Chapter 2

He didn't initially say what he wanted to report; instead, he asked us to describe the condition of the body. Although the whole city knew about the tragedy, no one had seen any photos; they only knew about it from news reports and hearsay. The shape of the wounds was only known to those of us on the inside. I politely declined, saying the wounds on the body were too gruesome to describe. He was silent for a moment, then said, "Aren't the wounds on the body arranged in the shape of a vest? And the eyes, ears, and tongue were cut off, and the head was smashed?"

We were very surprised and hurriedly asked him how he knew. He sighed and said, "I may have made an unforgivable mistake. More than twenty years ago, I encountered a case that was extremely similar to this one. The crime scene was on a wild hillside in the southern suburbs of the city—I can't remember the exact location—where a young man was murdered, and his death was exactly the same as what you saw. I've been through gunfire and seen all kinds of horrific scenes, but the scene at that time still shocked me..."

The old man paused here, a look of fear in his eyes. I quickly interjected, "Is the place you're talking about called Silang Mountain, with a river at its foot, about ten miles from the city?"

The old man said, "Yes, yes, I think that's the name. There was a river there. I remember it rained heavily then, and the river rose very high. It was around this time, oh right, it was also around the Ghost Festival, yes, that's right, the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month." Hearing this, my colleague and I looked at each other, speechless with surprise for a long time.

The old man continued, "That was during the three years of natural disasters; death was commonplace. We were also so hungry we were weak and powerless. After bringing the body back, we posted a missing person notice. The next day, the deceased's two older brothers came looking for him. We asked them briefly about the situation. The deceased was a factory worker, unmarried, and had probably gone to the outskirts to gather some wild vegetables, but tragically met his demise." The deceased's two brothers didn't say much and offered no clues.

We learned from the deceased's colleagues that he had a conflict with another colleague a few days before his murder, almost coming to blows. Coincidentally, that colleague had also gone to the suburbs to forage for wild vegetables that day. Most importantly, this colleague came from a very troublesome family background; his grandfather was a landlord who owned a lot of land. At that time, it was easy to escalate an ordinary case to the level of class struggle, so we concluded he was the murderer. Initially, he refused to confess, but after being beaten and starved, he finally confessed. The murder weapon was supposedly thrown into the river, but we didn't bother to look for it. He was executed soon after.

I always thought I had found justice for the murdered person, and my conscience was clear. But after hearing about this case yesterday, and reflecting on the circumstances, I realize how carelessly we handled the investigation. We may have wronged an innocent person, and the real killer is still at large. That's all I can offer; I hope you can catch the murderer.

A thought suddenly struck me, and I asked the old man, "Was the young man who was murdered surnamed Bian, the Bian that comes to mind?"

The old man was also surprised: "Yes, that's the surname, it's very rare. It seems his older brother was a farmer, and the other worked in a factory."

I quickly asked, "Was it a garment factory?" He shook his head and said he couldn't remember. I then asked, "Do you have any records from that time?"

He said, "No, they were all burned during the Cultural Revolution."

When my colleague and I came out, we were very excited. The old man who was the neighbor of the deceased had said that one of the girl's uncles had died in a murder twenty years ago. Could it be a coincidence? According to the information given by the deceased's neighbors, the deceased's parents seemed to have been on guard against something for a long time. Their family must have made enemies with someone.

end

So we went to the deceased's home. Unexpectedly, the parents flatly denied that their brother had been murdered, saying he had starved to death. When we tried to ask further questions, they refused, claiming they didn't know anything.

"They must have some unspeakable difficulties," I asked.

"Yes, we did a lot of work to get them to trust the police and cooperate with us, but they just wouldn't say anything. We suspect that their enemies are too powerful, and they are afraid to speak out for fear of further retaliation."

On the last day of the deadline, we were almost in despair. The deceased's brother came to us and said, "Officers, I think this case is probably unsolvable. Don't waste any more time." We said, "Don't lose heart, we will definitely seek justice for your sister. Please tell us if you have any leads." He hesitated for a moment, then said something that shocked us.

"What?"

He said his parents had always lived under immense pressure. From a young age, he was strictly disciplined by his parents, never allowed to run around, and always accompanied by an adult wherever he went. Even school field trips were denied. His cousins were in similar situations; no matter how much they protested, it was to no avail. Later, he vaguely sensed that his family was shrouded in a shadow of death, with one or two people dying unnatural deaths in each generation. He had personally witnessed the gruesome death of one of his uncles—like his sister, his eyes gouged out, his head smashed, and his clothes slashed with blood. He had tentatively asked his parents about it, but received the harshest rebuke and never dared to ask again. His parents and aunts aged prematurely due to the heavy burden they carried. Their generation, growing up in the new China, considered the murders mere coincidences and never took them seriously. More than twenty years had passed since the last murder; they thought their tragic fate was over, but unexpectedly, they too had not escaped it.

I could see the same fear in his eyes as his parents. His words were truly hard for us to accept; our initial reaction was that this young man was perhaps overwhelmed with grief. But he realized this, and with a bitter smile, he said, "I'm a scientist, a staunch believer in materialism. I've witnessed the tragedy of my uncle and sister firsthand, and I never knew when disaster would strike me. Only now do I realize what kind of life my parents have been living all these years."

"This is unbelievable! It sounds like something out of a ghost story..."

"We reported what he said to our superiors, but they didn't believe us at first and almost berated us. We had to call the deceased's brother in to explain and show the superiors the records of the interview with the old investigator. Only then did he begin to believe us. Later, we couldn't investigate any further and had to leave it as an unsolved case. As for what exactly happened that day and who committed the crime, I'm afraid no one will ever know."

Okay, that's the end of my story. I've rambled on for so long. Over the years, I've often woken up from nightmares, and I wonder how that family is doing now.

Do you remember their address? I'd like to visit them.

"I don't know. Shortly after the girl was buried, the two elderly people moved to their son's place. I don't know if they are still alive."

Do you have any news about the deceased's brother? If it's true, is this the end of fate?

"Yes, I've been keeping an eye on the news these past few years, looking for any new blood-stained murder cases. That young man must be almost fifty now, poor thing, probably still all alone."

"You mean...?"

"Yes, I went to her sister's funeral. He said he didn't plan to get married and didn't want his wife and children to bear this heavy fate. He said all the pain would end when he died. I saw no spirit in his eyes. He was probably in the state of 'the greatest sorrow is a dead heart.' I don't know if his cousin was like that too."

I stood there for a moment, feeling saddened for the sorrowful young man. Perhaps he once had a lover with a charming smile and beautiful eyes, but happiness was forever out of his reach.

Officer Chen smiled and patted my shoulder. "Little girl, don't get carried away! Hurry back and write your article, or your father will come after me!"

I suddenly asked, "Uncle Chen, do you believe in ghosts?"

He paused for a moment, then sighed slowly: "Alas, I don't know! I believe I've noticed all the details, but I still have no clue. Perhaps ghosts are the only explanation. You're right, there might really be some mysterious force in the world that science can't explain."

The report was a great success, and major media outlets rushed to interview Officer Chen. One day, Dad received a phone call and chatted with him for a long time, laughing. After hanging up, he said with a laugh, "Your Uncle Chen is famous now! Reporters are constantly coming to interview him, and I heard that a publishing house wants him to publish a detective book. That old guy is so annoyed; he's going to settle accounts with you!" He even praised you, saying you're cut out to be a policeman.

I said, "I'm still going to settle the score with him." Dad was taken aback. "What?"

I didn't answer. Yes, I've been having nightmares lately. Sometimes I dream of that girl covered in wounds crawling out of the blood, sometimes I dream of a man smiling at me, also wearing a blood-red vest... Whenever it rains, the rain pounding against the window terrifies me, and I can't sleep. I think of that innocent girl, the desolate mountains in the bitter rain, and the man's roars and shouts in the storm...

This situation lasted for more than a month. I don't know why I never had this feeling when watching horror novels and movies before. Maybe it's because I never thought they were real.

The truth comes out

One day, I went to a suburban county to interview the local government about their investment promotion efforts. The local leaders were in a meeting, and the secretary apologetically suggested I look at some books in the cultural center first. I pulled a county gazetteer from the shelf and flipped through it casually. Inadvertently, I turned to a page where, on the yellowed pages, several lines were clearly written:

On July 15th, 1920, Bian Jizhong, the leader of the Small Knife Gang in this county, was murdered in the south of the city. His body was mutilated, with his head disemboweled, eyes gouged out, ears cut off, and tongue severed. His corpse was slashed with sharp weapons, resembling a vest, a truly gruesome sight. Li Dagen, one of Bian's henchmen, confessed that several months earlier, he and Bian had kidnapped a merchant from out of town dressed as a Miao person in the northern suburbs, robbing him of his money. Bian then used a dagger to slash the merchant's body with vest-like marks for amusement. The merchant cursed incessantly, so Bian angrily gouged out his eyes, ears, and tongue, and then disemboweled him. The body had been exhumed by the county police chief and buried in Silang Mountain in the southern suburbs. The stolen goods were lost, and it was impossible to determine the merchant's origin. The bandit had confessed that he had stabbed the gang leader to death because of a dispute over the division of the loot. On July 19th, Li Dagen was executed at the execution ground in the southern suburbs.

I closed the book, feeling a chill run through me. I had found the answer.

The bandit was definitely tortured into confessing, but he deserved to die.

Who exactly was that merchant, and what kind of curse did he utter?

Why didn't his vengeful spirit kill all of Bian Jizhong's descendants at once?

Perhaps he wanted the descendants of the Bian family to live in fear forever, and for them to offer their lives as sacrifices to their wronged souls generation after generation.

When will the descendants of the Bian family be able to atone for the crimes committed by their ancestors?

I've suddenly become afraid to read the newspaper. I'm afraid that one day it will be filled with headlines in big, bold black letters like "...Bian XX...killed...blood-stained clothes..." I hope this nightmare is over, and it should be over!

Jianghu Eccentrics

The sun is still shining brightly, but it's clear it's losing its strength. The autumn wind is blowing again, and another year has passed in the blink of an eye.

I went on a business trip to a neighboring province for an interview and stayed for a month. After completing my mission, I took a nap after getting on the bus. When I woke up, it was already past four in the afternoon. Sitting opposite me was a dark-skinned young man wearing glasses. He looked like a college student. He smiled at me and then buried his head in his book again, engrossed in reading.

I sat there for a while and got bored, so while he was wiping his glasses, I asked, "What book are you reading that's so interesting?"

He quickly closed the book, handed it to me, and said with a smile, "You girls probably won't like reading this!"

When I looked at it, I realized it was Pingjiang Buxiaosheng's "The Legend of the Strange Heroes of the Martial World". I curled my lips and said, "I read this book several years ago. The author is even from my hometown! This book is not interesting. He has a book that is dedicated to the strange people and events in the martial world, such as beggars using illusion magic and paper tigers turning into real tigers. That is what makes it legendary."

His face flushed with excitement, as if he had met a kindred spirit, and he said repeatedly, "Yes, yes, yes, I've seen that too. There are also cases of using qigong to treat cancer, and cases of inserting the palm into a cow's belly to grab its heart, right?"

Once we found a common topic of interest, we chatted freely, discussing everything from chivalrous heroes of the martial arts world to Yang Chouma from "Amazing Stories," and characters like Yizhi Mei and Wo Lai Ye from Lin Xi's novels, as well as the fortune teller Wu Feizi and Gao Mai. He had a unique fondness for extraordinary people and events in the martial arts world, recounting them with great familiarity.

After chatting for a while, we had covered all the extraordinary people we could think of, and we were all a little reluctant to leave.

I suddenly sighed and said, "Sigh, after all this talk, it's mostly about the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. These so-called extraordinary people, like Yan Xin and Zhang Hongbao, are all frauds. Are there really no extraordinary people left?"

He nodded instinctively, then immediately seemed to be deep in thought, as if he was trying to find a way to refute my point of view.

After a moment, he said, "Actually, there are many extraordinary people scattered among the people, unknown to outsiders! I know one, an old man from my maternal grandmother's village."

My interest was piqued: "Oh, tell me! What kind of extraordinary person was he?"

He said, “There are many shamans and witches in the countryside who claim to be able to predict good and bad fortune and cure diseases. I have seen many of them and dealt with them, and most of them are frauds. But this old man is very strange. He does not predict good or bad fortune, nor does he read faces or palms. He specializes in divination and solving problems for people. That is to say, if someone encounters a problem, such as losing something, or having a strange disease that hospitals cannot cure, you can go to him.”

I asked curiously, "Oh, tell me about him!"

He said, "I heard about him a long time ago. He was born during the Republic of China era, and he's probably in his eighties or nineties now. When he was young, his family was very poor, and he worked as a farmhand. Later, he fell seriously ill, had a high fever, and fell into a deep sleep. His family was preparing for his funeral. His mother and several relatives were crying and wailing outside when an old beggar, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, sat at their door for a long time, and then left sometime later. After the beggar left, the man suddenly woke up and asked where the beggar was. His family then remembered that a beggar had indeed come by, and when they asked about his appearance and attire, he described it perfectly. They sent people to look for him, but they couldn't find him anywhere."

He said that the beggar saved him, and from then on he claimed to be possessed by the Victorious Fighting Buddha Sun Wukong, and began to worship the Bodhisattva at home.

He gradually became a revered bodhisattva, known far and wide. There are many legends about him saving lives and curing illnesses. I'll just tell you a few that I can verify myself. When my sister was in junior high school, she suffered from an eye disease. Her eyes were red and swollen, she couldn't open them, and they would tear up incessantly in light and wind. My parents spent a lot of money taking her to hospitals in the provincial capital, but they couldn't cure her; they even had to sell their cow. Later, my grandmother asked this old man to do some divination, and the result might sound absurd to you.” He then paused, leaving everyone in suspense.

I asked anxiously, "What conclusion?"

He continued, "Back then, we lived in mud-brick houses, and after a few years, cracks appeared. So we used a piece of wood to prop up the wall. He said there was a nail in that piece of wood that had rusted, and all we had to do was remove it. Strangely enough, the problem was solved the very next day! It was truly miraculous!"

I said doubtfully, "That's not necessarily true. Maybe it's just a coincidence."

He ignored me: "There's another story. One year I went to visit my maternal grandmother. Her neighbor's daughter, who had married far away, was back at her parents' home helping with the harvest season. They were working in the fields when an old man—I was there too—passed by—suddenly stopped and said to the woman, 'Such a big thing has happened to your family, aren't you going home?' The woman was stunned for a long time and didn't respond. But her mother quickly chased after her and asked, 'What happened? Please help us resolve this, old lady!'"

The old man shook his head and said, "I can't solve it either; perhaps it's fate."

The old woman urged her daughter and son-in-law to hurry back. But halfway there, they met the younger sister-in-law, who was crying and saying their eldest daughter had died. While herding cattle, the little girl ran off to the lake to pick lotus pods. Apparently, there were more and more lotus pods in the middle of the lake, so she forgot to go back, got caught in the water plants, and drowned in the mud.

"

I said, "That's very convincing! Anything else?"

"There are many more. The old man is illiterate, but when he performs rituals, the calligraphy he writes is excellent. I saw it when I was a child. It was written on yellow paper, and it was somewhat like the 'Slender Gold' style, and it was in traditional characters. He himself didn't recognize any of them."

Another time, there was an outbreak of jaundice and hepatitis, and I and several other children got infected. We tried treatment for a long time without success, and finally we asked him for help. He told my grandmother to find a thorny plant in the fields, boil its roots and stems into a soup, and then cook eggs in it. After eating it for half a month, we were cured. Now, every household in our area keeps some of these roots and stems. Later, I asked him how he knew that thing could cure illness, and he said he calculated it, but he didn't know why.

"Wow, what an amazing person!" I exclaimed in admiration. "Anything else?"

“There are too many. Once, a distant uncle of mine kept dreaming that his deceased father was crying to him. He had the same dream many times. Later, he consulted this old man who said that the original grave site was too low and the coffin was flooded. He said that it would be fine to change to a higher, sunnier grave site. Later, when the coffin was opened, it really was submerged in water. After the grave site was changed, my uncle never had that dream again.”

I suddenly remembered the blood-stained clothes case I heard about last year and excitedly asked, "Is that old man you're talking about really that amazing? Can he solve any problem?"

He looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, "What problem have you encountered? It's not that you can solve everything. He said that his magical powers are limited, and there are many things he knows but cannot eliminate. Moreover, it seems that he hasn't been performing exorcisms for people much in recent years. He said that he is getting old and doesn't have much energy. But I heard him say that performing exorcisms is revealing heavenly secrets and going against the will of heaven. Doing too many of these things is not good for one's descendants. He used to do it to earn some money for incense offerings, but now he doesn't need it anymore and doesn't want to perform exorcisms anymore."

I sighed in disappointment.

His curiosity piqued my interest, and he kept asking questions. So I recounted the whole bloodstained clothes case to him. I had only told Uncle Chen about it before, and he found it unbelievable and was skeptical.

After listening, the young man pondered for a moment and said, "I believe your judgment. I don't know where I read it, but among some ethnic minorities, there are some capable women who raise a kind of poisonous insect called Gu, which can be secretly implanted into a person's body. This insect can remain dormant in the body for many years until the person raising the Gu activates it using some method, causing the person implanted to die in great pain."

But that's not the most powerful thing. The most powerful were some religious leaders who possessed the ability to cast spells. They could chant incantations for their tombs or temples, causing the death of any intruder. The pyramids are said to have been cursed with such spells.

The man of Mongol descent you mentioned could be someone who can cast spells.

I asked eagerly, "Then how long will the spell's effect last?"

He smiled wryly and said, "Who knows? Maybe never. But I'm interested in another question. Have you noticed that this spell seems to always activate on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, which is the Ghost Festival, and it always rains?"

I said, "It seems that's really the case."

He continued his line of thought: "Based on what you said about the years, the first blood-stained clothes incident was in 1920, the year it rained. The second incident was in an unknown year, and the third occurred during a natural disaster, a nationwide drought. The time you mentioned it rained was probably in 1962, and the last time was in 1983, which also rained. I heard from the weather forecast that it will rain for the next week or two. What are your thoughts after hearing the data I've provided?"

He wrote the numbers in his notebook, marked the second time as a question mark, and then handed it to me. I looked at it for a few seconds, felt a chill run down my spine, and stared at him in disbelief.

He nodded silently.

Searching for descendants of the Bian family

After a while, I calmed down and said, "I don't know if our speculation is accurate. But it's better to believe it than not. There are only seven or eight days left until July 15th, and I think we should do something."

He said enthusiastically, "Yes, of course! How do we do it?"

I thought for a moment and said, "Are you going home?"

He said, "My home is in Hubei. I'll go back for a few days this time, and then I'm going back to Changsha to study."

I said, "That's great. Please go back and ask that extraordinary person you mentioned if he can solve this problem. I'll go find the Bian family right away."

We exchanged contact information before parting ways. (To be continued)

The process of finding Bian Zhiguo was much simpler than I had imagined. I called Officer Chen at the train station, but couldn't get through. I called his home, and his wife said, unfortunately, he had just left for Beijing for a business trip the day before. I sighed and decided to go to the textile company in the suburbs the next day to inquire.

Stepping out of the station, it was only six o'clock, but it was already quite dark, with heavy, dark clouds tightly shrouding the city. While still in the taxi, the first autumn rain of the year poured down violently, white jets of water pounding against the car windows with a loud bang.