Reino Fantasma - Capítulo 10
"Did he find gold inside the queen's belly?"
"According to his confession, he found a gold ring. However, what is even more surprising is that most of those who entered the Huiling Mausoleum died within a very short period of time, except for those who were captured and executed by the local government. Of course, the causes of death were varied. Some died in fights over the spoils, some died in the war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, but most died accidentally, such as falling into the river and drowning, being burned to death in a fire, and some even committed suicide. Of course, because of the long time that has passed, much of the information is based on the oral accounts of some third parties, which may be subject to a lot of subjective karmic retribution, and it is difficult to say whether it is true or false."
He stopped again, probably because he was too tired. I said to him, "Stop talking. You've learned a lot. Go back and rest."
"No, I also discovered something strange in the area." He perked up again and lowered his voice, saying, "According to local historical records, after the tomb raiding incident at the Eastern Tombs in 1945, the Nanjing Nationalist government sent an investigation team to the Eastern Tombs. They stayed at the Huiling Tomb, which had just been looted and whose underground palace was still wide open, for several days. According to records, the head of this investigation team was Duanmu Yiyun, a famous human physiologist in China at the time. I looked at this file, which no one had ever seen before, and wondered for a long time. If it was an investigation into a tomb raiding incident, shouldn't they have sent criminal experts and archaeological experts? Why send a human physiologist? It makes no sense at all. This investigation team only stayed at the Eastern Tombs for a few days before they immediately withdrew because the Eighth Route Army's Jidong Military Region began to enter the Eastern Tombs to suppress bandits. After that, there are no other records."
"Perhaps there are some inside stories that we don't know about?"
“Very likely. We can no longer risk visiting ancient tombs and haunting the dead; the number of victims has continued to rise over the past month. I think the safest approach is to conduct a thorough investigation that gets to the bottom of things.”
"Okay, we'll go to the archives to check the information again in a few days."
"Okay, I'm leaving now, I'm really too tired." Ye Xiao said goodbye to me.
I was alone in the empty room again, and my heart suddenly started racing.
February 7th
Today is the Lantern Festival, which is Chinese Valentine's Day.
I don't know why I came to the psychiatric clinic again. To be honest, I hate this place. I don't want to see Dr. Mo again, except when he's being interrogated. But here I am, choosing Chinese Valentine's Day. I know it's because of Rose. A strange, bittersweet feeling suddenly welled up inside me. Huang Yun's image reappeared. Whenever I think of Rose, Huang Yun's face appears at the same time. After all, I once decided to be Huang Yun's nominal husband, even though I was just a substitute for a substitute.
I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I pushed the door open, and it was ajar. Rose's desk was still there, but she was gone; the empty space was a little unsettling. I went upstairs and opened the door to the second-floor room. I saw Rose inside, head down, organizing many things, but I didn't see Dr. Mo.
"Hello, it's you." She quickly sensed my presence and turned around to greet me.
"It's nothing, I just wanted to see Dr. Mo, but isn't he here?" I lied. I wasn't going to see Dr. Mo; I just wanted to see her.
She sighed, walked up to me, and said, "This morning, some police officers came and took Dr. Mo away. They showed an arrest warrant. The charges against him were fraud, rape, operating without a license, and practicing medicine without a license."
“I knew it. You know, he told me himself last time that he had said those dirty words to his female patient in this room—I won’t say anymore.” I almost blurted out those dirty words, but when I saw Rose’s clear eyes, I couldn’t say anything.
"I don't know. Dr. Mo didn't say anything and just left with them."
"So what are you doing now?"
"Pack some things, contact the patients and tell them not to come anymore. The police will be sealing this place off soon," she said, picking up a large stack of documents. I immediately went over to help her take them.
“ROSE, listen to me, stop doing anything. Since this place is going to be sealed off, you should leave quickly. These documents are all lies.” I flipped through a few pages; most were blank, and some were just patients’ self-reported nonsense. As I flipped through them, I saw the calendar on Dr. Mo’s desk. In today’s notepad, there were a few words written in pen—She is in the underground palace.
It's "she's in the underground palace" again. These past few days, these five words have almost driven me to a mental breakdown. I've developed a conditioned reflex-like fear of these words, and I immediately close my eyes, just like when watching horror movies, most people have this contradictory feeling of wanting to see clearly yet also wanting to close their eyes during the most tense moment.
But I still opened my eyes. The characters were written very hastily, as if in a great hurry. The last few strokes were already somewhat deformed. Next to the bottom dot of the last character "宫" was a large blue ink stain. Perhaps he used too much force at the end.
"Excuse me, Rose, could you take a look and see if this is Dr. Mo's handwriting?" I wanted to confirm.
She looked at it: "Yes, it was written by him. She's in the underground palace? What does that mean?"
"ROSE, don't you know?"
"I don't understand these five words."
"I've never seen this before?"
"Yes. Is something wrong?"
I breathed a sigh of relief, my heart finally at ease: "Nothing's wrong, this is good, very good."
She continued tidying up those tedious documents. Suddenly, I placed my hand on what she was reaching for and boldly said, "ROSE, forget about these things. You need to think about the future."
She smiled at me and said, "I think I'll find a new job."
"Let's leave now."
She hesitated for a moment, then finally nodded and went downstairs with me. She glanced around one last time, touched her desk and phone, and said softly, "Actually, I quite like it here."
"If it weren't for Dr. Mo, this would indeed be a quiet and pleasant place. I would even like to work here myself."
"Never mind, one can't live in silence forever," she said to herself.
"That's right."
I opened the door, and it was raining outside—a Lantern Festival in the rain. She found an umbrella and said to me, "Let's go together."
We huddled under the same umbrella and left the clinic. I looked back at the small building; it might be the last time I saw it.
The Lantern Festival in the rain was indeed special; it lacked some of the usual liveliness but gained a touch of Chinese romance. Lost in thought, I realized Rose and I were under the same umbrella, our heads almost touching—a feeling I'd never experienced before. I felt a little nervous and unsure of what to do. It was almost six o'clock, the sky was dark, and in the wind and rain, I said to her, "It's too late now. Where do you want to go?"
"Go ahead and say it," she replied calmly.
I took her to a small restaurant I liked and ordered some local dishes. This was the first time I'd ever taken a girl out to eat, but I was completely clueless and just wolfed down my food. She ate very little, and mostly vegetarian dishes. By the time I finished, she had only touched her chopsticks a few times.
"Why are you eating so little? Are you sick?"
"Because—because I'm on a diet." She chuckled softly, and I chuckled too.
Stepping out of the restaurant, the rain was still falling from the sky. The colorful lights of the city night made the raindrops appear colorful, fluttering about in all sorts of hues.
"Let me take you home," I said, mustering my courage once more.
She nodded. She led me across a small street, not far from the music academy, to a small park where I saw the famous Pushkin statue standing alone in the rain. Rose noticed it too and said to me, “I see him every day, you know? He’s so lonely, standing alone in the middle of the road, like a pile of lifeless stones. But stones have life too, everything has life. The statue thinks, it has feelings and thoughts like a human. From that perspective, it’s alive, it’s immortal. Because—life can be eternal.”
"I didn't expect you to actually have such an imagination." I was indeed a little surprised.
"Just think about it, let's hurry up and go, don't disturb him, maybe he's writing poetry in the rain." She said with a smile, her laughter drifting in the rain.
We crossed two more crossroads and turned into a lane. This was different from the Shikumen or modern alleyways; it was something else entirely, with French-style buildings on both sides, each with a small garden in front. I followed her into one of the buildings. In the past, these buildings would have been detached houses, but now they were divided into "seventy-two tenants." Her rented room was on the third floor, a two-bedroom apartment. Although neither was large, totaling only about twenty square meters, it had a separate bathroom and a small balcony.
Rose's room was impeccably clean and spotless, a stark contrast to my own apartment. The furnishings were very simple, predominantly white, with a glass table and a computer.
"What would you like to drink?" she asked solicitously.
"No, I'm leaving right away. Are you going online?" I asked her while looking at the computer.
"Yes, I studied computer science in college."
“Oh.” I nodded, then stood up and said to her, “ROSE, forget about Dr. Mo. Don’t see him again. He’s finished. At the very least, he’ll get a suspended death sentence. You should find a good job, like at a computer company.”
Thanks."
"I'm leaving. Goodbye."
As I stepped out of her room, she caught up with me after only a few steps, shoved the umbrella into my hand, and said, "The rain is getting heavier. Take the umbrella with you. Don't get wet."
I walked into the rain with my umbrella, and the scene of someone offering me an umbrella felt so familiar, so cliché. I laughed at myself.
A misty, rainy night. February 9th.
I met Ye Xiao at the entrance of the archives. As we walked down the long corridor of the archives, he whispered to me, "Dr. Mo is dead."
"Dead?" I was shocked.
"On the very night he was arrested, he banged his head against the wall in the detention center and died."
"Suicide by banging your head against a wall? I've never heard of such a way of dying."
"It is indeed strange. In any case, he died a terrible death. His forehead was smashed open, and he was diagnosed with a skull fracture. He must have been hit all night." He tried to keep his voice down as we entered the archives.
“He committed suicide out of fear of punishment,” I blurted out.
"Keep it down." He looked around; there weren't many people in the archives, and it was so quiet you could hear everything. He continued, "The cause hasn't been determined yet, so don't jump to conclusions."
"Perhaps he had a change of heart and chose death as a form of repentance?"
"That's possible."
I suddenly remembered the words Dr. Mo had written on his desk calendar the day he was arrested—"fear." The previous day's "she," and "she was in the underground palace." I pondered the word "fear," then recalled the emails the Tomb Ghost and Lin Shu sent me before their deaths, and Lu Bai. Dr. Mo, who committed suicide by hitting his head against a wall, shared commonalities with them. Could it be that Dr. Mo was like them too? I shared this sudden worry with Ye Xiao.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Ye Xiao said slowly. “Although Dr. Mo is a fraud and a rapist, that’s beyond doubt. But at the same time, he may also be a victim of the ghosts in the ancient tomb.”
"We are still far from the truth."
"Yes. Hurry up and check." Ye Xiao skillfully flipped through the files; he was looking up medical research archives from Shanghai in 1945.
"How do I check this?" I asked, somewhat puzzled.
"After the tomb robbery in 1945, the head of the investigation team sent by the Nanjing government was Duanmu Yiyun, an expert in human physiology. He must have visited the Huiling Mausoleum after it was robbed. After the victory of the War of Resistance against Japan, he moved his studio back to Shanghai, but he died soon after. We started our investigation from there."
He started by checking names; there were very few people with the surname Duanmu who were also involved in medicine. We quickly found the files of Duanmu Yiyun's studio. The files contained some general entries—in the autumn of 1945, Duanmu's studio moved from Chongqing back to Shanghai. Shortly after arriving in Shanghai, he became the head of the investigation team for the Eastern Tombs tomb robbery incident. In reality, this investigation team was merely using the name of the Nanjing government; it was actually established by himself. The "investigation team" only stayed at the Eastern Tombs for seven days, five of which were spent at the Huiling Tomb. They soon returned to Shanghai.
"That's all?"
"The most important files aren't these, but the documents attached to them." As he spoke, Ye Xiao flipped through a large stack of documents—various files left behind in the workshop in 1945. The papers were yellowed, covered in dense, irregular handwriting, and appeared chaotic.
"Look," Ye Xiao said, pointing to a stack of documents, "Most of these documents are about ALT experiments."
Sure enough, the documents were all bound together, with the cover of the cover labeled "ALT Experiment." Looking inside, it was full of medical jargon, and the characters were all in very illegible traditional Chinese characters, making it difficult for me to understand.
A report sheet was tucked inside the third page of the document, beginning with the words: "Experiment Plan One"—
"At 21:20 on October 25, 1945, ALT arrived at Shanghai West Railway Station."
At 10:40 PM, ALT arrived at the studio.
The first test was conducted at 10:00 AM on October 26th.
The second test was conducted at 2 PM on October 27th.
The third test was conducted at 3:00 PM on October 28th.
The inspection report was officially submitted on November 1st.
I knew that 1945 was the 34th year of the Republic of China, but what was ALT? Perhaps it was some kind of medicine, or maybe it was Duanmu Yiyun's English name? I continued flipping through the pages, and on the eighth page, my eyes fell upon a Western-style table with the words "Autopsy Report" clearly written on it. I read it aloud softly—
The female corpse's height was 165 centimeters.
The female corpse weighed 50.3 kg.
The woman's age at death: approximately 20 to 22 years old, as determined by X-ray.
Blood type of the female cadaver: Using the inhibition agglutination test, her blood type was determined to be type O.
Notes: 1. The original incision on the female corpse's abdomen was 12 cm long and has healed naturally. 2. The female corpse's feet were 26 cm long, the same length as modern women's feet. 3. The female corpse's chest circumference was 79 cm, waist circumference was 67 cm, and hip circumference was 86 cm. 4. The female corpse had never given birth. 5. The female corpse's teeth were intact. 6. No preservatives were found on the skin surface or inside the body. 7. Examination revealed no typical signs of dehydration or atrophy; the muscles were elastic, and the joints could move normally. Based on the above points, it is concluded that the female corpse is well-preserved and an autopsy is not recommended.
Signature: Duanmu Yiyun. Date: October 26, 1945 (Republic of China Year 34)
After reading it, my hands were a little numb. I handed the paper to Ye Xiao. He read it without saying a word, then frowned and remained silent for a while before saying softly, "Unbelievable. Such a thing actually happened. Could this female corpse be the Empress of the Tongzhi Emperor? If it really is Empress Alute, then the so-called ALT experiment must be the Alute experiment. ALT is the abbreviation for Alute. No wonder Duanmu Yiyun went to the Eastern Tombs, and specifically to the Huiling Tomb. It turns out he wanted the Empress's remains. In other words, the Empress has already been transported to Shanghai by him."
"This is unbelievable. Could it be a forged document?"
“No, I studied document authentication at the Public Security University. These documents and files should all be genuine. Here, let me look through them.” He continued flipping through the pages.
I let out a long sigh, pondering the autopsy report I'd just read. It was too bizarre. This meant the account in that book I'd seen before was absolutely true. A quick calculation showed that the Empress died in the first year of the Guangxu Emperor's reign, 1876. By 1945, 69 years had passed, and her body was perfectly intact, without any embalming. Meanwhile, Empress Dowager Cixi was only twenty years old when Sun Dianying exhumed her body; it had already begun to decompose as soon as it was removed from the coffin. It seemed to confirm the saying, "What goes around comes around." I thought of the way my elders looked after they died—their skin color was completely different from a living person's, and their joints were incredibly stiff, impossible to move. Even after makeup and being placed in the glass coffin for the memorial service, they still looked different. The Empress had been dead for 69 years; even counting from when she was pulled from the coffin, it would have taken at least ten days to reach Shanghai. Normally, a person's body would decompose after ten days. Even more outrageous is that the autopsy report actually included the woman's measurements. By today's standards, these measurements would be considered a great figure. A woman who has been dead for so many years should have been withered and shrunken long ago. Putting aside her waistline, her bust and hips were still so full, which is truly astonishing.