Chapter 4: Madness.
In the dead of night, without a light in the darkness, the village chief crouched in Yang Liuwa's backyard like a dead man.
He did not even dare breathe loudly.
He heard Yang Liuwa's footsteps, then heard him open the livestock pen and drag something out.
It was the sound of cloth dragging over a dirt road.
Then came the sound of a blade being sharpened, the sound of chopping. All sorts of strange noises mingled into a portrait of moral depravity in the darkness.
The Mourning Bird let out a series of caws.
The sound made his eyelids twitch.
The village chief waited without stirring until Yang Liuwa finished and returned to the house.
Before dawn the next day, everyone gathered outside Yang Liuwa's home and seized him as he dismembered his father's corpse.
Yang Liuwa was utterly desperate. He tried to charge out, but someone struck his leg with a hoe.
His leg broke.
Yang Liuwa clutched his leg and wailed.
But no one pitied him.
Everyone seemed to know something, yet no one spoke.
They simply watched the man on the ground.
Then they stared fixedly at the village chief.
The village chief did the same.
A while later, Yang Liuwa hung from the tree. The village chief was the one who did it. Everyone watched him as he trembled and hung Yang Liuwa from the branches. No one spoke, as though they had all turned into clay figures.
That night, as the village chief slept, he heard the same sounds again.
He did not know what had happened, but he saw a "way to survive."
Yet when he woke, he found himself covered in Red Mud.
He had sleepwalked.
The village chief was frightened. He looked at the Red Mud covering his hands,