Song Xiaotian and I stood rooted to the spot, afraid to go over for a look and equally afraid to leave.
With no light, we couldn't tell whether the person was dead or alive.
I thought it looked like a corpse, but Song Xiaotian said... could it be a ghost?
I quickly clamped a hand over his mouth, telling him not to say that word at a time like this.
"Shine your phone on it..."
Song Xiaotian said, "If it's a dead body, surely the villagers wouldn't just leave it lying out in the open?"
We hurriedly took out our phones, switched on the flashlights, and pointed them that way.
The beams quickly lit up the scene, letting us see everything clearly.
An old man really was lying there, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on us.
We were so startled we nearly dropped our phones.
He was alive!
"Holy shit, that old man scared the hell out of me."
Song Xiaotian pulled me straight over, ready to lift the door panel off and rescue the old man.
"Hey, sir, you saw us coming. Why didn't you call out?"
Song Xiaotian and I questioned the old man as we lifted the door panel.
Honestly, the panel wasn't heavy at all. It weighed next to nothing, but perhaps the old man had trouble getting around and couldn't get back up after a fall.
I noticed a picture of a door god pasted onto the panel. Could the door god have been pinning him down?
To our surprise, as soon as we lifted the panel away, the old man got up by himself. But he seemed frightened of us and immediately backed away.
Song Xiaotian and I exchanged a look, baffled by his behavior.
"Thank you, young men. You're from outside the village, aren't you?"
The old man finally spoke, thanking us.
"Yes, sir, we're from outside. Are you all right?" Song Xiaotian tried to go over and steady him.
But the old man wouldn't let us come near.
At his age, could he really still be afraid of strangers?
There was something strange about this old man.
"Don't come any closer, young men. I don't like having contact with outsiders."
Once he was steady on his feet, the old man sized us up. "You're outsiders, so why have you come to our village? What are you planning to do here so late at night?"
He seemed to have taken us for thieves, so I hurried to explain. "We're from the city. We're looking for someone."
The old man narrowed his eyes. "Who?"
"Li Xiumei. I'm looking for Li Xiumei's house. Do you know where she lives?"
The old man thought for a moment, then frowned. "I've lived in this village my whole life, but I've never heard of a girl called Xiumei."
If he was a local, how could he not know Li Xiumei?
But I soon realized my mistake.
I shouldn't have asked about Li Xiumei. I should have asked about Li Yujiao. She had only changed her name to Li Xiumei after committing her crime, so it was perfectly normal for the villagers not to know it.
So I tried again, this time giving Li Yujiao's name.
"That Yujiao girl..."
The old man's expression quickly changed. "What do you want with her? That girl committed a crime back then. She hasn't come back in over a decade."
Song Xiaotian and I exchanged a glance, then told a lie. "We're police officers investigating the case from back then. We want to ask Li Yujiao's family a few questions."
The old man looked skeptical. "You're still investigating after all these years? Didn't you already know she was the murderer? She hasn't come back in all that time, either."
Of course she hadn't come back. She'd spent fifteen years inside a wall and had only been dug out recently.
"Until she's caught, we have to keep investigating and get justice for the victim. We're just here to ask a few questions. We'd appreciate it if you could point us in the right direction, sir."
The old man stopped questioning us and pointed in a direction. "It's right by the eastern end of the village. Just keep going straight. The most run-down house is theirs."
Although the old man kept insisting he was wary of strangers, he was quite talkative and went on without prompting. "That girl ruined her family when she committed that murder. Everyone in the village despised them."
"Yujiao's father didn't last another two years before the anger killed him, leaving his wife and son on their own. Our family was kind enough to help them out now and then. Otherwise, her mother and that half-wit wouldn't have lasted long either."
My curiosity stirred. "There's a half-wit in Li Yujiao's family?"
The old man nodded. "She had a younger brother, didn't she? Li Liang. He got seriously ill as a child, and they had no money to treat him. Later, they somehow got hold of some money and took him for treatment. They saved his life, but they'd waited too long. Li Liang developed meningitis, and it left him a half-wit."
"Everyone in the village said it was retribution."
I sighed as I listened.
Li Xiumei had helped Lü Zhengxian destroy Du Yuwei's entire family to pay for her brother's treatment, yet she still hadn't managed to cure him.
Rather than spend his whole life a half-wit, he might have been better off dying early and being reincarnated sooner.
I thanked the old man. "All right, then. You should head home soon, sir. It's dangerous wandering around in the pitch dark."
The old man smiled. "I'll head back in a moment. I'm moving first thing tomorrow morning, but I don't like the place. I thought I'd come out and see if there was somewhere better, and then I fell here."
Song Xiaotian and I didn't understand what he meant.
If he was moving, surely his new house had already been built.
If the new house was finished, what was the point of coming out to look?
Still, elderly people did tend to get a little muddled when they spoke.
I asked the old man if he needed us to walk him home, in case he fell again.
He said there was no need, then turned and left.
Song Xiaotian and I headed in the direction he'd pointed, planning to visit Li Xiumei's house first.
Li Xiumei had died fifteen years ago, murdered by Lü Zhengxian. Her family surely didn't know about it.
Only her mother and younger brother remained at home now. I planned to tell her mother about her death outright. I would reveal the truth and say Lü Zhengxian had killed her. That would certainly make Li Xiumei's mother hate him, and perhaps she would tell us something.
Walking along the country path late at night, Song Xiaotian and I both felt uneasy.
"Have you noticed how many graves there are in this village...?" Song Xiaotian suddenly asked.
We had indeed seen plenty of graves along the way.
I told him that was normal. Before cremation policies were introduced, everyone was buried. When people in the village died, naturally they were buried in the village.
In a place this poor, people would still be buried even now.
"I mean, half the houses in this village are abandoned, and there are more graves than houses... Do you think the people from those houses are all living in the graves now...?"
His words gave me quite a fright. "Come on, man," I snapped. "Can you stop making wild guesses in a place like this? You're creeping me out."
As we were talking, we suddenly spotted someone a short distance ahead.
That person was standing beside a well. We couldn't tell what they were doing.
We both froze, afraid to go any farther.
Because beside that well, there was also a grave...
Before you continue