Li Xiumei's Mother

Seeing something like that in the dead of night...

Never mind Song Xiaotian being scared-even my legs felt weak.

The man stood beside the well. We had no idea what he was doing; he just kept staring into it.

And right beside that well was a grave mound.

Song Xiaotian immediately pulled me down, and we hid in the grass.

With a terrified look, he asked me, "You don't think that guy crawled out of the grave, do you...?"

I covered my mouth, fighting the urge to slap him.

He was clearly just as scared as I was, yet he still had to make it sound worse.

But soon, I noticed something odd too.

The man really was covered in dirt, his clothes filthy, as though he had rolled around in mud. Looking at him that way, he did seem like he had crawled out of a grave.

But I had just been through some bizarre things myself, so I knew at least a little about this stuff.

If he was a ghost, he couldn't have crawled out of a grave-not unless his corpse had come back to life.

"It's Li Liang!"

I lowered my voice. "Li Xiumei's idiot brother."

He was clearly an adult, and an adult wouldn't get himself that dirty unless he was mentally disabled, with the intelligence of a child.

Once I worked out who he was, I breathed a sigh of relief.

If it was Li Liang, then he was a living person, not a reanimated corpse or a ghost.

Still, his behavior was strange. Why had he come out to the well in the middle of the night instead of sleeping at home?

Song Xiaotian and I didn't dare alert him. We stayed hidden, wanting to see what he was going to do.

Before long, Li Liang took a packet of something out of his pocket and dumped the whole lot into the well.

Whatever he poured in looked like powder.

Song Xiaotian was horrified. "Holy shit, he's poisoning the water!"

I was startled too. It really looked as though Li Liang was poisoning it.

That was a well! If he had put something highly toxic in it, wouldn't everyone in the village who drank the water be poisoned to death?

That idiot was vicious!

Song Xiaotian and I kept watching. He had already emptied the packet of powder into the well, so it was too late to stop him.

After putting in the poison, Li Liang suddenly started giggling foolishly, standing there clapping his hands as if applauding.

From the way he acted, he seemed about as witless as a person could get.

When he finished clapping, he skipped away from the well and ran toward his house.

Only after he was far away did Song Xiaotian and I hurry over to the well.

We switched on our phones' flashlights and shone them down into it.

Only then did we see how murky the water was. It didn't look like water people used for drinking.

We both breathed a sigh of relief.

This water wasn't for drinking. It was probably used to irrigate the fields.

"What do you think that idiot poured in there?" Song Xiaotian asked me.

I told him I had no idea, but he probably hadn't been poisoning it. An idiot's behavior made no sense to begin with, and where would someone like him get hold of anything poisonous?

Maybe he had just been amusing himself.

Of course, that was only my guess. We still needed to tell the villagers in the morning. If they used the water for their livestock and there really was something wrong with whatever Li Liang had poured in, there could be trouble.

Song Xiaotian and I didn't dare linger. We continued toward Li Xiumei's house.

Before long, we arrived.

Li Xiumei's house really was dilapidated. It wasn't even built of brick, but of yellow mud, like houses in the old days. Several layers of tarpaulin covered the roof tiles. It must have been patched a dozen times or more.

They were so poor. How did this widow and her children get by?

At that moment, the sound of gongs and drums drifted over from nearby, with chanting mixed in now and then.

I knew that sound. We heard it back home too whenever someone died.

Someone was performing funeral rites. There must have been a death nearby.

I looked toward the sound and, sure enough, saw a small, single-story house brightly lit.

"Hurry up and knock."

Song Xiaotian urged me on. "Once we've asked our questions, let's get out of here and find another village to rest in. This place feels really strange."

I nodded, walked up to the door, and knocked three times.

It was a wooden door, and it looked ready to fall apart.

A moment later, the door opened. Standing inside was Li Liang, whom we had just seen.

He stared blankly at us, his clear eyes full of confusion.

"Hello, is your... mother here? We need to speak to her."

"No talking. Mom's asleep. No talking..."

Li Liang was mentally disabled, but he could still communicate. After saying that, he tried to shut the door.

I quickly braced it open. "Well, could you go get your mother? We have something important to ask her."

Li Liang immediately became unhappy, like a child throwing a sulk. He mimed sleeping. "Mom's sick. Needs sleep. Go away, or I'll poison you."

I quickly had Song Xiaotian take two bread rolls out of his backpack and handed them to Li Liang.

Their aroma immediately caught his attention.

"Smells so good!"

"Good, right? They're both yours. Go get your mother."

He snatched the bread from me and shouted into the house.

"Mom, get up! Someone's here to see you!"

A cough soon came from inside.

It sounded weak. She really did seem to be ill.

"Liang, who is it?"

Li Liang glanced at me. "An idiot. Hehe..."

Beside me, Song Xiaotian couldn't hold back a laugh.

I felt a little embarrassed.

That idiot. He was the idiot, and he actually called me one.

But he was mentally disabled, so I couldn't hold it against him.

Soon, an Old Lady came out, leaning on a cane.

This Old Lady looked terribly ill, so ill that her face had taken on a dark tinge. There was something gloomy about her whole appearance.

Her eyes were red too, as though she had just been crying.

She came to the doorway and looked us over. "You're... not from the village. What do you want with us?"

I got straight to the point. "Hello. Are you Li Yujiao's mother?"

At the name "Li Yujiao," a flicker seemed to pass through the Old Lady's cloudy eyes, and she immediately grew wary. "Who are you?"

I told her we were police officers investigating the case Li Yujiao had been involved in all those years ago, and that we had come to ask a few questions.

To my surprise, the Old Lady suddenly became agitated. "More questions! Again with the questions! What's left to ask? It's been so many years, and you still won't leave us alone? You cops drove my husband to his death! Get out! Get out of here!"

As she cursed, she raised her cane to hit us.

Song Xiaotian and I hurriedly backed away. We hadn't expected such a violent reaction.

"Ma'am, please calm down. Think of your health. We just want to ask a few questions..."

"Ask your mother's fucking cunt! Get out!"

The Old Lady openly swore, then turned to her son, Li Liang. "Liang, chase them away!"

Although Li Liang was mentally disabled, he obeyed his mother. He went straight into the house, grabbed a kitchen cleaver, and swung it at us.