Mass Burial Ground

A ghost might frighten someone without scaring them to death on the spot.

But a person frightening another person could easily drive them mad.

Especially when that person was an idiot!

Li Liang stood outside, knife in hand, staring straight at me as though I had murdered his father.

I dropped to the floor in terror, without even getting a chance to pull up my pants.

If Li Liang hadn't been an idiot-if he'd been a normal person-he might have simply pushed open the bathroom window and climbed in, because it wasn't locked.

If I hadn't needed to pee tonight and had slept as soundly as usual, wouldn't he have hacked me to death in my sleep?

Nearly scared out of my wits, I bolted out of the bathroom and rushed into the bedroom to wake Song Xiaotian.

"What is it... It's not even light yet... Let me sleep a little longer..."

Song Xiaotian was an even heavier sleeper than I was. He didn't so much as open his eyes.

"Sleep, my ass! That idiot's here to hack us to pieces!"

"What!"

He shot upright, instantly wide awake. "Does he hate us that much?"

"Fuck, that lunatic! I let it slide because he's disabled, and now he's got it in for us!"

Furious, Song Xiaotian told me to get dressed so we could go find Li Liang.

We'd thought Li Liang was just obeying his mother back then. Who could have known that even after we'd come to the village chief's house, he'd chase us all the way here to kill us?

It was three in the morning, too. Who knew how long that idiot had been lying in wait outside? Just thinking about it made my skin crawl.

Song Xiaotian and I went straight to the bathroom and immediately saw Li Liang turn and run.

We pulled the window open, climbed out, and chased after him.

"Li Liang! Get your ass back here!"

Song Xiaotian cursed as he ran. "You think being an idiot gives you the right to kill people? I'll beat the shit out of you!"

Li Liang had been vicious earlier, chasing us around his house with a knife. But now that we were chasing him, he didn't dare face us.

"Xiaotian, something feels wrong. It looks like he's deliberately leading us somewhere."

I glanced around and realized there weren't any houses nearby anymore. Li Liang seemed to be luring us up the mountain.

Was he really an idiot?

Since when did idiots know how to scheme?

"If we don't teach him a lesson, he'll really come at us with that knife. We can't keep our guard up forever, I'm telling you."

Song Xiaotian seemed too angry to care about anything else. He was determined to catch Li Liang and beat him up.

I couldn't talk him out of it, so I could only keep chasing alongside him.

Sure enough, we were lured up the mountain, and then we lost Li Liang.

By then, Song Xiaotian had realized something was wrong too. "How does that little bastard run so fast...?"

I told him Li Liang knew the terrain here well. We couldn't possibly catch him, and he was deliberately luring us up the mountain.

The crucial question was, why?

I suspected Li Liang was pretending to be an idiot. Was he planning to kill us out here in the remote mountain woods?

"He should be somewhere nearby. Let's be careful..."

Song Xiaotian grew nervous too.

It was easy to get lost deep in mountain woods like these, especially at night, when there was no way to tell which direction you were going. One slight wrong turn could take you farther and farther off course.

And in the dead of night, this place was downright eerie.

We decided to search the immediate area. If we couldn't find Li Liang, we'd have to head back for now.

As we searched, Song Xiaotian suddenly stopped and poked me.

I asked him what was wrong, and he pointed. "Look over there..."

I followed his finger and saw some thirty earthen mounds rising high a short distance ahead.

The mounds varied in height, and in some places, white bones and yellow paper lay scattered around.

Seeing that in the middle of the night, Song Xiaotian and I suddenly couldn't move. Our legs felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds.

That bastard Li Liang... He'd actually lured us to a mass burial ground.

Those earthen mounds were graves.

Some people had so few relatives that there was no one to handle their funeral when they died. The villagers would take their bodies up the mountain and bury them, at least giving them a resting place.

But they couldn't just dig a hole anywhere and bury them. They had to set aside a place, and the remains of anyone with no one to handle their funeral would all be brought there for burial.

Out in the remote mountain woods, though, animals were bound to roam, and they could easily dig up the bodies.

I'd heard all this from my grandfather. He'd said that back when he was born, mass burial grounds could be found in plenty of mountain areas.

The sight of a mass burial ground in the middle of the night already had Song Xiaotian and me feeling deeply unsettled.

Then, of all times, crying came from among the graves.

But there was something strange about it.

Song Xiaotian's legs were trembling. "Chen Mo, why is someone crying here? Do you think it could be a..."

Before he could finish, I quickly clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Come on, man. Would it kill you not to say that word?"

"That's Li Liang crying!"

I'd recognized it. It really was Li Liang's crying.

No wonder it had sounded strange. Li Liang was an idiot, with the mental capacity of a small child, and when he cried, he sounded just like one.

Song Xiaotian and I followed the sound a little closer, but we didn't dare get too close or enter the burial ground.

Still, we could see Li Liang now. He was lying in front of a grave mound, crying and rolling around.

We quickly hid and spoke in hushed voices.

"Do you think he's just pretending to be crazy and stupid?" Song Xiaotian asked me.

I shook my head. I couldn't say for sure.

Li Liang had definitely lured us up the mountain on purpose. If he were an idiot, he shouldn't have been capable of such complex thinking.

But if he wasn't an idiot, then judging by what he was doing now, even a real idiot wouldn't act as stupid as he did.

Li Liang's crying definitely wasn't an act. He was distraught, and as he cried, he muttered something to the grave mound.

"Dad, Mom said my big sister's dead. I don't have a big sister anymore."

"She died so horribly. They cut out her tongue."

"She can't talk. I want to talk to her."

Song Xiaotian and I both covered our mouths to keep from making a sound.

We were frightened enough to want to run.

But we couldn't.

Li Liang was talking to his dead father, and we didn't know whether it was a one-sided conversation or whether his father could answer him.

We were afraid it was the latter-and even more afraid that running would alert his father...

At that moment, fear wasn't all I felt. What Li Liang had just said had also left me stunned.

Li Xiumei's body had only been dug up a few days ago. Before that, no one had known she was dead, much less how she'd died.

She'd died in Lanjiang City. How had the Old Lady, all the way over on Qin Island, known?

The Old Lady not only knew Li Xiumei was dead, but also that someone had cut out her tongue and that she couldn't speak.

Especially what Li Liang had said: "They cut out her tongue."

Did that "they" mean... there had been more than one person involved in killing Li Xiumei?

Had two people done it-or more than two...?