By the time the two of us ran back to the village chief's house, dawn had broken.
The village chief was up early. He opened the door and saw us.
He looked surprised, then startled when he noticed Song Xiaotian's hand was still bleeding.
"What happened to you two?"
"Nothing serious. We went out for a walk and accidentally cut a hand."
We didn't tell him the truth.
The village chief was very helpful, hurrying inside to fetch disinfectant and some medicine for the wound.
After treating Song Xiaotian's wound, he had his wife make breakfast for us.
Since we had imposed on their hospitality, we pressed five hundred yuan on them despite their protests.
"Chief, how did Li Liang's father die?"
After breakfast, we sat in the living room and chatted.
But when we brought up Li Liang's father, the village chief looked a little uncomfortable.
"Since you're here to investigate the case, you must know what Li Yujiao did before. Even animals wouldn't do something like that. She and her husband murdered an entire family and abducted a little child."
"Tell me, is that something a human being would do? After she committed such a heartless crime, Old Li was bound to be furious. He got so angry that it killed him."
Song Xiaotian and I exchanged a glance. The village chief clearly wasn't telling us the truth.
"Then why did we hear that Old Li hanged himself?"
The village chief laughed awkwardly and rubbed his hands together.
"He did hang himself."
"After all, his daughter had done something worse than any animal would. People in the village were bound to gossip. And we're all decent people here. We couldn't stand what his daughter had done, so sometimes we gave Old Li a piece of our minds. Who knew he'd be so thin-skinned that he'd go and hang himself..."
Song Xiaotian and I said nothing more. We didn't know what to say.
Wasn't this just an offline version of cyberbullying?
First they condemned someone until they drove him to his death, then turned around and said it had nothing to do with them.
Human nature. Sometimes I really didn't know what to say about it.
"Chief, we need to visit Old Li's house. Please help us talk the old lady around when we get there."
"Sure, sure. No problem. Leave it to me."
We followed the village chief out of his house, ready to visit Li Liang's home again.
Halfway there, we heard gongs and drums again, along with firecrackers.
I suddenly remembered that when we went to Li Liang's house last night, a nearby household had been holding a wake.
It looked like the funeral procession would be today.
"What rotten luck, running into a funeral procession..."
The village chief led us well out of the way, planning to wait until the procession passed before moving on.
The elders always said you had to keep your distance from funeral processions and never cross their path, or you would suffer terrible luck for the entire coming year.
"Chief, your village has quite a lot of houses. Why are there so few people?"
Standing beside a field ridge, we started chatting with the village chief again.
He said, "There's something eerie about our village. I don't know if there's something wrong with the feng shui, but quite a few people have died over the years."
Hearing that, Song Xiaotian and I immediately thought of the graves we had seen in the village, as well as the burial mounds in the potter's field.
Song Xiaotian asked, "How did they die...?"
The village chief said, "They all died of illness. No idea what kind. People here are poor and can't afford the hospitals in the city. Anyway, toward the end, they'd suffer for a few days, then pass away."
That's strange, I thought. Two or three people getting sick was normal. Even seven or eight was normal. But Song Xiaotian and I had seen at least several dozen graves, not even counting the burial mounds in the potter's field.
Had all those people died of illness?
"Why haven't we seen any children in your village...?" I asked.
The village chief sighed. "That's why I say the feng shui here is bad. We used to have plenty of people, including plenty of young people. Then, for some reason, the young people here just couldn't get pregnant. The birth rate kept dropping year after year."
"And here's the strange thing. They couldn't get pregnant in the village, but once they left to work elsewhere, well, they got pregnant!"
"Then word spread that our village had bad feng shui. The young people didn't want to stay anymore, so they left one after another. Some haven't wanted to come back for years. That's why so many of our houses have been abandoned."
Song Xiaotian and I stared at each other. The more we heard, the stranger it sounded.
What kind of feng shui could actually make people infertile?
By then, the funeral procession was approaching us. The village chief seemed deeply wary of it and turned his back immediately.
Song Xiaotian and I didn't move. Not only did we stay where we were, but we both felt a chill despite the broad daylight.
At the front of the procession, a descendant of the deceased was carrying his funeral portrait. And the person in that portrait... Song Xiaotian and I both knew him.
It was an old man. We had helped him up when we first entered the village last night.
"Holy fucking shit..."
Song Xiaotian sucked in a sharp breath.
Neither of us dared look any longer. We hurriedly turned our backs too, crouching on the ground and trembling.
So that was why the old man last night couldn't get up from beneath a weightless wooden board. It wasn't the door pinning him down, but the door gods pasted onto it.
He had said he was moving first thing this morning. He hadn't meant moving house the way we understood it. He was moving from a home for the living to a home for the dead...
Neither of us dared turn around until the funeral procession was far away.
Seeing how frightened we were, the village chief hurried to reassure us. "Don't be scared, you two. There's nothing frightening about a funeral procession. As long as you keep your distance, nothing will happen."
We quickly stood and urged the village chief to hurry up and take us to Li Liang's house.
This village was far too eerie. Song Xiaotian and I didn't want to stay a moment longer.
With the village chief leading the way, we arrived at Li Liang's house again.
Li Liang and the Old Lady were sitting outside the door, basking in the sun. The moment they saw us, they looked as though they had spotted their enemies.
But when they noticed the village chief was with us, fear suddenly crept into their expressions.
"Li Liang's mother, you've got some nerve."
With his hands behind his back, the village chief showed no fear of either of them. He sounded as though he were scolding servants. "Yesterday, you dared tell your son to attack police officers with a blade. You really are something, just like your daughter."
"Do you think I won't have the officers arrest you and parade you through the streets for everyone to see?"
The Old Lady was too frightened to speak. She lowered her head, looking utterly pitiful.
I never fucking asked him to say any of this. Before coming, we had told him not to make things difficult for the mother and son. Now he was even threatening to parade them through the streets.
I couldn't listen anymore. I pulled him away and had Song Xiaotian take him aside for a smoke.
I took out a thousand yuan in cash, walked over to the Old Lady, and pressed it into her hands.
The Old Lady glared at me resentfully, but with the village chief there, she didn't dare lash out.
"All right, Old Lady. We're only here to ask a few questions. There's no need to be so hostile toward us."
I spoke to her quietly. "We weren't the ones who drove your husband to his death. You should know better than we do how he died. Take the money and buy some decent food for yourself and your son."
"Just answer whatever I ask you in a moment. Once we're done, we'll leave."
"You wouldn't want us telling anyone that you ordered your son to poison the whole village, would you?"
Before you continue