In just over a week, two people had died in front of the bronze bell!
Word spread quickly, making our Changxin Street Bus Station famous throughout the city.
Rumors ran rampant, and countless netizens turned the killer bronze bell into anecdotes and stories that spread like wildfire online.
Within days, someone from the bus company came to take back the little red flag we had just been awarded as an outstanding work unit.
Our little bus station, normally the last place anyone noticed, suddenly found itself at the center of a public uproar.
Old Wu had been run off his feet these past few days, shuttling between the city authorities, the main station, and the Public Security Bureau. His backside had barely touched his office chair.
The cup he usually drank his tea from finally gathered a layer of dust.
After the man in black died, the first-floor lobby was sealed off completely, and all employees had to enter and leave through the side door in the stairwell.
The police had wanted to haul the bronze bell away, but they ran into the same predicament we had: they couldn't lift it, push it over, or pry it up.
Police officials from the city even came several times over the matter, but they all left without a solution.
In the end, someone actually proposed blowing it up. But after considering the impact of an explosion, they decided to cordon off the area and wait until the matter had been investigated before dealing with it.
I still kept that message from the delivery guy. Without it, I could have guessed at everyone in the world and still never believed that this murderous bronze bell had been sent by Master Liu Yunbo, the man I had always put my faith in.
The bronze bell had killed people-that was a fact. It was obvious now that Liu Yunbo could no longer be trusted!
I wasn't in the mood to speculate about why he had sent that murderous, sinister bell to the company. All I worried about was what trouble my few exchanges with him over the past half month or so might bring down on me.
The black-beaded bracelet, the bloodstained strip of hemp cloth-whatever he was trying to do, I had undoubtedly been an idiot and let him use me as his pawn.
With everything piling up over the past few days, I hadn't contacted Bai Fan. That morning, she saw the news and texted to ask how things were.
Afraid of frightening her, I didn't want to make it sound too supernatural, so I said the two people had killed themselves.
Bai Fan told me she was going to Shenzhen on a weeklong business trip and would treat me to dinner when she returned. Naturally, I was happy.
At a time like this, I really didn't have any energy for romance.
I lay in bed sorting through the people I had met recently, categorizing them one by one, but it all turned into a tangled mess. The complexity of the situation had spiraled completely out of control.
Seeing me frowning all day, Little Six told me to get more rest and offered to drive for me for a few days. These past few days had hit me hard, and I owed a lot to that clueless Little Six for looking after me.
That evening, feeling thoroughly miserable, I bought a bottle of beer to take back to the dorm and drown my sorrows. I happened to run into Old Wu lecturing the old man in the gatehouse.
When Old Wu saw me, he gave the man a few more brief instructions, then came over.
"Well, Little Li, the company's in complete chaos, and you've got something to celebrate?"
I shook my head awkwardly.
"Celebrate what? There's been so much going on lately that I can't sleep. I'm just hoping a little beer will help me get a good night's rest!"
"All right, then. I've got a bellyful of frustration myself. Let's have a drink together!"
Old Wu came back to the dorm with me. We each had a bottle of beer and a bag of peanuts.
Before we could even clink bottles, Old Wu gulped down half of his in one go, wiped his mouth, and cursed viciously:
"Goddammit, I've lived fifty-odd years, and this is the first time I've ever had to take such a rotten rap."
At the company, people usually fawned over Old Wu, and his word was law. Although he hadn't directly caused either of the deaths, they had happened on his turf, so he had to take the blame.
"Brother Wu, I found out who sent the bronze bell. Do you know Liu Yunbo?"
Old Wu shook his head helplessly.
"The police asked me about him too. I don't fucking know him at all. I've spent all these years bowing and scraping outside this place. I haven't offended anyone important."
I knew Old Wu had secrets. The mere fact that he lived opposite the archive room in that little two-story building meant there was more to it.
Since he didn't want to talk, I could only try to bluff something out of him.
"Come on, Brother Wu. Bottoms up!"
In his misery, Old Wu drained the remaining half bottle in one gulp.
"Brother Wu, flies don't go after eggs without cracks. Think carefully. There must be something!" I spoke casually as I opened another beer.
Old Wu belched, his eyes narrowing to slits.
"I really haven't offended anyone. If there really was something, it'd be something from over ten years ago!"
That immediately perked me up. Ever since I started driving the last bus on Route 13, everything had revolved around those three crashes ten years ago. If I wanted to get out of this now, I at least had to work out who was good, who was bad, and how it had all happened.
I handed Old Wu the beer and asked, pretending to be casual:
"I know about the three crashes at the reservoir ten years ago. What exactly happened?"
Old Wu waved the bottle in his hand.
"Oh, it has nothing to do with that. Ten years ago, I saw monsters at a place called Tiger Waist Mountain!"
"What? Monsters?"
Old Wu clinked bottles with me, then drained another third of his bottle in one go before taking a heavy breath and saying:
"Back in the nineties, before I started driving, I leased a plot of land in Tiger Waist Mountain Village. During the spring plowing that year, I dug up a copper coin with a tiger design!"
"A copper coin with a tiger design? That's an antique. That's a good thing!"
Old Wu grew agitated. "Good thing, my ass!"
"I thought it was an antique worth some money too. I even suspected there might be a tomb or something underground, so I got a few old buddies together, and every night, when no one was around, we'd go dig in the field!"
At this point, Old Wu seemed to recall some painful memory and let out a long sigh.
"We dug over the entire plot and actually fucking found a tunnel. The guys and I talked it over and went down!"
I was listening intently when I noticed that Old Wu's eyes had reddened. I picked up my beer and took a drink with him.
Old Wu took a moment to recover, then continued:
"The tunnel was long and dark. Blinded by greed, we carried shovels and used lighters to light our way right to the end. Then we found out it was a fucking monster lair. A whole nest of monsters! When we turned to run, Third Brother tripped, and they snatched him straight up in their jaws. They didn't even leave his body whole!"
A chill ran through me as I listened. "What kind of monsters? What did they look like?"
Old Wu closed his eyes and said quietly, "Things you wouldn't want to look at a second time!"
At that, Old Wu seemed to remember something else. He opened his eyes and glanced around.
"Oh, right. I heard from the police that this bronze bell was unearthed at Tiger Waist Mountain two years ago. Later, an outsider used his connections with the village chief to acquire it. I reckon it might've been this Liu Yunbo!"
"His connections with the village chief?"
Old Wu's words made something click. If the bronze bell had been unearthed at Tiger Waist Mountain, then Liu Yunbo was probably the one who had acquired it. If Liu Yunbo could use his connections with the village chief, that meant the chief must know him quite well.
Whether Liu Yunbo and Sixth Uncle were good or bad, human or ghost, I would know once I met the village chief.
After telling me all this, Old Wu began drinking heavily in gloomy silence. Before long, he had passed out on the table.
Early the next morning, I bought a coach ticket to Tiger Waist Mountain. Little Six wouldn't listen when I tried to dissuade him and insisted on coming along, so the two of us caught the first coach straight there.
Tiger Waist Mountain was fifty or sixty li beyond Tangwazi. It was already noon when we arrived. The moment we entered the village, we felt a chill. It wasn't that the temperature was particularly low; the villagers were simply looking at us in a very strange way.
Most of the people in the village were children, young adults, and elderly people. We saw very few middle-aged people.
We stopped a young man passing by with cattle and asked, "Brother, could you tell us where the village chief lives?"
The young man stared at us with vacant eyes for a long while, then suddenly broke into a wide grin.
That grin sent shivers down both my spine and Little Six's.
"Brother, hold off on the grinning. Where does the village chief live? I need to see him about something!"
The cattle herder's grin grew wider and wider, then he abruptly stopped smiling and his face went rigid. Those vacant eyes and that cold expression sent a chill through me.
Little Six was about to speak again, but I quickly grabbed him and kept walking.
There were plenty of people like that cattle herder along the way. We asked another two or three people in succession, but they all reacted sluggishly, as though they couldn't understand a word we said.
And there was that look in their eyes: cold, despairing, with a trace of mockery.
Little Six was getting scared. He asked me quietly, "Buddy, have you noticed? These villagers are a little strange."
"They are a little strange, but it's fine. It's broad daylight. What's there to be afraid of?"
As he walked, Little Six muttered, "Their eyes look like animals looking at food!"
His offhand remark sent a shudder through me, and I said impatiently:
"Quit talking nonsense. You've been watching too much Animal World!"
Apart from the strange people, the village wasn't much different from my hometown in the countryside. Brick walls, tiled roofs, crops in the fields-it still felt very familiar.
We followed the road to the edge of the village, where crops surrounded us on three sides and the road went no farther. At its end stood an old well, with red cloth wrapped around its body and little red flags planted around it.
Although my family lived in the countryside too, we used hand-pump wells. This was the first time I had ever seen an old-fashioned well with a round opening.
Curious, Little Six and I wanted a closer look. We had just reached the well and were about to peer down when someone suddenly shouted behind us.
"Whatever you do, don't look!"
We turned around. The person who had called out was a young man in his twenties, wearing dirt-covered clothes with a sickle tucked into his waistband.
Seeing that we were strangers, he asked, "You two are from the city, aren't you? Whose family are you visiting?"
Delighted to find that his eyes and speech were normal, I hurried over and said:
"We're from the city. We need to see the village chief about something. Do you know where he lives?"
The young man pointed to a tile-roofed house at the eastern end. "The place over there with a tractor in the yard is the village chief's house."
Before I could ask the village chief's surname, the young man turned and left.
Little Six and I headed in the direction he had pointed.
The village chief's yard was large. On the western side were three platforms piled with corn, and a tractor was parked on the other side.
The door wasn't locked. We knocked, but no one answered, so we simply opened it and went inside.
The room was very plain. Bedding was piled on the earthen kang, and apart from a table and a few pots of flowers on the floor, there was nothing else.
Ever since entering, Little Six had been staring at the brick wall beside the kang. After looking for a long while, he suddenly turned and called loudly to me:
"Buddy, get over here! Look who's in this photo!"
There were lots of black-and-white photographs pasted on the wall. I went over and glanced at the one Little Six was pointing to, and was instantly too shocked to speak.
The photo showed five men in their prime wearing camouflage uniforms. The one on the far left was none other than Old Wu.
Little Six didn't recognize the man posing beside Old Wu with their arms around each other's shoulders, but I would never dare forget him.
He was short, stocky, and solidly built, with a knife scar on his right cheek. It was Liu Yunbo!!!!
Just last night, Old Wu had said very clearly that he didn't know Liu Yunbo. Yet in this photograph, the two had their arms around each other's shoulders and looked very close.
Sweat broke out all over my forehead. I shifted my gaze farther to the right, and what I saw frightened me so badly that I collapsed onto the floor.
The man beside Liu Yunbo, with their arms around each other's shoulders, was actually the first driver from ten years ago-Old Tang, who had been dead for ten years!!!