Chapter 145: Many People Are Going to Die

During the retreat, my father noticed two people still lying on the ground across the way and asked, "What's going on here?"

At first, nobody on the other side dared to speak up. Who wouldn't be afraid of getting beaten? In a situation like this, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. My father turned around, pointed at me, and asked, "Did you do this?"

I spread my hands and said, "You really think too highly of me. Do I have that kind of ability?" I turned and pointed at Er-Dai, who was standing alone in the corner, enjoying the scenery with his eyes half-closed to rest, and said, "He did it."

"By himself?" My father looked somewhat skeptical.

I nodded and answered his question. He immediately looked very pleased and said, "Well done, a fine job, you've got guts!" Then he threw his arm around Old Li, the head of Shang'an Village, and said, "Well, it's ultimately our fault that someone got hurt. We should hurry and send them to the hospital; get them whatever medical attention they need, and spend whatever it takes. But you see, our Hong Village isn't unreasonable either. How about this, I still have two yuan in my personal pocket, take it and lead them to the hospital." As he spoke, he actually fished two yuan out of his pocket and shoved it into Old Li's hand. Old Li repeatedly declined, saying, "I wouldn't dare take this, I really wouldn't. This whole thing started because they came looking for trouble, and they were properly taught a lesson by that young brother. Besides, it's my fault as village head for failing to keep order. Therefore, all these medical expenses will be covered by our village."

My father cracked a wide grin and said, "Well, if you insist, it would be rude to refuse!"

Old Li added, "Also, we will take care of the funeral arrangements for the Dou family. I'll dispatch people right away to handle it."

"You don't need to trouble yourself with that. The people in your village lack sincere hearts, so the paper money they burn probably won't even reach the deceased. Our Hong Village will take over this entire affair, since this young woman died in Hong Village in the first place. There's one more thing, Old Li. Later on, you'd better come with me to the police station so we can transfer this girl's household registration over to Hong Village. From now on, the Dou family belongs to our Hong Village." At this point, my father raised his voice a notch and declared, "From now on, anyone who dares to bully the Dou family is picking a fight with Hong Village!"

"Good..." The group of men from Hong Village roared in unison, their shouts intimidating the cowards from Shang'an Village so badly that every last one of them lowered their heads, not daring to breathe too loudly. Just like that, within half a day, the Dou family courtyard was buzzing with life. People were putting up sheds, washing vegetables, heading up the mountain to dig graves. Cooking oil, salt, firewood, and rice were all brought spontaneously from various households, and they didn't even need to use a single pair of chopsticks belonging to the Dou family. It was from this very moment that Hong Village established a rule: henceforth, whenever any household had a celebratory or funeral event, everyone would bring their own provisions.

Old Dou was an honest, simple man. Last year on his way to Jiangsu, he encountered a heavy snowstorm and suffered severe frostbite on his feet. Ever since then, the household had been sustained entirely by Dou Xiao. Now that Dou Xiao was gone, Dou Fei wept like a broken faucet. Everyone agreed that both sisters were truly unfortunate souls.

Dou Xiao had been dead for over ten days. Logically, she should have been buried immediately, but Zha Wenbin believed that since the first three days had passed, the counting should start afresh from the moment Dou Xiao returned home, so he decided to hold a full three-day wake. The men went to chop timber in the afternoon, and by evening the carpenters were working through the night to build the coffin right in the courtyard. While the final touches were still being worked on at the back, the front was already being coated with paint. "Many hands make light work" holds true everywhere.

Because the corpse was severely deformed, Zha Wenbin had originally intended to simply put her in the coffin as she was, but Dou Fei refused. Pulling on Zha Wenbin's sleeve, she cried, "My sister never wore a decent piece of clothing in her entire life. I won't let her leave with such a grievance. I will wash her body myself."

According to the funeral traditions of the time, the wealthy were entitled to "five upper garments and three lower skirts made entirely of silk"—meaning five layers for the upper body and three for the lower, all crafted from silk with cotton padding inside. Even the poorest families would manage to scrape together a cheap set of burial clothes. There was only one strict rule: the clothes the deceased had worn during their lifetime must never be buried with them; instead, all of them had to be collected, piled up by the roadside, and burned.

Living conditions were generally poor back then, but fortunately, northern Zhejiang had been a silk-producing region since ancient times. The silk from the Hang-Jia-湖 plain, especially Huzhou Prefecture, was world-famous. Consequently, I hurried overnight to the county town to buy clothes, and incidentally picked up a few new outfits for that fellow Er-Dai. Zha Wenbin remained at the site, because when night fell, he would be the protagonist.

First, he gave instructions regarding the coffin construction. A coffin is a serious matter; setting aside the quality of the timber, the exact number of planks is bound by strict rules. Ordinary families generally used fir, but the drawback of fir is that it resists insects poorly and decays easily. Therefore, Dou Xiao's coffin was made of camphor wood. Camphor naturally repels insects, and the wood is hard—unquestionably a top-tier material for a coffin.

Once the timber was cut into planks, Zha Wenbin instructed the craftsmen to prepare it using the highest-specification "wall-to-wall" interlocking method. Building a wall-to-wall coffin required precisely ten pieces of timber: three for the bottom, three for the lid, two for the sides, and two for the head and foot joints—exactly ten pieces, no more, no less. This was known as "the Three Pure Ones illuminating the crown, the Three Halls supporting the lower realm, and the Four Vajra Kings protecting the body!" Except for the base, the interior of the coffin was entirely brushed with deep red vermilion lacquer. Not a single nail was used between the wood pieces; they were connected entirely through mortise and tenon joints, leaving gaps so tight you couldn't slip a razor blade between them. Aside from Xu Luban, you simply couldn't find a second craftsman with such skill in the entire northwest of Zhejiang!

With the coffin ready, the lamps could be lit. Even if the body wasn't inside the coffin yet, the coffin could never be without lamps! A coffin without lamps is a dark coffin. Two oil lamps were placed, one at the front and one at the back: the front one to illuminate the road to the Yellow Springs, and the back one to light the way back. Zha Wenbin specially added extra sesame oil for Dou Xiao and lengthened the wicks so that the light would be exceptionally bright.

A large table was brought in, set with two pairs of candles, one incense burner, one set of bowls and chopsticks, and a bowl of half-cooked rice known as the "head-turning rice"! Atop the rice sat two raw eggs, and on top of each egg rested a copper coin. These were called filial coins. After everything was finished, children with surviving parents would each take one of these coins and keep it for the rest of their lives, never daring to lose it, as it was the final keepsake left behind by the deceased. Naturally, the ones belonging to Dou Xiao were left to Dou Fei.

In front of the coffin stood a large iron pot where paper money was burned. Since Dou Xiao was unmarried and had no children or nephews, Zha Wenbin handed the task of burning the money over to a group of children who had followed the adults to help out. Each child was given a few candies; once they finished eating the candy, they would go back inside to continue burning paper, and after burning, they would receive more candy. They repeated this cycle, keeping the big fire blazing vigorously. It wasn't shameful at all; in fact, it was very lively!

Around six or seven in the evening, Dou Fei, aided by several brave women, carried Dou Xiao's corpse into the house to wash her. The bathwater had to be fetched in buckets from the river. She needed her hair combed and to be dressed and made up—a process known as the lesser encoffining. Combing the hair followed strict rules, directed by an elderly aunt standing nearby: three strokes forward, three strokes backward, while murmuring the chant, "Count to three measures." This was meant to tell the departed: You must leave now; if you're going, go quickly, don't linger, and reincarnate early so you can be a good human in your next life.

According to accounts later on, when the quilt was lifted as they prepared her for the wash, a few of the women couldn't hold themselves together on the spot. It was utterly tragic—hardly resembling a human form anymore. Despite this, Dou Fei gently wiped her down inch by inch with a cloth, completely scrubbing away the thick layer of corpse wax on her sister's body. She said, "My sister loved cleanliness; our family just never had the conditions to dress her up properly." She borrowed rouge, lipstick, an eyebrow pencil, and face powder from outside, and painstakingly painted her sister back into a human likeness.

The bathing lasted for a full two hours and more, right up until I rushed back from the county town. Five silk upper garments, three skirts, two pairs of shoes, two pairs of socks, along with a washbasin, toothbrushes, and towels—I had bought the lot. Whatever other young women used, I bought every single item in double sets without missing a thing. All these items were placed inside a bamboo sieve. Inside the sieve there was also a small stand where incense was to be burned, and beside the incense burner sat an oil bowl containing seven lamp wicks that all needed to be lit. We called this the Seven-Star Lamp.

When the bath was finished, an elderly woman carried the bamboo sieve inside. While crying, Dou Fei helped her sister change into the clothes. Right at that moment, Dou Fei discovered a problem: underneath her sister's armpit, there was actually a black hole about the thickness of a thumb. This completely terrified her. She bolted out of the house in a panic, not knowing who to look for, and grabbed hold of Zha Wenbin, crying, "My sister, my sister, something is wrong with my sister!"

Thinking a corpse had sprung back to life, Zha Wenbin instinctively snatched up a nearby tool and shouted, "Get everyone out of the house!"

"No," Dou Fei panicked. Not knowing how to explain, she simply used her own body to demonstrate, pointing, "There's a hole right here on my sister!"

Anyone with the slightest bit of sensitivity would realize this was a bad sign. The armpit on the left side was close to the heart—how could there possibly be a hole there? Could Dou Xiao's corpse have been chewed on by something? However, since it was a female corpse, Zha Wenbin, being a man, felt awkward about going in to look. Unexpectedly, Dou Fei grabbed him and dragged him straight into the room. Zha Wenbin braced himself and followed. Fortunately, Dou Xiao was already mostly dressed.

"Look!"

Zha Wenbin squatted down to take a look, and sure enough, it was just as she said. The hole was clearly pierced by an external force. Looked at this way, could Dou Xiao's death not have been an accident after all?

If it wasn't an accident, then she couldn't be buried yet; they had to figure out what was going on. Zha Wenbin immediately came out to find me and said, "There's a problem with the corpse. Why don't you make another trip to the police station tomorrow and ask them to perform a proper autopsy? I suspect they just brushed it off because they didn't want to deal with an unpleasant corpse."

Just then, that fellow Er-Dai popped up from somewhere. I hadn't seen him since I came back from the county town. Without a word, he brushed aside the curtain and walked right into Dou Xiao's room. Seeing him go in, Zha Wenbin and I followed. That guy was squatting on the ground, staring at Dou Xiao's wound, his brow twitching every now and then with a very solemn expression.

"Any discoveries?" I asked.

He stood up without even looking at me, and instead spoke directly to Zha Wenbin: "Corpse poison. This girl had a fingernail driven straight into her heart. It's useless to go to those people; there's something strange about that village."

Hearing him say that, I felt displeased. "Which village are you calling strange? We give you food and drink, and saved your life, yet you're still being picky."

Completely ignoring me, he continued to tell Zha Wenbin, "The aura of death is very heavy. Many more people will have to die this year for it to be enough."

Hearing this, Zha Wenbin's heart gave a jolt. He knew that Ye Qiu never seemed to speak idly; as long as he opened his mouth, there had to be a reason. So he asked, "What else do you know?"

Ye Qiu simply replied indifferently, "My intuition tells me someone is going to die in this room tonight."