Chapter Seventy-six: Scholar’s Village (2)

“Find that person!” That was the last thing Chen Wenbin said before going to sleep that night.

I didn’t know who he was looking for, but I understood the far-reaching impact of the incident—rumors of hauntings were spreading everywhere. It was still a relatively closed era, and such ghost stories were passed by word of mouth, inevitably losing details and being exaggerated. Eventually, outsiders were saying that seven people had died between Hong Village and another place, and then another seven the next night. The whole village, whoever could walk, had fled, and the uproar was everywhere.

Chen Wenbin became famous; tales of him circulated everywhere. Some described him as an old man with a goatee, others as the reincarnation of Master Zhang, and some claimed he had come down from the Three Pure Mountains to exorcise monsters. In short, the stories grew increasingly fantastical, until even feats like flying through the sky or conjuring soldiers from beans were spoken of as if they were real.

The next day, on the road to Scholar Village, the three of us sat in a shaky minibus. Scholar Village was in Anhui, and at that time the provincial road at the border of Zhejiang and Anhui was all mountain paths. The minibus had to cross the Tianmu Mountains, which rose over a thousand meters. Snow had fallen for days, making travel difficult; if it weren't for the busy business of the New Year, we probably wouldn’t have found a vehicle at all.

The three of us squeezed into the back row. My father came along that day, saying he wanted to go see for himself—after all, there were distant family ties.

“Haha, Master Chen, how about we set up a shop? We’ll use your name—fifty yuan for a fortune, two hundred for feng shui, three hundred for a house, five hundred for a grave. What do you think?”

“Enough, Fatty. You and I don’t mind, but Master Chen is as thin-skinned as rice paper—he’d never do such a thing.”

Chen Wenbin just smiled, saying nothing. This trip to Scholar Village was his idea; he wanted to see the ancestral hall I had mentioned.

Scholar Village lived up to its name. This remote mountain hamlet in southern Anhui required a transfer from minibus to a smaller bus, and finally a tricycle. Over a hundred kilometers took four hours to cover. During the late Northern Song, the Jin army broke through Bianliang, abducted Emperor Huizong and Emperor Qinzong. The Song court moved the capital to Lin'an, now Hangzhou, founding the Southern Song. Scholar Zhou Ziyuan, Grand Academician of the Northern Song, believed the emperors captured and the Southern Song living in peace and poetry in Hangzhou as if the world were tranquil. Zhou Ziyuan, advisor to the emperor, could not bear the ruler’s ways and resigned, returning home. Knowing the emperor was cunning, he emulated Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring, took his family to southern Anhui, founded a village, and established a private academy, living by farming and teaching.

The village was famous during the Ming and Qing dynasties, producing four top scholars, and in the Qing era, one even became Grand Academician of the highest rank. During Emperor Kangxi’s reign, upon hearing of the village’s cultural prominence and the talents it produced, he sent a plaque inscribed with four characters: “Learning Knows No Bounds!” He also named the village: Scholar Village.

Built around mountains, the place had seven hills, two streams, and a plot of land. When we arrived, the Kangxi-era inscribed plaque at the entrance was gone, said to have been smashed by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. It had been nearly ten years since my last visit. My father asked around and found my cousin-in-law’s home—his name was Zhou Bocai. Presumably, the family hoped he’d be learned and talented, but fate had led to a rather dismal scene.

His house was easy to find; even today it was imposing, though a few rooms were occupied by others—it had been a grand family home. A starved camel is still bigger than a horse; seeing the carved lotus stonework at the corner, Fatty’s eyes practically lit up.

“Oh my goodness, if you took a piece of this to Guangzhou, those Hong Kong collectors would go wild! What a waste! This is all stone carving art from the Southern Song. You said the owner was Grand Academician?”

I nodded. “Yes, Grand Academician—like the emperor’s secretary nowadays.”

Fatty crouched by the wall, nearly drooling. “That’s like imperial wares then; this craftsmanship must be court-level. Last year I saw a similar stone block in the Hangzhou Museum, excavated from the Southern Song Imperial Street—it looks just like this.”

I lifted a foot and kicked him in the backside. “Don’t go salivating over everything you see! Look at yourself, no ambition.”

Fatty brushed off the dust and snapped back, “You don’t know a thing. This is worth ten times your lousy TV—serves you right for selling junk all your life!”

“Hey, hey, speaking of junk, I learned that from you—you’re the master of junk after all.” We bickered, but business was business. Fatty found treasure, so why would I complain about making money?

I whispered to him, “Let me tell you, there’s stuff like this everywhere around here. If you’re interested, let’s see what we can do later?”

Fatty flashed his big white teeth and replied in Henan dialect, “Deal!”

My cousin-in-law Zhou Bocai’s house was in the corner of the village. Though the location wasn’t ideal, the land was the best in the village. In the mountains, building a house had several requirements: first, good sunlight. The sun rises late and sets early in the mountains. His home was at the highest point, facing south, and the first sunlight in winter always shone directly into his hall.

Second, the land had to be flat. His plot was half the size of a football field, the house taking up only a third; the rest was private land, broad and open, with a clear view. Even Chen Wenbin praised it as a great place.

A great place means good feng shui; good feng shui gathers energy, and with strong energy, the family and people thrive. By rights, such misfortune shouldn’t have fallen on his family. When we arrived, the villagers, hearing we were heading to Zhou Bocai’s, shut their doors—no one wanted to speak to us. In the end, we found a child to guide us.

Seven or eight funeral wreaths lay scattered at the entrance, showing that there had recently been a death. The snow-covered ground was a mess, full of colors. The door was closed; my cousin-in-law’s wife had reportedly fled in terror overnight.

Why flee?

Let me tell you!

A neighbor was home—my father knew him—and he recounted what had happened.

My cousin-in-law Zhou Bocai was dead, passing away at about the same time as his brother-in-law, both during the New Year, and neither could be properly mourned. According to custom, he had to be kept at home, laid out on a kang and covered with a quilt, pretending to sleep. Everyone knew, but no one wanted to help with a funeral during the New Year—it was unlucky.

When word spread that we had begun funeral proceedings, the local side hesitated. It was odd: in weather so cold your fingers would freeze in half a minute, a corpse at home should be like being in a freezer; a piece of pork in a jar wouldn’t spoil after a week. Yet the body stank!

He’d drowned in a cesspit, and after being retrieved, was rinsed for over an hour. Normally, a drowned corpse might smell, but my cousin-in-law reportedly had yellow fluid oozing from every orifice, a stench not like sewage, but more like the rotting meat smell you get in summer—utterly unbearable.

The elders decided the smell was so bad no one could stay in the house; better to bury him quickly. The Zhou family still had some local standing; everyone was related, all descendants of the old Grand Academician. They went door to door and arranged matters.

On the night of the third day of the New Year, the body was still inside, and the freshly painted coffin had just arrived. The village had a mortician to handle the burial. During the day, several women held their noses and washed Zhou Bocai in a wooden tub, reportedly rubbing in plenty of ladies’ creams to cover the smell.

At around midnight, they planned to dress and place him in the coffin. But when they entered the room, the corpse was gone.

Just an hour earlier, a dozen pairs of eyes had seen the freshly washed corpse carried into the room. After eating a meal together, the corpse had vanished.

Why did things get so strange?

The body hadn’t even been properly dressed yet. Funeral banquets happen in several rounds; the main feast is after the burial, earlier meals are just for helpers. When the helper was called out for a drink, he thought he’d finish dressing the corpse afterward, so he’d only put on the pants—the clothes lay beside the kang.

When he returned, the clothes were gone! No one else had entered. Had the dead man dressed himself and run off? Stranger still, the pair of shoes by the kang had disappeared too.

Everyone panicked—alive or dead, you must see the person or the body!

The village’s young men were immediately summoned, and several hunting dogs brought into the house. After sniffing, they rushed out the door, just as heavy snow was falling. Outside, a string of footprints drew attention.

The prints alternated, but only the front half of each shoe was visible—the heel was missing, only the ball of the foot left.

Some clever villagers hurried home to lock doors and windows. Others, unaware, wandered about with flashlights and torches. The dogs stopped in front of the ancestral hall, barking relentlessly.

This troubled everyone—the ancestral hall wasn’t open at all times. Each lunar month, on the first and fifteenth, it opened for descendants to burn incense and worship. Otherwise, it was tightly shut—an age-old rule for Scholar Village.

There was only one key, kept by the clan leader, and the door was locked, but footprints were at the entrance.

The clan leader was over eighty, trembling as several old men supported him, cursing “unfilial child” with each step. When he finally opened the door, he collapsed on the spot, reportedly dying instantly.

“Dead?” Chen Wenbin frowned.

The neighbor replied, “Yes, right on the spot. The old clan leader already had heart disease—how could he not be frightened to death seeing that?”

Fatty listened with rapt attention, crunching sunflower seeds with his ears perked up. “What happened?”

As the neighbor spoke, even his mustache seemed to curl. “What happened? Zhou Bocai was standing inside! I saw it myself—he was right there, beside the incense burner in the courtyard. When the clan leader collapsed, a young militiaman raised his gun and fired, hitting Zhou Bocai in the chest, and only then did he fall…”

Thus ends the second installment. Good night.