chapter 12

Whether it’s the living, or the dead, or the living dead, these names meant nothing to me as long as they kept me with my parents wife and children, whatever I was.

The biggest problem now was that my parents and wife had become muddled and they seem to forget a lot of things, including the fact that they are individuals, that this yard is all they have.

Hu Shisan wasn’t sure when such a balance would be broken either, he couldn’t guarantee that my family would live in this yard forever. This courtyard he called claustrophobic, saying it was an enclosed space that belonged neither to the yang nor to the netherworld.

I felt a bit of a pull when I heard it, but when I opened the door and saw the slate road that led to the darkness, I accepted the reality. Now no matter what my education, no matter what my beliefs, the truth was before me and I had to deal with it.

It was clear to me that as soon as I went down this path, I would be in another world. Maybe I can come back, maybe I can’t, none of that matters. What I did know is that at some point, most likely, my family will keep going down this road and they will never come back. I had to hurry to find out what the problem was and resolve the matter so that my family could be free again.

Hu Shisan likes to drink and eat meat, but he just doesn’t like female sex. He never mentioned women in my presence. A man who is not a good lover is a rare one, and I plan to make friends with him. When I told him about the offer, he laughed dismissively and said that we weren’t friends now, but life and death brothers.

I said, “I’m the one who’s giving you trouble.”

He shook his head and said, “Maybe you’re helping me, if it wasn’t for you, Brother Xing, I’m afraid I’d have been taken by the police by this time, so I’ll be shot in the autumn!”

I said, ” Shisan , but why did you kill your wife? Even if she’s sorry to you again, it won’t be so damned! No one has the right to take another person’s life.”

Hu Shisan covered his face and cried at this time, as soon as he reached out his hand he covered his chest and looked at me with tears in his eyes, ”I don’t know why either, at that time I was like a crazy man . And the worst part is, I killed all the people in that room, all of them.”

I patted him on the shoulder and said, “Actually, they didn’t complain when they died, it’s all because they disrespected you too much. This is what they deserve. But anyone who has a little sense of justice doesn’t end up like that!”

He turned toward the house, and when he was inside, he collapsed on the bed and went to sleep. As a result, my wife started looking for Jia Jia and asked me where Jia Jia had gone. I said Jia had grown up and had her own things to do. I was surprised to find that such a ridiculous reason could be used to fool around, and my wife accepted it.

I entered the room and just sat down, Hu Shisan sat up violently. He ran all the way out of the house and to the gate. I knew something was wrong and followed it closely. As he pushed open the door, I could vaguely see two dark shadows standing on the slate road. Neither of them had a face and looked fluttering.

Then, a very hollow voice drifted out, I couldn’t hear what was being said, and Hu Shisan closed the door after him. That’s when I saw my parents and my wife coming out of the house, and they were going to head out before and after they got to the gate. Hu Shisan put a talisman on the gate, and when my father touched the gate, his hand was stabbed and there was a puff of green smoke.

He retracted his hand and said, “It’s hot!”

I pulled my wife in and said, “What are you doing?”

The wife said, “We’ve been told to move, Yun , we’re moving to a big house with free water, electricity and heating, and free medical care, and the kids go all the way to high school!”

Hu Shisan said, “Sister-in-law, even if it’s a move, you have to go pack!”

My wife froze at first, then pulled my mother and said, “Yes mom, let’s go back and pack up, these furniture is to be taken away. But what if we don’t have a car? By the way, we should give my mom a message when we move too, otherwise they won’t know where we’re moving to and think I’m dead if they can’t find me.”

Hu Shisan said, ”Sister-in-law, let’s not move first, you wait for me and Brother Xing to come back before moving, we’ll go find a car. Not in a hurry anyway, don’t you think?”

My dad nodded at this point and said, “Good, you talk to someone outside and we’ll move in a few days!”

Hu Shisan opened the door at this time and went out, I followed close behind, and the two of us walked up the stone path for the first time. He led me all the way to the two black shadows, and Hu Shisan said, “Two, this family doesn’t want to move yet, just a few more days of accommodation.”

The words just came out, suddenly these two black shadows swooped towards us, Hu Shisan spit out a mouthful of phlegm, at once I felt a flower in front of me, then I heard two sounds of ow, a cool breeze blew past me, then I could not see anything anymore.

Once Hu Shisan pulled me, he turned around violently and said, “Hurry up, if you don’t go, you won’t be able to turn back!”

I looked back and realized my yard was so far away that all I could see from a distance was a little light from my home window. The two of us began to run in the direction of the lights, and for a full hour, the lights got bigger and bigger, and we finally made it back to the front door of my house again. It was only when I pounced on the door panel that my heart stepped down, and I cried with excitement.

I patted the gate, and the gate was still open by my dad. When he saw me, he asked me, “Son, what’s wrong with you? Whistling away to whisk the rabbit?”

I grabbed my dad’s arm straight away and said, “Dad, I’m almost not coming back. You must not leave this yard, understand?”

My dad said, “On such a good deal, why not move out? It’s all ready for us over there, so much better than the house here, mainly it’s easy to do everything! There’s a big market right next to it, and there are old ladies who do square dances at night.”

Hu Shisan gasped and said, ”Old Master, at least you have to wait for Brother Xing to return before you move! Are we going to take a trip out and move when we get back?”

My father said, “That’s right, find a car and come back, this car of yours, it won’t hold much cargo. Get a van back.”

Hu Shisan nodded and looked at me, ”This is our last chance, let’s go! Immediately go to Huangdian Tun and look for Lao Hu, maybe he has an idea!”

I went into the house, holding my dead wife iin my arms and telling her she must not move until I returned. Even after a few times of this admonition, I was still very uneasy, and I knew that something was wrong with their minds and they could not tell right from wrong. At the moment, it was more like they’re doing things by instinct.

Hu Shisan pulled me to the car and my dad opened the door. Hu Shisan drove the car out of the empty turn, and violently the sun shone through the car window.

I momentarily averted my eyes with my hand and said, “It’s fucking noon!”

Hu Shisan said, “What do you think otherwise? Now you understand what exactly exists in your home!”

I looked back and it looked like a compound that couldn’t have been more ordinary. Only there seemed to be a gray haze over this courtyard. I slowly turned around and said, “Shisan, it’s hard for me to accept that my family is all gone from me!”

Hu Shisan said, “There’s nothing you can’t accept, you have to be mentally prepared. If we go to Old Hu, we won’t necessarily be able to solve this kind of thing, do you know what the two black shadows were doing just now? That’s the guide that’s there to take your family over there. What does that mean? It means they are already registered in the underworld, and they are indeed dead.”

“Shisan, oh no, Master Hu, you must help me, help me keep them. If they’re dead, what’s the point of me being alive?”

“You have a daughter!” Hu Shisan looked at me and said, “Jia Jia is alive!”

I sighed and said, ”Jia Jia is alive and well and looks like a monster. That’s not my daughter at all.”

“At least that body is from you, that is your bloodline, it is cut and dried.” Hu Shisan said, “Brother Xing, you sleep, I’ll drive directly to Jinzhou, I’ll call you when I get off the highway!”

I hmmed and said, “Call me if you’re tired, by the way, do you have money? I have a card here, swipe mine if you refuel!”

I handed the 2.6 million bank card to Hu Shisan and told him the password. He shook the card and said, “This must be the card!”

I hummed , and didn’t say anything more. If it wasn’t for this card, I wouldn’t be where I am today, but what can I do now that it’s happened?

I leaned back and went to sleep, and when I woke up it happened to be at the exit off the highway, and by this time it was getting dark, and the car kept going north, following the navigation we went up a mountain road. The trail curved like a snake and became more and more secluded, with a few cars visible at first, but then no cars at all.

Hu Shisan pulled over, lit a cigarette and said, ”Brother Xing, I’m sleepy, why don’t you drive for a while! Looking at the navigation there’s still thirty kilometers to go, and this Huangdian Tun is really hard enough to walk.”

I hummed and got out of the car and changed places with him. Instead of leaving immediately afterwards, we smoked in our seats.

“I’m going to finish my cigarette and catch up on the road “

Hu Shisan was probably too tired and leaned back in his seat without saying a word. I was smoking a cigarette while saying, “This hellhole, how come not one car is visible!”

” This is how it is in the mountains, this road is very dangerous to walk at night. But we must move on, the time is short, after midnight it will be Saturday, and there must be a reason why Old Hu told us to come on Saturday.”

After I finished smoking, I threw the cigarette out the window, looked at the navigation and drove the car out. Thirty kilometers of driving for a full hour, finally. The navigation said the destination, but when Hu Shisan and I got out of the car, we didn’t see any village at all.

At this point we were in a depression, which was wooded, and the road ran through the woods. Our car was parked in a wooded area. I scolded, “Where did this damn navigation lead us?”

Hu Xizhang took his flashlight and shone it around, and finally saw a cement stele in front of a path, he ripped the vines and plants on it, and with a glance of his flashlight, three words were written on it: Huangdian Tun!

He said, “That’s right, this is the Huangdian Tun, this path is the way into the Tun, let’s go!”

I walked over, took my flashlight and shined it inside. The road was similar to the slate road in front of my house. I muttered, ”Shisan, how come I don’t think this path is quite right! Why don’t we go after dawn!”

The road was just enough to pass a car, and the trees on either side were very neat and growing exceptionally lush. Cover the sky tightly.

The road was straight, and after I started ten minutes, it started to feel wrong. The road never seems to end and the scenario ahead always seems the same. Before I could speak, Hu Shisan opened his mouth and said, “Brother Xing, stop the car!”

I stopped the car and got out with Hu Shisan, who got to the curb and unzipped his pants and said, “It’s suffocating me!”

I thought he noticed something was wrong and didn’t think he just wanted to pee.

I peed too, a chill coming around and I accidentally peed on my hand. But people are so strange, their own urine and other people’s urine is actually about the same composition, but their own urine does not feel much dirty at all when it reaches their hands. I just waved it off and ignored it.

I lit a cigarette and smoked it, saying, “Shisan, I’ve been driving for a full ten minutes, how come I don’t feel the road has changed a bit?”

Hu Shisan took his flashlight and looked inside the woods along the roadside, then looked behind him and said, “Yeah, how come the road is so long, and no matter how you go, the scenery around you is unchanging.”

I said, “We can’t be lost! Or ghosts against walls.”

“Get in the car, we’ll rest, it really won’t be until dawn!” He said.

After we got in the car, I was going to extinguish the car, and Hu Shisan stopped me and said, “Too many mosquitoes to open the windows, don’t extinguish the car, leave the air conditioning and headlights on.”

I said, “I don’t know how much further ahead, don’t kill the car, what if we run out of gas?”

“If you extinguish the car and open the window you’ll be surrounded by mosquitoes and will be bitten to death, you know?” Hu Shisan said, “You have no idea how powerful the mosquitoes are in the mountains. Then there’s the fact that the car doesn’t cost much to idle, we have enough gas.”

At this point he pointed ahead and said, “Just look at how many mosquitoes there are!”

I looked out and there seemed to be a cloud of smoke rising in the light, and it was all swarms of mosquitoes. Suddenly, mosquitoes started falling on the windshield, and soon a thick layer was falling. That’s when I realized how childish I was. Not only was I afraid to turn off the engine, but I locked the doors. That’s when I leaned back and closed my eyes.

Hu Shisan pulled the blanket from the back seat, one for each of us, then put down the car seat and lay down and went to sleep.

By the time I opened my eyes again it was already light and the mosquitoes on the car glass were nowhere to be found. I got up and got out of the car to take a look and almost called out. Scared, I leaned right back against the door of the car. I tapped on the window and said, “Shisan, you get out.”

I saw a large, dense mass of graves all around, and our car went to the middle of the cemetery, where there were no woods around, but a block of headstones.

Hu Shisan got out of the car and looked around and said, “We did get hit with a ghost last night. It’s evil here, but there’s no need to worry about it, it’ll be fine at dawn, let’s go!”

We got in the car together, turned around and drove out, and just as we got to the tarmac road, we saw a group of people coming over carrying a coffin and blowing on it. Hu Shisan and I got out of the car and watched as the coffin was carried into the graveyard.

Hu Shisan climbed up to a villager and asked, “Brother, I’ll ask you for directions, how far is it here in Huangdian Tunli?”