Chapter 62.2 Deserted Village 04
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By the well, Du Shuo’s gaze fell upon a bloodstained wooden knife. He called Chen Yang over, “This wooden knife wasn’t here yesterday.”
Chen Yang picked up the wooden knife, finding it sharp, almost as sharp as a steel knife. The wooden surface was encrusted with dark, dried blood, and similar stains dotted the ground around the well. In the cracks between the stone slabs, black clots had formed, likely remnants of spilled blood. He peered into the well but found it pitch black and seemingly bottomless.
Leaning over the well, Chen Yang could clearly hear the echo of his own voice. The well’s walls were covered in damp moss. Chen Yang touched it and found it extremely sticky and dirty. He took out his phone and turned on the flashlight to look inside the well. The opening was narrow, and the surface of the water was dark and still. Staring into the well for too long gave him a sense of unease.
Chen Yang stood up and said, “There’s no way to see what’s at the bottom of the well. The water is too dark, and the sun can’t shine in.” He glanced at the wooden knife on the ground and continued, “Did someone perform water burial here last night? But water burial is for feeding the river god. Throwing the body into the well… it seems more like feeding the fish.”
Du Shuo: “Go check the body inside the coffin.”
Chen Yang froze for a moment, then quickly snapped back to reality and rushed over to inspect the body in the coffin. Upon opening the lid, he found a corpse indeed, but it was not the same one from the previous day. This time, the body had been gnawed away on one side, yet the flesh remained fresh.
This was a freshly deceased body.
Chen Yang: “Who hid the body in the coffin?” He examined the fresh corpse and found that he was either one of the three youths’ companions or someone who had gotten off the bus. There was no spiral tattoo on his intact arm, and his other arm was missing.
Cutting off the rotten body parts, throwing them into the well to feed the fish, and then filling the coffin with a fresh corpse. Chen Yang didn’t understand this process and looked up at Du Shuo. Du Shuo said, “Sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?”
Wasn’t water burial supposed to appease the souls of the ancestors and guide them to reincarnation? How did it turn into a sacrifice? No, in ancient times, water burial was indeed a sacrifice to the river god. But these bodies weren’t thrown into a river but chopped up and thrown into the well. And why specifically throw it into the well in the ancestral hall?
Chen Yang stared at the memorial tablets in the ancestral hall for a while, then his pupils suddenly contracted. He realized something was off. “If the villagers relocated due to remote location and inconvenience, they should have taken their ancestral tablets with them!”
The ancestral hall held significant importance in the eyes of certain rural clans. It was practically their roots. Even if they rebuilt the ancestral hall next to the original one, they would carefully select an auspicious day to welcome their ancestors’ tablets into the new ancestral hall. When a clan moved away, there was no way the ancestral tablets would be left behind.
Du Shuo, hands behind his back, said, “This ancestral hall isn’t the ancestral hall of the villagers who moved away from the deserted village, so it’s normal not to move the tablets.”
Chen Yang: “It’s possible.”
Different places had different practices regarding ancestral halls. In some areas, each village had one ancestral hall, while in certain southern regions, each surname had its own ancestral hall. A village usually had several major surnames, and each major surname would have its ancestral hall. People of different surnames weren’t allowed to enter other ancestral halls. They wouldn’t be invited during funerals unless there was a marital relationship.
“So, there must be a certain clan that either faced a natural disaster, fled in haste, and couldn’t move the ancestral tablets in time. Or, the entire clan perished in the deserted village.” Chen Yang stepped forward, wiping off dust from one of the memorial tablets. “No names!”
Chen Yang continued to wipe the dust off the other tablets. The hundreds of tablets enshrined before him, arranged in dense layers, had no names, ages or causes of death. Even offerings of incense and flowers, when offered to such nameless tablets, would be seized by wandering spirits and wild ghosts due to the lack of a name.
“Why are there so many nameless tablets? Could this entire ancestral hall be dedicated to these nameless tablets? Who put them up?”
Du Shuo approached and took out the cleanest tablet from the edge. “No dust, a newly made tablet.”
Chen Yang took a look. “Who recently passed away?” He paused for a moment, then he turned his head toward the well standing quietly in the center of the courtyard. “Just last night, a water burial took place, and today, a newly made nameless tablet was put up. It does qualify as a recent death. So, all these hundreds of tablets in front of us were erected and enshrined in the ancestral hall after the water burial.”
Typically, water burials involved throwing body parts into a river, but here, they were thrown into a well. Did the well contain more than just fish? Why conduct a water burial at the well’s edge? Who performed the water burials for these nameless individuals? They built the ancestral hall, enshrined the tablets, but dared not inscribe names, seemingly isolating them, both to atone for their sins and to prevent them from seeking retribution in the afterlife.
Chen Yang placed the tablet back on the altar. Below the altar, there was still a table with offerings of incense and flowers, long rotten and overturned. In the oil lamp, the oil was filled with dead insects. The incense in the censer was haphazardly inserted, with stagnant ash. Suddenly, a fragment of ash fell with a ‘plop’ onto the table.
The sound echoed in the dead silent ancestral hall, adding a touch of horror to the atmosphere.
Chen Yang lowered his gaze. “Let’s go and check if there are other ancestral halls.”
Chonky suddenly darted out, spun around in a place away from Du Shuo, holding a card in its mouth, which read: “There are people in the woods.”
A dense forest covered the entirety of Egui Mountains, enclosing the deserted village within its verdant embrace. Chen Yang remarked, “Chonky, lead the way.”
Chonky hesitated for a moment, glancing at Du Shuo. Du Shuo said, “Lead the way.” Chonky, as if granted permission, leaped out of the window and bounded towards the front. Chen Yang followed suit, landing nimbly on the ground. Turning his head, he saw Du Shuo standing behind him. They shared a smile then continued their pursuit of Chonky.
After running through several alleys, they finally reached the edge of the forest. As they entered the woods, Chen Yang suddenly looked back at the dilapidated buildings swallowed by the greenery. Some emaciated and charred arms were attempting to stretch out from the foliage near the windows but quickly withdrew after being scorched by the sunlight.
Those starving ghosts were indeed observing them. Chen Yang averted his gaze and ran into the woods. Du Shuo was already waiting ahead. The backlit slope made the forest dim as the dense branches and leaves blocked the sunlight. The woods were silent, devoid of insect chirping or bird sounds.
Chonky was perched on a tree trunk, waiting for Chen Yang and Du Shuo. As they approached, it continued its agile leaps, disappearing like a fleeting shadow between the leaves. It was astonishing to witness such agility from a creature of its apparent weight.
The forest floor was carpeted in fallen leaves, mixing with decomposed leaves and mud. Sometimes, stepping on the fallen leaves would reveal the muddy ground beneath. Chen Yang, leaning against a gnarled tree trunk, surveyed the surroundings. Suddenly, a fragment of bone plummeted from above, startling him.
Chen Yang stepped back, looking up to see a wooden barrel placed at the fork of the gnarled tree. The barrel had a hole, where the bone had fallen.
Du Shuo walked over, checking on Chen Yang first. Seeing he was unharmed, he then inspected the wooden barrel. “Ghost cocoon.”
Peering through the hole in the barrel, Chen Yang saw a complete set of bones curled up inside. “Is this a tree burial?”
The so-called tree burial, like water burial, was a funeral ritual practiced in certain places. Some believe that trees were a resting place for souls, allowing departed loved ones to return and visit their families by possessing large trees, finding peace in the process. Therefore, tree burial ceremonies involved placing corpses in wooden barrels on trees, wrapping them in shrouds and tying them to branches, or even burying them in holes in the tree trunk.
These corpses laid to rest on the trees were referred to as “ghost larvae.”
Chen Yang: “There can’t be two different funeral rituals in the same village.”
With more questions arising and the issue of starving ghosts unresolved, the appearance of nameless memorial tablets and the coexistence of two distinct funeral rituals in a single village raised further complications. Different surnames and ancestral halls might coexist in the same village, but having two distinct funeral rituals is highly unlikely.
Special funeral practices reflected a clan’s religious beliefs regarding spirits and deities. In a mountain village, there was little tolerance for the coexistence of two such divergent religious practices.
Abruptly, a piercing scream and cries for help erupted from the nearby woods. Chen Yang and Du Shuo saw a pair of distressed individuals running towards them, their faces filled with terror. As the pair reached them, Chen Yang noticed that the young man was carrying an elderly person on his back.
The pair, panting heavily, stopped and exclaimed, “Run, hurry, run. The entire forest is filled with corpses. Run quickly!” The female couldn’t articulate words, only nodding in agreement.
Pointing at the ghost cocoon behind him, Chen Yang asked, “Are you talking about this?”
The pair looked up and let out another round of screams. Mistaking Chen Yang and Du Shuo for spirits, they pleaded, “Sorry, sorry, we just wanted to explore and didn’t mean to offend. Young people don’t know any better. Don’t blame us.”
The female, with a tearful tone, clasped her hands together, continuously bowing and apologizing, “Don’t blame us, don’t blame us, we didn’t mean to offend. Please forgive us.”
Chen Yang rubbed his nose and subtly shrugged at Du Shuo, indicating that he didn’t intend to frighten them. He said, “I am human.”
The terrified pair didn’t hear Chen Yang’s words at all. Instead, the old man behind the young man knocked him on the head and said in a resonating voice, “Coward! They are humans, not ‘beings’ crawling out of the ghost cocoon.”
The young man gently lowered the elderly person. “Professor, ghosts are cunning.”
The young woman nodded. “He’s right, Professor. Have you forgotten what we saw earlier? That thing hid in the ghost cocoon, deceived us by pretending it wasn’t dead, and tried to trick us into releasing it. But when it crawled out, it turned out to be a dried-up corpse, and it even grabbed me. It scared me to death.”
Chen Yang inquired, “Who are you? What’s the story with the dried-up corpse in the ghost cocoon?” He glanced at the wound on the young woman’s wrist, which looked gruesome, yet she seemed unfazed.
The elderly person spoke, “I am Professor Z from Z University, and these are my students. We initially came to study the coexistence of two distinct funeral rituals in this deserted village, a perfect topic for their thesis project. While wandering in the woods, we couldn’t find a way out. Just a moment ago, my students heard cries for help from the cocoon and thought it was a living person. They went to release it, but suddenly, a dried-up corpse jumped out and scratched my student. We ran quickly, escaped, but Zhao Yao doesn’t feel any pain at the wound. I suspect she’s affected by corpse poison.”
Chen Yang: “You also know about corpse poison?”
Old Professor: “I’ve been researching folk culture for many years. I’ve seen many things.”
Chen Yang nodded, took out a Daoist talisman, and instructed Zhao Yao to affix it to her wound. “It can temporarily suppress the corpse poison. Follow us into the village, and someone will apply some herbal medicine for you.”
Zhao Yao’s eyes lit up. “Are you celestial masters?”
Chen Yang: “Yes.”
Zhao Yao and the male student, Zhao Gang, excitedly surrounded Chen Yang, bombarding him with curious questions about celestial masters and related topics. Their exposure to beliefs in spirits and supernatural beings made them receptive and respectful. Their extensive research in folk culture further fueled their interest.
Du Shuo engaged in conversation with the professor. He asked, “How did you know about the two distinct funeral rituals in the deserted village?”
The old professor explained, “One day, while browsing books on unique folk funeral rituals in the library, a young man struck up a conversation with me. He had a deep understanding of folk funeral rituals, and as we talked, he mentioned the tree burial and water burial rituals here. I was intrigued, so I came to investigate.”
“Do you remember the name of that young man?”
The old professor happily answered, “I do. His name is Meng Xi.”
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