IBGSW Chapter 168
Forgetting Manzhou
“When I heard that I wanted to hit him, but my grandfather scolded me instead. He said ancestral rules, seniority comes first, and there’s no such thing as a nephew hitting his uncle.”
Kuai Changshun looked aggrieved:
“My grandfather’s always like this, pressing people down with ancestral rules. Clearly Kuai Wu was in the wrong. And besides, if the ancestral rules were any use, how did Kuai Wu, his junior, dare to point at his nose and curse him?”
He burst out in a low, angry voice:
“It’s just not fair.”
“The rules my grandfather talks about are for controlling honest people. A bastard like Kuai Wu isn’t bound by them. Afterward my grandfather even coaxed him with kind words, and the cloth stolen from Third Uncle was covered with cloth my aunts had woven at home.”
Kuai Changshun hadn’t realized the weight of what he’d said by accident. He recalled the past, disgusted only by Kuai Wu’s existence.
Zhao Fusheng thought it over and said:
“Your grandfather has it hard.”
“He does.” Kuai Changshun nodded, then looked sardonic:
“But whose fault is that? Does Your Honor think this was an isolated case?”
In his anger he answered his own question, loudly:
“No! That was just one of the many things that have happened over the years.”
Kuai Wu’s life had turned from the moment his father died.
After that he became like a lump of mud, beating his wife and children at home and getting drunk outside.
“He does nothing all day. Within ten li1, wherever there’s a wedding or funeral, as soon as he hears about it he shows up, shameless, asking for wine, and when he’s drunk he goes wild, and the worst part is, he does it all in my grandfather’s name.”
Because of Sixth Uncle’s presence, the other villagers, though they hated Kuai Wu, had to give Kuailiang Village some face. But they loathed him to the extreme, and at the mention of him they shook their heads.
“The whole of Wulidian knows him.”
Kuai Changshun couldn’t stop talking about Kuai Wu:
“When he’s drunk he cries. He gets together with a drunken lunatic from Fengmen Village and the two curse heaven and curse our family, and curse us to die without descendants—”
“...”
Sympathy showed in Wu Shaochun’s eyes.
“You ran into a scoundrel like that, you really have had terrible luck,” he shook his head and sighed.
“Who says otherwise? Worst of all, my grandfather won’t let anyone hit him. Our family has over twenty people, and every year we gather white perilla and fish in the river. Everyone works hard. By year’s end we’ve saved some money, and our household should be well-off, but my grandfather still subsidizes his family’s taxes, and by the year’s end there’s hardly anything left.”
Kuai Changshun kept shaking his head:
“When will this ever end?”
Zhao Fusheng had only meant to use him to learn the truth beneath Kuailiang Village’s calm surface, and had not expected that by using Kuai Wu as a breakthrough she would actually learn Sixth Uncle’s own hidden pain from Kuai Changshun.
A single thoughtless decision back then had caused not only a lifetime tragedy for Kuai Wu’s family but Sixth Uncle’s tragedy too.
And since he held the clan’s power, the tragedy spread to his descendants.
Perhaps the villagers’ and children’s feelings toward Sixth Uncle were similar to Kuai Changshun’s: surface respect mixed with deep resentment.
That resentment and discontent would sooner or later become a giant blade that tore Kuailiang Village apart.
Had Sixth Uncle realized this great crisis?
Zhao Fusheng thought to herself.
She pursed her lips and asked:
“Has anyone considered dividing the household?”
It was actually a good solution.
Looking at Sixth Uncle’s life, his tragedy came from his sense of responsibility.
As the leader of a village under a clan system, he cared for the villagers deeply and looked after them all. His position was like an elder’s in a family: benevolent, tolerant, caring yet authoritarian. He shouldered all the responsibility but lacked the ability to solve the troubles, so he shifted the responsibility outward, making everyone bear the calamity together.
In an age like the Great Han’s, burdensome taxes weighed on the villagers like a mountain, and the clan existed to shelter everyone and let each person huddle together for warmth and ride out hardships.
The original intent was good.
But the margin for error was extremely low.
Sixth Aunt’s soft-hearted matchmaking had gone wrong along the way, saddling the old couple with a mountain to carry.
After Kuai Jumin’s death, if Kuai Wu had been able to turn grief and anger into drive, perhaps things wouldn’t have come to this.
But Kuai Wu’s psychological endurance was very low. His father’s death became his excuse for escaping reality, and he used rage to cover his cowardice and guilt, shifting all the responsibility onto others to ease his own self-reproach.
In such circumstances, if Sixth Uncle had cut decisively, driven Kuai Wu out of the clan, the clan might have kept its cohesion and even developed further.
But what makes a person a person is that they have seven emotions and six desires2.
Sixth Uncle was human too. He was tormented by responsibility and conscience, and his authority as a village elder had become his shackle, preventing him from abandoning Kuai Wu and doing something that violated his status as a village elder.
“Divide the household?”
Hearing this, Kuai Changshun let out a strange cry.
After shouting, he swept away his earlier anger, was silent for a moment, and finally sighed:
“My dad and the others don’t agree.”
“Why?” Fan Wujiu, who rarely spoke, asked, curious:
“Because of filial piety?”
Kuai Changshun seemed not to know how to answer, and Zhao Fusheng answered for him:
“Because of power.”
“Power?”
Hearing this, Fan Wujiu was astonished.
A remote backwater, not a noble family or powerful clan, what power could there be?
His wits weren’t as sharp as his brother Fan Bisi’s, nor did he have a mind full of abacus calculations like Zhang Chuanshi. He really couldn’t make out the connection.
Kuai Changshun, on the other hand, felt somewhat uneasy at Zhao Fusheng’s words and, as if explaining, said:
“My grandfather is old. One day the burden on his shoulders will pass to my dad—”
The transfer of power as village elder: though Fan Wujiu looked down on such things, in Kuailiang Village Sixth Uncle’s word was law, and he was an elder revered by the villagers, with status no less than the big shots in the city.
“The lower people’s status, the more they care about order of rank,” Zhao Fusheng sighed.
Sixth Uncle was already showing signs of illness, and when he passed away, the elder’s power would pass to his sons. So his sons would be the firm supporters of his authority, and would never allow others to undermine it, even if the ones who wanted to divide the household were their wives or sons.
Kuai Changshun’s eyes shifted, and he didn’t dare meet Zhao Fusheng’s gaze:
“If my dad runs the village in the future, it certainly won’t be like this—”
Zhao Fusheng smiled and didn’t argue with him. Instead she said:
“If dividing the household won’t work, then why not drive Kuai Wu out?”
“That’s hard to say. After all, he’s family...” When it came to the key solution, Kuai Changshun put away his earlier anger completely and became somewhat timid, shaking his head.
Zhao Fusheng smiled and didn’t pursue the subject.
These villagers were short-sighted, hesitated and looked backward in everything they did, and lacked resolve, pitiable and lamentable and hateful all at once. Part of their suffering came from the nature shaped by their environment.
The Great Han’s system had produced these indecisive yet lawless commoners who dared use private punishment and thus caused a ghost calamity.
“Perhaps once Kuai Wu dies, the problem will solve itself,” she said lightly, with a smile.
Kuai Changshun felt inexplicably relieved.
For some reason, when this question came up, Zhao Fusheng’s gaze put great pressure on him, and he instinctively wanted to escape. Now that she herself changed the subject, he felt lighter.
“Yes, yes.” He also forced a smile and agreed, and then sighed:
“But it’s not that easy. As the saying goes, a scourge lasts a thousand years, while good people don’t live long...”
“Who’s the scourge? Who’s the good person?”
Zhao Fusheng turned her head to ask him, and he was struck dumb, not daring to answer.
This time, Zhao Fusheng didn’t let him dodge, and asked him:
“Is Kuai Wu a bad person? Is Fourth Madam Zhuang a good person?”
“Kuai Wu is of course no good, and Fifth Aunt, no, Fourth Madam Zhuang, she, she shouldn’t have had an affair. If she hadn’t, she, she was a good person. Why did she have to do that... She disgraced our Kuailiang Village. My grandfather treated her so well. When she gave birth, my grandmother looked after her for several days, bringing her tea and water all day long, and even stewed salted fish soup to build up her body—”
As Zhao Fusheng listened to his rambling, she suddenly realized there was something she’d overlooked ever since entering the village:
“What about the child?”
As soon as she asked, Kuai Changshun, who’d been mid-speech, froze, and a look of confusion crossed his young face as he said:
“Who?”
“The child!” Zhao Fusheng said again, pressing the point about Fourth Madam Zhuang’s child:
“The one you mentioned yourself, the child Fourth Madam Zhuang bore.”
After she said this, Kuai Changshun’s expression turned strange. It was as if, at the moment he heard the word “child,” many different emotions were chopped into pieces and then forcibly stitched together on his face, which looked eerie.
Panic and fear flashed in his eyes, the corners of his mouth drooped, sadness showed as if he had remembered some sorrowful past event.
But his brows were tightly knit, as if a confusing matter troubled his thoughts at the same time...
Strange! Truly too strange!
“Child? Which child?” he asked back.
Hearing this, Zhao Fusheng realized how serious the problem was.
Her expression turned grave, and she turned to Fan Wujiu: “Second Brother, earlier, when Zhuang Laoqi confessed the ghost case at the bureau, he mentioned that Fourth Madam Zhuang had a child. What was that child’s name?”
After saying this, she saw that Fan Wujiu looked blank, and encouraged him:
“You’ve got a good memory. Think hard, it was Kuai something, right?”
“I, I have a good memory?” Fan Wujiu was startled.
He normally didn’t use his brain much.
With his brother around, he just let everything go in one ear and out the other, not taking it to heart, and followed the instructions of Fan Bisi and Zhao Fusheng.
Now, hearing Zhao Fusheng’s words, pressure rose within him, and he looked at Wu Shaochun for help and stammered:
“Shaochun, what do you think? It seems there was such a thing, right?”
Wu Shaochun was just as troubled:
“There was a child.” His gaze wavered, and he looked guiltily at Zhao Fusheng:
“But Your Honor, my memory isn’t good, I can’t remember.”
Zhao Fusheng shook her head:
“It’s not your fault.”
She was certain that Kuailiang Village concealed something else, which had caused everyone to forget Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter in unison.
This discovery excited Zhao Fusheng a little.
“Changshun, do you remember your Fifth Aunt’s child?” she asked Kuai Changshun.
Kuai Changshun’s expression was strange. He said:
“I remember, it was, it was a daughter—” As he said this, he seemed unsure, and then pained, grabbing his hair:
“But I can’t remember her name.”
“If you can’t remember, never mind.”
Seeing his condition was off, Zhao Fusheng quickly said:
“When we get to Kuai Wu’s house, I’ll ask him.”
Kuailiang Village was covered by a ghost domain. The people here remembered that Fourth Madam Zhuang had a daughter, but not the girl’s name.
It was as if this little girl had been erased from the ghost domain by some force.
Was she dead or alive? Was she still in Kuailiang Village, or had she left the village?
If she wasn’t in the village, then since the village had been locked down after the ghost case broke out, with people posted to guard the entrance, how could Fourth Madam Zhuang’s young daughter have gotten out of this ghost village when all the villagers were trapped in it?
And if she was still in the village, how could the villagers not have noticed her?
Zhao Fusheng felt that Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter might be a major clue in this ghost case, and perhaps even a breakthrough.
She turned to look behind her as if guided by some spirit. Where her gaze landed was the Kuai Clan Ancestral Hall next to Sixth Uncle’s house.
According to Kuai Changshun, after the ghost case broke out, the Kuai clansmen couldn’t enter the hall.
Could Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter be inside the hall?
She would first go look at Kuai Wu’s house, then get rid of the Kuai people and go into the hall to find out.
Having decided, Zhao Fusheng turned back and smiled at Kuai Changshun:
“By the way, Changshun, do you think Fourth Madam Zhuang really had an affair with the outsider?”
Kuai Changshun was lost and dazed, still murmuring the name of Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter, and looked half-demented. When Zhao Fusheng asked, he was stunned for a moment, and after a long while his mind finally took in what she’d said, and he nodded sluggishly:
“Yes, yes, it’s true.”
“Kuai Mancai said it was Kuai Huaide who reported her?”
“Ah.” Kuai Changshun sighed, sounding complicated:
“Huaide, yes, he reported her.”
Zhao Fusheng asked:
“Can you tell me about it?”
Kuai Changshun looked troubled, not knowing where to begin.
“What does Your Honor want me to say?” His spirits were low. After Zhao Fusheng mentioned Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter, he had been uneasy.
“Your grandfather said Kuai Huaide is two generations below Kuai Wu.”
This matter involved the village scandal. If she opened with saying Fourth Madam Zhuang had a secret lover, it might provoke Kuai Changshun’s resistance, so she decided to start with small details and draw out information without his noticing.
When village kinship came up, Kuai Changshun relaxed in relief.
He nodded:
“Huaide’s grandfather and Kuai Wu are cousins, but my Fourth Grandfather (Kuai Jumin) had Kuai Wu very late in life, so the two cousins were far apart in age, and so were their descendants.”
“Did Kuai Wu borrow money from a junior, and did that cause Kuai Huaide’s resentment?” Zhao Fusheng probed.
“How could that be?” Kuai Changshun shook his head without hesitation: “Everyone in the village hated him, but resentment and revenge, it didn’t come to that—”
Toward the end he seemed to remember something, his eyes shifted, and he looked unwilling to say more.
Zhao Fusheng sharply caught his expression and suddenly asked him out of the blue:
“Changshun, how old is Kuai Huaide?”
“He’s twenty-seven—”
As soon as Kuai Changshun answered casually, Zhao Fusheng said:
“Sounds like he’s older than Fourth Madam Zhuang.”
This seemingly offhand remark hit a raw nerve with Kuai Changshun, and he nearly leaped up, almost dropping the lamp in his hand in his panic. “Your Honor, Kuai Wu’s house is close now, look, it’s over there.”
