IBGSW Chapter 174
The Bloodied Flower
Zhao Fusheng’s question left the room silent for a moment.
After a long while, Kuai Er’s wife said quietly, “After she came back, she washed Man... Man... and combed her hair, and told her to listen to her aunts, be filial to her elders, and respect Sixth Uncle.”
Those words sounded like last words now. In other words, once Fourth Madam Zhuang had chosen to come back, she had foreseen what might happen to her.
She had known it was a dead end, and still she’d stepped back into it. What for?!
“Haah...”
Zhao Fusheng sighed without a word.
“At dusk Sixth Uncle and the villagers came. When they saw Fourth Madam at home, their faces turned ugly and they glared at us hatefully.”
Kuai San’s wife was frightened.
“It hadn’t worked, and we were afraid that when the affair came out we’d be dragged in with her. We were all scared. None of us could have borne what would come.”
Helping a woman who’d lost her chastity elope, betraying Kuai Wu, betraying Kuailiang Village. The four Kuai sisters-in-law were afraid, and Sixth Uncle was even more so.
“Because of Old Five, the village had resented Sixth Uncle for years.”
His authority had been challenged again and again, and many people didn’t dare speak their anger. They were just waiting for an outlet.
Beneath the village’s calm surface, undercurrents surged.
At that moment, Fourth Madam Zhuang absolutely could not be allowed to speak.
Light has darkness on its far side, and goodness has evil on its far side.
Everyone silently agreed to say nothing about what had come before and to pretend they’d known nothing. They found evidence in Fourth Madam Zhuang’s home that proved her affair with the outsider, and with one accord they took the same stance. They tied her up, gagged her, and tore off her clothes.
No one dared stand with her now. The four Kuai sisters-in-law didn’t dare speak to her, afraid the village would judge them too.
Others who’d turned on her were even colder and more ruthless, eager to “show loyalty” and “show their stance” in front of the other villagers.
Fourth Madam Zhuang was beaten and humiliated.
Lewd eyes roamed over her without restraint. The kindness and sympathy that used to be in their looks were gone. What was there now was malice.
The darkness in human nature was set loose and magnified. They all decided that for an unchaste woman who had dared to betray her husband, the proper punishment was cruel: pig-cage drowning1.
The grievances had built up for too long.
The imperial court’s taxes were crushing, and everyone in that atmosphere was under heavy pressure. Beyond that, malignant ghosts roamed the world and many people might die of ghost calamities. It was an age with no guarantee of survival.
In Kuailiang Village, Kuai Wu was the black sheep, and Sixth Uncle’s word was law on many matters.
The villagers lived hard lives and had long been afraid to speak their anger.
They couldn’t change the court’s tax system. They didn’t dare challenge Sixth Uncle’s authority. They couldn’t drive a disgusting man like Kuai Wu out of the clan. Over the days and years this resentment lay hidden in their hearts, and now it finally found an outlet.
The crowd was wild with rage.
That anger was like a flood, and once the sluice gate broke, a great disaster brewed.
Fourth Madam Zhuang became the best place to vent it.
This lynching pleased everyone. The villagers’ long-suppressed fury got its outlet, and afterward, when their reason returned, they might feel guilt, or fear because of her death, and lose their edge, and they’d go back to their old meek, forbearing, cowed lives.
For Sixth Uncle, Fourth Madam Zhuang’s death would cow the villagers. It was a case he had presided over, like killing the chicken to scare the monkey2, and it would reinforce his wobbling authority. The villagers would fear and obey him more. In future, they’d be more united in every matter touching the clan. Even if another case like subsidizing Kuai Wu arose, many would still be resentful, but because of Fourth Madam Zhuang’s death, an unspoken understanding would form among them and no one would say more.
One stone, many birds.
And for the four Kuai sisters-in-law, Fourth Madam Zhuang represented a kind of hope.
Her escape from the mire, her flight with the outsider to a better life, might have been the hope for the future of these four women, and of many women in Kuailiang Village.
But she hadn’t made that choice. She’d chosen her daughter.
Many women are like that. After they have children, everything revolves around their children, and giving their lives for them feels worthwhile.
That lit a fire in the hearts of the four women.
They seemed to see their own futures in Fourth Madam Zhuang: unable to let go, bound by ties, stuck here and never able to escape.
Kuai San’s wife didn’t know why she was furious, but Zhao Fusheng saw clearly.
The four loved Fourth Madam Zhuang for her goodness and moral character, and were angry with her for the same softness of heart.
Fourth Madam Zhuang’s escape had carried the four women’s hopes for the future. Her choice meant that hope was dashed, and the women, realizing it, would turn their disappointment and pain into torment a thousand times over and heap it on the woman who’d carried their hope.
Some things, some secret feelings, were destined never to see daylight.
Zhao Fusheng asked the silent Kuai Da’s wife, “This afternoon, when Fourth Madam Zhuang carried her daughter back, what did it look like? Tell me.”
Kuai Da’s wife looked up blankly.
“My lord...”
“Describe how the two of them looked. Don’t leave out any detail,” Zhao Fusheng said calmly.
Her request baffled Kuai Da’s wife. But she’d been docile for so long, and helping Fourth Madam Zhuang escape was probably the greatest courage she’d ever shown, the most defiant thing she’d ever done. Now she fell back into following orders and, though she didn’t understand, complied.
“Fourth Madam was wearing a blue dress. Her family made it for her nine years ago when she first married.”
Kuai Da’s wife told it in detail, even mentioning that the dress had faded over the years.
Fourth Madam Zhuang had wrapped her hair in a patterned kerchief, and her black hair had been combed neat and smooth, dampened with water.
She’d been about to start a new life when she left, so she’d set out in a new look.
When she came back, she looked bedraggled because she was carrying the child. Her clothes were wrinkled and there was mud on her. “From the little girl.”
Kuai Er’s wife joined in.
“The little girl’s feet were muddy. She must have gone into the mountains. Her face was scratched and her palms were scraped. There was blood on her clothes.”
Kuai San’s wife, who’d been pacing angrily in place, suddenly stopped, her anger stalled. She tilted her head and thought, and a flicker of worry crossed her dry, sallow face.
“She’d fallen, and she was holding a flower...”
“A flower?”
Zhao Fusheng stirred.
From the moment she’d stepped into this room and begun drawing information from the four sisters-in-law, this was the first time she’d gotten a lead tied to the killing rules of this ghost case.
“What flower?” she asked.
Kuai San’s wife said: “White perilla.”
“Has my lord seen our Kuailiang Village’s white perilla?” Kuai Er’s wife said.
“It sprouts in spring, with serrated leaves about this long.”
She held out a rough, wide palm to show the length.
“In May or June it blooms. Once it’s open the flower is as big as a bowl, with sharp, slender petals, layer on layer, pure white. Very beautiful.” As she described it, a strange thought rose in Zhao Fusheng’s mind: this flower sounded so familiar.
The eerie red flower that had grown from Zhuang Laoqi’s corpse was just like this. Bowl-sized, with slender, pointed petals layered one on another. The only difference was the color.
She listened patiently as Kuai Er’s wife went on.
“You have to pick it between April and mid-May. It’s the buds that are useful. Later, once it’s in full bloom, the medicinal power fades.”
Kuai Si’s wife added from the side, “White perilla is pricey. Dried, an ounce is worth three coppers. Everyone picks it when they see it.”
By April, every household, men and women, old and young, took small knives out each day and picked every bud they came across into their baskets. “So it’s not that fully bloomed flowers don’t exist, but they’re rare.”
And on that day, Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter had found one.
“That girl is really sensible. She knew her mother had a hard life and often helped her,” Kuai Er’s wife said in a low voice, choking back sobs.
“In winter, when her mother got up before dawn, she’d get up too. While her mother worked, she’d light the fire.”
“When Fourth Madam went up the mountain to pick white perilla, the girl often carried a basket and went along. We all laughed that she was a little grown-up.” Kuai San’s wife, who’d been angry, seemed moved again by the other sisters-in-law’s words and smiled in spite of herself, as if her mood had improved a great deal.
“She disappeared in the morning, so she must have gone into the mountains to look for white perilla. I don’t know why she picked a fully bloomed one, but she must have suffered for it. She fell, hurt her face, her hands were scraped, and the blood dyed the flower red.”
Kuai Da’s wife sighed.
“Once white perilla has finished blooming, its power is gone and it’s worthless.”
Her words hit Zhao Fusheng’s sea of consciousness like a thunderclap.
A blood-stained white perilla!
The human-bone flowers that had bloomed from Zhuang Laoqi’s corpse!
Putting the two together, Zhao Fusheng understood a great deal at once.
Fourth Madam Zhuang’s revived malignant ghost wandered back and forth in the ghost domain, searching for those eerie red flowers on the bones of the dead. The ghost was repeating her actions from life. It meant that in life, Fourth Madam Zhuang had been held here by a single flower from her daughter.
“The girl must have picked the wrong one,” Kuai Si’s wife sighed.
“No!”
Zhao Fusheng shook her head.
“She didn’t pick the wrong one.”
Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter had truly wanted to pick a flower for her mother, and her mother had indeed understood her heart. After death, though her soul was gone and her memory was gone, her lifeless body still repeated the actions of life and instinctively chased the blood-stained flower.
“Not... not wrong?”
Kuai San’s wife looked up. Something flickered in her eyes, struggle, as though she’d grasped something in her heart. Yet her face showed only bewilderment, and she shook her head, her body shivering.
“Why? I really don’t understand. A useless flower, and that was worth staying for? Her life? What for?”
“Because she got what she’d been seeking.”
Understanding showed in Zhao Fusheng’s eyes.
She finally understood what Fourth Madam Zhuang had been looking for.
By now she understood the cause and course of the Kuailiang Village ghost case, the ghost flowers, the ghost boat, and the connection between Yellow Springs and the malignant ghost. She even had a faint idea why Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter had gone missing.
“What does my lord mean? We don’t understand.”
“We don’t understand.”
“We don’t understand.”
“We don’t understand.”
The four sisters-in-law turned in unison and said the same words, staring at Zhao Fusheng.
The torchlight in the room suddenly shrank and dimmed.
The four careworn, gentle women, who looked older than their real ages, had given Zhao Fusheng the impression of timid meekness. Now they gave off a faint sense of pressure.
Zhao Fusheng remained calm.
“Fourth Madam Zhuang’s life was bitter. She never received love.”
The Great Han’s heavy taxes were a mountain pressing down on the common people, and in that suffocating environment, people had grown numb and cold.
These people did not know what love was.
When the daily worry was whether they could survive, when two meals a day couldn’t fill their bellies, love and hate, joy and anger were an extravagance. Pressure flowed from the top down.
Class was sharply marked in the villagers’ lives.
In Fourth Madam Zhuang’s family, her father was the absolute authority, her mother came next, and once there were children, sons ranked above daughters.
Fourth Madam Zhuang, at the bottom of the family, had been made its outlet.
As a child she hadn’t been loved. When she finally could have been, as an adult, tragedy struck. Kuai Jumin’s death was unexpected, but in that environment, his end was also to be expected.
And her affair with the outsider hadn’t come from a bad nature. It came from a human yearning to be loved.
The outsider’s care had healed her. The villagers’ help and protection had urged her on.
On the day she set out, her daughter had given her a flower and changed her mind.
Zhao Fusheng asked Kuai Er’s wife, “Second Sister-in-law, how long were the outsider Chen and Fourth Madam Zhuang together?”
Kuai Er’s wife was quiet, but she seemed to know a lot about village affairs, and Zhao Fusheng was sure she’d know this.
“He came to our village at the end of April and, about seven days later, came face to face with Fourth Madam, but didn’t say much. It wasn’t until late May that they had that exchange, when he brought... the flatbread to Man... to the girl,” Kuai Er’s wife said. “After that, the two got together, up until he fled yesterday.”
“So they were together for more than three months,” Zhao Fusheng said, and Kuai Er’s wife nodded.
“During that time, did the outsider ever give her flowers?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
“Flowers?” The question surprised Kuai Er’s wife. She turned almost instinctively to the other sisters-in-law, puzzled. “What flowers?”
“Any flowers at all,” Zhao Fusheng said patiently. “Silk flowers, beaded flowers, woven flowers, an embroidered handkerchief with flowers, or even a wild flower picked by the roadside.”
When she finished, the others either waved their hands frantically or laughed.
Zhao Fusheng looked at Kuai Si’s wife, who was holding back a laugh, with a strange expression. “What are you laughing at?”
Kuai Si’s wife grew uneasy under her look and question and straightened her face at once. “My lord, what use are silk flowers and beaded flowers? We country people don’t use them. Who would dare wear one except on a wedding day?”
Especially for Fourth Madam Zhuang, whose situation was already difficult and conspicuous. If she’d dressed up, wouldn’t she have been asking for trouble?
