IBGSW Chapter 175
Searching for Kuai Wu
“Besides, we’re all poor people. Things like those are probably only for young ladies and madams of rich families in the city, aren’t they? Silk flowers and such cost several big coins. You’d do better buying millet or wild greens, which fill your stomach for several meals.”
“As for wildflowers by the road, they can’t be eaten or drunk, so what are they for?” Kuai Si’s wife finished and saw that Zhao Fusheng looked dazed.
She sensed keenly that a complicated expression had come into Zhao Fusheng’s eyes, something like sympathy and regret, and grew uneasy. She rubbed her hands together and asked timidly, “My lord, did I say something wrong?”
“No.”
Zhao Fusheng shook her head gently.
“So Fourth Madam Zhuang never got a flower in her life.” Even the outsider’s “kindness” to her had been practical.
“So when her daughter went through so much trouble, entered the deep mountains, and got hurt just to pick that bloodied flower for her, it naturally meant something very different to her.”
In her daughter’s gesture she had felt her daughter’s love, which asked nothing in return and came from the bond of blood. It might also have been a child’s best wish for her mother, and it was exactly what she’d been seeking all her life.
“Having gotten that love from her daughter, why would she need to look elsewhere, to the outsider?”
In the course of investigating this ghost case, Zhao Fusheng had sighed several times already, and she felt like sighing again.
“My lord means Fourth Madam wouldn’t leave because of that flower?”
Kuai San’s wife didn’t believe it and raised her voice.
Doubt showed on her face. She probably found it absurd.
“Because of her daughter’s love for her,” Zhao Fusheng said gravely.
The four women went quiet.
They hadn’t been born like this either.
They’d also been daughters once, then wives, then daughters-in-law, then mothers, and the natural love between mother and child couldn’t be cut off.
“...”
Kuai San’s wife, who had been so furious a moment ago, stood rooted to the spot. Two lines of tears poured from her red, swollen eyes.
The torches in the room blazed brighter. In the light, the clear tears on her red eyes looked blood red.
“But... but it’s no use...”
Kuai San’s wife wept, murmuring to herself.
“It’s useless. What’s the use? Love, flowers, can they be eaten as food? Can they compare to staying alive? Why was she so stupid? Didn’t she know coming back was a dead end?”
“Yes,” Zhao Fusheng nodded.
“They’re no use. But what makes a person a person, and not a walking corpse, if not the seven emotions and six desires1?”
She looked calmly at the silently weeping Kuai San’s wife and asked, “Last night, you shouted at Kuai Huaide and covered up the secret meeting between Fourth Madam Zhuang and the outsider Chen. What good did that do you?”
“...”
Kuai San’s wife was speechless and stared at her blankly.
Zhao Fusheng hadn’t expected an answer. She turned to Kuai Da’s wife.
“You paid the ferryman for Fourth Madam Zhuang, asking nothing in return. What did you get?”
Then to Kuai Si’s wife:
“Your husband died and left you a widow with an orphan, and you barely have enough to eat yourselves and depend on others for help. Why did you, at all costs, try to raise Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter? What for?”
She looked at Kuai Er’s wife.
“You kept Fourth Madam Zhuang’s secret, and drove off Kuai Huaide when he tried to violate her. If it had come out, you might have faced serious consequences. Was it worth it?”
The answer was the sound of four women sobbing, one after another.
Kuai Er’s wife pressed her sleeve to the corner of her eye and said softly, “It was worth it. She was Fourth Madam.”
The others nodded silently.
Zhao Fusheng smiled.
“Then she must have thought it was worth it too. That was her daughter.”
Zhao Fusheng had never met Fourth Madam Zhuang in life, but from Zhuang Laoqi, Gou Laosi, Sixth Uncle, Kuai Changshun, and the four sisters-in-law, she had learned a great deal and pieced together her image in life: gentle and hardworking, resilient yet fragile.
She had held this family together by herself for eight or nine years. She was no weakling.
She was far braver than Kuai Wu, who ran from the world at the first setback.
On the surface, the bunch of flowers her daughter gave her had stopped her steps toward new hope. But Zhao Fusheng guessed that actually there was far too much she couldn’t let go of.
She couldn’t leave Kuailiang Village. She couldn’t leave the people here.
There were people and things here that had caused her pain, but there were also many who’d given her care and help.
Perhaps she’d feared that after she left she’d bring endless trouble to her daughter, Sixth Uncle, and others. So at the critical moment she pulled back, to bear the consequences of her own choice.
And this time, it brought the ending that had been fated all along.
......
What did worth it or not worth it matter? Some feelings, to some people, might be worthless, but to Fourth Madam Zhuang they were worth more than a life.
The measuring stick for that value was in Fourth Madam Zhuang’s heart.
“Haah...”
Zhao Fusheng sighed again and was about to speak when she suddenly heard a bang from the next room.
Something struck the wall hard, and sand and dirt rained down with a rustle.
The torches stuck in the wall shook, and the light dimmed suddenly.
A violent male voice rang out:
“Bitches! In the dead of night, what’s all the noise about? Crying and shouting, are you going to let anyone sleep? Wailing like your whole family’s dead?”
“Damn it...”
There was a rustling, as if someone next door had sat up. He cursed filthily for some time, then there was a clang of something heavy hitting the ground, followed by the sound of pottery shattering.
“Where’s Zhuang Si? Where’s that slut Zhuang Si gone? If she doesn’t bring me wine, I’ll kill her!”
The moment the shout rang out, the warmth in the room was shattered.
Tears still hung in the four women’s eyes. The remaining sorrow hadn’t yet faded, but disgust and fear were already rising in them.
“My lord...”
Kuai Da’s wife finally came to her senses. She seemed to realize only now that she’d said too much in this conversation.
Dread rose in her heart.
She was afraid this conversation would leak and bring disaster down on all of them.
“That’s Kuai Wu, I take it?”
Zhao Fusheng asked, smiling, her expression unchanged.
Kuai San’s wife, face full of panic, nodded instinctively.
Kuai Si’s wife clenched her hands together, nails digging into the backs of her hands. She said nothing, but she was biting the dead skin on her lips so hard they were bleeding, and she didn’t seem to notice at all.
Zhao Fusheng took in every expression, and with interest looked at Kuai Er’s wife, the calmest of them.
This woman was the most interesting.
“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.
“No.”
Kuai Er’s wife shook her head at the question. On her aged, plain face a faint smile came and went.
“Does my lord know? Our village is haunted.”
“I heard a rumor or two,” Zhao Fusheng said, rather discreetly.
Kuai Er’s wife didn’t ask where she’d heard it. She’d seen this Demon-Suppression Bureau official’s methods of questioning and had no doubt about her skill in drawing information out. She said, “Fourth Madam is coming back soon.”
She said it with a smile.
“When she does, not one of us will escape. Whether we tell these secrets or not, what difference does it make?”
When she finished, Kuai Wu pounded the wall again.
Bang bang bang!
The drunk roared at the top of his lungs.
“Where’s Zhuang Si? That slut, that woman with no shame...”
The four sisters-in-law were both afraid and disgusted, but from long habit of endurance they just sat silently, accepting it.
Zhao Fusheng wasn’t willing to put up with Kuai Wu’s temper.
Watching the wall shake violently and hearing the sand slide down, with the lights flickering, she stood up suddenly and patted her clothes.
“All right, I know what I need to know. I’ll go next door and take a look at Kuai Wu, help sober him up.”
“...”
The four sisters-in-law rose, uneasily watching her.
Zhao Fusheng walked to the half-closed door, pulled open the unbolted wooden gate, and a blast of cold wind rushed in.
In the yard, Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun were standing alone, buffeted by the cold wind. Kuai Changshun was nowhere to be seen.
Fan Wujiu held a lamp, shoulders hunched and neck drawn in, shivering from the cold.
They heard the gate open behind them and turned together. When they saw Zhao Fusheng come out, their eyes lit up. “My lord, you’re finally out.”
Zhao Fusheng’s eyes fell on the oil lamp in Fan Wujiu’s hand. It was the lamp Kuai Changshun had been carrying earlier, and for some reason the flame inside had gone out.
This lamp, one of the few that could be lit in Kuailiang Village, had stopped burning once it reached Fan Wujiu’s hands.
“The lamp’s out.”
Zhao Fusheng smiled faintly and pointed it out.
She stood in the doorway, head tilted, listening. The roars and curses of Kuai Wu she’d heard in the room could no longer be heard.
It was eerily quiet outside. Everything around them was pitch black.
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun stood facing the little lotus pond in front of the yard. There was no light tonight, but in the dim yellow glow from the open wooden gate they could see the pond’s surface reflecting.
“How interesting,” she said.
Fan Wujiu didn’t understand what she meant, but, thinking of her mention of the lamp going out, shook his hand helplessly. “As soon as this lamp got to me it stopped burning. I don’t know why.”
Understanding flashed in Zhao Fusheng’s eyes. She didn’t ask where Kuai Changshun had gone, but Wu Shaochun volunteered:
“Not long after my lord went in to question them, Changshun said he had something urgent and had to leave. He left the lamp with us. But I don’t know why, when he first gave it to Second Brother Fan it was fine, and soon after Changshun left, it went out all at once.”
“Maybe it ran out of oil,” Fan Wujiu said, frowning.
Then he walked to Zhao Fusheng and asked curiously, “What did my lord talk about in there?”
Hearing that, Zhao Fusheng raised an eyebrow.
“You didn’t hear?”
Kuai San’s wife had been crying and shouting so loudly, and the two of them had been right outside. They hadn’t heard?
“No.”
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Something big is probably about to happen in the village, and we may get to watch a good show,” Zhao Fusheng said.
“What good show?” Fan Wujiu shuddered instinctively.
He glanced up at Zhao Fusheng’s face. A faint smile was on it, and for some reason that smile made Fan Wujiu’s heart quake.
“My lord, please don’t smile like that. I’m scared.” He couldn’t say exactly what the feeling was, but it was like the times he’d encountered ghosts.
“You’ll see soon enough. We’re going to Kuai Wu’s house. We’ll talk on the way, and when you see him you may understand what kind of show it is.”
She finished and walked along the eaves toward the house on the other side.
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun stood stunned for a moment. But they reacted quickly and hurried after Zhao Fusheng. Wu Shaochun asked curiously, “How did my lord know Kuai Wu was home? I can’t hear a sound from there.”
“He’s there now, at least. Whether he’ll still be there later, I can’t say,” Zhao Fusheng said meaningfully, and quickened her pace, urging them. “Hurry.”
“...”
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun hadn’t gotten a straight answer and felt nothing solid to hold on to. They both thought: I hate people who talk in riddles.
But though they complained in their hearts, neither dared say anything.
From the noises she’d heard in the room, Zhao Fusheng had pinned down Kuai Wu’s location. She turned to the side of the house, to the door of a ramshackle woodshed, raised a leg and kicked hard—bang!
With a heavy crash, the door, which had been about to fall anyway, collapsed in a cloud of dust.
The instant she forced the door open, the firelight in the room where the four Kuai sisters-in-law were sitting went out in the distance.
Zhao Fusheng stepped into this old home where Fourth Madam Zhuang had once lived, and a chill wrapped around her at once.
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun followed her in. The moment they entered, something strange happened:
The special oil lamp Kuai Changshun had left, the bronze lamp that went out when it was handed to Fan Wujiu, suddenly lit itself.
A faint stench of rot spread.
When the light came on, even Fan Wujiu was stunned.
He realized something eerie was happening. Bracing himself, he looked at the bronze lamp in his hand and cried out in alarm:
“My lord...”
“What are you panicking about?!”
Zhao Fusheng walked ahead, not looking back.
She seemed not the least bit surprised. Her calm spread quickly to Fan Wujiu and settled him a great deal.
“My lord, the lamp’s lit.”
Wu Shaochun’s scalp prickled too.
He’d been through ghost cases, but he’d felt nothing in the course of them, and at the time he’d been in the ghost domain without knowing it. This was completely different from being clearly awake, knowing he was in danger and very likely to run into a ghost.
“We didn’t light it,” he reminded Zhao Fusheng, forcing himself to stay calm.
“That’s normal.”
Zhao Fusheng nodded and slowly surveyed their surroundings.
The room was run-down beyond words, with an uneven dirt floor and a shabby stove with several black pots on it.
In front of the stove there was little firewood, only a few chipped jars piled up. The roof above leaked in places. Inside, the sleeping room had a dark mosquito net hung over a dilapidated bed.
“Shaochun, you said you’d seen a lamp like this.”
By the lamplight, Zhao Fusheng finished looking around, then suddenly glanced back at Wu Shaochun. Wu Shaochun nodded and answered honestly:
“I saw a bronze funeral lamp like this in an old tomb I dug up at Huanggang Village.”
“A funeral lamp?”
Fan Wujiu hadn’t yet realized anything was wrong. As he spoke, Zhao Fusheng casually looked down at the lamp that had lit itself in his hand.
Wu Shaochun didn’t notice anything odd in Zhao Fusheng’s expression. He nodded. Seeing that Kuai Wu’s outer room was empty and could be seen at a glance, he bravely poked his head toward the inner room.
The inner room was dark. He could make out a half-height wooden cabinet and a shabby bed with a net over it. He said, “Hm?”
“My lord, nobody’s here.”
“Someone is,” Zhao Fusheng said with certainty. Then she called to Fan Wujiu:
“Second Brother Fan, give him some light.”
At her words, Fan Wujiu answered and walked to the door of the room with the lamp.
The light illuminated the inner room. Behind the black, ragged mosquito net, a figure was sitting. None of them knew when it had appeared.
