PCA Chapter 150

“I knew that old man wasn’t up to any good! All that talk about ghosts in the village—he’s the one with a guilty conscience, planning to murder us and rob us!” Qu Ling’er slung his bundle over his shoulder and continued angrily: “Leaving like this is too easy on him. You shouldn’t have stopped me—I should have tied him up and given him a beating to teach him not to play tricks and pretend to be a ghost again!”

 

“You’ve grown,” Su Cen smiled, “now you even use phrases like ‘murder and robbery’ and ‘play tricks with ghosts.'”

 

Qu Ling’er glared with his almond-shaped eyes: “I’m being serious!”

 

“It’s best to be cautious in another’s territory.” Su Cen’s smile faded as he looked back at the thatched cottage. The knife-sharpening sound had stopped at some point, but no one had come after them. In the bright moonlight where nothing could hide, he still felt something eerily mysterious about that small cottage, as if it were shrouded in dark mist, unfathomable.

 

“What do we do now? Enter the village?” Qu Ling’er looked at the undulating houses of the village in the distance, still showing some reluctance as he looked up to seek Su Cen’s opinion.

 

Su Cen narrowed his eyes slightly and after a few steps said: “We’ll enter at daybreak.”

 

“Where are we going now, then?”

 

Su Cen casually pointed to a place not far away: “Over there.”

 

Qu Ling’er followed Su Cen’s gesture and suddenly didn’t want to go anymore.

 

In the distance, smoke curled and fireflies flickered ominously. Mounds of earth rose from the ground with scattered tombstones—a disorderly burial ground.

 

At the Yangdi official post station, things finally quieted down in the late night. The Turkic guards were all drunk as mud, and the station master had gone to great trouble to have them carried back to their rooms.

 

On his way back through the rear courtyard, he passed the black box still sitting there. Unlike its usual silence, there now came an off-key melody from within. The sound wasn’t particularly loud, but in the surrounding stillness, this discordant tune was strikingly clear—even the smallest breaks in the melody were perfectly audible.

 

An inmate being so brazen—the station master gathered his courage and kicked the large box: “Stop singing!”

 

The person inside actually giggled, “Does it sound good?”

 

“Good my foot!” The station master, seeing that this person posed no threat, cursed and kicked again. “It’s the middle of the night—are you calling ghosts?”

 

The person in the box didn’t mind, clicked his tongue, and resumed singing the previous tune.

 

“I told you to stop!” The station master moved to act again, but before he could touch the box, his movement suddenly froze. A cold sensation crept up the side of his neck—a sharp blade had appeared from behind, pressed tightly against his throat, just inches from his blood vessels. One slight movement and blood would spill.

 

“Don’t move,” a cold voice said from behind.

 

The station master realized that, without his noticing, a large group of people in black had emerged from the darkness behind him, approaching silently.

 

The humming from the box had stopped at some point. A chuckle came out, followed by the question: “Does it sound good?”

 

“…Yes, yes, it sounds good.”

 

“I told you my singing wasn’t bad,” the person in the box finally seemed satisfied and sighed, knocking on the box. “What are you standing around for?”

 

The lead figure in black immediately stepped forward and knelt on one knee: “Young Master.”

 

Su Cen found a bare coffin board to sit on, cleared away the bothersome graveyard grass, and ignoring Qu Ling’er’s expression (as if he’d swallowed a fly), proceeded to wrap his official seal, travel documents, and other papers in a bundle, then dug a hole and buried them.

 

That old man might be an exception, or perhaps the entire village was like him. Su Cen didn’t dare risk carrying these items anymore. In these remote, harsh places, people could be difficult to deal with. His official identity couldn’t summon soldiers or officials here and might even provoke the villagers into violence.

 

When organizing case files at the Dali Temple, he had seen similar cases. In Qianzhou, where the local customs were fierce and education lacking, a local tribesman had killed someone outside the area. When the local official went to arrest him, a conflict erupted with the locals, and the official was surrounded by the tribe and beaten to death. Though the imperial court later sent troops to suppress them, the incident caused quite a stir at the time. Local officials in remote areas became fearful, and when facing problems, they would directly petition the court for additional troops. Poor official-civilian relations led to consecutive uprisings by several mountain tribes. Although they couldn’t amount to much, the disturbances lasted for nearly half a year before subsiding.

 

While each situation was different, if a rural old man dared to harbor such intentions toward them, and he now only had the timid Qu Ling’er to rely on, being cautious could only be beneficial.

 

Qu Ling’er didn’t dare look around freely, afraid he might see something he shouldn’t. He sat close to Su Cen, asking shakily: “Brother Su, why do we have to stay in a place like this?”

 

“What’s wrong with this place? The dead are safer than the living.” Su Cen casually wiped away years of accumulated dust from a nearby tombstone and examined the dates of birth and death. “Wude seventh year… this person has been dead for over fifty years. Could they possibly rise up and bite you?”

 

Qu Ling’er stretched his neck, wanting to retort, but after opening and closing his mouth, he decided against it. The dead had at least lent him a coffin board to sit on, while the living had sharpened knives in the middle of the night intending to kill him. One must know right from wrong. Qu Ling’er silently thanked the ancestors around them, emphasizing to himself that he was a grateful young man who would definitely repay these “ghost grandfathers” with paper money and incense when he returned home.

 

With Su Cen by his side, Qu Ling’er felt somewhat more at ease. After sitting for a while against Su Cen, he began to yawn. Having barely slept during the first half of the night, drowsiness overcame him, and he kept nodding off.

 

Su Cen wasn’t sleepy yet. After examining several nearby tombstones in the moonlight, he wanted to look at those farther away, but Qu Ling’er was holding onto him tightly, making it impossible to move. He had no choice but to wake him up. “Ling’er, sleep on your own. I’m going over there to look around.”

 

Qu Ling’er wouldn’t agree.

 

Left with no choice, Su Cen allowed Qu Ling’er to cling to his arm as they walked. Su Cen examined every tombstone in the graveyard from the inside out, finally stopping thoughtfully before one particular stone tablet.

 

Qu Ling’er’s drowsiness had nearly been walked out of him. He looked up and asked, “What’s wrong, Brother Su?”

 

Su Cen frowned slightly, “According to the dates on the tombstones, all these people died before the 22nd year of Yonglong.”

 

Qu Ling’er wrinkled his brow in thought, then speculated: “Could it be that they later moved the burial ground and stopped burying people here?”

 

“This graveyard isn’t full; there’s still plenty of space. Moving graves is a significant matter, and ancestral burial grounds aren’t easily changed.” Su Cen pointed to two grave mounds in front of them. “And look at these two graves—the soil is fresh, indicating they were buried recently. This shows people are still being buried here, but there are no tombstones.”

 

Qu Ling’er moved forward to look and indeed saw grave mounds without tombstones. And it wasn’t just these—there were several more like this further away. He couldn’t help but wonder: “Could they be children’s graves? I’ve heard that in some places, tombstones aren’t erected for children who die.”

 

“Tombstones are meant to facilitate ancestral worship by descendants. Some places believe that without a tombstone, the ghost remains nameless, easily becoming a wandering spirit, suffering hardship. In some regions, tombstones aren’t erected for those who die prematurely, violently, or without descendants,” Su Cen paused briefly before continuing: “But this doesn’t explain why people who died after the 22nd year of Yonglong don’t have tombstones. Could it be that after that year, everyone who died in this village died violently, prematurely, or without descendants?”

 

Qu Ling’er pondered for a moment, frowning: “Then what’s going on here?”

 

“This indicates that in the 22nd year of Yonglong, something major happened in the village that caused them to stop burying people here,” Su Cen slowly raised his head, his gaze focusing into the dense darkness, “or perhaps, there was no one left to bury.”

 

“No one left to bury?” Qu Ling’er felt a chill in his heart. “What do you mean?”

 

“If everyone died, naturally there would be no one left to worship, so having tombstones or not would be irrelevant.” Su Cen stared at the tombstone-less mounds before him, murmuring: “If everyone died, naturally there would be no one left to bury them.”

 

A night breeze arose unexpectedly, rustling through the grass with a bone-chilling coldness.

 

“The bodies in the Mount Meng cave—if there’s Lu Xiaoliu among them, could there be other people from Lu Family Village too?” Su Cen pondered aloud: “If those unidentified skeletons truly are people from Lu Family Village, it means they all died back in the 22nd year of Yonglong. Then who are the people in the village now?”

 

Qu Ling’er was now wide awake, hugging himself and rubbing the goosebumps on his arms. He gently tugged at Su Cen’s sleeve, “Brother Su… could you please not discuss such terrifying things with a blank expression while standing in a graveyard?”

 

“Is it terrifying?” Su Cen turned to smile at Qu Ling’er. “Let me tell you something even more terrifying.”

 

“Wh-what?”

 

Su Cen looked up at the sky—the moon was setting in the west. He said softly: “Dawn is coming.”

 

Qu Ling’er: “What’s wrong with dawn?”

 

Su Cen replied: “At dawn, we enter the village.”

 

Eight hundred li away, at the Yangdi official post station.

 

With a “click,” the lock on the iron box broke open. The door swung to one side, and first a foot emerged, followed by a pair of pale hands gripping the sides of the door. A person stepped out of that square box.

 

Everyone was startled.

 

A finely-featured youth dressed all in black raised his childlike face and coldly smiled at everyone: “Am I the Young Master you’re looking for?”

 

The black-clad men were startled and quickly retreated: “It’s an ambush!”

 

In an instant, a large contingent of forces emerged from the darkness, surrounding the courtyard so tightly that not even water could seep through. The previously feigning-drunk Turkic guards now had gleaming eyes and gleaming curved swords, clearly thirsting for blood for some time.

 

“You’ve followed us from Xuzhou to Yingchuan, and finally couldn’t resist showing yourselves.” Qi Lin slowly emerged from the crowd, a cold glint flashing in his pale eyes, poised to strike.

 

The black-clad men realized they had fallen into a trap and quickly retreated to regroup. They didn’t anticipate that Chen Ling had just warmed up behind them, wielding a pair of emei daggers. Like a fish entering water, he charged into their formation, targeting vulnerable areas like eyes and windpipes—each strike lethal.

 

In an instant, fresh blood dyed the cold moonlight. The Wolf Guards refused to be outdone, howling as they surged forward.

 

 

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