Chapter Eighty-Five: A Horror Story

For a while I did not know what to say. Water Rat had not lied to us after all: Wang Lun had already been killed half a month earlier, and afterward his body had been torn into more than twenty pieces by a humanoid monster, then buried here.

If that was so, then who was the Wang Lun who had appeared at the karaoke bar last night, only to have his head smashed in by Liu Dong with a beer bottle?

And who were the two men who killed Wang Lun? When Water Rat and Wang Lun robbed them, was it merely a coincidence, or had those two deliberately driven their car to that place?

Countless doubts surged through my mind in an instant, and an inexplicable unease even began to take shape in my chest. In the faint light of that thought, I seemed to realize that this whole affair was far less simple than we had imagined.

"What should we do now?" I pointed at Wang Lun's body, which we had pieced back together beside us, and said to Peng Li, "Should we take it to the police station, to prove my brother didn't kill anyone at all?"

Peng Li shot me a look and said that with just a heap of severed flesh, what exactly could I prove by bringing it to the police?

"We can do a DNA test!" I hurriedly said. "Even if this rotten pile of body parts can't prove he's Wang Lun, if we test the DNA, won't that prove it?"

"So what if it does? Would the police believe that the same person could die twice at different times? Put yourself in their place. Would you believe that this one and the one your brother killed are the same person?"

At that, I realized I had indeed been too impatient. So I asked how we were supposed to deal with Wang Lun's body.

Peng Li said, "What else is there to do? The police never received a report on this, which means this guy probably had no relatives either. Since someone even dug the grave for him, just bury him."

With that, Peng Li slammed a heavy kick into Wang Lun's body. The blow sent Wang Lun's thigh flying several meters away.

I glared at him, furious, and shouted, "Brother Peng, don't you know this corpse was pieced together?"

Peng Li gave an awkward smile, then kicked Water Rat instead. Water Rat let out a yelp and sprang upright, hopping about in pain.

"Put it back in the ground!"

After giving Water Rat his orders, Peng Li turned and walked straight to his BYD SUV. I followed close behind, and behind us came Water Rat's desperate cries for mercy: "Officer, you can't do this! Wait for me!"

From the driver's seat, Peng Li stuck his head out and said in a tone of command, "Bury it properly. As for whether you put up a tombstone, that is your decision. I'll come check tomorrow morning. If I find you haven't finished what you were supposed to do, you know what the consequences will be."

With that, Peng Li stomped on the accelerator and roared off toward the city center in the distance.

"Brother Peng, you're not waiting for that kid?"

"Wait for him for what? He's just putting on an act. He won't die!"

"Brother Peng, can you slow down a little?"

"I'm used to driving this way."

"Then can you at least stop weaving all over the road? And could you not drink while driving? Hey, Brother Peng, look ahead—electric pole!"

Once again, with a sickening crash, Peng Li slammed the car into the utility pole. He even tried to reverse and keep going, but I hurriedly ripped out his keys, then opened the door and got out, retching violently on the spot for nearly a full minute.

After we finally returned to the city, we ate dinner together. During the meal, Peng Li ordered a braised pig's trotter. Watching him eat in such a greasy, shameless way, I had to run to the restroom and vomit for another minute.

At last, Peng Li drove me back to school. When I got out, I asked him how he had learned about Water Rat.

Peng Li's answer startled me. He said it had been sent to him by the man known as the Ghost Scholar, in an email.

"The author of the book?" I quickly took out the volume Peng Li had given me earlier and asked him what exactly was written in it, and why the Ghost Scholar seemed to know about Water Rat.

Peng Li took a sip from the bottle of Jiang Xiaobai in his hand and replied, "Read it yourself and you'll understand. And I can say this much for sure: the author of this book is definitely connected to your brother's case."

"Could the Ghost Scholar be the true mastermind behind Wang Lun's murder—the driver Water Rat and Wang Lun stopped that day? By the way, did you check the IP address he used to send you the message?"

"Can't trace it. Everything was encrypted, and it was forwarded through software more than a hundred times before it finally reached my inbox. Even if we brought in the police computer experts, it would still take days to track it down. But I'm not the one in charge of this case right now, and I don't have the authority to investigate it." After saying that, Peng Li asked me to get out of the car. "Go back first and read this story. If you trust me, I'll pick you up here tomorrow morning and take you to meet someone."

With that, Peng Li drove away, and I carried the book back to the dormitory.

When I returned, the dorm was empty. Thinking of how, at this very hour yesterday, the few of us had still been laughing and joking in that room, my heart ached as though pricked by needles.

I called Jiang Chao and asked where he was. He said the counselor had just called him in for questioning, and now he was going out to eat. He asked whether I had eaten and if I wanted to join him.

I said I had already eaten, told him to come back early, and hung up. Then I took out the book signed by the Ghost Scholar and began to read.

What struck me as strange was that the book had no title. On the cover was a severed human head bleeding from all seven apertures, and each line of blood running down from that head formed a line of text.

"If one day, in a foreign land, you come across an acquaintance who has already been dead for many years, what would you do? You are given three choices...."

As I looked at those words, each one congealed from blood, a chill crept up my spine.

In the end, I still turned to the first page and began to read.

It was a fairly short novella, around one hundred thousand words in all, and it took me nearly two hours to finish it.

The general story was about a carpenter in the nineteen-nineties. After an argument with his wife, he accidentally killed her with a woodcutting axe.

He was frightened and grieved beyond measure. To escape legal responsibility, he quietly buried his wife in the backyard of their home. After that, every day he was plagued by nightmares in which his wife returned to claim his life. In the end, the carpenter could no longer endure the torment and went to seek the help of a sorcerer.

After hearing the whole story, the sorcerer said that with his current abilities he could not destroy the wife's ghost. However, he did have a method to bring his wife back to him. There was one condition, though: once his wife returned, the carpenter must treat her well, and could no longer beat or scold her, nor even lay a hand on her.

The carpenter had truly loved his wife from the start; he had killed her only because of a moment's mistake. Naturally he could accept the sorcerer's condition, and he also vowed that as long as his wife could live again, he would never touch her.

Sure enough, the next day, after the carpenter woke from sleep, he heard the sound of someone cooking in the kitchen. He rushed there at once and was astonished to find that his wife had indeed come back to life, and was even making him a pot of fragrant rice porridge.

The carpenter was overjoyed and nearly rushed forward to embrace her, but remembering the sorcerer's warning, he forced himself to restrain that impulse.

Although the carpenter did not know what means the sorcerer had used to bring his wife back, he did not dwell on it. From then on, he lived in harmony with her. Perhaps out of guilt for what he had done, he treated his wife extraordinarily well, almost yielding to her in everything. After her resurrection, she had not changed much from before; she remained gentle, capable, and virtuous. Soon their life returned to what it had been, and perhaps even more deeply affectionate than before.

In the blink of an eye, three months passed. The carpenter kept his promise throughout that time and never once touched his wife, and their days were happy.

Until the day three months later.