What kind of person washes only one foot?
Luo Ren pondered: “Could the other foot be a prosthetic?”
Mu Dai didn’t respond, focusing on eating her now-cold soup dumplings—if she gave the puzzle to Luo Ren, he wouldn’t have the attention to question her wall-climbing activities.
Still, she had doubts. Many people with prosthetics removed them when alone or in private—Ding Guohua rarely went out, so why would he need to wear a prosthetic from morning till night, even when sleeping?
Luo Ren said, “Maybe it’s not a prosthetic, but just one foot.”
If it were truly just one foot, the burden on movement wouldn’t be too great. Some people might prefer to keep it attached year-round, maintaining an illusion of wholeness for psychological comfort.
It sounded like foot amputation.
But in the Murder Bamboo Slip case, those who had their feet cut off were all dead, and yet…
Mu Dai looked at Luo Ren: “In the cases we encountered later related to the Murder Slip—that old clam and the woman from the village—why weren’t their feet cut off after death?”
She didn’t know if the old clam had feet, but the woman was buried with her body intact.
Luo Ren said, “That’s not hard to explain. Shen Gun once said that the power of the Phoenix Lock was transferred to us.”
Before them, perhaps no one had noticed the existence of the Murder Slip, so the Phoenix Lock could only enforce punishment on its own—a punishment that seemed excessive to Luo Ren. The perpetrator was already dead; what purpose did cutting off a foot serve beyond a self-deceptive declaration?
But after their involvement, the pursuit of the Murder Slip was on the right track.
Still, it was true that those who had their feet amputated were all dead. Why was Ding Guohua still alive and well?
Luo Ren looked up at the now-darkened sixth-floor window and said: “Let’s go up and ask him directly.”
After loud knocking, the light came on inside. Ding Guohua’s voice sounded impatient: “Who is it?”
The door had no peephole; he had to open it to see.
Luo Ren smiled: “It’s me again.”
Ding Guohua looked displeased and tried to close the door, but Luo Ren blocked it with his hand.
“I want to ask about an AIDS diagnosis in Nantian County twenty years ago.”
Ding Guohua was furious: “I told you I don’t know. If you keep harassing me, I’ll call the police.”
Luo Ren said, “Is there a piece of skin missing from your back?”
Ding Guohua visibly froze. His lips trembled slightly, and the color drained from his face.
Luo Ren looked down: “Was your left foot suddenly cut off, and you couldn’t explain who did it?”
The force pushing against the door, resisting him, weakened.
Luo Ren removed his hand: “I know a few people similar to you. Interested in comparing notes?”
After a moment, the security chain slid along its track and was removed.
Luo Ren and Mu Dai exchanged glances, silently sighing with relief.
Ding Guohua’s room was truly old-fashioned, with a white crocheted tablecloth, a black-and-white television, and a thermos decorated with large peonies.
He dragged his disabled body, poured water into ceramic mugs for them both, then moved a round stool to sit opposite them, nervously clutching at the pants on his thighs.
“You just said there are others similar to me?”
“My uncle, who died by suicide. When they found his body, his left foot had been cut off, and a piece of skin was missing from his back, rectangular, like a bamboo slip.”
Ding Guohua’s mouth hung half-open, and after a long moment, he softly uttered, “Oh.”
Luo Ren gestured toward his foot: “How did it happen?”
Ding Guohua smiled bitterly: “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He continued: “I was taking a nap at home when suddenly there was pain, pain that made my whole body convulse. When I woke up, my entire lower body was wet…”
At the time, he thought he had wet the bed as an adult. But when he lifted the blanket, the overwhelming smell of blood hit him, and at the stump, he could still see the white bone covered in blood.
“I had been arguing with my wife those days, and she had angrily returned to her parents’ home. I was alone in the house. The windows were closed, the door was bolted, and the blanket hadn’t even been disturbed. There were no warning signs—my foot was just gone.”
Fortunately, being a doctor, he knew how to administer first aid. He quickly found household bandages to tie above the leg, stopping the bleeding immediately. The pain at that spot was so intense that he mistook the abnormality on his back for mere itching, discovering it only days later while bathing.
Luo Ren asked: “That day, before your nap, did anything happen?”
Ding Guohua thought for a moment: “A woman came looking for me… about what you’re asking—the AIDS diagnosis.”
“That woman was emotionally unstable. One moment, she would beg me to cure her illness, and the next, her mood would suddenly shift. She would jump up and spit in my face, kick the door, and smash my windows with bricks.”
“There are patients like this. When you can’t cure them, they blame everything on you, finding no other outlet for their frustration but to take it out on the doctor.”
“That noon, she made a scene at my door, knocking and banging. I ignored her and went to bed. As I was drifting off, I could still hear her scratching at the door and wailing.”
Luo Ren’s gaze gradually narrowed.
From experience, when the Murder Slip left its host, the next person to be possessed was often nearby. This matched.
Mu Dai suddenly asked him: “Earlier, when we inquired about you, the information was pitifully scarce. There wasn’t even any mention of your foot being cut off. Do others not know about this?”
Luo Ren was surprised that Mu Dai asked this question—he hadn’t even considered it himself.
Ding Guohua smiled bitterly: “I never told anyone… I treated the wound myself. Initially, I took sick leave. Later, when I had to go out, I fitted myself with a false foot. If anyone asked why I walked awkwardly, I’d say I had fallen…”
Luo Ren stared at him steadily: “Why?”
Ding Guohua seemed disoriented: “I can’t explain it clearly. During that period, many… strange things happened. After my foot was cut off, I felt it was retribution.”
He couldn’t explain when the strange occurrences began.
At first, there were minor diagnostic problems. For instance, he would see a familiar patient waiting at the pharmacy window. Passing by, he would glance at the prescription and suggest: “In your condition, you shouldn’t take XXX. It’s too potent and might cause problems.”
The patient would be more surprised than he was: “Dr. Ding, you prescribed this medicine yourself.”
Me? How could that be? Perhaps the prescription was written too carelessly.
He would examine the prescription and find it was indeed his.
He thought he was too tired and privately reminded himself: Old Ding, as a doctor, you can’t be confused. A casual word could cost someone’s life.
But the situation grew increasingly severe.
From initially prescribing the wrong medication to later willfully misinterpreting symptoms, deliberately exaggerating, and fabricating conditions.
Ding Guohua’s voice became incredibly strained: “It was as if something was controlling me. Even knowing it, I was powerless to resist. During that time, my relationship with my wife gradually deteriorated. She felt my temper had become volatile, like I’d become a different person…”
Luo Ren had encountered people possessed by the Murder Slip before, but they were either dead or uncommunicative. This was the first time he heard a firsthand account from someone affected.
He thought of his uncle, Luo Wenmiao, and that sentence spoken with tremendous effort: “Luo Ren, don’t let me kill anyone.”
Ding Guohua’s struggle must have been even more intense than his uncle’s, because he was considered a doctor with medical ethics. With a heart like a parent to patients, bringing despair to them daily must have been an unbearable torment.
Besides, Nantian was still very poor then. A diagnosis from the county hospital was almost final. Few people had the financial resources or determination to try their luck in bigger cities.
He remembered that woman, too—surname Xiang, Xiang Shilan. She had a sexually transmitted disease and knew nothing about AIDS. When she first heard about it, she asked him: “What medicine should I take?”
Later, upon learning it was a terminal illness, she became somewhat deranged.
It was said she dripped her blood into her neighbor’s cooking pot, maliciously shouting: “Why should I die alone? If I’m going to die, everyone should die together!”
When Ding Guohua mentioned this about Xiang Shilan, Luo Ren looked worriedly at Mu Dai. When their eyes met, she smiled slightly as if to say, “I’m fine.”
Ding Guohua coughed twice, bringing the topic back.
“All of this—that control—seemed to suddenly disappear after I lost my foot.”
“But I felt I was no longer fit to be a doctor. I was afraid to face the patients I had diagnosed incorrectly and whose treatment I had delayed. I disliked seeing people or having visitors.”
He lowered his head, painfully moving his left foot: “Sometimes when I look at this foot, it feels like divine punishment, compensating for the sins I committed.”
He looked at Luo Ren: “You said your uncle was like me—I still can’t understand what happened during that period.”
Luo Ren couldn’t possibly explain the origin of the Murder Slip in detail. After a pause, he said ambiguously: “It was a disease, one where you couldn’t control yourself, where your words and actions became abnormal. My uncle couldn’t endure it. He killed himself.”
“After suicide, his foot was inexplicably cut off?”
“Yes, inexplicable. Perhaps as you said, divine punishment.”
By the time they left Ding Guohua’s home, it was midnight. There was a message in the group chat: Yan Hongsha had taken over Cao Yanhua’s shift.
Cao Yanhua had spent a boring day waiting at the hospital. After his shift ended, he was unusually excited in the middle of the night and wanted to do something thrilling.
—Should we go to the Tengma Sculpture Platform? It’ll be heart-pounding. If we’re lucky, we might see the red high heels.
No one responded, and he didn’t message again. Yan Hongsha wouldn’t accompany him, so Cao Yanhua was probably privately pestering Yi Wansan.
Luo Ren watched Mu Dai carefully, concerned for her. After all this time, it was likely the first time she’d directly learned about her mother.
So her mother was called Xiang Shilan, and she hadn’t contracted AIDS, which suggested Xiang Shilan was quite possibly still alive.
The name “Mu Dai” was given to her by Huo Zihong. Before that, who knows if Xiang Shilan had named her? Mu Dai had vaguely mentioned that many people called her “Nan’nan.”
Nan’nan, this familiar, common name that rolled off the tongue nicely.
Under the streetlights, their shadows stretched long. Mu Dai kicked a small stone at her feet: “After hearing so much from Ding Guohua, do you have any clues?”
Luo Ren asked in return: “What about you?”
Mu Dai said, “I’ve thought of some things.”
She stopped walking and counted on her fingers: “Zhang Guanghua was drowned by Hong Yi, pushing him into the water. After the Murder Slip left him, it found Liu Shuhai.”
“Liu Shuhai died of illness in a small hotel in Jinan, then the Murder Slip found your uncle, Luo Wenmiao. After your uncle’s suicide, it attached to Pin Ting.”
“Then we concluded that after the previous host dies, the Murder Slip seeks a new host. Based on this conclusion, we successfully forced the first Murder Slip out of Pin Ting.”
Luo Ren guessed what she was about to say.
Mu Dai continued: “But this led us into a fixed pattern of thinking, believing that only when the host dies would the Murder Slip leave.”
What if the Murder Slip had freedom of choice?
“My mother… Xiang Shilan was a better possession target than Ding Guohua.”
Even before being possessed by the Murder Slip, she already harbored such malice: “Why should I die alone? If I’m going to die, everyone should die together!”
The first Murder Slip—Zhang Guanghua, Liu Shuhai, Luo Wenmiao—all seemed randomly chosen. These people could still be considered good-natured; Luo Wenmiao had even attempted some resistance and struggle.
The second one, being just an old clam, was incomprehensible and incommunicable. It seemed like a kind of mechanical cleverness—the Murder Slip feared water yet possessed something that could move freely through it.
The third one, the woman who sewed the Sweeping Clear Lady, her union with the Murder Slip was born of desperate survival. She wanted revenge and couldn’t survive without the Murder Slip.
The fourth one abandoned Ding Guohua and chose Xiang Shilan, who better suited its taste.
The Murder Slip wasn’t just a rigid bamboo strip. It was thinking, trying, and plotting—laying a trap so complex that they hadn’t even touched its edges yet.
She asked Luo Ren: “In the future, will people appear who actively want to be possessed by the Murder Slip, who want to cooperate with it?”
Luo Ren nodded: “I’m not optimistic about human nature. I think they definitely will.”
Mu Dai seemed thoughtful: “Then we need to be careful.”
“We’ve always been careful.”
Mu Dai shook her head: “What I mean is, if one of the Murder Slips gains enough power, and even has people willingly following it and strategizing for it, wouldn’t it want to retrieve the other slips?”
Luo Ren felt a jolt in his heart.
Although no signs had yet been detected, Shen Gun had indeed mentioned that the Murder Slips might have some form of communication and exchange with each other.
The other three—the three that had been sealed by the Phoenix Locks transformed by their blood—were merely placed in a fish tank full of water. That fish tank was in an ordinary house in Lijiang. Although the door was locked, it wasn’t secure; a kick would open it.