Western outskirts of Dougu, in the main hall of the Yizhuang. Sinister winds blew the coffin racks in the side rooms, making them creak and groan chaotically, as if someone were scratching inside the coffins. Meng Rui’s eyes flickered as he gazed at the injured Wen Nansheng in the coffin.
“Where exactly does this map lead, and what connection does it have with Fu Nianyu’s missing daughter?” Meng Rui asked directly. Wen Nansheng sighed heavily and braced his hands on both ends of the coffin, saying, “Actually, how could Fu Nianyu be the only victim of the so-called ‘Ghost Witch Seizes Children’ rumor?”
Meng Rui was startled and immediately said, “Could it be that your child also…”
Wen Nansheng nodded slowly: “About five years ago, my daughter was similarly abducted by a phantom-like man wearing a black cloak. After my daughter disappeared, I immediately went to the government office to report the case, but that wine-and-meat County Magistrate Du Yi’an only superficially promised me he would help find my daughter—in reality, he sent no one to search at all. Even more absurd, he told me some nonsensical story about ‘Ghost Witch Seizes Children.’ Naturally I wouldn’t believe such baseless tales. Since the government office wouldn’t search, I would search myself.”
Meng Rui observed Wen Nansheng’s gradually agitated expression. In his heart, the figure of his sister Meng Wan Xiang flickered dimly in and out of focus. Meng Rui closed his eyes slightly, then opened them again, listening to Wen Nansheng continue his account.
“I spent my entire fortune searching for three whole years. Two years ago, I finally had an unexpected gain.” Wen Nansheng calmed his agitated emotions before continuing. “I offered a large reward to find my daughter. Someone provided a clue—they had encountered a carriage on the mountain road of Sanfen Village. At the time, wind lifted the carriage curtain, and inside sat a man dressed entirely in a black cloak. Beside him lay an unconscious young girl. The day after I received this clue, I rushed to Sanfen Village.”
“Did you discover anything?” Meng Rui asked.
Wen Nansheng nodded: “I disguised myself as a traveling merchant collecting mountain goods and infiltrated Sanfen Village. I inquired everywhere, but no one had seen a strange girl, nor had anyone seen the black-cloaked man. Just when I was doubting the authenticity of this clue, I suddenly encountered someone.” Wen Nansheng’s speaking pace became very slow. “I recognized that person. But not because I had seen him before—rather, I smelled him.”
“Smelled?” Meng Rui frowned. The old man who had attacked Meng Rui seemed tired and walked to a chair in the main hall to sit down. The old man walked with an uneven gait—he was actually a cripple. After sitting down, he closed his eyes without speaking. Looking at the old man’s attire, Meng Rui roughly guessed he was the Yizhuang’s corpse burier. With so many ownerless lonely souls in the Yizhuang, of course someone was needed to bury them in the yellow earth.
Wen Nansheng instinctively touched his nose and said, “That’s right, the smell. The night my daughter Wen Ping disappeared, I smelled a fragrance on the black-cloaked man’s body—a particularly pungent strange fragrance.”
“It wasn’t like the sweet scent of women’s rouge, nor like the sandalwood incense burned in temples. It was an indescribable strange fragrance. Later I also tried to pursue leads based on this fragrance, but all ended without result. This fragrance should come from specially refined incense medicine, so there was no way to trace it.” When Wen Nansheng narrated to this point, Meng Rui couldn’t help but remember that Fu Nianyu had also smelled an inexplicable special fragrance.
“You recognized that person because he also carried this strange fragrance.” Meng Rui said. Wen Nansheng nodded, then continued: “So I secretly followed that person and saw him enter the only wealthy manor compound in Sanfen Village—Jin Yaoguang’s Jin Residence.”
“Jin Yaoguang again.” Meng Rui muttered to himself. The victim of the corpse-tearing case that occurred on the way here, Ma He, had also been a steward in Jin Yaoguang’s household. This Jin Yaoguang was highly suspicious.
“The Jin Residence was very difficult to infiltrate. I could only rent a small room near the Jin Residence and monitor every move in the Jin Residence day and night without rest.” Wen Nansheng sighed. “I waited bitterly for three months before things finally took a turn. It was a night when the moon was dark and stars were sparse, approximately the third quarter of the xu hour. The back door of the Jin Residence suddenly produced two men entirely wrapped in black cloaks. One of them held a long cloth bag in his arms. The bag was bulging with contents. From the shape of the bag, it looked very much like a child. I closely tailed the two men all the way east until we came to the entrance of a cold, damp gorge.”
“Almost nothing grew in the gorge. The two men filed into the gorge one after another. I followed them in as well. Soon I saw an astonishing scene.” Wen Nansheng’s pupils dilated, as if recalling it even now filled him with amazement.
“What did you see?” Meng Rui also felt slightly excited as he asked.
“Flowers… The gorge was full of flowers, enormous flowers. The flowers were about as tall as people. The giant flowers hadn’t yet bloomed—their buds were as large as platters, opening on stems that protruded from the ground. Also, the giant flowers gave off a strong rotting corpse smell that made it impossible to approach.” Wen Nansheng recalled every detail of the strange giant flowers, then continued: “I saw those two men had already burrowed into the giant flower grove. I could only steel myself and also burrow inside, but after only about ten steps I could no longer endure the strong corpse stench and retreated. After I withdrew outside the valley, I still felt dizzy and disoriented. It took quite a while before I recovered. I didn’t dare enter again and could only wait for those two men to come out. About an hour later, the two black-cloaked men emerged, but the long cloth bag was nowhere to be seen.”
“Could it have been hidden in the gorge?” Meng Rui speculated. Wen Nansheng agreed: “I thought so too. The young child in the cloth bag was hidden somewhere in the gorge. Although the hope was slim, I hoped that my daughter who had been missing for years was also hidden deep in this gorge. I had to enter the gorge, but the prerequisite was that I must overcome the giant flowers’ strong corpse stench.”
“I gradually understood why the black-cloaked men had such strong strange fragrance on their bodies—this strange fragrance was to reduce the giant flowers’ stench’s effect on people. I had no way to obtain the strange fragrance, but I also began trying various strongly scented powders and spices. I attempted to infiltrate the gorge, and indeed it was somewhat more bearable than the first time I entered the gorge, but the duration wasn’t long before I was again fumigated out by the corpse stench. This corpse smell contains trace amounts of toxins. Inhaling it into the body for too long will make you dizzy.” Wen Nansheng gasped for two breaths of air, then continued: “It was impossible to complete the goal of exploring the gorge in one or even several attempts. To avoid losing the clues I worked hard to obtain each time, I drew the gorge paths I had clearly explored into a map and gradually perfected it. In the most recent two years, I’ve only done this one thing—either secretly infiltrating the gorge to explore, or taking risks by following the two black-cloaked men into the gorge. Finally, I drew a relatively complete map of the gorge.”
“What I found strange was that the two black-cloaked men would bring cloth bags into the gorge at intervals. Every time I tracked them to the end, they would mysteriously disappear. When I discovered them again, the cloth bags were often gone. Where they hid the cloth bags—I never found the answer.” Wen Nansheng shook his head. “A month ago, just when the map was almost complete, I was also carelessly discovered by people from the Jin Residence.”
“Who discovered you?” Meng Rui asked.
“The one who discovered me was the Jin Residence steward, Ma He.” Wen Nansheng spoke. Meng Rui was shocked: “Ma He… Do you know he’s already dead?”
“I only learned of it not long ago.” Wen Nansheng unconsciously glanced at the seated old man, then said: “Ma He interrogated me about my identity and threatened to hand me over to Jin Yaoguang. I certainly couldn’t fall into Jin Yaoguang’s hands, or else all my previous efforts would be wasted. So I begged Ma He to let me off.”
“After Ma He learned my purpose, he actually laughed happily. Afterward I understood that Ma He had followed Jin Yaoguang for many years, but in recent years Jin Yaoguang began to rely heavily on his own son Jin Chuang and gradually grew cold toward Ma He. He even transferred Chunfeng Hall, which Ma He had previously managed, to other stewards. This made Ma He especially dissatisfied. So Ma He had long been thinking of taking revenge on the Jin father and son.” When Wen Nansheng spoke to this point, Meng Rui heard something and said: “Ma He wanted to use the map in your hands to threaten Jin Yaoguang and his son?”
Wen Nansheng nodded: “Ma He was too arrogant. He didn’t think Jin Yaoguang dared do anything to him, so he blatantly exposed himself and threatened the Jin father and son. Afraid of Ma He’s coercion, I divided the map in half and handed the front half to Ma He, secretly keeping the latter half for myself.”
“After Ma He was killed, didn’t the map fall into the murderer’s hands?” Meng Rui said.
“I don’t dare say who the murderer is, but the map absolutely didn’t fall into the murderer’s hands. After Ma He obtained the map, he drank wildly in Xinghua Residence for many days. I had already secretly switched out the map while he slept. It’s just that I worried for my own safety, so I wanted to find someone to help me safeguard the map.”
“So you found Fu Nianyu?” Meng Rui finished the sentence for Wen Nansheng.
Wen Nansheng admitted: “I saw the Fu couple in front of the Dougu County Office and greatly admired Madam Fu’s courage to speak out in anger. Moreover, they, like me, had also had their daughter abducted. If they knew the truth, they would surely make good use of this map. So in haste I disguised myself as a beggar and slipped the map into Madam Fu’s sleeve pocket. After that, I discovered Jin Residence servants secretly monitoring Ma He in Xinghua Residence. I knew things would go badly. I originally wanted to quickly retrieve the latter half of the map and then meet up with the Fu couple, but I didn’t expect to be surrounded and beaten by a group of beggars, then thrown into the wilderness. When I groggily woke up, I had already been rescued by Senior Kua Lu Lao and brought back to the Yizhuang.”
“Kua Lao is my life-saving benefactor. I also didn’t want to hide anything from you, so I’ve revealed this secret in full.” Wen Nansheng struggled to climb out of the coffin. Kua Lao gave his chair to Wen Nansheng to sit on and spoke: “This old one is a person about to enter the grave. Having seen many dead people, being able to save one living life can be considered meritorious. Just now in your words, there was one sentence most pleasing to hear—Dougu County Magistrate Du Yi’an is a wine-and-meat county official. Not only is he an incompetent wine-and-meat official, he’s even more a despicable and vicious petty person.”
Meng Rui heard there was more to Kua Lao’s words and asked: “Why does Kua Lao say this?”
Kua Lao slowly narrated his own story. It turned out that Kua Lao had previously been the coroner at the Dougu County Office. Because of a drowning case where he disagreed with County Magistrate Du Yi’an, he was dismissed from office. Afterward, Du Yi’an even had someone secretly break one of Kua Lao’s left legs and arranged for Kua Lao to be at this Yizhuang, keeping company with dead people and graveyards all day. Kua Lao truly hated Du Yi’an to the bone.
Kua Lao pondered for a while: “The giant stinking flowers you mentioned just now—I may know a thing or two about them, but it would be best if I could see them with my own eyes before drawing a conclusion.”
“I also want to go to that Forbidden Gorge in Sanfen Village.” Meng Rui said slowly. The strange human-faced flower his sister had carved faintly appeared in Meng Rui’s mind… Could his sister’s abduction fifteen years ago also be related to the giant flowers in the gorge?