Shi Ting and Yan Qing asked a villager at the entrance for directions and learned that Old Zhang ran the village’s only general store.

The shop normally sold liquor, tobacco, and everyday household goods like oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar.

In his youth, Old Zhang had lost an eye to a black bear’s claws, and the villagers called him One-Eyed Zhang. Every month he drove his three-wheeled cargo truck to the county seat to restock supplies, making him one of the few people in Wuyin Village who regularly traveled in and out.

Following the villager’s directions, Shi Ting and Yan Qing found Old Zhang’s general store — a lonely two-room dwelling with a blue sign mounted to the left of the front door bearing two simple characters: “Store.” After years of wind and rain, those two characters had faded until they were nearly illegible.

An old man in a cloth shirt and cloth shoes sat in a chair by the door, lazily sunning himself with a bottle of liquor in his hand. Only when he heard approaching footsteps did he open his eyes.

“Well now,” Old Zhang’s eye lit up. “Where are you two coming from?”

Before him stood a tall, handsome young man and a woman seated in a wheelchair whose beauty was remarkable.

Old Zhang had spent decades in this mountain hollow and had never seen people so striking. He was momentarily dumbstruck.

Shi Ting stepped forward. “Are you Old Zhang?”

“I am, I am.” Old Zhang stood and wiped his hands on his worn trousers, grinning. “Officer, are you here on business, or buying something? My shop may be small, but I carry everything a person needs.”

“Do you know Zhu San?”

“Zhu San? Know him well.” Old Zhang reeked of alcohol as he spoke. Seeing the long row of empty bottles lined up against the wall, one could tell immediately he was a seasoned drinker. “Zhu San is our village hunter, makes his living off game. He and I get along well. If you’re looking for him, I can take you.”

“Zhu San is dead.”

Old Zhang froze, blinking, then stared at Shi Ting in disbelief. “Dead?”

“Yes. He died yesterday evening.”

“That — how can that be? I saw him just the day before yesterday. He’d just come back from the county seat and bought a packet of tobacco from me.”

“What was Zhu San doing in the county seat?”

“Buying medicated plasters.” Old Zhang said. “Almost everyone in our village, young and old, suffers from joint and back pain. Zhu San’s back wasn’t good — he needed plasters every day.”

“Do you know where he bought them?”

“A pharmacy in Wenshan County. Run by two brothers. Zhu San was on good terms with them and often brought wild game their way. Last winter he even brought one of the brothers to the village for a hunting trip.” At the mention of Zhu San, Old Zhang looked pained. “How could a perfectly healthy man just be gone like that.”

Shi Ting fixed his gaze on Old Zhang’s face and spoke slowly, word by word: “What was yesterday’s date?”

“Yesterday?” Old Zhang seemed to suddenly realize something. His eyes went wide, and he murmured: “The fifteenth of April!”

He whispered it once, then his voice shot up: “The fifteenth of April!”

The moment the words left his mouth, he hunched his body and bolted into the shop. Shi Ting pushed at the door from outside and found it locked from within.

Just as he was about to force it open, the village chief’s voice came from outside: “Officer! Officer!”

Shi Ting turned and saw the village chief standing at the entrance with two villagers.

The village chief stepped forward. “Old Zhang didn’t kill anyone. He’s not the murderer.”

“How do you know?”

“The one who killed is the Mountain Demon.” The village chief explained with complete seriousness. “Ever since a Mountain Demon shrine appeared on the mountain three years ago, our village has been cursed. Every year on the fifteenth of April, someone always dies by their own hand. Three people have died so far.”

Another villager chimed in: “Old Zhang lost an eye and he’s a frail old man. How could he possibly overpower someone as strong and fit as Zhu San? Besides, the two of them were on good terms — there’s no grudge between them.”

Shi Ting looked at them and stopped pressing against the door. “We were only conducting a routine inquiry. We have no evidence at this point to prove Old Zhang killed anyone.”

“Officer, the Mountain Demon did this. You won’t find the killer.” The village chief said. “Your men saw it with their own eyes — Zhu San went mad in his own courtyard and then took his own life. My son and Old Li met the same end years ago. Perfectly healthy people suddenly going mad. If that isn’t the Mountain Demon’s curse, then what is it?”

“Have any of you ever seen the Mountain Demon?”

The village chief and the other villagers all shook their heads. “No, but some of the older generation has. They say it stands very tall and cannot be harmed by blades or bullets, and that it has eyes of fire. Some elderly villagers whose eyes were diseased — they say applying a remedy brewed from the Mountain Demon’s fiery gaze restored their sight completely. We suspect the Mountain Demon has been causing harm because someone in the village stole its eyes. That is why it has been sending down disasters to punish us.”

Shi Ting naturally put no stock in such supernatural talk, but the villagers were simple people who had no understanding of science.

“Old Zhang lost an eye — doesn’t that suggest he stole the Mountain Demon’s eyes?”

The village chief was momentarily speechless.

Shi Ting continued: “Does Old Zhang live alone?”

“His eye was gone before he was even grown, so no woman was willing to marry him. He’s over fifty now and still a bachelor.”

“So you’re saying no one can confirm Old Zhang was at home when Zhu San died yesterday?”

“He must have been home.” The village chief said firmly. “Yesterday was the fifteenth of April. No one dares go outside on that day. Old Zhang is the most timid of all — there’s no way he would have gone out.”

While they were still speaking, the door that had been bolted from within suddenly swung open. Old Zhang came stumbling out clutching a stack of paper offerings, muttering to himself. Right before everyone’s eyes, he lit the pile of paper on fire, and as he fed sheets into the flames he murmured continuously.

Shi Ting could only make out two phrases: “rest in peace” and “take the money.”

Ash from the burning paper swirled through the air in all directions. Shi Ting quickly pulled Yan Qing to one side to shield her from the drifting cinders.

Once Old Zhang had finished burning the offerings, he dropped to his knees and kowtowed several times with great force.

The village chief stepped forward. “Old Zhang, who are you burning offerings for?”

Old Zhang said nothing. His one eye stared fixedly at the blackened ash on the ground, his lips moving silently in words no one could understand.

“Officer, as you can see, Old Zhang is not in a state to answer your questions right now. How about this — I’ll personally bring him to you myself tomorrow when he’s feeling clearer. Would that be acceptable?” Shi Ting agreed to the village chief’s request. As he left Old Zhang’s courtyard, he noticed there was no fire basin inside it.

“I don’t think Old Zhang is the killer,” Yan Qing said. “His reaction didn’t look like someone who was lying.”

“He wasn’t lying.” When Old Zhang heard the news of Zhu San’s death, the shock and surprise on his face had been plain to see, impossible to fake. “Yesterday, when not a single villager in Wuyin Village dared leave their home, he had nothing to do but sit alone drinking. The smell coming off him was overwhelming — clearly a mix of last night’s drinking and more today. He was thoroughly drunk and obviously had no idea what happened yesterday.”

“If Old Zhang isn’t the killer, could he be the killer’s next target?” Yan Qing said. “Three of the four players from the mahjong table are dead. I don’t believe that’s a coincidence.”

“It seems we’ll need to look into the social connections between those four. Perhaps the four of them once did something of great consequence together.”

As the two of them were heading back to the small courtyard, they ran into Zheng Yun and Bai Jin coming the other way.

Wuyin Village was very small. The two of them had already completed their rounds of every household. The villagers were all deeply shocked by Zhu San’s death, yet at the same time seemed to feel it was inevitable. Like the village chief, they believed the deaths of Da Zhu, Zhu San, and Old Li were the Mountain Demon’s doing.

They had prepared a large quantity of offerings and planned to go to the Mountain Demon shrine the next day for a collective ceremony.

“Seventh Brother, Zheng Yun and I just found a house that had burned down completely beyond recognition. I asked the neighbors about it and they said two people had burned to death there.”

Shi Ting stopped walking. “Local people?”

Bai Jin shook his head. “No. They were a pair of brothers who had driven in from Shun Cheng to trade in medicinal herbs.”

The name Shun Cheng struck a quiet note in Shi Ting’s mind. “From Shun Cheng?”

“There is an extremely rare medicinal herb that grows on the mountain here in Wuyin Village, called Wugen. They say it only grows on Kui Mountain in Wuyin Village. The local people, aside from farming, mostly make their living by going up the mountain to gather it.”

Yan Qing was hearing the word “Wugen” for the first time. She had studied traditional medicine as an elective in college, though not with any great depth, and it was possible this “Wugen” was simply a local name used in this era.

“Wugen ripens each year in April and May, making that the best season for harvesting.”

Shi Ting said, “Isn’t that right now?”

“If it weren’t for the fifteenth of April yesterday and Zhu San’s terrible death, we would likely have struggled to find a single soul in the village — because at this time of year, every able-bodied villager, man or woman, young or old, goes up the mountain to gather the herb without exception. Wugen fetches a high price; even half a jin of it is enough to keep a family of three for six months. But the plant is rare and not easy to find.”

Yan Qing thought to herself that this Wugen sounded very much like ginseng.

“How did those brothers die in the fire?”

Zheng Yun picked up the account. “Wuyin Village is extremely damp, and the two brothers were outsiders who couldn’t bear the humidity. So they moved the fire basin from outside into the room. Somehow the basin tipped over, and the fire quickly spread to the house. The two brothers never made it out — they were burned alive.”

Shi Ting suddenly thought of the lighter found at Zhu San’s house. That lighter was only sold at foreign goods shops in Shun Cheng.

Could the deaths of those two brothers be connected to Zhu San’s case?

With no time to waste, the group quickly made their way to the burned-out house.

It was an ordinary three-room earthen dwelling — the kind found everywhere in Wuyin Village.

Because the structure was made of compacted earth, it hadn’t collapsed into a skeleton of beams, but the windows and door had been completely consumed by fire, leaving the yellow earth walls blackened with soot.

Inside, it was a scene of complete ruin — crumbled walls, broken pots and shattered bowls, barely a clear patch of ground to step on.

Bai Jin said, “At the time, a neighbor saw the glow of flames and heard cries for help. But by the time anyone came, the house was already mostly burned.”

He walked toward where the window had been. “Apparently the two brothers were standing right here at this window, calling for help. By the time the villagers put out the fire, both had burned to charred remains.”

—