Chapter 114: The Next Stop

Shortly after, the local police station sent officers, and Lao Fan departed down the mountain with them, never to return.

Zhang Qinglin sat in his chair, gazing through the window at the brilliant sunlight, idly fiddling with the jade tiger in his hand. What secrets were hidden within this object, and whose face was the one he had glimpsed at the very end?

As Zhang Qinglin pondered this, Wanqing walked in, and he turned to look at her.

Wanqing had followed the police vehicle to the village that morning, intending to wait for Lao Fan to finish his business and bring him back. However, no sooner had Lao Fan stepped out of the house than he inexplicably collapsed. The police had rushed him directly to the hospital, where he remained in a coma.

The doctors attributed his condition to poisoning, and with the police investigation already underway, Wanqing had returned immediately.

"Lao Fan really has the worst luck. There’s no telling when he’ll wake up in this state. I think we should stop wasting time here and head back to Beijing. What do you think, Lao Zhang?" Cheng Che stood up from the edge of the heated brick bed and looked toward Zhang Qinglin, who was seated by the window.

"There is indeed no reason for us to stay here any longer. I thought about it on the way back: if Lao Fan knew about Master Ma’s affairs, why didn’t he speak up last night instead of waiting until today? We still need to find Wu Mingshi to track down Master Ma’s whereabouts," Wanqing said, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder.

Zhang Qinglin rubbed the jade tiger, his mind already made up. He swept his gaze over the two of them and said, "Then we go to Hebei first to find Xiao An."

The four of them packed their things, bid farewell to the master, and drove down the mountain.

During the return journey, they stopped several times to rest. In the interim, Wanqing called one of Brother Xun’s subordinates, asking him to inquire about the whereabouts of Wu Mingshi and Wu Cheng’an.

While passing through Gansu, road construction on the highway forced them onto the national road. A sudden change in weather brought a thick fog, so they stopped in Xi'an and traveled no further.

They found a hotel in an area nearest to the national road. As they stepped out of the car, a torrential downpour began.

Raindrops beat against the windows like shell casings. The storm was fierce but brief; shortly after they checked into their rooms, the rain ceased.

During their idle chatter on the road, Wanqing had recounted a strange tale from the Xi'an region that left Zhang Qinglin lost in deep thought. He stood by the window, staring out at the world beyond.

The strange story concerned a village in Tianxia Town.

In Luming Village, there lived a man who would sit all day on a pile of stones at the entrance to the village, staring into the distance, holding a bamboo pole and gesturing with it from time to time.

The villagers called him the "Ghost Messenger." Every so often, he would brandish his bamboo pole. Someone in the village with a keen interest had once taken him to see a local mystic, who claimed the man possessed "Yin-Yang eyes" and could see things invisible to others. At first, the villagers gossiped and didn't believe a word of it.

But one day, the Ghost Messenger emerged from his thatched hut in the dead of night, wielding a wooden club. He began striking the back wall of Old Wang’s house. There was nothing there, but the man hammered away until he had smashed a large hole in the perfectly sturdy wall.

The Wang family spent the night in terror, unable to stop him. The next morning, the villagers found a weasel with a drooping head on the eaves behind the Wang house. This sparked widespread discussion, with everyone claiming the Ghost Messenger had killed a weasel instead of sleeping. In their village, killing a weasel was forbidden, and the elders were furious.

That very evening, the grandmother of the Wang family died, having seemingly slammed headlong into the back wall of their house—right into the large hole the Ghost Messenger had smashed open.

The villagers, who had been watching the spectacle, were horrified and eventually felt compelled to find the Ghost Messenger. He hadn't gone anywhere; he was still sitting at the entrance to the village.

When the villagers approached him and demanded he return, he remained motionless, sitting firmly on the stones. Suddenly, he uttered a phrase: "My hut is too crowded with people, I cannot return. I shall sit here and wait for them to leave."

Someone asked, "What people could possibly be in that dilapidated hut of yours?"

The Ghost Messenger replied, "I will not go back. If I do, I will lose my life."

"He’s truly insane," someone muttered.

The Ghost Messenger pointed at the man and said in a haunting tone, "Do not move. It will come looking for you soon."

The man glared at him, dismissed him with a contemptuous wave of his hand, and told the others to head back into the village.

After returning, that man suddenly collapsed, his body trembling, foam bubbling from his mouth, his eyes rolling back as he fell into a coma.

The villagers rushed him to the local village doctor, who took one look and declared there was no hope, telling them to prepare for the funeral.

With another death, panic gripped the village. The events had happened too suddenly, and no one knew why. Some blamed the Ghost Messenger and organized a mob to storm the village entrance. But when they arrived, the Ghost Messenger had vanished, and a thorough search of the entire village turned up nothing.

Two or three days later, someone returning to the village spotted a figure sitting on that pile of stones at the entrance. It was the Ghost Messenger.

Seizing the opportunity, they summoned the village men to grab their tools. But to everyone's surprise, the Ghost Messenger remained unfazed, sitting steadily on the stone pile, and said to them, "If you still want people to die, then go ahead and strike. But if you want the village to be peaceful and safe, then go find me a bamboo pole."

They had no choice. If they truly killed the Ghost Messenger, they feared the entire village would face retribution.

They went from house to house searching for a bamboo pole. Once they brought it to him, the Ghost Messenger waved it back and forth over his head. He then asked for a bowl of glutinous rice, telling every person to take a handful and scatter it at their own door. He also warned them not to leave their homes on the night of the fifteenth, and to continue this practice on every fifteenth of the month thereafter.

This day was the fifteenth, and a bright, pristine full moon hung in the sky.

The Ghost Messenger sat on the stone pile at the village entrance, the bamboo pole lying flat in his hands. As soon as the clock struck midnight, he began brandishing the pole before him, striking the air back and forth. As he did, he chanted, "Once you enter, do not trample the crops, do not enter people’s homes, and do not eat the livestock."

A voice echoed from behind him: "They have noted everything you said, but they have also noted who harmed them."

The Ghost Messenger replied, "That is their just desert."