Chapter 1.12 Discussion (Extra)

I don’t know much about what happened afterwards since Uncle Three and Cao Er Daozi practically rushed in. The scene was chaotic, and Biao Gong was so angry that he was almost vomiting blood. (1) Uncle Two took everything in and then told me to help my father back first. He also warned me not to cause any trouble.

When I saw that things were completely out of control, I immediately ran away. As soon as I left, I saw a mess outside the ancestral hall and knew that they had already had a fight.

There was such an uproar about this matter that it wasn’t until the morning of the third day that I saw Uncle Three again. He had a head wound wrapped in gauze and he was squatting on the threshold to eat breakfast. I grabbed my share and squatted down next to him to ask what had happened afterwards.

Uncle Three cursed as he ate sticky rice cakes and drank rice congee, saying that he was too fucking unlucky. He didn’t expect that the coffin would have nothing and that he and Cao Er Daozi had beat each other’s heads open for no reason. Shit, he was definitely one of their own and wouldn’t be easy to kill; otherwise, how could he take this loss?

I told Uncle Three that he was too greedy going after his ancestors’ grave without even giving his own family a pass.

“You don’t know shit,” Uncle Three scolded me. “I’m doing this to give your father some face! Damn it, if it weren’t for me walking sideways in the village like this, do you think your father could still act as the patriarch? Besides, that loser Cao Er Daozi sees that I’m successful and has been jealous of me for years. I don’t want to be thrifty with him since we’re family, the bastard. Our family didn’t kick him out but he still fucking came to argue with us! Telling me I can’t even bury the ancestral grave. If he wants to bury it, all he can do is bury it beside the toilet!”

When Uncle Three cursed a second time, Uncle Two’s voice came from inside the house, scolding him in turn, “You’re not fooling your nephew. Why do you still act like that when it comes to your eldest brother? Don’t you know that he’s terrified of such scenes?” After saying this, Uncle Two carried out a bamboo chair. He lived like those immortals you read about in novels: he got up early and hardly ate anything. He had already finished his Tai Chi exercises long ago and now came to sit in a chair and feed chickens beside us.

Uncle Three lost his temper at Uncle Two and muttered, “In my profession, I just can’t suffer losses in front of others. What if the coffin had something really good in it? I really thought something might have been hidden there under the chaos of war. I didn’t think it was a pile of stinking snails.”

Knowing that Uncle Two was quite knowledgeable, I asked him, “Uncle Two, you read a lot of books. Have you heard of this before?”

Uncle Two put away the rice bran, thought for a moment, and then said, “Now that you mention it, this really wasn’t the first time. I remember that a tomb was found in Fenghuang Mountain, Hangzhou that belonged to a eunuch in the Southern Song Dynasty. There was a colorful pool with live fish in it. It was said that the pool was also closed off. Later, someone ate one of the fish and suddenly died.” He frowned, appearing so anxious that the chickens squawked, “That was in the tomb, so maybe there was a reason for it, but that’s not the case with this coffin.”

I looked at Uncle Three and asked him if he had also encountered such things in the tombs he had been to but he shook his head, “There’s no reason for why such things often happen; this kind of thing is God playing around. Don’t think about it too much, just act like you don’t know. There are many things we encounter in the tombs, and if we all stop to think about it, then even people like your Uncle Three will become philosophers.” With these words, he was basically alluding to the fact that he believed Uncle Two thought too much.

“Then what happened to the coffin?” I asked.

Uncle Three sighed. He had also left early and got his head beaten by Cao Er Daozi. All he knew was that the corpse belonged to a nameless woman and we couldn’t move it until we knew who it was. The corpse’s pose was also very inappropriate, so he suspected that it was sealed in the coffin and killed by accident.

“They were killed?”

“Probably forced into the coffin, sealed in, and then drowned. This kind of thing was more common back then. What Biao Gong said may be right: it may be a maid or a concubine.” Uncle Three sighed, “Who cares. After all these years, who knows what’s going on?”

“Then the main issue now is how to deal with it?”

“The coffin was cleared, lime was spread inside, and the body was put back in. All the snails were picked out and the Taoist priest was invited to do the ritual.” Uncle Three took a hard bite of a rice cake. “Biao Gong said that if he really couldn’t find anything, then he would bury it intact as if he didn’t know about it.”

Uncle Two ignored him as he continued to feed the chickens while angrily asking, “What about the snails? Didn’t Biao Gong ask you to bring them back and fry them with some sauce?”

“Shit, if he wants to eat them, he can have them. The old bastard might as well eat too many and die,” Uncle Three said. “We dumped them all into the stream yesterday. It made me sick.”

“Hey, how can they do this?!” I asked, completely disgusted. “Who would dare go into that black liquid and touch the snails?”

“The Taoist priest said to release them, so what else could we fucking do?” Uncle Three retorted.

At this time, a man rushed into the courtyard, ran over to me, and hurriedly asked, “Where’s your father?”

My dad had been overstimulated and still hadn’t recovered, but before I could answer, Uncle Three kicked the guy and asked, “Hei Pi, what’s the matter?”

“Biao Gong asked for Wu Xie’s father to immediately come to the stream. Shit, there seems to be something in it.”

<Extra 1.11> <Table of Contents><Extra 1.13>

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TN Notes:

(1) It’s one of those Chinese sayings that’s an exaggeration. The vomiting of blood as a result of extreme anger, hatred or sadness is frequently seen in Chinese dramas, he’s not actually puking blood

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Updated 11/21/2021