Chapter 1.14 Shadow (Extra)

Uncle Three paused for a moment and then looked at the shadow. Feeling a little embarrassed by his anger, he changed the subject and said, “Fuck, who discovered this damn thing?”

Everyone turned to look at one person—a child. I knew him; his name was Wu Shuang Dan. At that time, I asked him how his father gave him such a name, and he said his father’s name was Wu Yi Gen, so it was probably to get back at his grandfather. (1) The child turned pale with fear when we all looked at him and couldn’t speak.

A man standing on the side told us the story. It turned out that this kid was picking up stones nearby on the way back to repair his father’s cooking stove. He needed to pee urgently, and since children liked to play, he jumped onto the stone to pee and that’s when he saw it.

Uncle Three looked at the kid and asked him, “When was this?”

But the trembling kid ignored Uncle Three and just continued to stare at the stone as if he were scared to death.

Uncle Three asked him again in a different tone to try to get a reaction but was at a total loss. “What’s he afraid of?” He asked the man on the side.

The man’s face was pale as he pointed to the snails under the stone. “He said to us just now, ‘It’s moving’. Compared to when he first saw it, it’s climbed up a little!”

A creepy atmosphere suddenly spread among us, and I saw that Biao Gong’s fingers were trembling slightly.

After a long silence, Uncle Three cursed, picked up a branch from the bank, and jumped into the water. He then stirred it vigorously, swept all the snails out from under the stone and shoved them to one side, and then turned back and shouted, “What should we do if such cool guys are afraid of being killed by fried snails?”

Sure enough, everyone looked relieved once they saw the strange shape disappear. Uncle Three called out to his man who was mingling among the onlookers, said something to him, and then said to the others, “Go back! Don’t look at it anymore. Go back and fry some yourself.”

The onlookers scattered quickly. Uncle Three walked up to Biao Gong and whispered to him, “Can you trust me, old man?”

He frowned at Uncle Three, “What do you want?”

“This fucking matter—you just leave it to me. My brother can’t do this job, and there’s no one under you. If you continue to make trouble, I’m afraid the whole village will know.”

Biao Gong apparently knew that it was bad at this point and thought for a long time before nodding, “Don’t play any of your tricks or you’ll die more miserably than the snails.”

Uncle Three grinned and looked at the stream before asking, “When will the new ancestral grave be ready?”

“Three more days,” Biao Gong said.

“Don’t delay, do it tomorrow. Give the Taoist priest some money and get him to change the day.” Uncle Three patted him on the shoulder. “This young lady must’ve really had an accident.”

Biao Gong nodded, “I know. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll have my brother guard this stream,” Uncle Three replied. “Wait a minute while I go buy something to dry up all these snails.”

With that said, Uncle Three beckoned me to follow him. He wanted to go shopping in the city and asked me to drive.

I hurried over to him and asked, “Uncle, this is too crazy. What’s going on?”

Uncle Three motioned me not to ask. As soon as he got in the car, he immediately narrowed his eyes and said to me, “Damn it, we may have made a mistake.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid the extra coffin wasn’t for the corpse, but the snails.”

“Eh, why?”

“How would I know?” Uncle Three frowned. “Shit, I’m afraid something is going to happen. Anyway, let’s get rid of the snails first.”

<Extra 1.13> <Table of Contents><Extra 1.15>

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TN Notes:

(1) Tiffany cleared this up: The surname “吴” (Wu) is pronounced the same as another Chinese word “无”. “无” means “No/nothing”. So “Wu Shuang Dan” sounds an awful lot like “No pair of balls” in Chinese. His father’s name “Wu Yi Gen” basically sounds like “No dick”. So… that’s how the revenge on the grandpa came to be.

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Updated 11/22/2021