Chapter 4.15 Beggar’s Knife (Extra)

There were a lot of thatched huts along the riverbank that had rows of pickles strung up outside of them. An old woman was in one of these huts, swatting pickles with a cattail fan to drive away the flies. Her eyes had turned white, indicating that the cataracts were very serious.

There was a square table in the hut, and rows of coal stoves and pots full of boiling medicine set up along the shore. There were three stacks of small dishes on the square table, which the hitmen’s leader was eating with an unremarkable looking short man. The leader took a bite of pickled vegetables, looked between the old woman and the dishes on the table, and said, “Boss, is this what you normally eat?”

The short man scooped out half of the rice from his bowl and poured it into a new bowl. He then put two or three chopsticks’ worth of pickled vegetables, peanuts, and fried clams on top, and then brought them to the old woman, who really couldn’t see them. She touched the short man’s hands with her own trembling hands, felt for the bowl and chopsticks, and began eating.

“What do you think I should eat?” The short man went back to the table. “This is the kind of food that’s always easily available, and it’s just a matter of adding less grease and water to it when times get tough. If you eat well all year round, you’ll feel even worse if you don’t get to eat in the future.”

A voice came from the low hut next to them, “When you say things like this, it’ll be a miracle if he even understands what you’re talking about.” The speaker turned out to be a middle-aged man wearing a changshan (1), who sat down at the table and picked up a pair of chopsticks. He and the leader eyed each other and then looked at the short man, who didn’t bother looking at them. Instead, his gaze was focused on a row of corpses lying under the table, and the flies swarming around them. He said to the leader, “Tell me what happened.”

The leader was a little embarrassed. He wiped the sweat from his head, fiddled with the peanuts in his bowl, squeezed out a timid smile, and said, “It has nothing to do with me.”

The short man put a few pieces of clam meat in the leader’s bowl and then looked at the man in the changshan, who shook his head. “I’m going to Baiping Building later. Two of the three gangs invited me out to eat, so I’ll just eat a little now.” The changshan man spoke in Southwestern Mandarin. His tone was so clear that one would think he was a scholar.

The short man picked up the clam dish, poured the rest of the clams and soup into his bowl, stirred it, and ate it all. He then said to the leader, “It’s so cold, yet you’re sweating so much. You still haven’t changed.”

The leader felt the sweat on his head, and seemed surprised that it was there. He said, “I’m scared and flustered since I’m eating with you, Boss.”

“If you didn’t do anything wrong, then why are you flustered?” The short man put down his bowl and chopsticks and stared absently at the medicine pot beside him. The hitmen’s leader also looked at the medicine pot and started sweating even more.

“Boss asked me to do something, so I did it. I just don’t know if it was a bad thing.” The leader stuffed a few heaping mouthfuls of rice into his mouth.

Off to the side, the changshan man put a few pickled vegetables in his bowl and then walked over to the place where the corpse had been placed under the table. He squatted down and used his chopsticks to lift the linen cloth covering one of the bodies, revealing Shuixiang’s head.

Her hair was a mess, one eye had turned into a bloody socket, and half of her face was covered in dried frozen blood.

The changshan man narrowed his eyes, and continued moving the linen cloth down, revealing the rest of Shuixiang’s body. Her shirt had been ripped open, revealing her round breasts, but her pants were still in place. Her pale white chest and abdomen were thickly dotted with countless blade marks that had chunks of flesh hanging from them.

The changshan man took a bite of his meal and pointed to Shuixiang’s eyes with his chopsticks: “This knife wound was the killing blow. And it was the first one, too.”

“How do you know? Did you stab her?” The leader immediately asked. “Oh, I already know you’re a fake scholar. You’ve been having an affair with this woman for a long time, and all your books are shit—”

Before the leader could finish, the short man slapped him on the back of the head. The leader immediately shrank back, not daring to speak.

The short man scolded him in a dialect that obviously wasn’t the local dialect, but seemed to come from the Yunnan ethnic minority. He didn’t give the hitmen’s leader a second look as he picked up the peanuts and squatted in front of Shuixiang’s body. The changshan man continued: “The wounds on her body aren’t fatal. But the shape of this knife is very strange. The blade is curved, but thin and difficult to use. If the person had stabbed her stomach first, Shuixiang would have definitely struggled and the wounds would have been enlarged. But the flesh from these wounds was actually brought out when the knife was pulled out. The wounds are neat, indicating that Shuixiang wasn’t moving at the time they were made.”

The changshan man pointed to Shuixiang’s eyes with his chopsticks. “They first stabbed the knife into her brain, killing her instantly. Then, they used the knife to stab the rest of her body.”

“Was it revenge? Was someone targeting her specifically?” The short man ate a peanut as the changshan man shook his head.

“No.” He looked at the other bodies. “Of the thirteen people she brought ashore, twelve died. There aren’t as many knife wounds, and most of them were stabbed in the ear.”

“Was it an expert?”

“I haven’t seen such a connoisseur, but this kind of weapon is hard to use.” The changshan man stood up, tapped his bowl, sat back in his seat, and continued eating.

The hitmen’s leader glanced at him with pleading eyes, but the changshan man looked back at him coldly without responding. The leader was covered in sweat and shouted to the old woman with cataracts, “You don’t need to heat the coal stoves anymore. I’m so hot, I’m dripping with sweat.”

The short boss also sat back down, and someone outside dragged a man in. The man had been stabbed in the chest three times, but didn’t die. His face was pale, the blood in his mouth had dried, and his chest was covered in the steaming dregs of herbal medicine. He couldn’t stand up and had to lie on the ground.

“Now tell me, what happened?” The changshan man asked him.

The wounded man’s lips trembled and he took two or three breaths before mumbling, “There’s a beggar. We went to catch him, but he didn’t run away. He just lost his temper and said that he only received a hundred coins.”

<Extra 4.14> <Table of Contents><Extra 4.16>

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TN Notes:

(1) Traditional Chinese dress (or robe, long jacket, or tunic) worn by men. Basically, the male equivalent of a cheongsam