Chapter 25 Traveling Notes

When we arrived at Agui’s house, we found that he had already prepared a large table of dishes, and all the surrounding neighbors gathered to eat with us.

Half of the houses here had been built by Fatty, who lived here for a long time and took care of Agui during that time.

All the farmer’s houses had a living room, and when I entered Agui’s, the first thing I noticed was that the idol statue that had been there originally had been switched out.

I wasn’t familiar with this particular idol statue—it wasn’t the more common image of Madam Ban, but an idol I had never seen before.⁽¹⁾ The statue was very detailed, with many elements carved on it. It also looked like it was repurposed from a Buddha statue—the base was a clay Buddha statue but there were many strange things stuck on it.

These strange things appeared to be scales from various animals, such as snakes, fish, and others that I couldn’t quite figure out.

The Buddha statue was very old—it only took one glance to tell that it wasn’t modern—and it didn’t have a face. Instead, the Chinese character for “Yuan”⁽²⁾ had been engraved where the face should have been.

The Buddha statue had been placed on a plate with a lot of sun-dried things on it.

“What’s this?” I asked Agui tentatively.

“I brought it back from Vietnam,” he responded.

I took a closer look and found that all the dried things on the plate were actually frogs.

Feeling that something was a little off, I exchanged a look with Poker-Face and Fatty. Fatty said that we could deal with things tomorrow; today, it was better to finish enjoying the food and wine.

I tried to immerse myself in the local atmosphere as much as possible.

We drank the wine until very late in the evening and played cards for a while. With the exception of that strange Buddha statue, the atmosphere here in the countryside was very pleasant and normal. The reason why I was so concerned with that statue wasn’t so much because I felt uncomfortable, but because I felt as if it was looking at me.

The next morning, I more or less got permission to smoke. This was because cigarettes were distributed so frequently around here that even if I said I didn’t smoke, I could still gather enough cigarettes to add up to a pack or two. Moreover, the amount of second-hand smoke wasn’t insignificant since everyone smoked around here, so I might as well smoke too.

I lit a cigarette and went with Fatty to eat breakfast at the breakfast shop by the village entrance. He told me that he stayed with Agui last night. Agui said that the idol statue was a Vietnamese Bodhisattva that had a scaled body. If he offered it sacrifices to a certain extent, he could go to the underworld and meet Yun Cai.

I knew this was nothing more than pure superstition. After all, Agui was very lonely, so it made sense that he was easily influenced by such things. So far, I hadn’t found anything to indicate that this thing was harmful. At most, the people in Vietnam probably charged him more than four thousand yuan when he asked for this thing, which was a bit expensive compared to its worth.

I gave a thoughtful hum but didn’t pursue the matter any further.

When we went to Yun Cai’s grave that afternoon to pay our respects, however, I found that this matter definitely wasn’t as simple as Agui had made it out to be because there were six or seven of those Buddha statues on Yun Cai’s grave. In addition to the offerings to Yun Cai, there were also offerings next to these Buddha statues.

The offerings were practically piled up, which meant that Agui must have been coming to pray at least once a week.

These offerings were also very strange. If they only consisted of fruits or paper figurines, then that would be fine, but all the offerings here were things that I had never seen before. They all appeared to be fingernails of various things, but many were clearly human fingernails.

I knew it wouldn’t be an easy feat to get so many fingernails. Even if the whole village came together and cut their fingernails, it still wouldn’t be enough. Agui said that this Bodhisattva wanted fingernails as offerings, and so these nails were all bought from Vietnam.

I picked up one of the fingernails, which was about an inch long—it had either been cut from a woman who grew her nails out or cut from a corpse. After all, if a body decayed slowly after it was buried, the fingernails would continue to grow for up to half a year.

I didn’t directly question this matter when I was paying my respects because Agui was very religious.

After we were done, I looked at the graveyard from the top of the hill and saw that there were many tombs with similar statues on them. It seemed that this thing had been popular in the village for a while now.

On the way back, Agui kept telling me, “You can really go to the underworld. Several people have already been there.”

I remained silent but gave Fatty a look. “How did it get here from Vietnam?” Fatty asked Agui.

Agui told Fatty that someone was doing business in Vietnam and brought it back from there. The Vietnamese village where this Buddha first appeared was right on the border, and now this Buddha and another god were fighting fiercely all along the border.

At that time, I felt that something was wrong but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Later that night, we all sleep at Agui’s house. It had been built using concrete and had an attic on the fourth floor, but the attic wasn’t finished yet so we slept on the third floor. Although it was pleasantly cool, I didn’t feel comfortable staying in that house.

I also noticed that Poker-Face wasn’t acting right either. He was constantly touching the walls everywhere, which made me wonder if he had found something.

<Chapter 24><Table of Contents><Chapter 26>

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TN Notes:

(1) Not finding anything in English. According to Baidu, Madam Ban was a famous Zhuang heroine in the Longzhou area of ​​Guangxi during the Eastern Han Dynasty. One legend said that the emperor dispatched troops to the area but there was problem with their food rations so Madam Ban donated all the food she had grown (it was meant to be sold to support her dowry) and then mobilized a bunch of other women to donate the food they had grown as well. Another legend said that the troops weren’t used to the air in the south and often suffered from seasonal diseases. Madam Ban ordered the villagers to use herbal medicines to help them. The troops recovered their combat effectiveness and quickly defeated the rebels.

(2) This is the Chinese character 元, and it can be considered a surname or have the following meanings: currency unit (esp. Chinese yuan) / first / original / primary / fundamental, etc.

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Sorry guys, still in recovery mode. I think my fever and headache are finally gone but my ketones and blood sugar keep spiking overnight and it feels like I’m swallowing glass shards every time I swallow so sleep hasn’t been great either. If I’m feeling up to it, I’ll keep working on chapters but obviously not high on my list of things to do right now _(:3 」∠)_

Pic added 12/18/2022 (fan translation courtesy of me).