Chapter Twenty-Two: The Visitor

A month passed just like that. Although the events in Hezi Village were still fresh in my memory, much of the terror I’d felt at the time had faded away, and my life seemed to have returned to normal. After everything that happened, Jin Zhenbang didn’t come to see me himself—instead, he sent a middle-aged man with a check for two hundred thousand. I politely declined, then posted two pieces of paper outside my shop: one read “Guard against greed,” the other, “Guard against haste.”

By adhering to these principles, my business picked up considerably. The rent I’d been unable to pay was soon covered, and I quickly filled up the three antique display cabinets with new stock.

I thought the matter had come to a close, but at the end of September, someone from Beijing came to Tianjin looking for me.

It was Tong Xiaomeng. I assumed she had come all the way to Tianjin just to return my cell phone.

Half a month before, I’d managed to call my number, and Professor Gu answered, joking that I must come to Beijing for roast duck at Quanjude, and he’d return my phone then. I was tempted—after all, a camera phone wasn’t cheap at the time—and I wanted to clarify what truly happened in Hezi Village. But business kept me busy, and I kept postponing the trip. I hadn’t expected Tong Xiaomeng to seek me out instead.

This time, she wasn’t dressed in the outdoor gear I’d seen her in before. She wore a pink T-shirt and a pleated skirt. She was already very attractive, with delicate features and lively, expressive eyes. Perhaps because she swam often, her legs were long and evenly shaped. She radiated the youthful energy of a college student from head to toe.

We found a restaurant and talked for a while about what had happened before. Then I changed the subject, asking if she’d come to Tianjin just to return a phone.

Tong Xiaomeng’s face grew somber. After a long silence, she said, “Professor Gu is dead.”

I paused for a moment and offered a quiet “Oh,” expressing my regret. Perhaps the ordeal in Hezi Village had been too taxing, and with his age, Professor Gu might not have been able to withstand the emotional upheaval. I’d noticed something was off with him in the ancestral hall, but I hadn’t expected him to pass so suddenly.

Tong Xiaomeng clearly wasn’t finished. She looked at me and asked, “Since coming back from Hezi Village, haven’t you felt anything strange?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

She hesitated, glancing around the nearly empty restaurant in the middle of the day, then leaned in and whispered, “Has that woman come looking for you?”

I was stunned. After a moment, I asked, “Wu Xiaomei?”

“No!” Tong Xiaomeng seemed anxious now. She rummaged through her bag and produced a photograph. “Look at this,” she said.

I took it, and a chill ran down my spine. I immediately placed the photo face-down on the table.

The photograph was of Professor Gu’s corpse. It looked like it had been taken during an autopsy at the hospital. His hair was disheveled, his glasses were gone, and his eyes bulged from their sockets, bloodshot and veined like they were crawling with parasites—so dense and grotesque it made my skin crawl.

I felt numb all over and asked, “What happened?”

Tong Xiaomeng’s eyes were rimmed with red. “The woman’s corpse from Hezi Village killed Professor Gu.”

Professor Gu hadn’t died in Beijing. He died in Hezi Village.

That night, after I was locked in the black coffin and thrown into the river, Tong Xiaomeng and her sedan chair were also cast into the water. She found the sunken black coffin, opened it, and confirmed the corpse inside was indeed sacrificed to the river god. Most importantly, she took a jade pendant from the female corpse.

At this point, I could practically guess what had happened next, but there was one thing I didn’t understand: I’d spoken to Professor Gu on the phone just half a month ago—how could he have died in Hezi Village?

Tong Xiaomeng wiped away her tears and continued. “I took the jade pendant as evidence to bring back to Beijing, but after Professor Gu got it, he kept us holed up in Ninghai County, locking himself in the room and refusing to come out. He told me not to disturb him.”

I was very familiar with the habits of these old experts. When they got their hands on something valuable, they’d pore over it in secret, never showing it off. First, to prevent someone else from stealing their glory, and second, because they’d all lived through tumultuous times—no matter how valuable the item, some things were meant to be kept hidden. They knew this better than anyone.

Professor Gu stayed locked up until the day before his death. At noon, he finally emerged, muttering, “She’s coming,” over and over. He gave the blood jade to Tong Xiaomeng and told her that if anything happened to him, she should bring it to me—I’d know what to do to save her.

After that, he shut himself in his room again. Worried for his health, Tong Xiaomeng knocked for ages without any response. Eventually, she pushed the door open and found him collapsed on the floor, motionless.

She was so frightened she nearly fainted. Professor Gu was stiff, soaked through, with foul-smelling silt oozing from his mouth and ears. The expression on his face was exactly what the photograph had captured—he had drowned in his own room.

His body was sent to Beijing for autopsy, and the result was also drowning. The university didn’t believe Tong Xiaomeng’s account and suspended her from classes, demanding a written explanation. In truth, they were trying to force her out. She moved off-campus, renting a place nearby. But that very night, strange things began to happen.

First, there was inexplicable knocking at the door. Each time she opened it, no one was there, but the floor was damp as though someone soaking wet had just been outside—yet there were no footprints to be found.

Two days ago, Tong Xiaomeng was awakened by knocking in the middle of the night. She tried to get up, but her body was paralyzed as if in a nightmare, and her throat was full of water. If she hadn’t been a strong swimmer, and if Professor Gu’s death hadn’t put her on edge, she might not have survived to come find me.

I listened, veins throbbing at my temples, recalling how the woman’s corpse had grabbed my leg at the bottom of the river, trying to drag me under to drown me.

Seeing Tong Xiaomeng’s pale face, I asked, “What do you intend to do now?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. The university suspects Professor Gu drowned while we were conducting fieldwork, and the police have been interrogating me, but they don’t believe my story. I wanted you to come to Beijing and testify for me—that Professor Gu’s death wasn’t an accident.”

I’d been keeping myself composed this past month and soon found my calm. Looking at her, I said, “You’re really more concerned about getting my testimony in Beijing than about the woman’s corpse coming after you?”

She nodded. I sighed helplessly: “Testify to what? That Professor Gu was killed by a woman’s blood jade, murdered by her ghost in his room, and not by sudden illness?”

She fell silent.

I wanted to ask more about the night of the incident, but exhaustion was written all over her face. The days since leaving Hezi Village and Professor Gu’s death had clearly been hard for her. After a moment’s thought, I asked, “Are you in a hurry to leave?”

“No. I’m not going back until this is resolved,” she replied.

I’d come to understand her temperament and didn’t try to persuade her otherwise. I wasn’t sure how I could help, but in the end, I agreed. When I asked for her ID to find her a hotel nearby, she refused, saying she was under police surveillance—using her ID would expose her. She’d paid a black market driver to smuggle her to Tianjin.

Harboring a fugitive was no small matter. That meant I couldn’t use my own ID either. After much deliberation, I took her to Sanhui Hall by the Old Ancestral Hall to get her a room.

Sanhui Hall was fairly well known in the Yudongmen area, though business was always slow except around the Spring Festival, when itinerant grave robbers—like toads in March—emerged from the mud and flocked to Beijing and Tianjin. Most stayed at Sanhui Hall, which served as a sort of underground “safehouse.” No ID was required, but it wasn’t very safe and the conditions were rough.

Tong Xiaomeng didn’t seem to mind. Having followed Professor Gu to remote mountain villages and even slept in wolf dens in the Changbai Mountains, this place was practically a palace by comparison.

I joked that she’d been scared all the way from the capital to Tianjin by a woman’s corpse.

She didn’t respond, just said she was tired and asked me to leave.