Chapter 2

Dad shuffled toward me on his knees, tears in his eyes, his hands pressed together.

“Xiao Yun, you're not eighteen yet. They'll go easier on you. Your brother's different. He's studied for so many years. He's this family's only hope.”

“Your sister-in-law is still young. She's never thought much of us anyway. If your brother goes to prison...”

“Could you bear to leave your niece without her father?”

I felt as though I couldn't get enough air. Every breath tore at my chest.

“But Dad, I'm taking the university entrance exam this year. I've studied for years too. I have a future!”

Mom sprang to her feet.

She slapped me so hard my vision went black and my head spun.

“When it comes down to it, this is all your fault.”

“Wang Gui probably just wanted to scare us! He's done it plenty of times before, and nothing's ever happened. He knows when to stop.”

“If you hadn't got up to use the toilet in the middle of the night, dressed like that, he wouldn't have got any ideas. None of this would have happened!”

“You ungrateful little bitch! Your brother killed him by accident because he was saving you!”

“I...”

Ordinarily, Mom's righteous certainty might have confused me.

For years, whatever happened, she could twist her way through any argument and somehow end up blaming me.

But this time...

I knew it wasn't true.

I'd saved all six of our lives.

Mom worked on my feelings. Dad tried to reason with me.

Instead, I began to calm down.

I sat back in the chair.

“If I could help the family, I would.”

“But the evidence is right there. There's nothing I can do.”

“What evidence?”

Dad's voice rose at once, sharp with alarm.

In their startled eyes, I saw my own face reflected back, unnaturally calm.

“The evidence that he killed Wang Gui.”

“The vase.”

5

“You... you secretly kept evidence?”

Only then did they notice the broken pieces beside the body.

Some were missing.

The Bodhisattva's warning had made me careful.

While they argued, I'd quietly picked up and hidden fragments of the vase bearing fingerprints and blood.

As for where I'd put them...

Only I knew.

If they insisted on making me confess, I could produce evidence of my innocence whenever I needed to.

Mom flew at me, her hands clawing, her voice climbing higher and higher. She looked ready to tear me apart.

“See? I knew it! You've been pretending to be such a good girl since you were little. You're the most scheming, vicious one in this house!”

“Tell us where you hid it!”

That slap had brought me fully to my senses. I stubbornly refused to give in.

My brother hurried to stop her.

“Mom! Don't push Xiao Yun anymore. I did it. I'll take responsibility. I'll turn myself in!”

“Don't...”

I caught his sleeve, choking on the words.

“I didn't mean it like that!”

The tears I'd fought back all night finally fell.

The truth was, my brother hadn't treated me badly.

Ever since we were little, whenever he had something good, he always made sure I got half.

When I got into a top high school, our parents had wanted to send me to vocational school so they wouldn't have to pay tuition. He'd talked them around. Without him, I wouldn't have made it this far.

Even that day, he'd told me privately, “When I get paid next month, I'll buy you and your sister-in-law new phones!”

My heart ached. An idea slipped out before I could stop it.

“I know what we could do.”

“There's still room in our pigsty, isn't there?”

“What if... we buried him there?”

6

Our pigsty stood to the northwest.

Exactly where the Bodhisattva had said the God of Wealth was.

Dad and my brother discussed it and decided it could work.

“Wang Gui's made enemies everywhere. He'd been drinking before he came here, too. Maybe nobody knows. We'll bury him first. The police might never find him.”

A family needed a secret to share. It would bring them closer together.

In the pigsty's suffocating stench, we began to dig. Suddenly, a shovel stopped against something.

“Wait,” I said softly. “I think there's something down there!”

A dark shape lay in the mud. My heart pounding with excitement and fear, I hurried to uncover it.

Then my hopes turned cold.

The shovel hadn't struck treasure.

It had struck part of a rotting carcass.

“Don't be scared. It's only a dead dog,” Dad said, sweeping his flashlight over it.

In the beam, the corner of an old chest showed through the earth.

My heart tightened again.

Together, we hauled it out. When we opened the lid, everyone froze.

Treasure.

Gold and silver. Jewels, pearls, antiques.

An entire chestful.

My parents wept with joy, muttering over and over that Heaven had finally seen their plight. My brother held golden beads in his hands, so excited he could barely speak.

I sank to the ground, dizzy.

Wild joy and terrible pain collided inside me.

Everything the Bodhisattva had said was true.

And so Wang Gui's body took the treasure chest's place.

Afterward, Dad drew me aside.

“Tell me the truth, Xiao Yun. How did you happen to run into Wang Gui at just the right time? And how did you know there was treasure under the pigsty?”

“How would I know? It was all coincidence,” I said vaguely. “Maybe the Bodhisattva's watching over us. They say surviving a great disaster brings good fortune.”

My parents immediately hurried off to kneel before the statue.

Normally, they could hardly be bothered to burn incense. They only remembered to cling to the Buddha's feet when they were about to buy lottery tickets.

Now their foreheads hit the ground with loud, repeated knocks.

I rubbed my eyes.

Was I imagining it?

The Bodhisattva's features, once indistinct, seemed to be coming into focus.

Fine, curved brows. Eyes clear as autumn water. Red lips.

Bathed in a golden glow, the corners of her mouth curled into an eerie smile.

7

A week passed in anxious anticipation.

Nothing happened. Nobody connected Wang Gui's disappearance with us.

When the time came to divide the treasure, Mom made one pointed remark after another, afraid I'd demand a larger share.

The Bodhisattva had said it was a windfall. But I was truly frightened. I volunteered to give up my share and took nothing.

That day, as I came home from school, I saw a crowd outside our house. Police cars filled the space in front.

The heart that had never quite settled began to pound.

Wang Gui's elderly mother was there with the police.

She screamed in a harsh, braying voice.

“My son's in there! I know he is! He came to me in a dream!”

Cold sweat broke out all over me.

Even the officer beside her looked helpless.

“Wang Gui's been missing for over a month. His mother insists he came to her in a dream and said pigs were gnawing his head. His older brother told her to stop making a scene, but she won't listen. She's convinced he's dead...”

Panic left me feeling as though the ground had vanished beneath me. I couldn't speak.

Then frantic barking came from the pigsty.

Every face in my family changed.

A police dog clawed at the earth, uncovering a length of white bone.

The officer's expression hardened. He spoke into his radio at once.

“We've found something. Possible human remains. Send backup immediately.”

8

I shook uncontrollably.

Dad's knees gave way several times. Without my brother supporting him, he'd have collapsed.

More and more white bones were dug out and laid on the ground.

An officer turned his stern gaze on us.

“Well, well. You all seem so honest and simple, but this is what you've been doing behind everyone's backs? Do you think the law doesn't apply to you?”

“We know we were wrong,” Dad pleaded miserably. “So many children to feed, and not enough money. We really had no choice...”

“No choice?” the officer snapped. “Being short of money gives you the right to poach wildlife? This is a serious offense. Do you understand?”

He pulled back the white sheet.

Rotting scraps of flesh still clung to the bones.

They were clearly the remains of wild animals.

Fighting the stench, the officer showed them to Wang Gui's mother.

“Look. We've dug this whole place up. Your son's not here. Maybe he's got himself into trouble somewhere else and gone into hiding!”

Only after Dad was led away did the rest of us lose the last of our strength and slump to the ground.

My brother tried to reassure us.

“We'll pay the fine. Dad will be out in a few months. It'll be all right.”

It took countless lies to hide a single truth.

At least we'd somehow scraped through the worst of it.

9

A month earlier, I'd told my parents to get together a shipment of wild mountain delicacies and take them south to sell.

The neighbors were curious. What were we selling that made so much money?

We deliberately acted mysterious and refused to say.

There were plenty of jealous people in the village. Seeing us sneak out to the pigsty night after night, they quietly reported us to the police.

That was exactly what we'd wanted.

Once a place had been searched, it would naturally become a blind spot in later investigations.

That night, Dad made a decision.

“We can't leave it in the pigsty forever. A-Cheng, take your sister. Move it out tonight. Don't tell anyone where you bury it—not even us. This is a secret between you two.”

I understood.

He wanted the secret to bind us together.

If nobody found out, we were accomplices.

If somebody did, we'd both go down together.

We would share the rewards and the ruin.

The car sped through the night. In its dark, enclosed interior, my heart felt heavy.

Because I could hear the Bodhisattva again.

“Child, what do you make of this girl's future?”

“Her life drifts like duckweed, and now she stands at a crossroads. My cultivation is too shallow. I can't see it clearly.”

I looked straight into the rearview mirror.

The back seat was empty.

“Don't worry. Nobody's following us.”

My brother held an unlit cigarette between his lips. It was a habit of his whenever something was troubling him.

“She has an injury on the bridge of her nose, in the Palace of Health. A sign of mortal danger. Her given name is Yun—cloud—and her birth chart has too much Metal. Metal overcomes Wood. A cloud above a blade of grass: however light the grass may be, a cloud has no substance. It cannot hold it up. I fear she will die at the hands of someone in her own family.”

The car jolted hard. The body in the trunk made several heavy thumps.

I flinched.

Then my brother spoke.

“You... you're still my sister, Su Yun, aren't you?”

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