Chapter 3

The lower half of her body was gone. Blood poured from the stumps of her thighs.

Ahuang had one of her legs in his jaws and was tearing at it eagerly.

Bracing herself on her hands, she struggled to crawl toward me.

“Good boy. You may have been a foundling, but we haven’t treated you badly.”

Through my blurred vision, another bloodied figure with half a body chewed away crawled closer.

“We fed and clothed you. Search your conscience. You have to save us!”

“Shut up, you stupid woman! No need to waste words. He owes us!”

I recognized Father’s voice.

“Xiaosheng, Third Aunt has brought a powerful Taoist priest. He’s set a strong ritual formation in the graveyard behind the mountain.”

“Lead your sister-in-law up there.”

When I did not react, he raised his right hand and slapped me.

“Did you hear? Every day the same. You won’t behave until you’ve been beaten!”

Losing his lower body had done nothing to weaken his arm.

I endured the burning in my cheek and nodded obediently.

Where they could not see, however, the corners of my mouth lifted.

Useless lot. So they did have another move.

To fight the drowsiness, I bit down hard on my tongue.

Pain flooded my brain.

I struggled upright and hurried toward the mountain behind the house.

Looking back, I shouted to my sister-in-law, who was raging in the yard.

“I know where your children are! Follow me!”

By then, our parents had stopped breathing.

They lay like two heaps of mangled meat on the cement, mixed with foul-smelling blood.

I glanced at their bodies without expression and ran on without regret.

11

All along the road, low barking and screams rose from house after house.

I knew Ahuang was biting the beasts who had eaten his young.

All living things had spirits. This was his revenge.

I did not intend to interfere.

Soon my sister-in-law followed me to the mountain.

The graves looked even more sinister at night.

In the darkness, I saw a distant flicker of fire.

Someone was chanting clearly.

The incantation disturbed her spirit, making it unstable.

I told her to wait at the foot of the mountain.

This priest seemed to have real skill. Better not risk her.

I crept up the slope and listened for a while at a distance to establish his position.

Then I circled behind him, picked up a palm-sized stone, and struck the back of his head hard.

It might not kill him, but an hour or two unconscious would be enough.

I destroyed the entire formation he had prepared.

Then another problem presented itself.

Where was my brother hiding?

His mind might be underdeveloped, but he would not be easy to deal with.

I remembered an itinerant practitioner passing through when I was little. He had told Father, “This boy may be slow, but he has a rare double-yang destiny. It counters wandering spirits! Why not let him learn a few skills with me?”

My brother was the village chief’s biological son. Even without schooling, he would never want for food or clothes. Why would they value such a lowly itinerant trade?

Our parents dismissed the fortune-teller in a few words.

But his pronouncement pleased them immensely.

That night, chained beneath an outside window as punishment, I heard them whispering excitedly.

“Third Aunt has new merchandise again. A pretty university student!”

“Yes, I’ve seen the photo. City people are so well nourished, so fair and clean. Afu likes her too. One look, and he was drooling.”

“Good. I’ll tell Third Aunt tomorrow. We’ll take this one.”

A day later, they removed my chains and used them to lock the newly arrived girl in the woodshed.

No. She was not my sister-in-law.

The first girl soon killed herself by smashing her head against the wall.

My brother tortured the second to death. I did not know exactly how.

I only heard that by the end, hardly any part of her body was uninjured.

The sister-in-law who carried the dog fetuses was the third.

I would always remember the first time she saw me.

Her large, beautiful eyes stopped on the crescent-shaped birthmark on my neck and the three moles beside it.

She stared for a long time, as though trying to carve my face into her memory.

Her gaze made me shy.

But in the dead of night, risking a whipping, I stole a small steamed bun from the kitchen and brought it to her.

For the first week, they routinely starved these girls to break their will and torment their minds.

Iron chains bound her neck, hands, and feet. She could not move.

I gave her a little water, then held the bun to her mouth.

What happened next remained clear in my memory.

She ate it through her tears, then told me, “My little brother. I’ve finally found you.”

“Traffickers stole you from the hospital just after you were born.”

“Our parents searched everywhere, crying every day and traveling from place to place. Later, they died in a car accident.”

“I’m your sister. Your real sister.”

12

Only when she asked me to pull down her collar and revealed a birthmark identical to mine did I emerge from my stunned disbelief.

I was no abandoned foundling. Like those “sisters-in-law,” I had been bought from Third Aunt!

Their reason for buying me was simple.

I was meant to look after their disabled son, who could not care for himself, in his old age.

My sister and I agreed to escape in three days, on her wedding day.

They would remove her chains. I would secretly put a sedative in the food so everyone passed out. Then we would run together.

But human cruelty went far beyond what we had imagined.

My brother had been particularly bad-tempered lately and had devised a new amusement.

He tied a string of firecrackers between my legs and lit them.

Then he roared with laughter as I ran around in terror.

The explosions tore a piece of flesh from my upper thigh. The pain was terrible.

Because of it, I neglected to feed the pigs and was punished by being denied food.

Too hungry to sleep that night, I went out to find weeds to fill my stomach.

Then I heard rustling from the woodshed.

It grew louder. Soon I could hear my sister’s muffled cries for help.

I kicked open the door. My brother’s clothes were disheveled. He was raping her.

“You animal!”

I lost all reason. Charging with every ounce of strength I had, I knocked him more than a meter away.

His mind was impaired, but his body was exceptionally strong.

He stood a meter eighty and weighed over a hundred kilos.

Recovering, he lifted me like a chick and flung me into the yard like an empty sack.

The back of my head struck a stone step. I lost consciousness at once.

When I woke, half a month had passed.

Finding me not quite dead, still faintly breathing, they had thrown me into the pigpen.

My sister-in-law—no, my sister—had secretly come to care for me every day.

She fed me thin porridge and begged the Earth God to lend me life.

By the time I finally recovered, she had changed.

She had already married my brother.

Without a word of complaint, she devoted herself to serving him and dutifully caring for our adoptive parents.

She rose before dawn to feed the pigs and work, and still endured his beatings.

But she no longer resisted. She bore it all in silence.

Around that time, Third Grandpa brought a local dog to guard the house.

His name was Ahuang.

13

My grades were excellent. The headmaster recommended me for middle school in town.

But our parents refused to let me go. They ordered me to leave school.

I was too young to earn enough for tuition and fees. I could only resign myself.

“I’m going south to work. Come with me, Sis!”

Under the yellow light of an oil lamp, she sat sewing.

They had long since gone to bed, leaving her to work alone. They had no humanity at all.

She paused at my words, then grew stern.

“You’re still a child, Xiaosheng. What work? You need to study.”

“What good is studying? Better to earn money. I can support you!”

She took my hand and placed a small paper packet in my palm.

“I saved this secretly. Use it for your fees. If it isn’t enough, I’ll find a way…”

Shame and frustration surged through me, along with an anger I could not explain.

“We were both kidnapped! We’re both from the city! Are you going to spend your whole life buried in this mountain hole, warming my brother’s bed?”

Instead of becoming angry, she laughed softly.

She stroked my cheek.

“Silly boy. I know you care about me.”

“Our parents died long ago. None of our relatives wanted to take me in. We don’t belong to the city anymore.”

“At least I have Ahuang here. I’m very happy.”

By then, she and Ahuang were already inseparable.

“Besides, I’m pregnant.”

14

The memory broke off.

The bride who had been sitting on the stone bench at the foot of the mountain was gone. Only the eerie wind remained.

After a moment’s thought, I ran straight to Third Aunt’s house at the village entrance.

At her gate, I saw her striking at the bride possessed by my sister’s spirit with a peachwood sword.

I threw myself in front of the bride and took the blow on my arm.

The blade had been sharpened. It was not as sharp as metal, but it still cut into my flesh.

Once stained with blood, the peachwood sword lost its power.

Third Aunt pointed at my nose and cursed furiously.

“You damned little bastard! You’ll destroy the whole village!”

I seized her throat with one hand and slowly tightened my grip.

“Is my brother hiding here?”

I was no longer the weak boy people could bully years ago.

At university, I had taken up sanda and boxing, imagining that one day I could protect my sister and keep anyone from hurting her again.

In the end, she had died horribly. It had all been a foolish dream.

What did it matter if the whole village joined her in the grave?

Choking, her face turning purple, Third Aunt involuntarily glanced toward an inner room.

I released her at once and strode inside.

My brother’s condition had worsened in recent years.

He had once merely been slow. Now he often flew into madness.

I opened the door to find him naked, sprawled over a sow, his expression deranged.

Utterly revolting.

At the sight of him, my sister’s eyes turned crimson. Her hatred became bloody tears spilling from their corners.

But he had a double-yang destiny. Spirits could not approach him.

I gave her a reassuring look.

Then I punched him off the sow and began beating him.

Third Aunt suddenly caught my calves from behind.

“Shengzi, your brother had nothing to do with these filthy things! Please spare him!”

I looked back meaningfully.

“How about you start with Ahuang?”

She clasped her hands, sobbing, tears and mucus streaming down her face.

“I’ll tell you! Third Grandpa bought Ahuang from a powerful Taoist. He said he was a breeding dog of a kind seen once in a hundred years. He could possess an impotent man and help him do it.”

“If the woman became pregnant, that was better still. Dog fetuses are a miraculous tonic. For men, they strengthen kidney energy. For women, they nourish qi and blood.”

I closed my eyes, struggling to contain the fury burning in my chest.

For nothing but their selfish desire for tonics, they had made my sister pregnant again and again, turning her into a living tool?

Seeing my face darken, Third Aunt hurried on.

“It was a wonderful thing! Even you benefited!”

“Don’t you know? Your sister—your sister-in-law, I mean—was clever. She bargained with your parents. Two hundred yuan for every litter! Where do you think your school fees came from? Your sister earned them by giving birth to puppies!”

So that was it…

Through my shock, I caught sight of Ahuang waiting at the gate.

“When you kidnapped us and brought us here, Third Aunt, you knew we were brother and sister, didn’t you?”

“As such a great benefactor of the chief’s family, you must have eaten plenty of that meat yourself.”

Before the words had faded, Ahuang shot forward like an arrow and began his revenge.

After the beating, my brother’s eyes actually seemed a little clearer.

He dressed, sat up, and glared at my sister’s spirit.

“You filthy bitch! I have a yang destiny seen once in a hundred years. Your ghostly tricks can’t touch me!”

I shook my head in mock regret and smiled.

“Why is Third Aunt so kind to you, Brother? Don’t you want to know?”

“Everyone else is healthy. Why are you the only one with an intellectual disability?”

He looked up suspiciously.

“Because you’re Third Aunt’s son by Father! They’re cousins. You were born of incest, and that’s why you’re like this!”

His mouth fell open in shock. He made inarticulate sounds.

“Don’t believe me? Look at the necklace around her neck. There’s a picture of you at one year old inside!”

Ahuang had long since left, disappearing into the vast darkness.

My brother staggered over to Third Aunt’s ruined body.

He removed the gold necklace. It held an exquisitely made hinged locket.

He stared for a long time, then gave an enormous, unnatural howl.

Then he ran wildly from the village into the dense primeval forest behind the mountain.

How long could a madman survive in woods full of wild beasts?

That would depend on his luck.

15

Forty years later.

“Comrade Lin Sheng has devoted his life to reuniting abducted and missing children with their families. Combining big data with technology, he has helped a total of 365 children find their loved ones. He has been named one of this year’s ‘Touching China’ honorees.”

I had spent nearly half my life working for an internet company. In my spare time, I had founded a family-reunification website, helping missing children find their families for free.

Today was my retirement day.

I bought lilies and a bag of dog food, then took fruit and white liquor to Nanshan Cemetery.

My family was waiting there too.

“I’m tired. I can’t keep going.”

Thinking of that village’s catastrophe still frightened me.

I had been a victim. But I had also played an indirect part in my sister’s fate.

And I had, in fact, secretly tasted a mouthful of that fragrant dog-fetus broth.

The flavor had lingered on my tongue, its aftertaste refusing to fade.

No wonder everyone in the village went mad for it. It could magnify human desire without limit.

Afterward, the village seemed to evaporate from the world. It disappeared from the map.

One day, after work, I passed a pedestrian overpass and encountered the Taoist who had performed the ritual in the mountain graveyard. He had set up a fortune-telling stall: five yuan a reading.

He looked horrified to see me. Then he hurriedly called me over, offering free advice.

“Child, did you… taste that poison too?”

My gaze froze.

I had never told anyone.

“It’s all right. The darkness between your brows is still faint. Your karmic burden isn’t heavy. There is a remedy.”

“For the rest of your life, keep a kind heart and do good deeds. You can dispel the vengeful curse upon you and gain merit for your family’s souls, helping them reach rebirth sooner.”

I nodded hurriedly.

“Thank you, Master.”

“Wait! There’s something unusual about your destiny. Were you involved in that karmic wrong yourself?”

Bewildered, I shook my head.

“Never mind. Cause and consequence, fortune and fate—it is all ordained. When the day comes, you will understand.”

I had not understood then.

Now I understood completely.

How could I not have known that the money my sister gave me for school was unclean?

Not asking was a kind of acceptance.

I had calmly taken money bought with her flesh and blood and enjoyed my own bright future.

Cause and consequence came full circle. My reckoning was near.

I spoke a little longer before their graves. The sky darkened.

I felt it. The time had come.

Slowly, I walked around the back of Nanshan, to a viewing platform on a cliff.

From the height, the lights of countless homes flickered through the night.

I took off my clothes and leaped from the cliff with all my strength.

My limbs began to change. My hearing and sense of smell sharpened as never before.

Then, with a few bounds, I disappeared into the thick forest.

The next day, the cemetery caretaker found a complete set of men’s clothes on the platform.

In his hazy memory, he thought he had seen an enormous black wolfdog bounding along the cliff late that night.

The End