Si Teng (Rattan) – CH 062

Chapter 62

Miss Bai Ying? Who was Miss Bai Ying? This was the second time he had heard the name in recent days. Zhou Wandong was suspicious and asked Jia Guizhi several times, but she was in a daze, as if she hadn’t heard him at all.

Zhou Wandong had heard of the Great Living Buddha, but not Bai Ying. Bai Ying sounded like an ordinary woman’s name. How could she be mentioned in the same breath as the Great Living Buddha?

Jia Guizhi was also pondering this question.

She wondered, what kind of person was Miss Bai Ying?

Speaking of Bai Ying, one couldn’t avoid mentioning her great-grandfather, Jia Guihong.

***

Great-grandfather Jia Guihong, the third child in the family, was nicknamed Jia San. By the time Jia Guizhi could remember, he was already utterly decrepit. She had heard everything about this great-grandfather from her grandfather.

When her grandfather spoke of this, he was very angry. He said that they were not from Qinghai at all in the past, and they lived well in Shanghai. He fumed, “Do you know Shanghai? It’s a great place. You don’t know how prosperous Nanjing Road is. There are so many ladies wearing cheongsams and high heels, twisting their bodies around, so beautiful. There are so many shops selling mosquito nets, toilet water, vanishing cream, quilt covers, scissors, top hats, and everything. You can also watch movies, and there are opera stages. Let me tell you, Beijing’s famous actors are not famous in the capital. Only after they have visited the docks of Shanghai can they become truly famous all over the country.”

It was such a wonderful place, a place where foreigners were vying to establish concessions. One night, his uncle, Jia San, returned in a yellow chartered car. For some unknown reason, he ordered his entire family to pack up and move to the Northwest.

What was the Northwest? It was a desolate, uninhabited place, a place of exile since ancient times. In the past, high-ranking officials who had committed crimes would go crazy and hang themselves upon hearing they were being exiled to the Northwest. Who would be so eager to move to such a place?

Furthermore, China was in turmoil at the time. Chaos abounded in China, from east to west and from north to south. It was either war or banditry, drought or floods. Wouldn’t it be suicidal for the whole family, young and old, to set off like this?

Jia San’s wife tried everything, crying, making a scene, and even threatening to commit suicide, but to no avail. When they set out, everyone, except Jia San, wept as if they were in mourning.

At first, they had no specific destination; they simply headed northwest. Jia San hinted that the north was in the midst of a war, making it difficult to travel there, and the south was also unsettled. He heard the Red Army’s guerrillas were elusive, so they had to go to less populated areas. But the southwest wasn’t an option, as “Miss Bai Ying” had instructed them to avoid it. So, the northwest was the only option left.

Originally, they hadn’t planned to settle in Nangqian. However, upon arriving there, disaster struck. The Ma family warlords, who controlled Qinghai, were plundering Tibetans, killing people, stealing grain, silver, and horses. Almost all the property they had painstakingly saved along the way was looted. What Jia Guizhi’s grandfather couldn’t forgive the most was that during this sudden disaster, his elder uncle, Jia San, simply yelled at them to hide. The first thing he tried to save was a long chest. As Jia San’s wife fled, she was struck by a stray bullet and died of shock.

With no means of survival after losing their lives, they had no choice but to settle in Nangqian.

No one in the family liked the old man. They all thought he was mysterious and strange. If it weren’t for the kindness he brought up, they would have thrown him out long ago, along with his bedding. Jia Guizhi’s mother, in particular, hated the old man. When she gave birth to Jia Guizhi at home, Jia San, trembling on crutches, walked from the side room to the door of her house, repeating in fear, “It’s this child. The eighty-year deadline will come sooner or later…”

Later, Jia Guizhi asked Grandfather what this eighty-year deadline meant. Grandfather glared and spat, “Listen to this old man’s nonsense! He says he encountered a demon in his early years, and the demon told him to do something he had to do seventy years from now. Eighty years is the deadline. If he doesn’t do it by then, the Jia family, from top to bottom, will be wiped out, and their bodies will be mutilated. Pah, pah, pah, he’s crazy. We ran all the way from Shanghai to this place.” Her grandfather was deeply resentful that he hadn’t become a Shanghainese in this lifetime, and he always brought this up when he scolded her great-grandfather.

As for the demon thing, Jia Guizhi felt that although her family kept saying “pah, pah, pah,” in their hearts they would rather believe it than not. Otherwise, why had she been raised a Buddhist since she was a child? Her mother even repeatedly told her, “Devote yourself to Buddhism, Guizhi. The Living Buddha will bless you…”

One day, when her great-grandfather was nearly dying, she squatted by the doorway, shoveling sand. She looked up and saw the skinny old man, his eyes gleaming, waving at her. She forgot her mother’s instructions to “stay away from that old demon, Great-Grandfather,” and for some reason, she walked into her great-grandfather’s room.

***

The road wasn’t smooth—sometimes bumpy, sometimes rough. Except for occasionally stopping in a deserted place where they couldn’t identify the direction, they were rushing most of the time. After sleeping several times in a daze against the freezer in the car that he didn’t know what it was used for, they finally arrived.

It was midnight, and the car was parked on a mountain road near a cliff. The trunk door opened, and Zhou Wandong poked his head in, gruffly asking Qin Fang, “Do you want to go to the bathroom?”

Qin Fang hummed, then leaned against the wall of the car to get up. Thanks to his exceptional cooperation, Zhou Wandong hadn’t bothered him much along the way. In the end, he even decided to remove the tape on his mouth: after all, he had to eat, and the ripping and pasting, while not painful, was rather a hassle.

After getting out of the car, Qin Fang realized this wasn’t a convenient parking spot. After getting back in, Zhou Wandong and Jia Guizhi seemed in no hurry to leave, chatting away in the back. Qin Fang’s heart was pounding. He gently nudged the car door to listen and heard Jia Guizhi say, “It should be in this valley among the cliffs, but it’s impossible to recognize it from above. The mountains are so similar. My great-grandfather said he had a map. We should follow it and go in honestly from the ground.”

Map? Why did it sound like a tomb raider’s treasure hunt?

Zhou Wandong’s voice sounded a little impatient. “Have you seen your great-grandfather’s map? Have you been to that place?”

“No, and I haven’t been there.”

“You haven’t even seen it, so how do you know it exists?”

“Everything my great-grandfather said he’d mentioned is in a long chest. No one has touched it.”

Zhou Wandong was puzzled. “Why not? At least open it and take a look. Maybe the old man left behind some treasure. Maybe there are… gold ingots inside.”

Gold ingots? Jia Guizhi sneered.

The long, black chest, like her great-grandfather, was loathed, even avoided. Her grandpa said that when they settled in Nangqian, he saw with his own eyes her great-grandfather Jia San carry a woman’s body out of that chest.

The chest was long but narrow. Along the way, they had wondered curiously about what was inside, but they had never compared it with a coffin.

A long journey from Shanghai to Nangqian, nearly two months of trekking, sometimes even sleeping on the top of a box. Who would have thought that inside would be a corpse!

Her great-grandfather Jia San must have been possessed. He’d been possessed since the night he returned from work and, uncharacteristically, announced they were moving.

After her great-grandfather’s death, the family wanted to burn his belongings, but no one wanted to enter the room filled with sour odors or touch the box that had once held a corpse. They simply locked the door and left it at that. Jia San lived in the most remote room anyway, so one more room wouldn’t make a difference.

Later, a new, larger house was built, and the old house remained empty. Then, Jia Guizhi went away to study, married, and settled down, rarely returning to Nangqian. The older generation fell ill or died, leaving only a few members of the family. At the time, Zhao Jianglong suggested she sell the family inheritance for money, but she declined, saying she didn’t need the money anyway.

Perhaps deep down, she remembered everything her great-grandfather said when he summoned her that day.

Or perhaps, despite outwardly professing complete disbelief, she secretly harbored a lingering fear.

After hearing that Nangqian had been affected by the 2010 Yushu earthquake, Jia Guizhi immediately returned to her hometown. The old house, locked for decades, finally collapsed, revealing the corner of a blackened box, shattered with wood chips, amidst the rubble.

Staying close to their ancestral home, they built a new house on the site, setting aside a room specifically for the long box. If it weren’t for Zhao Jianglong’s sudden career change…

After selling off their property and arranging for close family members to relocate to the provincial capital, Xining, Nangqian suddenly became completely irrelevant to the Jia family. All their belongings were thrown away or sold, except for the long box. After much hesitation, they chose a quiet night to secretly bury it next to their grandfather Jia San’s grave.

She told Zhou Wandong that the box hadn’t been touched, but that wasn’t true.

A few months ago, Zhao Jianglong offered to smuggle goods for someone. This was a common practice among the underworld. The smuggler didn’t carry the goods, as they were highly suspicious and the easiest to spot. Someone else, who wasn’t suspected, had to be chosen to carry the goods in order to keep them from being discovered during an investigation. But they were also worried about the possibility of someone smuggling the goods away, so they kept a close eye on them along the way.

After Zhao Jianglong’s factory closed down, although Jia Guizhi sold her land to pay off his debts, she still owed a lot. With a criminal record, it was difficult to make a comeback quickly, and life wasn’t as comfortable as before, so she had to find some unconventional ways to make some money. Since Zhao Jianglong was going out, the two of them had a good time the night before. Their relationship had surprisingly improved after the betrayals of their mistresses, so it was an unintentional act.

After the incident, Zhao Jianglong lamented that they were both old enough to have a child. They’d both had medical checkups and were fine, so why hadn’t they had any children?

Jia Guizhi felt a sharp pang in her heart, but she knew Zhao Jianglong meant it, so she remained silent. After a while, Zhao Jianglong casually asked, “When did you get that scar on your back?”

Scar? When did she get it? She had no idea. She reached out and touched the spot he mentioned. It was smooth, without the usual roughness and protrusions of scars. She asked Zhao Jianglong to take a photo with his phone. “Oh, there it is, a shallow one, and it didn’t hurt. It must have been rubbed sometime.”

But as she got older, she always felt a certain anxiety, fearing that the occasional abnormality in her body was a sign of a terminal illness. After Zhao Jianglong fell asleep, she lay in bed, examining the photo, then zooming in on it.

Her heart suddenly skipped a beat, and she swallowed like a guinea pig. She slowly sat up against the backrest of the bed, and with trembling fingers, she pointed at the scars to count them.

Magnifying them, she could see clearly that it wasn’t just one, but seven, twisted together. Each one was slender and hideous, like… a vine thread.

In a flash, she suddenly understood many things.

—These weren’t scars; they were threatening reminders.

—Why seven? Because Grandpa had mentioned that a task would begin in seventy years, with eighty years being the deadline. Counting from 1937, it had been almost seventy-seven years. Seventy-seven minus seventy equals seven. For every year that passed, there was one scar.

—Why hadn’t she and Old Zhao had children in all these years? Because if the task wasn’t completed, there would be no descendants, and her body would be mutilated.

—Why did her great-grandfather say, so terrified, “It’s this child. The eighty-year deadline will sooner or later be hers…”?

Could it be that everything her great-grandfather said was true?

As soon as Zhao Jianglong left, she went to Nangqian. She opened the long box at my great-grandfather’s grave with trepidation. Inside was a letter, written in beautiful handwriting, as if by a woman, signed “Bai Ying.”

There were also letters from her great-grandfather. He was illiterate. Before, he had to have someone write for him. After liberation, he participated in a literacy campaign and worked hard to learn to read. He had read a Xinhua Dictionary until the pages were worn out. Finally, he could write haltingly, his letters varying in size and shape. He circled the words he couldn’t write, but it didn’t affect her understanding.

After reading the whole thing, a chill ran down her spine. Only one phrase lingered in her mind: demons and monsters.

Panicking, she sought help from her mentor, the guru who had initiated her into Buddhism. She vaguely explained that she was in “serious trouble.” The guru asked her, “Is it serious?” If it was too serious, she could only seek help from the Great Living Buddha.

Oh, the Great Living Buddha, she knew. It was difficult for ordinary people to see him. It was said that a lay Buddhist from mainland China sincerely requested an audience and donated one million yuan in exchange for a few words with the Great Living Buddha.

What could she bring to the Great Living Buddha? Why should she expect him to help her solve this serious problem?

Just then, she received a call from Zhao Jianglong, who told her in a relaxed tone that the trip was simple and that he had seen the product—a simple, unremarkable bead. However, she heard that it was quite special in the eyes of Tibetans and even had a name: Nine-Eyed… Dzi Bead.