chapter 8
Cheng Miao returned to the bedroom and retrieved the book. It still looked entirely ordinary, though the dense professional terminology made her head hurt.
She shook it, but nothing fell out.
Sitting on the bed, Cheng Miao looked from the medical text to its paper cover. Inspiration suddenly struck.
She carefully tore open the cover. Sure enough, a yellowed slip of paper had been hidden between the cover and the book.
Cheng Miao silently berated herself for the oversight. Rather than waste time regretting it, she studied the tiny words penciled on the slip.
The strokes were faint, and time had worn them down until they nearly blended into the paper’s natural grain.
“In ancient times, the First Emperor of Qin dispatched Xu Fu in search of medicine. Xu Fu journeyed to Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou, where he obtained a wondrous prescription that grants long life to those who consume it.”
“Take the flesh, skin, and meridians from the Zusanli, Hegu, Dazhui, Baihui, and Taiyang points of virgin boys and girls. On the night of the full moon, combine them with two catties of fleeceflower root, eight taels of white poria, eight taels of red poria, three taels of green salt, eight taels of Sichuan morinda root, and five taels of ginseng. Pour the medicine into a bowl and coat it with mercury. Grind it to a paste with the fingers, then roll it into pills. Take two mace at a time, washing it down with a hot broth of the virgin boy’s and girl’s vital blood. This prolongs life, preserves youth, and restores the aged.”
As Cheng Miao read those passages, even the shapes of the words seemed terrifying.
An elixir of restored youth made from the flesh and blood of children…
Now Cheng Miao knew what the residue inside the herbal medicine jars beneath the windows was. No wonder that nauseating scorched odor permeated the hidden room and everything beyond it.
Doctor Xu might have been one of the rare university graduates of his era, yet he clearly retained a deep fascination with feudal superstition. Wherever he had found this prescription, it had driven him mad enough to raise a blade against the children around him and follow its instructions.
Inside a drawer, Cheng Miao found a small metal box containing several black pills the size of thumb tips. These were the rejuvenation pills refined from Liu Xue’s flesh and blood.
No wonder children disappeared from Minsheng Lane at intervals. Whenever Doctor Xu finished his supply of pills, he selected another victim.
After Liu Xue’s death, rumors of a haunting caused many parents to move away with their children. With no targets left, Doctor Xu departed as well.
Cheng Miao casually slipped the metal box into her pocket, her thoughts drifting. Could Er Pang, the child from Aunt Song’s family whom Er Gou said had recently disappeared, be connected to Doctor Xu…?
As she speculated, her fingers tapped absently against the bottom of the drawer. Two crisp knocks instantly recalled her wandering thoughts.
Cheng Miao tapped again. Sure enough, the sound in the center was different. There was a false bottom!
She pressed down hard. As hoped, the concealed panel sprang up, revealing a photograph.
Cheng Miao held the photograph to the light. It was a group portrait. Everyone wore the clothes of ordinary civilians from the Qing dynasty, while the man in the center possessed a face identical to Doctor Xu’s. The people surrounding him looked deeply grateful. Some shook his hand; others presented him with eggs.
Doctor Xu held a child of two or three as he faced the camera, smiling with honest, good-natured warmth. He looked nothing like the madman Cheng Miao had encountered moments ago. Behind him stood an enormous herbal medicine cabinet, its densely packed drawers unpleasant to look at.
Cheng Miao turned the photograph over. Unsurprisingly, tiny handwriting marked its lower-right corner. Her blood ran cold.
“Photographed by Bai Shengshi in the twenty-fifth year of the Guangxu reign.”
…Cheng Miao almost felt an icy presence closing around her…
This was not the story of a modern university graduate corrupted into a murderer by old superstition.
It was the story of a monster that had survived for a century, ageless and unchanged, by devouring children.
Clutching the photograph, Cheng Miao left the hidden room. She hoisted Liu Xue’s small skeleton onto one shoulder and dragged Aunt Li’s remains with her free hand.
The three children outside recoiled at the sight. Cheng Miao had no time to reassure them. “I need your help. We’re going into the courtyard to dig a hole.”
The children were somewhat afraid of her. Though baffled, they obediently nodded.
Hu Zi and Er Gou came forward and took Aunt Li’s remains. Thanks to Cheng Miao’s earlier explanation, the boys were no longer frightened of the skeleton as they had been at first. Instead, they examined it from every angle with curiosity.
Niuniu ran ahead to open the clinic door, then froze the moment she pulled it wide. After a short pause, she turned toward Cheng Miao and said in her childish voice, “Sister Miaomiao, I think there’s someone in the stairwell.”
Cheng Miao’s hair nearly stood on end. She did not need to wonder who was blocking the way. She told Hu Zi and Er Gou to leave Aunt Li’s remains for now. “When I say run, forget everything else and follow me!”
The children tensed at the look on Cheng Miao’s face. Hu Zi gripped Niuniu tightly, while Cheng Miao took the lead and stepped out of the clinic with Liu Xue’s skeleton on her back.
Looking down the stairs from the second floor, she saw nothing but darkness in the first-floor stairwell. The longer she stared, the more it seemed that the stairs led into a bottomless abyss.
Only now, without the flashlight, did Cheng Miao realize that the stairwell was unnaturally dark. She had to use her imagination to reconstruct the traces of lives once lived on the mottled walls hidden behind the blackness.
At the entrance, where darkness met the light outside, a small figure stood in complete stillness. Only its blurred outline was faintly visible.
From Cheng Miao’s angle, she could not tell whether it was male or female. Instinct alone warned her that the danger radiating from it was almost tangible.
“Liu Xue… I’m here to help you. I know the truth now. I’ll give you a proper burial, and I’ll ask Hu Zi and the others to tell the world what happened.”
The figure seemed to lift its head as if it wanted to speak, then fell still again. The silence before the storm made Cheng Miao deeply uneasy. Her heart sinking, she raised the photograph.
Sure enough, even as a vengeful ghost, Liu Xue felt an irresistible fear of the man in that picture.
The shadow flickered, then vanished into the darkness.
Cheng Miao did not lower her guard. Still holding up the photograph, she hurried the three children through the stairwell. When she reached the open courtyard, she drew a deep breath of air stagnant as a dead pond and sincerely felt that, compared with the clinic and stairwell, even this sinister courtyard seemed welcoming.
The flower bed was the only part of the courtyard where digging a hole seemed possible. Cheng Miao and the children gathered around and began clawing away the earth.
Though the soil was relatively loose, it was threaded with countless plant roots. Even rotten, they formed a dense, tangled web.
Clearing them alone took Cheng Miao a long time. Though Liu Xue had just appeared, the anxiety in her heart did not ease in the slightest.
The intervals between Liu Xue’s appearances were shrinking, and the instance was nearing its end. In Games like this, the final stretch was often the most dangerous.
“Hu Zi, who’s that girl in the courtyard? I don’t think I’ve seen her before.”