Chapter 68
Chapter 68
Xie Qingling immediately crouched down and asked, “What is it?”
“Too many,” Dai Xingyu said. “I can’t carry them all by myself.”
Xie Qingling’s heart sank. She exchanged a glance with Shen Huaizhou and saw the same grim premonition in his eyes.
They stripped off the long skirts covering their gear and undid their straps until only their close-fitting black bodysuits remained. Then Xie Qingling and Shen Huaizhou jumped into the river together.
Their form was textbook-perfect, their movements swift. They looked thoroughly experienced.
Once underwater, their two slender bodies moved with the grace and agility of fish born to the river.
Dai Xingyu stared blankly for a moment before realizing what had just happened.
If they could both swim, why had they ordered him in alone?
That was too much!
He was furious!
Dai Xingyu grumbled, then dived back toward the riverbed.
By then, Xie Qingling had already reached the bottom.
The muddy water and dim light hampered her vision somewhat, but as a Spirit Wielder, she could still “see” the many burlap sacks lying across the silt-covered riverbed.
Luo Yuancheng sprawled atop the small hill formed by the sacks, clutching them and refusing to let go.
She swam over, hoisted two sacks at once, and began making her way back up.
The sacks were excessively heavy. Even for a Spirit Wielder, making the round trip through the river’s resistance took its toll, and Xie Qingling was panting slightly when she reached the bank.
Hearing her breathe, Shen Huaizhou reminded her, “You can use Spirit to hold your breath. It’ll take less effort that way.”
Xie Qingling asked, “If I use Spirit to hold my breath, how long can I stay underwater at most?”
“For me, if I only use Spirit to hold my breath without doing anything else or maintaining any defenses, I can last about a day.” Shen Huaizhou looked her up and down. “You, though? Ten hours at most.”
Xie Qingling shot back, “Why? I’m an innate Spirit too.”
“Because you haven’t been a Spirit Wielder for long enough.”
Xie Qingling fell silent.
After a moment, she asked, “How many years has it been for you, then?”
“Almost three.”
“Oh.” Xie Qingling pursed her lips. The difference wrought by years of accumulation could not be erased so easily.
Using the method Shen Huaizhou had taught her, she dived again.
Without the need to hold her breath, it was indeed much easier. She moved freely through the river like a fish.
She carried up one load, then another.
Xie Qingling climbed ashore, went back into the water, climbed ashore again, then dived once more…
Back and forth they went.
After the three of them made four or five trips, they finally cleared all the sacks from the riverbed. Along the way, they also fished out Luo Yuancheng, the zombie who had been drowned “dead” by the river.
The sacks that had formed a small hill on the riverbed were laid side by side along the bank in two long rows.
By then, all three of them were nearly exhausted.
An ordinary person could never have managed such a tremendous amount of labor.
Xie Qingling counted twenty-eight sacks in total.
Every mouth had been tied shut. There was no way to tell from the outside what they contained.
Dai Xingyu murmured, “Why does this look so creepy…?”
Xie Qingling said nothing. She crouched in silence and untied the first sack in front of her.
Inside lay a skeleton.
The skeleton wore a tattered red garment. Mud had eaten into the bones and stained the fabric brown, leaving it looking partly like blood and partly like earth. Its age was impossible to determine. The sack also held many heavy stones, which accounted for its crushing weight.
She opened the second sack. Inside was another skeleton, accompanied by the same load of stones.
This skeleton also wore a tattered red garment, one even more ruined than the last. Only a few thin scraps of red cloth hung precariously from the bones.
Then came the third sack. Once again, it held a skeleton and stones.
And once again, the skeleton was dressed in red.
This red garment was comparatively new. Patterns could still be faintly discerned in the fabric, though its precise style was no longer clear.
The more sacks they opened, the deeper their horror grew.
Dai Xingyu and Shen Huaizhou joined in and untied all the remaining sacks. Without exception, every one contained stones and a skeleton, and every skeleton wore red.
The only difference was the age of the garments. Some were newer, others older, as if they came from different eras.
The three of them fell silent. For a moment, no one spoke.
Twenty-eight bodies in all.
They might once have been living people, stuffed into sacks with stones and sunk into the river.
This was a mass murder that had gone on for years – perhaps for longer than anyone could imagine.
“This is insane…” Dai Xingyu murmured. “Why did so many people have to die…?”
Xie Qingling walked a circle around the twenty-eight bodies before finally stopping in front of one sack.
She spread the long skirt she had taken off across the ground, then tipped the skeleton out of the sack. Crouching beside it, she stared without moving.
After three or five seconds of silence, Shen Huaizhou asked, “Is there something special about this skeleton?”
“Its clothes are very new,” Xie Qingling said. “The garments on the other skeletons all show at least some signs of erosion from river silt, but this red dress is extremely new. You can even see its embroidered patterns.”
Xie Qingling closed her eyes, concealing the emotion within them. “Mandarin ducks playing in the water. Twin lotus blossoms on a single stalk. Don’t those patterns look familiar to you? This is a wedding dress.”
“A wedding dress?!”
“A wedding dress?!”
Shen Huaizhou and Dai Xingyu spoke at the same time.
Were all twenty-eight bodies brides?
No. That made no sense. How could so many brides have been sunk in the river?
With so many stones packed into the sacks, this had plainly been cold-blooded murder!
All three of their faces turned grim.
Just then, the voice in Xie Qingling’s mind spoke.
[With you I roam the Nine Rivers, where fierce winds rise and waters surge in waves. With you I roam the river’s islets, while drifting ice comes tumbling down. The cruel River God, the faithless River God – each year, she takes a beautiful bride. Year after year, lovely maidens enter the river. Even after twenty-eight full years, she has yet to find the beloved she desires, and the River God’s patience is utterly spent.]
[Dissatisfied with the bride she only just received this year, she demands that humanity provide another offering capable of pleasing her. Humans, oh humans, present your most sincere submission and your most beautiful bride.]
[If you cannot offer another beautiful bride within one month, the River God’s wrath will fall upon you.]
Xie Qingling’s face turned ashen. She asked Dai Xingyu, “Have you sensed the aura of any ghosts or monsters so far?”
“No. This isn’t a ghost or monster.”
“Ghosts didn’t cause this,” Xie Qingling said. “It was a god. A cruel god.”
Dai Xingyu and Shen Huaizhou exchanged a glance. The situation was already obvious, and they spoke almost in unison. “The River God’s Wedding?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“This disaster was caused by sacrificial rites, and there’s a very good chance more people will die…” Xie Qingling looked over the twenty-eight bodies spread across the ground. “As for these so-called brides, I suspect they were ultimately eaten by some kind of creature.”
Xie Qingling removed the skeleton from the red wedding dress embroidered with mandarin ducks and twin lotus blossoms, then placed it on the skirt she had spread out and carefully straightened every part.
Following the structure of a human skeleton, she arranged the bones one by one.
“This skeleton’s clothes are very new, but nothing remains except bone. There isn’t the slightest trace of flesh, and that isn’t right. A body at the bottom of a river will decompose faster because of the water and silt, but some soft tissue should still remain. These bones are far too clean. Rather than natural erosion, it looks more like something licked them clean.”
The image made Dai Xingyu’s scalp crawl.
Suddenly, Xie Qingling stopped handling the bones, her body going rigid.
“I think I know whose body this is.” Xie Qingling raised her head and looked at Luo Yuancheng, who lay nearby like the dead zombie he was, then murmured the words aloud.
Only then did Shen Huaizhou and Dai Xingyu remember that Luo Yuancheng had led them to these bodies.
Were all of them people Luo Yuancheng knew?
Were they the remaining three men and one woman?
“It’s Li Jiao, the woman among the other four.” Xie Qingling pointed to the empty space where one section of the leg bones should have been. “Her file says she was missing part of her right leg, and this matches. Li Jiao was disabled and normally used a mechanical prosthetic leg to walk.”
Li Jiao was forty-five years old and had once held a management position at a company.
Seven years ago, Li Jiao and her eight-year-old daughter had been in a car accident. Her daughter died in the crash, while Li Jiao lost her right leg and became disabled.
After two years of depression, Li Jiao quit her job. Despite her disabled body, she became a mountain climber.
Once she took up climbing, she seemed to rediscover meaning in life and gradually became cheerful again.
All of this had been recorded in the personal profiles of the five hiking companions.
This was Li Jiao, who had disappeared a month ago.
Shen Huaizhou and Dai Xingyu had both read their files. Once Xie Qingling reminded them, they understood as well.
As he looked at Li Jiao’s stark white bones bathed in moonlight, Dai Xingyu was overwhelmed by a swirl of emotions.
She had been dead for less than a month and was already reduced to this. It seemed Xie Qingling had been right: some creature had eaten her clean.
Beyond his regret, Dai Xingyu was deeply perplexed. “Seriously… After losing a leg, she should have stayed home and enjoyed the life she fought so hard to keep… Why did she insist on going mountain climbing…?”
He did not sound as though he blamed her. He only sounded heartbroken.
Xie Qingling said nothing.
A deep sigh sounded beside the river, mingling with the water striking the bank until no one could distinguish one from the other.
“We’ve found two people from the group of five. The other three are still missing,” Xie Qingling said. “We have to keep looking.”
There was no telling whether they were dead or alive.
She pressed both hands to the ground and attempted to control the skeletons through Soul Recall, hoping they might yield another clue.
This time, however, not one of the twenty-eight skeletons answered her.
They remained still and silent, as though asleep.
Shen Huaizhou asked, “What’s wrong?”
“There’s no response. In theory, Soul Recall allows me to command anything that a dead soul is attached to, whether it’s a skeleton or a corpse…” Xie Qingling stared at her own palms, lost in thought for a moment.
“They were eaten!” Realization struck Xie Qingling. She gritted her teeth, her voice cold enough to chill the blood. “Their souls were eaten too!”
Damn it!
How could such a thing exist?
What River God? She was not worthy of being called a god!
Xie Qingling sighed. “Dai Xingyu, contact the Director first and explain what’s happening here. Unless I’m mistaken, this case is much bigger than we thought.”
Dai Xingyu nodded, then began contacting Ling Fang.
Meanwhile, Xie Qingling and Shen Huaizhou turned their attention to Luo Yuancheng’s corpse.
Xie Qingling asked, “Burn him?”
Before setting out, all three of them had packed their own cases. If she remembered correctly, Shen Huaizhou had even stuffed a bottle of gasoline into his.
She had been puzzled at the time. Now she understood what it was for.
Clearly, this was not the first time Shen Huaizhou had handled such a situation. He had anticipated the possibility in advance.
“Yes. A body that has already reanimated can’t be left intact.”
“Then do it.”
Shen Huaizhou glanced at her again, a strange feeling rising in his heart.
This new hire ordered a veteran around with remarkable ease.
Shen Huaizhou remained silent for a long moment. In the end, he said nothing. He followed Xie Qingling’s instruction, poured out the gasoline, set it alight, and disposed of the reanimated Luo Yuancheng.
Xie Qingling asked him, “Was Luo Yuancheng’s reanimation connected to the creature in the river?”
“It might have been, or it might not,” Shen Huaizhou answered. “His remains were found in a valley surrounded by mountains, with a river running nearby. It was the perfect place for yin energy to gather. A human corpse left in such a place can reanimate on its own. Of course, the unknown creature may also have caused it.”
“Either way, once we drag that thing out and kill it, the problem will be solved.” Shen Huaizhou folded his arms. His striking face remained cold as he enunciated every word. “Remember this: when evil ghosts run rampant, kill the ghosts. When demons cause chaos, subdue the demons. When gods commit evil, slay the gods.”
“Exactly what I had in mind.”
–
By then, Dai Xingyu had finished reporting the situation at the scene to Ling Fang.
Dai Xingyu said, “The Director said he’ll hand over matters in Future City and have someone from the Logistics Department cover for him. Then he’ll leave the city and come support us. He told us to keep investigating until we uncover the truth.”
“This is an extremely serious case.”
If they did not resolve it, more people would die in the future.
Xie Qingling said, “First, leave a marker here for the Logistics Department so they can come handle the aftermath.”
“As for us…”
Xie Qingling raised her head and studied the black outlines of the peaks imprinted against the night sky. Dense forest stretched high enough to hide the moon, and unknown creatures seemed to rustle among the trees. Swish, swish, swish – the sound was merely wind brushing through the leaves.
A gust swept overhead. The canopy surged like waves, carrying a tremendous roar into the distance. Far-off mountains stood dark and silent beyond the forest.
A solitary moon hung high in the sky.
Xie Qingling felt as though the three of them stood inside a prison formed by the surrounding peaks.
She lowered her head and said heavily, “We need to find whoever is behind this.”
“Right now, we only know which god accepted the sacrifices. We still haven’t found the humans responsible for conducting the rites.”
“We’ll find them first.”
The faithless River God still wanted to demand an offering that would satisfy her.
Another beautiful bride had to be presented within one month.
It had been almost a month since Li Jiao’s death.
Another bride might already be in mortal danger.