Chapter 8

First, I told them a story, so they would understand how serious this was.

Once, there was a woman whose name I couldn’t even remember.

She was a good mother. Unfortunately, she had married a piece of scum.

She loved her daughter dearly. Unfortunately, her husband didn’t.

Her husband wanted a son. Without one, he couldn’t carry on the family line and bring honor to his ancestors.

So one day, that husband decided to sell out his own daughter.

He demanded a sum of dirty money, hoping to start a new life with it, even though he knew the money was being paid in exchange for his daughter.

But the girl’s mother refused. She wouldn’t agree.

So her face was smashed with a rock, her clothes cut off with scissors, her body wrapped in a roll of coarse cloth. Her own husband buried her here.

For sixteen years, no one knew.

Until a few days ago, when the police dug her up.

That was the end of the story. It was that simple.

But the two of them stared, dumbfounded. Perhaps they had no idea what I meant.

I had to explain further. “There are two points. First, if I bury you down there, no one may find out for more than ten years, either… Second, you still haven’t worked out who that story was about? You came here last night behind the police’s backs. Don’t you know why?”

Yes, what had brought them here last night was their secret from sixteen years ago.

The secret they still wouldn’t tell the police, even with a murdered daughter and her killer at large.

Zhang Lingzhi finally remembered.

He drew a sharp, deep breath, then began crying and pleading. “Please… Let me go… Please…”

Zhang Jianjun understood, too. But he wasn’t sorry.

He still thought money could solve it. He said, “You… I’ll give you money…”

I was so angry I laughed.

Then I crouched down to look for something in my backpack.

I thought of Niannian again.

Of the last time we played rock, scissors, cloth.

Of how I’d threatened never to play with her again, making her come up the mountain on an adventure with me.

She had been afraid, but she followed me anyway.

We became separated on the mountain. I left her where she was and went off alone to look for a way out.

I didn’t find one. I got lost, too.

After dark, my dad found me.

He told me Niannian’s parents had found her. I believed him.

But that wasn’t the truth.

I only heard the truth before my dad died last year.

He had never dared tell me, because he knew how close Niannian and I were.

The truth was that Zhang Lingwei and Zhang Lingzhi found Niannian first that day on the mountain. They hurt her.

It was hard to imagine how two people of fourteen and fifteen could do such a thing.

Zhang Lingwei beat Niannian. Zhang Lingzhi sexually assaulted her.

Afterward, they planned to push her into a mountain gully and leave her to die.

At their age, all I could think was that they were simply evil. Evil enough to deserve death.

Whether it was good luck or bad, Niannian didn’t die then.

Her mother found her.

But perhaps death would have been better.

If Niannian had died then, her mother would not have died.

As soon as Yang Zhicheng learned what had happened, he went to Zhang Jianjun and demanded money.

But Niannian’s mother refused. She wanted justice for her daughter.

So that night, Yang Zhicheng killed her and buried her here.

Perhaps he didn’t want Niannian, either. He just feared that killing too many people at once would be difficult to conceal.

Because six months later, Niannian “drowned.”

Afterward, Yang Zhicheng remarried, and really did have two sons…

It didn’t matter anymore. Before coming back to my hometown, I had already killed him.

With this knife in my backpack.

I took it out.

Tied to the pillar, Zhang Lingzhi wet himself in terror.