Chapter 50

Main Text Chapter Fifty Mother-Child Fiend

Mother-Child Fiend

Li Chunlai was soaked head to toe by the rain, he stared at the half‑burned broken coffin, his heart was in turmoil—this is an opportunity given by Heaven, ah, the fire hasn't yet ruined what's inside the coffin; if you want to take it out you must seize the moment.

However, the rest of the villagers had already left; after finally hoping for a heavy rain, there were many things to prepare, and now in this remote wilderness only Li Chunlai remained; just thinking of the strange female corpse in the coffin made him feel a bit uneasy.

But thinking that exchanging the gold and silver jewelry for money would let him marry a big‑bottomed woman, the bachelor Li Chunlai no longer hesitated; he raised his hoe with both hands and used it to lift the coffin lid—the coffin had already been burned, so pushing the lid open required little effort; after a few lifts he pushed the broken board aside.

Just now, when the villagers opened the coffin, Li Chunlai merely squeezed into the crowd and glanced inside twice, not daring to look closely; but now, to strip a few valuable pieces of jewelry from the female corpse, he had to screw up his courage and look.

The foul smell inside the coffin had mostly dissipated, but after being burned and then soaked by rain, the corpse stench, dampness, and burnt odor mixed together into a strange, indescribable stench; although it was raining from above, it could not suppress the weird smell coming from the coffin.

Li Chunlai was smoked until his head ached; he pinched his nose and endured, glancing into the coffin that was already a bit burnt—if he hadn't looked it would have been fine, but once he looked he couldn't hold back and opened his mouth to go wah‑wah‑wah.

Seeing the rain grow heavier and the sky already dark, if he didn't act now it would be too late; Li Chunlai wiped the filth from his mouth, fixed his gaze on the gold‑silk bracelet on the female corpse's wrist, was about to reach for it when suddenly someone slapped him on the back.

That slap scared Li Chunlai so much he nearly wet his pants; he thought it was thunder striking, that the dead in the nearby graveyard had risen—people around here often heard rumors of zombies, but he never expected to actually encounter one.

But when he turned around, he saw it wasn't a zombie—it was his neighbor Ma Shun, the famed Ma Dadan of the village, broad‑shouldered and thick‑waisted, with a fine build; there's nothing under heaven he wouldn't dare do, and besides his bad temper, when he fights he pulls no punches, so normally hardly anyone in the village dares to provoke him.

Ma Dadan had earlier seen a few pieces of jewelry on the female corpse in the coffin and grew greedy, wanting to keep them for himself, but at the time there were many people around so he couldn't get his way; then he saw the village chief order Li Chunlai to burn the coffin, and he abandoned the idea. Not long after returning home, a heavy rain fell; Ma Dadan thought, 'This is truly heaven helping me!' Perhaps the coffin hadn't yet been completely burned, so taking advantage of nobody's attention, he slipped back.

Ma Dadan didn't want to waste words with the good‑for‑nothing Li Chunlai; he personally stripped the female corpse's jewelry and clothing piece by piece, bundled them into a small packet, humming a sad tune as he prepared to leave—only to see Li Chunlai squatting nearby, staring at him pleadingly.

Ma Dadan warned Li Chunlai not to tell anyone, or he'd throw him into a ditch to feed the wolves; then he rummaged in the packet, pulled out a shoe stripped from the female corpse's foot, and gave it to Li Chunlai as hush money.

Li Chunlai held that single shoe, feeling furious beyond words, yet he dared not offend Ma Dadan, so he reluctantly agreed; by then the coffin had been soaked by rain and couldn't be burned, so the two of them dug a pit nearby and buried the coffin.

Returning to the village, he told the village chief and the blind man that he had followed their instructions and burned the coffin together with the corpse. The blind man nodded, satisfied, saying: "That's good. I once heard my master mention the practice of striking drought stakes. A corpse newly buried in the earth, if interred in an unfavorable spot, will become a zombie; zombies easily turn into drought demons, and all such droughts are caused by drought demons. Although I, the blind man, cannot see, I understand this clearly in my heart. Hearing you speak of that coffin and the corpse inside, I know it is out of the ordinary—perhaps this ancient corpse died while pregnant, and only after being buried did the child emerge; the child, buried alive, could not live, and thus naturally died as well. A child turned into a drought demon is even more fierce; this mother‑child pair both became zombies, hence they are called Mother‑Child Fiend, extremely formidable. Now reduced to ashes, they can no longer harm people."

Li Chunlai felt more and more uneasy inside as he listened, but he also feared that speaking the truth would earn the village chief's reproach, so he gave a few vague replies and then went home to sleep.

At night, lying on his own kang, he tossed and turned unable to sleep; as soon as he closed his eyes he dreamed the female corpse and her son came to choke his neck, frightening him into a cold sweat.

The rain did not cease all night; as morning approached, he heard a commotion outside, and Li Chunlai hurriedly put on his clothes and went out to see what was happening.

It turned out that Ma Dadan, together with his wife and two children—a family of four—had been ripped open in his own home, their intestines spilled all over the ground, and all four human hearts had vanished.

Li Chunlai thought, 'This is bad; Ma Dadan's family's hearts and livers were probably chewed up by that female corpse—maybe tonight the corpse will come looking for me.' What could he do? He was naturally timid, the more he thought the more frightened he grew, his back turned cold, he could no longer hold it in, and he urinated fully into his own pants.

At this moment the villagers discovered a completely naked female corpse in a pile of dry straw beside Ma Dadan's house; the corpse's complexion was ruddy and lively, its fingernails were extremely long, like steel hooks; most remarkable were its feet—not the large feet of ordinary rural women, but the three‑inch bound feet of ancient women, and these small feet were covered in fur, very hard; looking only at the soles, one would think they were the hooves of some animal.

The female corpse that Li Chunlai and Ma Dadan had buried in the coffin the previous night was completely withered and purple, whereas this corpse looked as if it had just died, with blood still traces around its mouth—could it have become like this by eating the hearts and livers of living people?

A major incident of an extermination massacre occurred in the village, alarming the public security organs, which interrogated the villagers repeatedly like sifting through a sieve, but the case was too sinister; moreover, the village head and the blind people's organization had everyone erecting a dry-whipping post, which was considered a big superstitious activity. The villagers could not clearly explain what had happened; even if they knew, they could not speak, and if they did, no one would believe them, and speaking ill might implicate themselves. In the end, the police could do nothing but have the female corpse with small feet transported back for examination, seal the scene, and the case temporarily became an unsolved mystery.

The village head had scolded Li Chunlai several times in private, telling him to keep quiet and bury the matter in his stomach. Although Li Chunlai usually seemed listless, he still had some ideas in his mind, and he did not tell anyone about his hiding of the single embroidered shoe. Regardless, even if that female corpse were a zombie, the police had taken it away for autopsy, and Ma Dadan also died, so they pushed all the blame onto Ma Dadan, claiming he had forced them to do it; Ma Dadan was usually timid and cowardly, so the villagers believed his words and did not pursue it further. Anyway, the deaths of the four members of the Ma family were all due to Ma Dadan's greed bringing disaster upon himself.

Li Chunlai dared not take out that embroidered shoe to show anyone; although he was uneducated, he knew the shoe was an antique from a previous dynasty, and he had pinned all his hopes for a bride-price on that single shoe. Grave robbing was rampant in Shaanxi, and the trade in cultural relics was extremely brisk; outsiders often came to the village to buy old things, but Li Chunlai was timid and, wanting to avoid attention, never dared to make a move.

One day, a distant relative of Li Chunlai from a neighboring county who was hauling goods to Beijing said a lot of good things, gave him a ride, and he followed to Beijing. After inquiring, he learned that there were antique buyers around Panjiayuan, so he asked his way and came over; it could be said that we were fated to meet, and the moment he spoke, he found me.

Li Chunlai appeared plain and timid on the outside, but he hid a trace of extreme slyness that was hard to detect. After drinking quite a bit of beer, his face flushed and his neck thickened; emboldened by the alcohol, he recounted the origin of that embroidered shoe in full, skipping over some parts, his language poor, and in other places his words failed to convey his meaning, yet I managed to understand about eighty or ninety percent of it.

I said to Li Chunlai, "The history of your shoe really can be described as somewhat tortuous. Just now I took a look, and this sandalwood‑soled fragrant embroidered shoe is not bad; to say that an embroidered shoe from several hundred years ago has been preserved this well is quite rare. I have handled a few pairs before, and the satin uppers had all turned to bark, but…"

Li Chunlai worried that I would say the shoe was worthless, appearing very nervous, and hurriedly asked, "Boss, how much is this shoe actually worth?"

I made a helpless gesture, sucking my teeth, and said, "Old brother, if there were a pair, this shoe would be worth some money, but there's only one…"

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