Chapter 393: Qionglong Stone Shadow: The Story of the Letter

I heard it and my spine turned cold, my hands starting to tremble. After a long while, I said: "How could your grandmother be like that? Did she have some strange illness?"

"Later, the nanny found me. It turned out she had gone to the bathroom. After that, I was always afraid of my grandmother. It wasn't until I grew older that my grandmother told me that this was the way the women of the Huo family practiced their soft kung fu—they had to sleep hanging to achieve maximum flexibility. She had been sleeping like this ever since she was nineteen, a maiden. Now she couldn't sleep on a bed at all; she had bone spurs in many places, and only by hanging did it not hurt."

"Holy crap, then your grandfather must have practiced hard for a while before the wedding night," Fatty said.

Huo Xiuxiu ignored him and continued: "Because this left such a deep impression on me, I cared very much about her last words."

From Huo Xiuxiu's own account and my observations of her, she was a girl who had developed her own worldview early on, with independent thinking and a knack for analysis. So she remained preoccupied with her grandmother's sleeping posture and those few sleep-talking utterances. Of course, this preoccupation didn't arise overnight. The reason she felt those sleep-talking words had some unusual significance was that later she heard the same dream words many more times.

As she grew up, she began to believe that deep in the heart of her grandmother, who seemed as tough as a rock, there was a huge knot.

This knot was extremely secretive. Her grandmother might never reveal it, even to her death. But Huo Xiuxiu was certain that the knot was related to that sentence.

"There's no time left."

What thing had no time left? It was hard to say whether it was curiosity, or that same fatalistic Taiji fate like in my heart, or as she herself said, her hope to untie this knot for her beloved grandmother. She began deliberately or unintentionally probing into this matter. What surprised me was that in this probing, this little girl showed astonishing initiative. Her clarity of thought and grasp of things were disproportionate to her age.

"The girls of our Huo family are often beautiful and shrewd, while the boys are handsome but tend to be foolish," she explained. "I don't know why. Maybe it's because the girls are raised by Grandma from a young age. My older brother just fools around with girls all day, never serious."

"I don't think spying on your own grandmother and aunt is something a proper person does," Fatty jabbed.

She thought about it, probably felt that was somewhat true, and sighed: "Anyway, as I investigated, my grandmother's knot became my knot."

She truly started investigating this matter about four years ago, when she was fifteen. At the time, she had no clues at all, only that sentence "There's no time left." For me, it might have been completely impossible to start, but for her, there was an entry point I couldn't have imagined.

At first, she tried to find her grandmother's diary, but unfortunately, not everyone keeps a diary. Her grandmother's written records from earlier times were very scarce, unlike my family. My grandmother was a refined lady (note: my grandmother), and the sons and grandsons she raised all had a hint of scholarly refinement. Even my Third Uncle, when he wasn't talking, could pass for thirty percent of a pale-faced scholar. The Huo family style was more pragmatic and jianghu. The women had to fight, go into tombs, and also raise children and manage the household. They wouldn't have time to practice calligraphy or write essays. So Old Madam Huo's temperament back then definitely wasn't like Lin Daiyu's. Hence, there wouldn't be many written records left.

However, Huo Xiuxiu didn't come up empty-handed. She found many letters; correspondence was kept on file. With the childish idea that she might find her grandmother's love letters through snooping, she read through several boxes of old letters. Unfortunately, all the letters were basically business correspondence, with none of the content she was looking for.

But she did find something strange.

She discovered that starting from 1995, there was a very special mail every year: a package, generally arriving in the second half of March. In those days, packages came with a notification slip, and then you had to go to the post office to pick them up. Because of the Huo family's status, all items were first filtered by several people and then filed. Most packages were opened and inspected, the contents recorded on a form, and who the item was for written on the back. It was on these forms that Xiuxiu spotted something peculiar.

On the forms for 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999, the contents of those packages were all: videotapes. And the person who picked them up was always her grandmother.

That meant, for those several years in March, someone had been sending her grandmother a videotape each year.

Her grandmother was a very old-fashioned person who only watched opera. It was unimaginable that something like videotapes would have any connection with her.

Unsurprisingly, she became intensely curious about the whereabouts of those videotapes. So she started paying attention and looked for every possible opportunity to find them.

(I recalled a similar experience of my own, only I was looking for the porn flicks my father got from his Hong Kong friend. Later I realized I wasn't in love with the erotic images, but with the thrill of finding the tapes themselves.) To that end, she even made a very detailed plan, like when her grandmother would go out, and how she would handle the tapes once she saw them. She saved up two months' allowance to buy a VCR and set up a dubbing connection with the home VCR.

Eventually, she found those tapes under the floorboards of her grandmother's wardrobe. She picked one, quickly went to the living room to dub it, then put it back. The entire process was as tense as being a spy. After that, she chose a time to go to a friend's house and watch the tape.

The content of the tape was, as she said, like surveillance footage. It showed a very dim little room, with several people in white clothes crawling on the floor. The tape had about thirty minutes of footage. In it, she recognized her aunt, Huo Ling.

Her aunt seemed soulless, crawling on the floor. It was utterly terrifying.

She had known since childhood that her aunt had gone missing. So, after seeing this tape, she was scared out of her wits. She didn't know what was going on or what to do. She just instinctively knew that this was something very bad. Her grandmother seemed to be hiding a secret. Her grandmother indeed had a very frightening knot.

But she didn't dare ask her grandmother what was going on, because she knew it wouldn't end well. She also didn't dare tell anyone else. In the following month, she was constantly anxious.

But perhaps because she really had a personality similar to mine, after she slowly calmed down, that craving for the truth began to torment her. People with that fatalistic Taiji fate have a curiosity that others find hard to believe.

After that, she continued investigating. At first, there were no results, until she adopted a very clever but risky method.

She actually spent several months imitating her grandmother's handwriting and wrote a reply to every single address from those old letters.

The letter was roughly as follows:

"Dear all: Recently I dreamt of that matter again. Through the years, this nightmare has lingered. I wonder if you are all well. Nearing old age, with one foot in the grave, I wish to see you all once more. There is one thing I didn't mention back then, and on reflection, it may be crucial. I hope to speak with you face to face, just as old friends catching up."

These letters spanned nearly half a century; even the most recent one was from long ago. Most of those addresses probably couldn't be delivered. But Huo Xiuxiu said she felt that those business contacts were in villages or small towns, where change was minimal, especially in villages. Even if the address had changed, because the area was small and people knew each other, as long as the letter reached the village, someone would deliver it to the recipient.

After sending the letters, she took charge of the family mailbox, making everyone think she was in love, waiting for letters from her boyfriend. Actually, she was filtering the mail. For the first two months, there was no reply. Starting from the third month, a few sporadic replies came, all basically expressing confusion.

The little girl persisted, checking the mailbox every morning at five, without interruption.

In the fifth month, the letter finally arrived.

Only one line:

"Let the past be."

She immediately knew she was onto something. This person definitely knew the situation. The return address was from a small shop in Liulichang, right in Beijing. So she immediately packed up and went to that shop.

It was a rainy day. The entire city was covered by a rain hood. Liulichang was sparse, with few people around. Many storefronts had closed early. She knocked and entered, and saw an old man in the inner room. The old man looked at her, smiled, revealing a gold tooth.

Huo Xiuxiu said, "That old man, his name is Jin Wantang. Does that ring any bell?"