The night was silent. Qin Fang had no intention of heading back to the An residence, so he took the opportunity to topple onto Su Yunkai’s bed when he didn’t notice and stuck to it like dough.
When Su Yunkai found out, Qin Fang was already asleep. Ming Yue let down the mosquito net. There were so many mosquitoes here that they could literally carry a body away in the middle of the night without the net there to protect it. Seeing that the coachman had not come in for a long time, she asked, “Where’s Uncle Chang?”
“He didn’t want to disturb me in the evening, so he said he would squeeze in with the other officers tonight, since they already set up several tents anyway.” Su Yunkai added, “Didn’t he have dinner with you all?”
“No, I had thought he went to eat with Lord Xu and the rest.” Ming Yue looked outside. It was already 10 PM. There was no more noise outside. In the early summer, the evening wind was still quite cold. In the middle of the night, one still needed to cover up with a blanket. “I’ll go ask Lord Xu and the others if they’ve seen Uncle Chang.”
Su Yunkai got up and said, “It’s getting late. I’ll go.”
Ming Yue said with a smile, “No more disputes. Let’s go together.”
Su Yunkai also smiled. He got a lantern and went to find the coachman with her.
Chang De was a coachman from the Damingfu Yamen. He had come with them the entire way during their patrol. Perhaps because he was used to serving officials, he had the idea that less was better than more. He is always respectful and distant to Su Yunkai. On the road, he simply drove the carriage and didn’t talk much. Thus, their feelings did not run deep. However, as this was a foreign village, in the end, they felt uneasy because they were unable to confirm that he was with others.
Relative to the Zhu residence, the tents of the county yamen officers were on the left and those of the escort agency were on the right. When Su Yunkai and Ming Yue exited the Zhu residence, they headed towards the left. This was their first time on this road. The road was quite flat, but there were many fork roads. They took the wrong path a couple of times and had to turn back. The good thing was that they went together. They talked and joked in low voices the whole way, so they didn’t get impatient, even when they went the wrong way.
The village roads were narrow. Ming Yue stood in front. Su Yunkai, who stood slightly behind, was responsible for the lantern. The light hit the ground under her feet almost perfectly, brightening up the road. Seeing that they were about to arrive at the tents, Ming Yue walked faster. She wanted to get back as soon as possible so that Su Yunkai could sleep more.
Who knew that she would suddenly trip? Her entire body began to topple forward. Su Yunkai noticed immediately and caught her with one hand. The lantern rolled down beside her. The oil overflowed and the fire quickly turned the lantern into a ball of fire. The fire all around made the instantly pale face of Ming Yue ruddier. Once she discovered she was almost completely in Su Yunkai’s arms, her cheeks truly turned crimson. “I’m all right. I just tripped.”
Su Yunkai held her steady and used the light that was becoming weaker and weaker to observe her. “Are you truly fine?”
“Mhm.”
Seeing that she was moving away, Su Yunkai suddenly remembered that he had reached out too quickly. It appeared that he had not actually grabbed her waist . . . whatever he had grabbed was very soft . . . . He immediately released her and put his hand behind his back, embarrassed and speechless. He flailed about for a topic and said, “Be careful when you walk at night.”
The sudden “chest attack” had been engulfed by Ming Yue’s panic at the moment. She didn’t realize it at all and was much calmer than him at present. Hearing this, she rubbed at the grass on the ground with her heel. “It’s not that I was careless, it’s just that the grass here was so lush that the puddle was completely hidden.”
Su Yunkai also looked over. Sure enough, even though the lantern fire was still there, the green grass was lush and jade colored. The puddle could only be seen if the grass was moved to the side. Furthermore, the road could only allow one person to pass. Even in the daytime, people who had not walked this road would be caught in the “trap” at least once.
Ming Yue patted down her robe, stood up, and turned her ankle. “It’s good that I’m all right.”
Seeing that she didn’t appear to be in pain, Su Yunkai said, “Now that the lantern is gone, we can only borrow the light of the moon. I’ll walk ahead and you follow.” After that, he thought for a moment, then extended his hand to her. “Hold on.”
Ming Yue looked at the hand stretched out under the moon. She decided to only grasp onto the corner of his sleeve.
He walked slowly before her. Ming Yue basically walked onto his footsteps. Each step was steady.
Every time she looked up, she could see his tall back.
From behind, it looked just like the image etched into her memory from when he chased away a vicious dog and grabbed her hand as they ran.
At that time, her sight had been blurred by tears and she couldn’t see the little boy clearly. Now, without the lantern and the fire and with only the faint moonlight, she still couldn’t see clearly, but the feeling of steadiness was familiar.
There was a little light outside the camp, flickering in the wind, running low on kerosene. Su Yunkai leaned over to pick up stones on the ground and threw them far away. The stones created a noise that wasn’t entirely quiet in the still night, but no one came. He repeated this again, but still no one came out. He wanted to do it a third time, but seeing Ming Yue look at him, he asked, “What’s the matter?”
Ming Yue shook her head and sighed. “Your sophistication[1]…” She cleared her throat and coughed hard.
From inside the tent, there was instantly the sound of someone sitting up abruptly. After a moment, someone opened the curtain, knife in hand. Seeing that it was Su Yunkai and Ming Yue, he was about to pay his respects, but he was stopped by Su Yunkai quietly. “Did you see the coachman who was with me?”
The officer was bleary eyed and muddled. After thinking for a while, he said, “No.”
“He didn’t have dinner with you all? Is he not sleeping here?”
“I don’t know if he ate together with us, but he certainly isn’t sleeping here. Except for the three people my lord had other tasks for, each of our four tents sleeps five people, and all of them from the yamen. If there was an outsider, we would definitely know.”
Su Yunkai suddenly felt uneasy. Ming Yue felt the same. Someone had disappeared at dusk and still hadn’t returned by midnight. It was suspicious.
The yamen officer also noticed something wrong. “Is he missing? Our Lord Xu also said earlier that… this place is very strange. Yet, my lord, you don’t believe it…”
Su Yun lightly reprimanded him, “As an officer of the yamen, how could you say that? Go and tell the others to get up and search together.”
The officer hurried back into the tent and woke his comrades. There were complaints all around at being awoken, but hearing that it was Lord Su’s orders, they didn’t dare say complain. Instead, they got up in a hurry.
Su Yunkai took the lantern outside the tent and went out to look with Ming Yue. He was halfway on the road when he saw a figure approaching from the distance. The figure didn’t carry a lamp, so it was only a blurry shadow. The two stopped at once. Only when the figure came nearer did they realize who they were seeing was Yang An.
Perhaps because he had run the whole way, Yang An’s breath wasn’t steady. He said, “What happened, my lord?”
Su Yunkai frowned. “Why are you here?”
“I was about to go to sleep, but I saw the lights come on here. My father said that something might have happened, so he sent me here to check in. The others are still dressing. They are a little slower, but they will come later.”
“Mr. Yang hasn’t gone to bed at this time?”
Yang An said with a smile, “My wife just gave birth to a baby last month. My lord hasn’t married and likely doesn’t know that the child awakes and sleeps randomly all day long. I always wait until he falls asleep until I go to the side-room to sleep. If he doesn’t sleep, I won’t be able to sleep. After such a long time, my circadian rhythm has been disrupted. Earlier, I had just been asleep and I was about to lie down when I spotted the lights here.”
Su Yunkai understood. “Mr. Yang is a man who cares for his family.”
Yang An smiled and said nothing further. Indeed, the voices of the people of the escort agency seemed to be fast approaching. Su Yunkai didn’t question Yang An any further. Instead, he said, “My coachman is missing. Since you are all here, I’d like your help in finding him.”
“It’s no big deal. Us bodyguards rush around all the time. This is nothing. I’ll go now to tell them that we need a search party.”
With that, he went back to inform the escort agency’s people. The group set off together.
Ming Yue said, “He really is a warm-hearted person. It was because of this that when the bandits were robbing them, he was the only one that got hurt. He put too much importance on the objects. If he were indifferent like the other escorts, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
Su Yunkai lightly nodded, expressing his agreement. Ming Yue was careful as they continued walking. When she saw another green grass puddle, she stepped over it lightly, no longer falling into the trap. Su Yunkai also stepped over. After a few steps, he had a thought and decided to look back. Glancing at Ming Yue’s shoes, he noticed that they were wet because she had firmly stepped into a puddle earlier.
The shoes, which had become a little shabby because of her sprint to the doctor, were even more shabby now.
“Ah-”
A scream interrupted his thoughts. Su Yunkai looked up towards the direction of the sound. The yamen officers who followed him all stopped, discerning that the sound came from the village entrance.
It was a man’s voice, but it was extremely shrill, spreading through half the village. Su Yunkai sprinted over and could still hear the startled yells. There were villagers near the entrance who had already gone to look. When Su Yunkai arrived, he saw a man shivering on the ground, his face pale and his whole person emanating the smell of wine. Perhaps because he had just come back from drinking in the middle of the night, as soon as he saw the yamen officers equipped with swords, he almost jumped over, his legs still shaking. “My lo-lord. Someone died! Someone died!”
All the people looked in the direction he was pointing. There was a person hanging upside down on the luxuriant and dark banyan tree.
Su Yunkai was stunned. Perhaps because the wound was on the neck, blood flowed all over the body’s face. It was blood-chilling under the dim moonlight.
Someone had brought a lantern, which brightened up the surroundings. The timid covered their eyes, not daring to look.
Ming Yue didn’t take a step back, but after she saw the man clearly, she was shocked enough to take a step back. “Uncle Chang.”
The long rope was wrapped around his head and his loose hair drooped down, covering half of his face. When she gasped his name, the villagers did a double-take and recognized that this man was part of Su Yunkai’s entourage. At that time, they burst into commotion, saying that the officials had offended the spirits and gotten punished as a result—
“My lord, you said that the ghost sister has never killed. Now that it has come to this, will you still not stop?”
Su Yunkai wanted to go over to look at the body, but someone had already come out and stopped him, “Investigating, investigating. Time and time again, the lord offends the old banyan tree. You stripped its clothes and hollowed out the hole. You said there was treasure, but there was nothing. You’ve led so many people into the village, disturbing the peace. Please stop. You are not afraid of death, but we are!”
Su Yunkai was surprised. “A homicide has occurred. Instead of tracking down the murderer, you are instead spreading rumors and superstitions.”
“The lord is just a visitor. Of course, you are not concerned about what happens to Banyan Village, but we are afraid. We are afraid.”
The fear in the hearts of the villagers had become greater than their fear of the government. When people led, others would naturally follow. In addition, the nursery rhyme had too much of an influence on the village. With the agitation, more people came over to block him and forbid him from moving forward. In the face of the situation, Lord Xu called on the yamen officers to protect Su Yunkai, which finally stopped the villagers.
Su Yunkai was fuming. To think they thought that a vivacious life couldn’t compete with a ghost sister. The foolish and insolent villagers were arousing fear amongst each other!
Ming Yue knew from experience that in the summer, the body changed every hour. They had to “rescue” Chang De’s body from the tree as fast as possible so that they could determine his time of death more accurately, which would then perhaps help them find the murderer faster. But those villagers didn’t let them go at all. Instead, they created a human wall around the banyan tree.
“Stop!” With a loud cry, Zhu Changrong shunted the yamen officers aside, walked into the human wall, and shouted, “Hindering the official’s work! You’ve all become too audacious!”
With the appearance of the village head, the momentum of the crowd weakened under his high rank. Zhu Changrong took another step forward. His eyes were full of rage. Only then did someone give in, and the wall of people suddenly scattered. Su Yunkai was able to enter through the gap.
At the moment, a gust of evening wind blew, making the man on the tree start to swing and stare forward with his bloodied eyes, which was even more blood-curdling. Then, the nursery rhyme—
“…… Hanging upside down the tree, unable to come down. When the wind blows, she sways. When the wind stops, she stops. But don’t stop, passerby, because she is smiling and looking at you.”
.
A Hint of Spring 