The train was two hours late arriving at the station.
By the time Shen Wuqiu emerged from the station, the sky was already draped in dusk. Rows of aging medium-sized buses and public buses were neatly lined up across the wide plaza. Without needing to ask, she knew that the last bus to the township had already finished service for the day.
Politely declining the warm invitation to stay the night from the plump proprietress of a nearby inn, she approached three taxi drivers in a row before finding one who did not immediately refuse her after hearing her destination.
“Jingrong Village? Most people do not care to go out there at night.”
Shen Wuqiu understood the implication behind his words, but she did not beat around the bush. “Just name your price.”
The driver looked her up and down through narrowed eyes, then tentatively held up four fingers.
Four hundred yuan. By past standards, this was an absolute rip-off; from the train station to her doorstep, it was no more than seventy kilometers at most. As for the current market rates, she had not been back in five years. But she did not care about a little money, so she nodded decisively.
Seeing this, the driver instantly dropped his previous indifferent attitude and enthusiastically took her suitcase, placing it in the trunk.
Although Jingrong Village was far from the city center, the road leading there was not a rugged, difficult mountain path. The entire way consisted of flat paved roads; the reason taxis were reluctant to take business in this area was simply because the route passed through a stretch of uninhabited mountain forest. For a rural township, this was not particularly unusual. What made it unusual was that this forest had long been the source of various folktales about spirits and monsters, and with subsequent embellishments from local gossip, the stretch of road had only grown more legendary.
Drivers with even a sliver of cowardice avoided going there after dark, let alone at night.
However, there were always a few bold souls.
The driver looked to be in his early thirties, and his conversational tone matched his lean, wiry figure, exuding a slick, street-smart vibe.
Shen Wuqiu did not find it repulsive; she was simply utterly exhausted from over a dozen hours on the train and lacked the energy for prolonged conversation. Yet, because the road home was far too remote, she did not want to offend the driver either, so she forced herself to stay awake and make small talk.
“You do not sound like a local, Miss. You must be coming from the big city, right?”
“No, I am heading home.” Shen Wuqiu replied directly in the local dialect.
Looking surprised, the driver turned his head back to glance at her. “Ah, you really are one of our own.”
Shen Wuqiu was amused by his quirky expression. “I just have not been back very often since leaving for college.”
“Sigh, our little county town does not have many career opportunities anyway. Anyone with a bit of ability goes out to make their way in the world.”
“It is just a personal choice, really. It has nothing to do with capability.”
“People who have been to school certainly talk differently.” The driver spat out a mouthful of betel nut out the window, then asked, “When are you heading out again after this trip home, Miss? We can add each other on WeChat so you can just contact me directly for rides next time. I am not bragging, but apart from me, there really are not many people who dare go out toward your area at night.”
The driver’s manner of spitting betel nut was unpolished, causing the smile that had just formed on Shen Wuqiu’s face to vanish. She replied flatly, “I am not leaving again after this trip home.”
Thinking he must have misheard, the driver waited a moment before turning back to look at her. “Coming home to get married?”
Shen Wuqiu shook her head, her tone quite calm. “Coming home to farm.”
Clearly disbelieving, the driver remained silent for a good long while before speaking. “You sure know how to joke around, Miss.”
Shen Wuqiu could not be bothered to explain further.
In truth, she really was coming home to farm. Her aging father owned tens of thousands of acres of mountain forest land, but his health had lately deteriorated. Since her brother was unwilling to inherit the massive family enterprise, he had pressured her to come back and take it over instead.
As a young woman, she naturally was not tempted by this estate; however, among those tens of thousands of acres lay nearly a hundred acres of rose gardens that were the lifelong passion of her late mother, and she could not bear to see them ruined. Coupled with the fact that she was currently facing professional difficulties, her sleazy boss had sexually harassed her and then tried to turn things around to blame her, these favorable conditions of time, place, and people prompted her to yield to her father’s wishes.
Assuming she was just blowing him off because she did not want to talk, the driver tactfully stopped asking and concentrated on driving.
Shen Wuqiu was glad for the peace and quiet. Once things settled down, she closed her eyes to rest.
Leaving the vicinity of the train station behind, the traffic on the road grew thinner and thinner. By the time they turned onto the country road leading to Jingrong Village, practically no other vehicles were in sight.
It was impossible to tell how long they had been driving when a sudden, shrill scream ripped through the air, piercing the quiet night like a tear in fabric.
Holding the steering wheel with one hand, the driver jumped in fright, dropping the betel nut he was about to unwrap and instinctively slamming on the brakes.
Caught off guard, Shen Wuqiu’s body lunged heavily forward from momentum. Fortunately, her reflexes were fast, and she managed to brace her hands against the seat in front of her just in time to avoid hitting her head. “What is going on?”
Still shaken, the driver stared blankly for a few seconds before turning back to look at her. “Did you hear that?”
Shen Wuqiu had been dozing off and felt drowsiness creeping back in, failing to process things immediately. “Hear what?”
His face drawn tight, the driver swallowed hard. “A child crying.”
Only then did it dawn on Shen Wuqiu that she had indeed heard that sharp cry, though she had initially thought it was just an auditory hallucination between sleep and wakefulness. She glanced out the window. Outside was nothing but ink-wash darkness, so heavy that the world seemed to hold no light other than their own headlights. She would have bet anything that there was not a single household within a five-kilometer radius.
“Did you mishear, driver?”
Convinced he had not heard wrong, the driver tightly gripped the back of his own seat, looking thoroughly terrified. “Do you know where we are right now? At the foot of Cliff Mountain.”
Cliff Mountain was the place shrouded in folktales about spirits and monsters. It was called Cliff Mountain because it towered into the clouds, yet one side was sheer and flat like it had been sliced by an axe, forming a massive wall of natural stone. The road passing through Jingrong Village was built right alongside this stone wall.
The bizarre legends of Cliff Mountain had been blown out of proportion by local storytelling, but Shen Wuqiu had walked this road thousands of times back and forth and had never encountered any of the things people talked about, which was why she had never believed the myths.
Calmly, she said, “There is no human habitation for miles around the foot of Cliff Mountain, let alone a child.”
The driver looked at her as if she were a monster. “Have you never heard the legends of Cliff Mountain?”
Before he could finish, the shrill scream rang out once more, further terrifying the already frightened driver and making him nearly jump out of his skin.
Shen Wuqiu never expected the driver’s boasts to fall quite so quickly.
This time, she heard the cry clearly too. It did sound somewhat like an infant wailing, which was genuinely chilling out here in the desolate mountain night.
Perhaps because the driver was acting so cowardly, she felt significantly less afraid herself. She pulled her phone out of her handbag, turned on the flashlight, and prepared to roll down the window to investigate.
Before her hand even touched the button, the driver stopped her. “What are you doing?”
“Finding out what is making that noise, of course.”
“You are not scared?”
Shen Wuqiu shrugged. “I am. But are you not even more scared than I am?”
She was acting far too composed; the look the driver gave her began to warp as he quietly distanced himself from her.
Not caring what was going going through his mind, Shen Wuqiu rolled down the window, poked her head halfway out, and swept the light from her phone and the car across the surroundings. She saw nothing. Just as she was about to pull her phone back, the shrill cry rang out again.
Quickly tracking the sound with her phone’s light, her gaze immediately locked onto several pairs of glowing green eyes.
Gasp!
Shen Wuqiu drew in a sharp breath of shock, locking eyes with those glowing green orbs for several seconds before recovering her wits.
What people feared most was the unknown; once something became known, the fear largely dissipated.
Regaining her composure, Shen Wuqiu extended her phone-wielding hand further outside.
Yet the light of her phone appeared far too weak in the misty night, completely failing to illuminate the specific shape of whatever was hidden beneath the roadside weeds. Unwilling to give up, she let out a scolding shout at the pair of green eyes still staring at her. They remained unmoved, though the baby-like wail sounded again at a lower volume.
Turning back, Shen Wuqiu wanted to ask the driver for help so they could both step outside and see what was causing the ruckus.
To her surprise, the driver, who had only been tough-mouthed, had curled up under his seat, clasping his hands together and praying frantically under his breath.
Shen Wuqiu stared helplessly at the car roof, then picked up her mineral water bottle, which was still more than half full. Weighing it in her hand, she tossed it toward those glowing green eyes.
With a loud clatter, the green eyes vanished in an instant.
Immediately following that, a white ball of fluff emerged from the grass.
Evidently, that series of shrill, miserable screams had been produced by this very creature.
Just as Shen Wuqiu wanted to lean out further to see what this white fluff-ball actually was, the creature walked out of the grass on its own. It stepped gracefully toward her, stopping about a meter away. As their eyes met:
Meow!
Now Shen Wuqiu knew, this white thing was a cat!
Hearing the normal feline cry, the driver seemed to come back to life. He sprang up from beneath the seat just in time to see a few unyielding tabby cats dart past the front of his car.
“Damn it, so that sound was just a cat!”
Hearing the driver’s voice, Shen Wuqiu snapped out of her daze. When she blinked and looked back out, the area illuminated by her phone was completely empty, as if the white cat had never even existed.
Swiveling her phone to shine it elsewhere, she asked the driver, “Did you see the cats just now?”
“Yeah, a few tabbies just ran past the front.”
Since it was not some supernatural entity and merely stray cats, the driver was not scared anymore. He picked up his water mug, took a large gulp of strong tea, and restarted the engine.
Yet, remembering how these cursed creatures had scared him nearly to the point of wetting his pants, especially in front of a young woman, the driver felt like Shen Wuqiu’s earlier words were a subtle mockery. Eager to defend himself, he rationalized, “I am actually really brave normally, but hearing those stories about Cliff Mountain too much makes you psych yourself out. Plus, you cannot blame me. Who teaches a cat to sound like a human baby instead of meowing normally?”
Shen Wuqiu did not know what to say. Thinking of the pretty white cat, she could not help putting in a word for it. “It was probably bullied pretty badly to cry out like that.”
“Bullied pretty badly.” The driver muttered, then suddenly realized something. “I almost forgot what season it is.”
“Huh? What about spring?”
“Cats go into heat most easily in the spring. No wonder that cat was wailing so miserably. They must be mating.”
Shen Wuqiu remained silent for a long time, and the driver suddenly panicked and hurried to explain, “Miss, please do not misunderstand. I was not talking dirty to you.”
With the sexual harassment incident from her boss still fresh in her mind, Shen Wuqiu truly disliked hearing such talk, but hearing the driver’s explanation allowed her to relax slightly.
Fearing she would not believe him, the driver continued, “My grandma used to keep a female cat. When they mate, the tomcat bites the female’s neck. Anyway, the female cat suffers quite a bit.”
That certainly fell outside her area of expertise.
So, the white cat’s miserable cries earlier had actually been while it was mating? In that case, had not her good intentions completely ruined someone else’s grand enterprise of passing on the family line?
Would that bring bad karma?