When Li Sanjiang carried Li Zhuiyuan home on his back, the sky was just beginning to lighten.
Cui Guiying took the child from him. After exchanging a few words with Li Weihan, Li Sanjiang left.
Li Zhuiyuan was laid on the woven mat bed. He closed his eyes for a while, then opened them again.
He couldn’t sleep. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw Little Oriole dancing in the fish pond.
Cui Guiying and Li Weihan didn’t go into the inner room to rest either. They sat in the kitchen.
The woman kept rubbing her fingers until they turned red; the man puffed on his water pipe, bowl after bowl.
Seeing that daylight had already broken, Cui Guiying got up and said, “I’ll make breakfast for the kids.”
Li Weihan exhaled a plume of smoke and said, “The smoke rose a bit early today.”
Cui Guiying had no choice but to sit back down and stare at her husband. “So when should we wait until?”
“Until someone tells us.”“Who’s going to tell us?”
Li Weihan didn’t answer, just kept sucking on the pipe.
After a while, there was a knock at the door:
“Guiyinghou, Guiyinghou.”
It was the neighbor from next door, Zhao Simei.
Li Weihan tapped the ashes from his pipe. “The notice is here.”
Cui Guiying got up, yawning and rubbing her eyes as she opened the door, puzzled. “What’s going on, Simeihou?”
Zhao Simei grabbed her arm and shook it hard.
“The Big Beard family—someone’s dead!”
“What?”
“Two of them! Big Beard and his youngest son! Someone just saw them floating in their home’s fish pond. Everyone’s going to have a look—come on, let’s go too!”
“Let’s go!”
Before leaving, Cui Guiying called into the inner room, “Yinghou, the rice is washed. Make breakfast later, alright?”
“Got it, Grandma.”
Once she heard a reply, Cui Guiying left with Zhao Simei.
Li Weihan waited a bit longer, felt around his pocket for a spent cigarette, set down the water pipe, and left as well.
Zhao Simei’s knocking had already woken the children. Knowing something big had happened, they all ran out to watch the commotion, ignoring Yinghou’s cries from behind to brush their teeth and wash up.
By now, the Big Beard family’s pond was surrounded. Villagers were still streaming in—men, women, young and old, whole families in tow.
Two bodies floated on the surface, untouched, even though a small boat sat right by the edge.
Though the Big Beard family didn’t have a good reputation, the villagers weren’t heartless. The reason no one helped bring the bodies ashore was because they looked like biscuits soaked too long in soup—bloated beyond recognition, their flesh a translucent jelly color, like two human-shaped slabs of pigskin jelly.
Everyone knew drowned corpses bloated over time. But how could two people who were alive just yesterday turn into this overnight? The whole thing reeked of something foul—no one dared go near the water.
Big Beard’s wife knelt at the edge of the pond, wailing, but didn’t know what to do. When others tried to comfort her, she didn’t respond, only cried louder about her misfortune.
Finally, Big Beard’s eldest son rushed back from town. At last, someone to take charge.
But the son was so shaken by the sight of his father and younger brother floating like that, his face twitched in fear. He didn’t dare enter the pond and could only send someone to fetch Li Sanjiang.
Li Sanjiang arrived pushing a handcart stacked with his tools.
After surveying the pond, he immediately started waving his hands and backing away.
“Hell no! I ain’t pulling those up. Bad luck, real bad luck! Someone else can do it. Hurry, go find someone else!”
His dramatic refusal sent another ripple of shock through the crowd. People began muttering about what curse the Big Beard family must have brought down on themselves.
Someone soon brought up what happened with Little Oriole the day before—after all, the funeral troupe had nearly come to blows at the Big Beard house. Secrets didn’t stay buried long in this village.
Li Weihan joined in, recounting how he’d taken the grandkids out on the river yesterday and how Li Zhuiyuan had fallen in. Said the boy had nightmares of a woman walking underwater, and even Doctor Zheng couldn’t wake him—thankfully Liu Jinxia had handled it.
A crowd gathered to hear more. Everyone chimed in with their own theories.
Cui Guiying stood beside her husband, visibly anxious. On a normal day, if she didn’t have chores to do, she could gossip for three days straight with the village women. But today, she was tight-lipped and stiff.
Her heart was thumping. It felt like a thief crying “thief!”—a cat weeping for the mouse.
Pan’er, Lei’er, Huzi, and Shitou also joined in. They swore they’d seen a female water ghost yesterday, one that nearly dragged Little Yuanhou down as a Ghost-substitute—she was out for revenge!
The gathering turned into an open-air tea session. Once they’d dissected the Little Oriole incident to the bone, the villagers, still unsatisfied, started dredging up every past scandal of the Big Beard family.
Not long after, the second son returned with his wife, while the two daughters came with their husbands. The daughters hugged their sobbing mother; the sons and sons-in-law huddled with Li Sanjiang to haggle over price.
Li Sanjiang played hardball. Claiming it was a double retrieval and the corpses were especially cursed, he demanded ten times the usual rate for one body.
After agreeing on payment, he set up an offering table, lit candles, and burned spirit money, adding an extra half-hour of chanting to “summon companions,” drawing everyone's attention.
Though his performance lacked the flash of a professional funeral troupe, everyone knew the truth—those troupes were all for show. Li Sanjiang was the real deal.
During this, two Santana sedans arrived, red police lights flashing on top—officers from the town station.
Normally, a single drowning wasn’t a big deal. But two dead, a father and son, and right in front of their house? That changed things.
The police took one look and were stunned. They’d seen bloated corpses before, but nothing as grotesquely refined as this.
So they decided to wait until the bodies were retrieved before stepping in. They didn’t interrupt Li Sanjiang’s ritual, nor did they approach—just smoked by their car.
When Li Sanjiang was done, he slaughtered a rooster, scattered what might’ve been real black dog blood, and finally stepped into the pond with his boat.
He first used the “guide hook” to draw the corpses to the boat, then secured and lifted them with the “soul-returning basket,” covering them with the “homecoming net.” Once at the edge, he stooped low and used a specific technique to carry the bodies onto his back, then stepped ashore.
This was a sacred rule for a Corpse Retriever—his own feet had to touch land before the body did. That was the only way to “carry” and “deliver” the dead home.
Only after the family called out could he lay the bodies down, completing the task and assuring the dead they’d truly returned, avoiding the risk of becoming Dead Sinkers.
After repeating the ritual twice, Big Beard and his son were finally settled on straw mats.
Done with the job, Li Sanjiang nervously eyed the center of the pond. He’d only performed the basics and hadn’t dared probe deeper.
Who knew if she was still in there?
The police cordoned off the bodies, but villagers didn’t care. They still peered from a distance, kids letting out frightened screams from time to time.
Li Sanjiang took his pay, packed his tools, and with a cigarette dangling from his lips, pushed the cart home. The villagers all gave way. No one wanted to brush shoulders with a man fresh from pulling corpses.
The investigation began. The police set up a makeshift base at the Big Beard house. The village head came too, calling people over, boiling water, serving tea.
Big Beard’s wife couldn’t say much. She’d simply woken to find her husband gone, and it was a passerby who spotted the floating bodies and yelled for her.
The deputy chief asked the village head who had grudges with the Big Beard family. The head scratched his ear and replied dryly:
“Oh, quite a few.”
One by one, those with old scores lined up to give statements.
This included Li Weihan and the boys who’d talked about Little Oriole. They were all questioned.
At first, the police thought they were chasing another body, even sent an officer with Li Weihan to the riverbank, but found nothing. His story was so bizarre, they chalked it up to an old villager trying to impress his grandkids with ghost tales.
They weren’t even sure how to file the statement. Li Weihan got worked up when no one believed him, insisting it was true. The village head had to gently coax him away.
Even the funeral troupe that’d caused a scene yesterday was summoned, but they all had solid alibis—off working in another township.
As for Little Oriole’s disappearance, no body, no culprit. And with Big Beard and his son dead, the matter was marked as “missing person.”
In the end, the double drowning was ruled an accident: father and son, drunk and rowdy, drowned in their own fish pond.
The Big Beard family didn’t push for more. Once the funeral was done, the two sons and two daughters began fighting over the inheritance, turning it into a public spectacle—one more juicy tale for the village to chew on.
By dusk, the statements were finally finished. Li Weihan and Cui Guiying walked home with the children ahead, the old couple trailing behind.
Cui Guiying, still shaken, patted her chest and said, “Why’d you go blabbing like that? Even got called in for questioning. Scared me half to death.”
Li Weihan tossed his empty cigarette pack into the ditch, pressed his lips together, and said:
“Uncle taught me—this kind of thing, you gotta talk about it. Can’t keep it bottled up. Little Yuanhou’s situation, Zheng Datong and Liu Jinxia both know about it.”
Cui Guiying complained, “You could’ve just told them privately, keep it under wraps.”
Li Weihan shook his head. “Even if the adults know how to keep secrets, can the kids?”
“Well…”
Li Weihan let out a long breath.
He said:
“Uncle always said, the best way to keep a secret… is to tell it in front of everyone.”
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