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墨書 Inktalez
As he scraped the tree bark with his military knife, a jade thimble suddenly rolled out among the shavings. The inner circle was engraved with "Bingzi Year, Hai Hour," marking the exact time of Li Xiuyun's death.
The thimble suddenly heated up, projecting a hologram in the clearing: a young Chen Guohua was questioning Zhou Huaisheng on the second floor of a teahouse, while Zhou wore Widow Lin's jade thimble on his left ring finger.
"The timeline is misaligned," Chen Yu shouted into his earphone, only to realize that the communication channel had been cut off two hours earlier. A branch of the Sophora tree suddenly wrapped around his ankle, hoisting him upside down. In this inverted view, he saw forty-nine lipstick coffins suspended in mid-air, each coffin lid marked with comb teeth corresponding to a deceased individual.
From the center of the coffin formation, an old woman who combed hair slowly descended. Her wooden comb grazed Chen Yu's forehead, drawing a string of blood beads. As the blood droplets suspended in mid-air formed a rebirth knot, Chen Yu saw his grandfather's police badge embedded in the old woman's hair bun, the badge number matching his own current officer number.
"It’s time to continue the incense offerings," the old woman's voice overlapped with Zhou Huaisheng's. She peeled back her scalp to reveal a decaying skull, with forty-nine wooden comb teeth embedded in the bone seams.
Seizing the moment, Chen Yu shot out a climbing anchor hook, entangling it with the North Star position of the coffin formation. The entire space suddenly trembled violently. Amidst the torrential rain came the rhythmic sound of a sewing machine as Widow Lin emerged from the ground, holding an oiled paper umbrella.
The jade thimble in her hand shot out a beam of light, piecing together a surveillance video before Chen Yu: on the night of the 1996 fire, Zhou Fulai rushed out of the blaze holding a female corpse, whose right hand wore a sewing machine thimble from 2016.
In the basement of the Qinghe Town Archives, the musty smell of aged Xuan paper lingered as Xu Wenshan's flashlight pierced through cobwebs and illuminated a camphor wood box containing funeral records from year thirty-seven of the Republic of China. When he lifted the lid, forty-nine braids sprang up suddenly, their ends striking like soul-capturing bells—each strand tied with a faded birth chart tag.
"Bing Xu Year, June sixth..." Xu Wenshan said as he picked up a piece of moldy silk cloth with tweezers; ink characters were blurred by bloodstains. "The Zhou Clan purchased forty-nine Huang Mu for thin coffins to ferry unclaimed souls."
The corner of the cloth was stuck to half a yellow paper sheet depicting human-shaped hair nets entwined around coffins—the very prototype of Li Xiuyun's rebirth knot on her corpse.
A cold wind rushed into the basement as braids coiled around Xu Wenshan's wrist like live snakes. He pulled out a carved wooden comb from his pocket and sliced through the hair; black viscous liquid oozed from where he cut, pooling on the azure brick floor to form a Bagua formation.
At the center of this formation appeared a virtual shadow of a lipstick coffin; its lid slowly slid open to reveal skeletal remains entwined with hair nets.
In midnight rain, Xu Wenshan was copying documents in the town records office when his digital camera’s flash suddenly froze on an image: in year thirty-seven of the Republic of China’s Yin Marriage records, "Zhou Mingde" was listed as groom while "First Wife Zhou Lin" was noted as bride. Upon increasing contrast, he discovered that "Lin" had been added later; originally it read "Yin."
"Mr. Xu has sharp eyes," Zhou Huaisheng's voice came from behind an archive shelf. In his hand was a cracked Wenwan walnut revealing a curled-up fetal corpse inside. "My grandfather married what became my first wife—a union formed by forty-nine strands of Yin Fa." He held up a Republican Era wedding photo; what hung down from beneath the bride’s veil were not ornaments but dense braids.
As Xu Wenshan stepped back, he knocked over an inkstone, splattering black liquid across the glass cabinet.
In reflection, Zhou Huaisheng's face suddenly morphed into Widow Lin’s; her jade thimble glowed with a corpse-like green light on her index finger. When he reached for his phone to call for help, he found all photos in his camera had transformed into close-ups of Hair Combing Old Woman—each photo showing an additional gray-white strand in her hairdo.
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