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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter 6: Searching for People (Part Three)
"Damn it." I suddenly felt an inexplicable worry for the Mad Old Woman. We parked the car at the Cemetery parking lot and approached a stone tablet that introduced the local customs and folklore.
The tablet read: This place was once a crucial route during ancient wars, rumored to hold treasures. Many have come here seeking fortune, only to encounter thunder, rain, falling trees, and even ghostly mists, within which appeared armored Ancient Soldiers.
Qin Jian stared at me in astonishment for quite a while without saying a word.
"Is this some kind of movie?" I sighed. "If it were someone with ill intentions or a malicious person, they would probably be dead by now."
"And you are?"
"Well, I just don't understand how we all saw the same thing at the same time, including that Mad Old Woman and the girl in her arms."
After examining the stone tablet, we walked toward the Cemetery entrance when suddenly we heard someone calling out.
"Hey, we're over here!" It was Zhang Wang along with Mo and their son.
We approached them, and Zhang Wang eagerly said, "Where have you guys been? We’ve been following you from behind. That stretch of road was tough to navigate; I was really worried something might happen..."
"As long as you're okay. Did you come to the Cemetery too?" It was quite absurd that we had both ended up at the Cemetery while searching for someone. Qin Jian and I were trying to verify something we had seen on the road—a group of people—and wanted to find out if they were filming.
Zhang Wang and his group had also come to the Cemetery. Did they see something strange as well? With that thought in mind, I pulled him aside to talk. I left Mo with Qin Jian, who seemed a bit awkward as they exchanged shy smiles before finally managing to amuse the child a little.
I continued my conversation with Zhang Wang.
"You encountered any unusual situations here, like fog or anything abnormal?"
"We did. I accidentally killed a goat crossing the road."
"What happened?"
"When we arrived, there was a thick fog. A herd of goats was walking slowly in front of us. I didn't see clearly and seemed to have run over one, but the rest of the goats disappeared. The goat I hit had no blood. I got out of the car with the child's mother to check, but we didn't see any dead goats or blood on the ground."
They had also encountered something strange.
However, it was odd why our experiences were different, and how we ended up resting in this place by some twist of fate. At that moment, I didn’t tell him about seeing the Mad Old Woman holding a child; I only asked Zhang Wang for a photo of his daughter when she was alive.
It was clear that Zhang Wang valued his deceased daughter greatly; even though she was gone, her photo was still tucked in his wallet. He pulled out the picture for me to see—a lovely girl with bright, sparkling eyes, a slight smile, and a delicately shaped nose.
If this girl had grown up, she would have been a stunning beauty. Unfortunately, envy took her life too soon.
I recognized her clearly; she was the same girl held by the Mad Old Woman. In my mind, the grandmother must have been heartbroken over her granddaughter's death and developed dementia as a result. I returned the photo to Zhang Wang, who stared into my eyes and asked, "Is there something wrong?"
"Did your mother love her granddaughter?"
Zhang Wang gave a bitter smile, handed me a cigarette, and lit it with his lighter before taking a slow drag. "It's not that she loved her so much; she was just a child—cute and sweet-talking. She liked to take her... At first, everything was fine, but then something happened. She was in the kitchen mixing milk when the child fell down the stairs and suffered severe intracranial bleeding. Despite efforts to save her, it was futile. My wife blamed her for a few things, but she didn’t seem too affected by it; it was as if she wasn’t really sad at all. She even disposed of the child."
"Disposed of?"
Zhang Wang said, "We are intermarried between Mongolian and Han Ethnicity. My mother is Mongolian, my wife is Han, and my father is also Han. But the child died. According to my mother's method, we wrap the child in a piece of white cloth and sew it up with a thick needle and coarse hemp rope. The white cloth becomes a pouch, and the child is placed inside until nightfall. My mother then throws the child at the Tri-Fork, and whoever sees it first will take the child out and let it be eaten by wild dogs. That person becomes the child's guide, and the child will follow that person back home, reincarnating as their child in this world."
This was the first time I had heard of such a burial method; it was so different from Han practices. I asked, "Did you see the child being taken away or eaten by wild dogs?" Just thinking about it felt cruel; our Han Ethnicity treats deceased infants with much more humanity.
Even under poor conditions, we wouldn’t casually abandon a child to be eaten by wild dogs. But this was just an old custom; every place has its own people and traditions.
"No, my mother wouldn’t let me go. My wife was very sad and kept crying, so I had to stay by her side."
"Alright!" I had nothing else to say and moved closer to Qin Jian and his family when suddenly someone announced over the loudspeaker.
The announcement stated that an elderly person had lost their way and collapsed at Cemetery No. 8 in Seven Paths Bay Cemetery, urging family members to come quickly for identification.
Upon hearing this, Qin Jian, Zhang Wang, and I all felt tense. Could it really be such a coincidence? Of all places to end up here, an elderly person had collapsed—was it Zhang Wang's mother, that mad old woman?
After we went to check, we had to admit that there were indeed many unpredictable coincidences in the human world. The person lying on the ground was none other than Zhang Wang's mother; however, the old woman on the ground looked completely different from the one in the photo holding a child.
One was vibrant while the other appeared incredibly haggard and aged. What could have happened to her that made her leave home and beg her way here? Moreover, how did she manage to walk all this way? I shared the doubts of others.
Looking at his dirty, disheveled mother, Zhang Wang sighed heavily in distress while his wife remained silent with a gloomy expression. In the cemetery's rest area, a doctor who had been called in—essentially a Barefoot Doctor from a nearby medical station—briefly examined her: "She is malnourished and somewhat dehydrated; she must be taken to a better hospital for intensive treatment immediately. The longer we wait, the more regretful it will be."
After getting the old lady into the car, I climbed in alongside Qin Jian; we needed to go down together—otherwise, how could I help them?
As soon as I got into the car, I knew someone would have questions. Sure enough, before I could even settle in my seatbelt, Qin Jian said, "I think there’s something wrong with Zhang Wang's wife."
"What's wrong?"
"Look, the mother-in-law is seriously ill, and as a daughter-in-law, she stands far away, indifferent and seemingly unhappy."
"Don't you understand that daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law are natural enemies? I thought if your mother were here, she might not be so harsh on Chi Xinrong, and Chi Xinrong wouldn't be so cruel to her mother. Since ancient times, daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law have been two conflicting parties forced to coexist under one roof."
No matter how well a daughter-in-law treats her mother-in-law, the latter always suspects her sincerity, thinking she has ulterior motives.
A mother-in-law will never treat her daughter-in-law as well as she would her own daughter. Even if she doesn't have a biological daughter, her niece would still be considered better than her daughter-in-law in her eyes.
Thus, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law are indeed natural enemies.
These words were unnecessary for Qin Jian as well; being a man, he could never truly understand the feelings between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law.
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