That unnaturally heavy black coffin was finally dragged up the southern slope by over a dozen young men, grunting, cursing, and straining, then pushed into the waiting, damp, cold grave.
Dirt flew. Shovel after heavy shovel covered it, burying deep within the cold southern soil: Li Erwa's father's shattered skull, those eyes staring fixedly at the sky, the ominous black ooze from the coffin's base, and Wang the Limper's desperate wails that had pierced the rainy night.
For the first few days, an invisible but heavy fear gripped the back of every villager's neck.
When people went out to the fields or visited neighbors, their eyes would flick unconsciously towards the southern slope and the graveyard, as if that newly mounded, slick earth covered not a corpse, but a bomb with a slowly burning fuse.
Conversations were hushed. Even the dogs barked with less conviction.
The whole village felt taut as a fully drawn bowstring.
But as day after monotonous, uneventful day passed, that sour tension gradually loosened its grip.
By the fifth day, the leaden curtain of rain was finally ripped apart by an invisible hand. Long-absent golden light poured down, fierce and bright, making steam rise from soaked rooftops, muddy paths, and drooping, listless crops.
The warmth of the sun on their skin seemed to melt a corner of the massive stone of fear that had sat heavy on their chests. Someone laughed loudly on the field path.
The sound, like a bird escaping its cage, soon circled above the village again.
"See! Told you that old fraud Wang the Limper was scared out of his wits!"
"Exactly! Always muttering over his rusty coins, trying to frighten everyone half to death!"
"Come on! Let's go see if he's hiding under his quilt crying from shame!"
Curious onlookers gathered, chuckling as they headed towards the solitary mud-brick house at the west end of the village. Li Erwa followed silently at the back.
The sun beat down on his head, yet a chill kept creeping up his spine.
The coffin's impossible weight, its icy touch, the image of that viscous drop oozing from its base – these thoughts slithered like cold, persistent loaches through the quietest parts of his mind.
Wang the Limper's familiar, flimsy wooden door stood wide open, gaping like a black hole in the sunlight.
Inside looked as if a typhoon had hit, followed by a mudslide.
The drawers of the simple wooden chest were yanked out and dumped. Fragments of yellowed ancestral talismans and a smashed compass lay scattered on the filthy mud floor.
In the corner, the narrow cot barely fit for one person held only a roll of straw bedding. The thin, patched black quilt was gone.
"Ha! Ran away! He really ran away!" Heiniu planted his hands on his hips, grinning broadly with his gap-toothed smile.
"That bastard! Couldn't scare folks with his tricks, so he slinks off like a thief! Probably gone begging on the road with his fortune-telling bowl!"
Louder laughter erupted from the crowd, crashing like waves against the empty, decaying little hut.
It was the laughter of relief after a narrow escape, laced with cruel contempt for the one who had fled.
Fear dissolved completely, as if the chilling gloom that had shrouded the village had been nothing but a bad, forgettable dream upon waking.
Only Li Erwa remained standing in the shadow of the broken eaves. He stared at the empty bed and the shards of the broken spectacles on the ground.
Wang the Limper's final image – the one dangling earpiece, the face smeared with blood and mud, the eyes burning with despair and madness – didn't blur in the strong sunlight.
Instead, it seemed etched with a knife, sharp and painfully clear in Erwa's vision.
This comforting, sun-drenched peace was like a porcelain bowl slicked with lard – smooth and shiny on the surface, but hiding an unnerving chill beneath.
This peace flowed silently until the fifteenth day, when it was shattered by the shrill, panic-stricken shrieks of early-rising women.
"M-my chickens! My chickens are all gone—!" Old Lady Yang's voice pierced the air, sharp and tearful, making ears ache.
Her usually noisy little chicken coop stood empty. A few stark white feathers, smeared with sticky, dark red blood, clung sparsely to the muddy bamboo fence roots and the damp, soft earth inside the enclosure.
Next door, Granny Zhang stamped her foot. "My ducks! My fat speckled ducks! What devil broke my door latch!" Her backyard gate hung crookedly open.
Besides scattered duck feathers, the wet mud showed a few broad, blurred drag marks, quickly trampled into oblivion by the gathering, agitated crowd.
"A weasel?" someone suggested, though they sounded unconvinced. Weasels stole chickens and ducks with stealthy precision, not by knocking down fences and breaking doors.
And the blood... it was too thick. It didn't look like a clean bite to the neck... more like... spatter from something ripped apart.
Doubt, like a spider's web, cast a thin frost of unease over the villagers' hearts. But it was a far greater tragedy two days later that tore and crushed this fragile peace.
It happened to "Huzi," the village chief's big black dog. He was the village's living alarm clock and unofficial constable.
No stranger came within a hundred paces of the village without him barking furiously; even drunk villagers returning late were chased home by nips at their trouser legs. But that night, the village drowned in the thick, stifling ink of a summer night.
An abnormal silence, thick as swamp mud, fell. Even the usual chorus of insects and frogs had vanished.
At dawn, the chief pushed open his courtyard gate in his undershirt, ready to wash his face.
A strangled cry, inhuman in its pitch, tore through the cool morning mist. His legs turned to cooked noodles.
He slid down the doorframe, sitting hard on the ground, eyes glued to the horrific slaughterhouse splashed across his courtyard mud like gruesome ink!
Huzi's once-powerful body had been brutally torn apart! The massive dog's head lay crooked to one side, empty eye sockets staring vacantly at the grey sky.
The spine, still clinging to fur, was twisted into a horrific spiral, broken bones piercing through the skin.
Worst of all was the visceral carnage of the abdomen – ripped open into a gaping cavity. The heart, lungs, guts – sticky lumps of flesh and organ – were strewn across the courtyard like discarded refuse after a monstrous feast!
The stench of the putrid blood, already soaked deep into the earth forming a sludge of dark crimson and black, was overpowering.
And amidst this charnel house of blood, mud, and dismembered remains, several deep impressions were clearly stamped into the wet earth, marking the killer's steps.
The footprints bore an eerie resemblance to oversized, distorted bare human feet, but the toe marks were unnaturally long and grotesque, like some beast's... or perhaps... swollen, rotting digits.
Most sickening of all, pooled deep within the center of each terrifying print, was a small puddle of thick, filthy, grey-black ooze like grave sludge.
It was slowly seeping into the blood-soaked earth, emitting an overwhelming, suffocating stench of pure, unadulterated decay!
This wasn't just blood; it was the true scent of death – the mingled rot of deep grave soil, ancient coffin wood, and putrefying entrails!