Chapter 62: Deserted Village 4; Nameless
Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
There are numerous customs for burying a body after death. Burial was the most common which was not surprising. However, in a few areas there were many strange and bizarre burial practices such as sky burial and the hanging coffin burial, which have since become familiar. Water burial was less known. It was influenced by a primitive religion and appeared bloody and violent.
Water burial and sky burial have the same meaning. The latter fed the eagle and the former fed the fish. The eagle and the fish were the incarnation of the gods. In areas where water burial was practiced, it was a customary belief that throwing the body into the river and burying it in the belly of a fish is the path to reincarnation and purification of the soul.
There were different ways of water burial in different regions. There were two most common ways: One was throwing the whole body into the river by sprinkling the ashes after cremation. The other way was to use a knife to cut off the body parts put into the river. The second way was more bloody. One needed to use an extremely sharp wooden knife and a stone axe to use according to the body’s joints, inch by inch cutting off throwing it into the river. This process was called dismemberment.
For water burial the time and water must be chosen properly. The last type of dismemberment, which is done at night. The body gets thrown in waters with sea threads swirling around the body parts.
Chen Yang, “Sea Thread Waters… We didn’t look closely at the well in the ancestral hall. The well might be connected to the river. We didn’t see the river on the side we came in, so it would be on the other side of the deserted village. You said “water burial”. Then this village used to practice water burials and the fish in the river grew up eating the body parts. Those fish swam into the ancestral hall’s water through underground undercurrents and were fished and eaten by them… I still don’t understand why the sea thread pattern was created by eating the fish.”
The fish that grew up eating corpses are certainly evil. The long sea threads on their arms must have something to do with the fish in the ancestral hall’s well. But how do the two have a connection? And what does it have to do with killing hungry ghosts and Wu Lingjiu?
“Fish in Taoism have a special status. A carp leaps over the Dragon Gate, carp for the Dragon’s son. Seven stars on the head of the black fish worship the Big Dipper… Therefore, there are lonely souls and wild ghosts that love to attach themselves to fish. If those fish in the ancestral hall’s well really grew up eating corpses, then it’s normal to have wandering spirits possessing the fish.” Du Shuo reached out and put his arm around Chen Yang’s shoulders and whispered, “Let’s rest first, we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Chen Yang nodded, “Mn.”
Du Shuo found a clean spot and let Chen Yang lean on him to sleep. His big hand gently caressed Chen Yang’s back as Chen Yang soon drifted off to sleep. Before going to sleep, Chen Yang looked at the nine ordinary people who gathered in the corner to form two distinct teams. The three young men were in one team, and the other six were in a team that came out of the bus.
The group that came out of the bus were hostile to the three young men. If those three hadn’t disobeyed the advice to cook fish soup, how could they all have been trapped in the deserted village? As for the three young people, they sneered with disdain for the six people who were “bitches” and also separated themselves cleanly.
The four Tianshis stood in a separate place. The injured Tianshi Zhong was being taken care of by another Tianshi. Chief Wu Yi was whispering with Liu Quanning to discuss things, and the doll was lying in her pocket drowsy. As for Fatty, he was still lying on the windowsill looking at the moon. Chen Yang wondered what he was thinking about.
He thought this as he fell asleep.
The next day Chen Yang opened his eyes with Du Shuo’s hands over his ears to block out sound. But the sound of quarreling was so loud that Chen Yang was still woken up. He sat up and subconsciously rubbed Du Shuo’s palm. He asked in a mute voice, “What’s going on?”
Du Shuo retracted his hand and put it back on Chen Yang’s head to smooth his soft hair, “Theft.”
Chen Yang, “I need the full story. Don’t just give me the conclusion. Talking to you like this takes away the fun of figuring it out myself.”
Du Shuo lowered his eyes and quietly gazed at Chen Yang who was innocently selling his good behavior. “The woman holding the child accused the youth of trying to steal her child. The youth denied it. The woman’s group did not believe the youth and denounced the suspicion. The youth was angry and confessed that the child was a burden and it would be better to take it out to explore the road. The two sides quarreled.”
Chen Yang understood, got up and walked over. The two Tianshis, Chief Wu Yi and Liu Quanning, were standing on the side with no intention of coming forward to reconcile the sides. When they saw Chen Yang, they beckoned him over. Chief Wu Yi said, “Don’t pay attention to them, they are making a scene.”
While pointing to the two quarreling sides Liu Quanning told him, “Chief Wu Yi’s doll said they supervised and stole. We just don’t bother. It’s not like we’re so idle that we can go be a neighborhood council lady.”
“Mn, I don’t want to care.” Chen Yang had no intention to manage after hearing what Du Shuo told him. Both sides of the quarrel were afraid and they were waiting for the Tianshis to manage. If the Tianshi did, their drama could continue. If the Tianshi does not care, they will soon give up.
As soon as they stopped arguing, the three youths smiled mockingly and the woman holding the baby ran to Chen Yang and cried, “They want to steal my baby and throw it to those hungry ghosts. They are not human!”
“Knowing that the deserted village is weird, I saw my companion die in front of me. The Tianshis told them not to eat anything from the deserted village, yet they deliberately cooked the fish soup. It isn’t a secret that eating things from the deserted village means being unable to get out, so why do they want to drag everyone to die together? Such selfish and self-serving people will secretly kill us even if we don’t drive them out now!”
“Right! The more I think about it, the more I think it’s not right. Such a bizarre place, the Tianshi also specially admonished them. Even with their playfulness and rebelliousness, it is impossible to play with everyone’s life. Unless they were already trapped in the deserted village before they met us, they were trying to drag everyone to death with them.”
“If they won’t even spare the little babies now, will they spare us later? Several Tianshis, even if you are compassionate and kind, you should not indulge the jackals to get along with us.”
Chen Yang learned the reason for this self-directed supervillainy. It turned out that last night they talked about the fish in the ancestral hall well being put in mind by someone with a heart. He guessed that the youths who cooked the fish soup might have been trapped in the deserted village and wanted to drag the others to their deaths.
The three youths shouted, “It’s not like we were forcing you to drink fish soup!” The youth pointed to the middle-aged uncle from the group of six people, “You were the first, who came with money to buy fish soup from me. Now you say you are innocent. One by one, did I force you to drink the fish soup we cooked by pressing your necks? Make it clear. It was you who came to me with your own shame and asked for fish soup!”
“What? If you had listened to the Tianshi, and not touched the fish in the well in the ancestral hall and cooked the fish soup in front of us, would we have drunk it? At that time we were all starving, and you still deliberately tempted us. You are deliberately dragging us to die together! Tianshis, this group of rebels will kill us and are not worth saving!”
The three young men hurriedly stepped forward to explain. “Don’t listen to their nonsense. At the time, we were just messing around and didn’t think it through. We never forced them to do anything; they shamelessly came to us. Look, they even paid for the fish soup.” One of the young men pulled a few red banknotes from his pocket as evidence, showing them to Chen Yang and the others before tossing them back to the middle-aged man. “Here, take it back. We owe you nothing now. Stop spewing your damn lies!”
“Who stole your kid? I didn’t even touch him. Look at your child—he doesn’t cry except when you’re holding him. The moment you put him down, he screams like someone’s choking him. If I had taken him, he’d have thrown a fit immediately. Let me ask you, have you ever heard this child cry like that?”
Shifting blame back and forth. That’s what Chen Yang thought.
The six people who came out of the bus guessed that the three youths had deliberately dragged them to death together and wanted to get rid of them in advance just in case. The three youths, on the other hand, broke up their scam and shifted the blame. The two sides again broke out into a quarrel.
Wu Yi was so grumpy that she smashed a stool on the spot and said in a cold voice, “Have you had enough? If not, go out and bring all the hungry ghosts here. Quarrel in front of them.”
Both sides were indignant and tried to justify themselves. They seem to think that after paying for their lives, they have the courage to speak. Someone said, “Yi Tianshi, the hungry ghosts will be sunburned into sewage even if they come out in the daytime. We also want to take advantage of the daytime to settle things, so as not to see ghosts at night and daytime to prevent internal ghosts.”
Chief Wu Yi, “Since we are settling accounts let’s do it together. We instructed you not to eat things from the deserted village, you said it was fun, and you said you were tempted. What about us? Who deliberately mixed the fish soup into the kettle? It was them.” She pointed to the three youths and then to the other six who were not concerned, “Did any of you not see it? If you saw it, you didn’t stop it and didn’t remember it, didn’t you play with the idea of ‘if something happens, at least there will be a Tianshi to follow’?”
All nine people showed a sarcastic face and could not say anything to refute. They were all selfish, but felt they had no choice. After all, no one wanted to die.
Chief Wu Yi said, “If you make any more small moves, get out!”
Nine people still wanted to say something, but seeing the Tianshis were full of indifferent displeasure and they still wanted to be saved by them, the group dared not speak again. Both sides stared at each other, grumbling as they found a place to sit and rest.
Chief Wu Yi commented, “They are now in a restless mood. Before there were some scruples, but they did not dare to make big moves. Now they are constantly making small moves.”
Chen Yang, “when they found out they were unable to walk out of deserted village, they selfishly hid from you to eat deserted village food. If they find out that they will die in the village and that the Tianshi can leave alive, but not save them, I’m afraid it will spur them to do something even more terrible.”
The offer to pay for life last night was also to reassure the group that they would not take advantage of the opportunity to drag their feet. Today, instead of thinking of dealing with the hungry ghosts and leaving the deserted village, they were here to ostracize their fellow human beings.
Chen Yang said to the Chief Wu, “Let’s go to the ancestral hall first to check the situation.”
Yi nodded, “Watch out for the watchtower. There are many hungry ghosts hiding inside. Hungry ghosts are afraid of sunlight, so the outside of the watchtower is full of green plants.”
Chen Yang stopped, “Hungry ghosts are all hiding in the towers? Why don’t we eradicate all the greenery and let the sunlight kill them.”
“It’s no use.” Chief Wu Yi vetoed, “we tried, but the green plants are stubbornly rooted in the walls of the towers. Even if we took a full day to try, we may not be able to eradicate all the towers of green plants. The watchtower architecture is special. Even if we only clear the window, or the door of the greenery, it is not much use. Instead, we will anger the hungry ghosts so that they remember our scent and roam the hills to hunt us down. Now we hide in this building that is free of plants because the yang energy is enough to temporarily cover the energy of our bodies. But it won’t hold for long.”
“Okay.” Chen Yang and Du Shuo left the tower and followed the narrow path back to the ancestral hall. It was still eerie, with the plaques in front of the hall standing silently, as if anyone who broke into the ancestral hall was being watched by the plaques.
At the edge of the well, Du Shuo spotted a blood-stained wooden knife and called Chen Yang over. “This wooden knife wasn’t here yesterday.”
Chen Yang picked up the knife, noticing it had been sharpened to the point of rivaling a steel blade. The knife was coated in dark, filthy blood, and there were faint traces of the same blackened blood on the ground. Between the cracks of the stone slabs, clotted black residue suggested that a significant amount of blood had once flowed there. Peering into the well, Chen Yang saw only darkness; its depths seemed almost bottomless.
Leaning closer to the well’s edge, he could clearly hear the echo of his own voice. The damp, moss-covered walls of the well glistened faintly. He reached out and swiped a finger across the surface, finding it sticky and filthy. Taking out his phone, he switched on the flashlight and illuminated the interior. The well’s mouth was narrow, the water below pitch black and unnervingly still. Staring into it for too long brought on a creeping sense of dread.
Standing up, Chen Yang said, “It’s impossible to see the bottom. The water is too dark, and sunlight can’t reach it.” Glancing at the discarded wooden knife, he added, “Did someone perform a water burial here last night? But water burials are meant to offer bodies to river gods. Throwing a body into the well… seems more like feeding the fish.”
Du Shuo responded, “Let’s check the body in the coffin.”
Chen Yang froze for a moment before realizing what Du Shuo meant. He quickly ran to inspect the body in the coffin. Opening the lid, he found that there was indeed a corpse inside—but it wasn’t the same one as yesterday. The corpse in front of them now had half its body eaten away, but the flesh was still fresh, with no signs of decay.
This was a freshly dead body.
“Who put this body in the coffin?” Chen Yang murmured as he examined the young man’s corpse. Judging by the remains, the deceased was either one of the three young men who had entered the village or someone from the bus group. The intact arm bore no shellfish tattoo, while the other arm was missing entirely.
Chopping up the decayed corpse, throwing it into the well to feed the fish, and then replacing it with a fresh body in the coffin—Chen Yang couldn’t make sense of this sequence of actions. He looked up at Du Shuo, who simply said, “Offerings.”
“Offerings?”
Water burials were supposed to pacify the spirits of the departed and guide them to reincarnation. How did they turn into offerings? No, wait—back in ancient times, water burials did indeed serve as offerings to river gods. But these bodies weren’t being placed in rivers; they were being chopped up and thrown into a well. Why use the well in the ancestral hall specifically?
Chen Yang stared at the rows of ancestral tablets in the hall for a long moment, his pupils suddenly contracting as a realization struck him. Something didn’t add up. “If the villagers of the deserted village relocated because it was too remote and inconvenient, they should have taken their ancestral tablets with them!”
In some rural clans, the ancestral hall was of paramount importance, practically their spiritual root. Even if a new hall was built next to the old one, the ancestors’ tablets would be moved to the new hall on an auspicious day. For an entire village to relocate, it was inconceivable for the tablets to remain abandoned in the deserted village.
Du Shuo, hands behind his back, said, “This ancestral hall doesn’t belong to the villagers who moved away from the deserted village. That explains why the tablets weren’t taken.”
Chen Yang nodded. “That’s possible.”
Different places have different traditions regarding ancestral halls. In some areas, a single village might have just one ancestral hall. But in certain southern regions, each surname has its own hall. A village could have several major surnames, each with its own ancestral hall. People from different surnames weren’t allowed to enter another hall, and funerals wouldn’t involve outsiders unless there was a marriage connection.
“So, it seems that a certain clan didn’t relocate their ancestral tablets. This could only happen if they were forced to flee quickly due to a natural disaster or man-made catastrophe, leaving no time to move the tablets—or if the entire clan perished in the deserted village.” Chen Yang stepped forward and wiped the dust off one of the tablets. “Anonymous!”
Chen Yang quickly wiped the dust off the other tablets. Every single one was marked as “Nameless one.” The ancestral hall before him, filled with hundreds of densely packed, overlapping tablets, was dedicated entirely to the nameless. No names, no dates of birth or death, no cause of death, and no one to erect proper memorials. Each tablet simply bore the word “Nameless” and was left in this place. Even offerings like incense and flowers would likely be stolen by wandering spirits due to the lack of names.
“How could there be so many nameless tablets? Is the entire ancestral hall dedicated to these nameless souls? And who’s the one making offerings for them?”
Du Shuo walked over, picking up a clean, recently made tablet from the edge. “This one has no dust on it—it was just made.”
Chen Yang took it and examined it. “Where did the new death come from?” After a pause, he tilted his head to glance at the ancient well standing silently in the center of the courtyard. “Last night, there was a water burial, and today there’s a newly made nameless tablet. It’s indeed a recent death. So, all these hundreds of tablets must have been set up after water burials and then placed here in the ancestral hall.”
Typically, water burials involved throwing the remains into rivers, but here, the remains were thrown into the well. Were there more than just fish in that well? Why conduct water burials at the well? Who performed these ceremonies for the nameless? And after the burials, why build an ancestral hall and enshrine them with tablets?
Yet, despite the enshrinement, they dared not carve names onto the tablets. It was as if they wanted to confine these souls, offering worship as a form of atonement while fearing that giving them names might allow them to descend to the underworld and lodge complaints.
Chen Yang put the tablets back on the altar. The table below the altar still had five offerings of incense and flowers which had decayed and melted over time. The incense oil in the lamp was filled with the corpses of flying insects. The incense in the incense burner was stuck together in a mess. The incense ash was still smoking, and suddenly a cut of incense ash broke off and fell on the table with a ‘pop’.
The sound suddenly rang out in the dead shrine, adding some horror to the atmosphere.
Chen Yang lowered his eyes, “Let’s go find out if there are other shrines.”
Fatty suddenly leapt out and spun around a few times away from Du Shuo, holding a cardboard in his mouth. The cardboard read, “There’s someone in the woods.”
Chen Yang, “Fatty will lead the way.”
Fatty hesitated for a moment and looked at Du Shuo, “Lead the way.” He said. Chen Yang jumped out of the window and landed easily. When he looked back, he saw Du Shuo standing behind him. They smiled at each other and ran after Fatty .
After running through several alleys, they reached the forest. As they were about to enter, Chen Yang suddenly turned back to look at the blockhouse that was now partially hidden by greenery. From the windows, he saw a few dry, withered black arms reaching out through the plants, but as soon as the sunlight scorched them, they recoiled immediately.
The hungry ghosts were watching them after all. Chen Yang withdrew his gaze and ran into the forest. Du Shuo was already waiting ahead. The slope of the mountain was in shadow, and the dense branches and leaves blocked out most of the light, making the forest dim. It was eerily quiet—no insect chirping, no bird calls.
Fatty stopped on a tree trunk, waiting for Chen Yang and Du Shuo. When it saw them, it resumed leaping through the forest, moving incredibly fast. Its black figure flitted through the leaves, barely visible as a blur. It was hard to believe something so heavy could move with such agility.
The forest floor was blanketed with fallen leaves. Beneath the leaves was a mix of decayed foliage and mud, and occasionally, stepping on the leaves would reveal soft, rotting muck. Chen Yang steadied himself by grabbing a crooked tree and began observing the surroundings. Suddenly, a fragment of white bone fell from above, startling him.
Chen Yang stepped back and looked up, only to see a large wooden barrel, about half a person’s height, lodged in the branches of the crooked tree he had been holding onto. The barrel had a hole in it, and it was from that hole that the bone had fallen.
Du Shuo approached and first checked on Chen Yang. Seeing that he was fine, he turned his attention to the barrel wedged in the tree branches. “Ghost cocoon,” he said.
Chen Yang peered through the hole in the barrel and saw a complete skeleton curled up inside. He said, “Is this a tree burial?”
Tree burial, like water burial, was a funeral custom found in certain regions. Some believed that trees were resting places for the soul, and that deceased loved ones could revisit their family by inhabiting the tree while also finding eternal peace. This led to the practice of tree burial, which involved placing the body in a wooden barrel and suspending it in the tree, wrapping the body in a burial shroud and tying it to the trunk, or even carving a hollow into the tree to house the body.
The corpses buried within the trees were referred to as “ghost cocoons.”
Chen Yang said, “It’s impossible for two different funeral rituals to exist in the same village.”
The questions kept piling up. The matter of the hungry ghosts hadn’t been resolved yet, and now there were the anonymous memorial tablets and two entirely incompatible funeral rituals—something that should never coexist in a single village. While a village could house multiple surnames and ancestral halls, it was extremely rare for two distinct funeral practices to exist together.
Specialized funeral customs symbolized a clan’s religious beliefs about spirits and deities. A small mountain village would never tolerate the coexistence of two conflicting religious practices.
Suddenly, a piercing scream and cries for help erupted not far away in the forest. Moments later, Chen Yang and Du Shuo saw a man and a woman frantically running toward them, their faces full of terror. When they reached them, Chen Yang noticed that the man was carrying an elderly person with graying hair on his back.
The couple stopped in front of Chen Yang and Du Shuo, gasping for breath. The man stammered, “Run—run now! The forest—it’s full of bodies. You have to leave!” The woman was too frightened to speak and could only nod furiously.
Chen Yang pointed to the ghost cocoon behind him and asked, “Are you talking about this?”
The man and woman looked up and screamed again in terror. They even mistook Chen Yang and Du Shuo for ghosts, begging for mercy, “We’re sorry! We’re so sorry! We only came to investigate. We didn’t mean to offend. Please forgive the foolishness of the young.”
The woman, on the verge of tears, clasped her hands together and kept bowing repeatedly, “Please forgive us! Please forgive us!”
Chen Yang rubbed his nose and gave Du Shuo a subtle shrug, silently signaling that he hadn’t intended to scare them. He said, “I’m human.”
But the terrified couple didn’t register his words at all. Instead, the elderly man being carried by the young man smacked him on the back, his voice booming like a bell, “Useless! They’re human, not the kind of ‘people’ that crawl out of ghost cocoons!”
The young man set the old professor down and muttered, “Professor, ghosts are cunning.”
The woman nodded vigorously. “Exactly! Professor, have you forgotten what we just saw? That thing was hiding in the ghost cocoon, pretending it wasn’t dead, trying to trick us into letting it out. And then it crawled out as a dried corpse and even scratched me! It scared me to death!”
Chen Yang asked, “Who are you? And what’s this about the dried corpse in the ghost cocoon?” As he spoke, he glanced at the woman’s wrist, which bore a nasty wound. It looked ghastly, but the woman seemed completely unfazed, as if she felt no pain at all.
The elderly man said, “I’m a professor from Z University, and these are my students. We originally came to study the coexistence of two unique burial customs in the abandoned village, which coincidentally fit as their research topic. After arriving, we wandered around the forest and couldn’t find a way out. Just earlier, my student heard cries for help coming from inside a ghost cocoon. Thinking it was a living person, they went to open it, but suddenly, a dried corpse jumped out and scratched my student. We managed to escape, but Zhao Yao can’t feel any pain in her wound, and I suspect she’s been poisoned by corpse toxins.”
Chen Yang asked, “You know about corpse toxins?”
The professor replied, “I’ve studied folklore and cultural traditions for years; I’ve come across many things.”
Chen Yang nodded and took out a talisman, handing it to Zhao Yao. “This can temporarily suppress the corpse toxins. Follow us into the village, and we’ll find someone to treat your wound with herbal medicine.”
Zhao Yao’s eyes lit up. “Are you exorcists?”
Chen Yang replied, “Yes.”
Zhao Yao and the other student, Zhao Gang, excitedly surrounded Chen Yang, bombarding him with questions about being an exorcist and other related topics. Since they were already familiar with beliefs in spirits and supernatural practices, they were highly receptive and respectful while discussing these matters, especially as part of their folklore studies.
Meanwhile, Du Shuo stood off to the side, chatting with the professor. He asked, “How did you know about the two unique burial customs in the abandoned village?”
The professor replied, “One day, I was in the library, reading about unique burial customs in rural China, when a young man struck up a conversation with me. He seemed very knowledgeable about traditional funeral practices. The more we talked, the deeper the discussion got. Eventually, he mentioned the tree burials and water burials in the abandoned village. I was intrigued, so I decided to come and investigate.”
Du Shuo asked, “Do you remember the young man’s name?”
The professor smiled and said, “Of course. His name was Meng Xi.”
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