Fortunately, after saying this, there was no need for Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin to press him; Old Hu had already begun his account.
In stark contrast to his aged appearance, his description was surprisingly logical and precise. As he spoke at length, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin felt as though they could see the terrifying scene themselves, unfolding slowly before their eyes like a painting of a murder on a scroll…
“It was just at the beginning of late autumn last year when the long-dilapidated Daye Temple began its renovations.
The mountain temple tightly shut its gates and turned away all pilgrims.
The temple, which should have been bustling with visitors and flourishing with incense, became utterly deserted. All day long, only professional workers like carpenters and bricklayers could be seen going up and down the mountain paths.
After renovating for some time like this, ginkgo leaves began to blanket the steps.
Although ‘ginkgo’ has ‘silver’ in its name, its leaves are a brilliant gold. When they scattered across the stone steps leading to the temple, they looked like beautifully shaped pieces of gold foil covering the ground, respectfully welcoming the impending return of the Buddha.
Setting aside the temple that was still under renovation, this mountain path, full of scenic fallen ginkgo leaves, also attracted people to come and visit.
Even though the temple’s renovators repeatedly emphasized that the construction site was unsafe and placed ‘No Visitors’ signs at various checkpoints on the mountain, it still couldn’t stop enthusiastic locals who wanted to enjoy the scenery.
Looking back on it now, the so-called ‘unsafe construction site’ might have just been an ulterior motive to keep people away.
There were quite a few visitors, and naturally, I was one of them.
It’s just that I normally don’t believe in Buddha or pray, nor do I climb mountains or exercise. Even though I’ve lived in this city for a long time, the number of times I’ve come here can be counted on one hand. Because I was climbing alone and didn’t want the sight of young couples to be an eyesore, I purposely avoided the crowds and picked the deserted paths, walking up while enjoying the views.
Since I rarely came and didn’t know the way, I absentmindedly climbed all the way up and unexpectedly ended up on the back side of the mountain, right at the construction site.
My timing was a coincidence; I arrived right at mealtime. There was hardly anyone at the site, just wood, cement, molds, and other materials scattered all over the ground. Although the site was spacious, it felt like there was nowhere to step.
I had been climbing all afternoon and was both tired and hungry. By this point, I couldn’t walk anymore, so I chose to rest behind a large rock on the path I’d come up, with my back facing the construction site.
The only reason I chose this spot was because the site was messy, and I had come up to see the scenery, so I subconsciously picked a place with a good view. I absolutely had no ulterior motives or any clairvoyant abilities.
I rested behind the rock for a while when suddenly I heard a sound coming from behind me.
‘Clack—clack—clack—’
It sounded like the wheels of a flatbed cart rolling over uneven ground.
Had the workers finished their meal and returned to work? Thinking this, I turned around, planning to ask a worker for a shortcut down the mountain.
But I saw a strange sight.
By then, the sun had already set, and the sky was mostly dark, though not quite dark enough to need lights. Yet, this is actually the dimmest time of the day—the sun is gone, the lights aren’t yet on, and the earth transitions from blue to black, as if soaked in ink.
In this near-black bluish field of vision, I saw a person in gray clothes slowly dragging a flatbed cart forward.
The cart was carrying a large, sack-like object. Both ends of the sack dragged on the ground, scraping and bouncing along as the cart moved.
No, it wasn’t a sack.
It was a person!
When I realized what was on the cart, I was overwhelmed with shock, but I didn’t choose to run away.
When faced with danger, people can actually unleash power they couldn’t normally imagine.
Ultimately, a person has no way of truly knowing themselves.
If you ask me how I know this so clearly? It’s because I have a wealth of life experience.
Anyway, when I realized the thing on the cart was a person, not only did I not think of running, but I even quietly adjusted my angle to get a better view.
I noticed that the person was lying face down on the cart, back towards the sky. He had a burly build—a man. His head and legs were hanging off the cart, touching the ground.
At this point, I still didn’t know whether this person was dead or alive.
But I had already started worrying about his head scraping against the ground—I wondered if the concrete floor would disfigure his face.
Well, rather than calling it worry, it was more like curiosity.
I watched the whole time, watching this person in gray drag the cart over to the cement mixing pool, and then watching him pour cement into a mold… I should explain here, temple Buddha statues, generally speaking, are made of clay, wood, gold, and so on.
Usually, the main Buddhas inside a temple are either carved from wood or cast in gold. Only those less important Buddhas on the sides are sculpted from clay.
Even though I never pray to Buddha, I still understand this bit of common sense.
Furthermore, I knew that the mold he was pouring the slurry into was for the Four Heavenly Kings in the side hall—not because I recognized it, but because there was a sign placed next to it, boldly reading ‘Side Hall, Four Heavenly Kings’.
I imagine it was the temple’s renovators who wrote it specifically, afraid the bricklayers might mix them up?
The temple renovators really did a pretty good job on these kinds of details.
Anyway, the person in gray picked up a pale yellow, large tarp-like thing from the cart and laid it out inside the mold. Then he shoved the person on the cart onto it and wrapped him tightly in the tarp.
The man was very meticulous; he even secured it with tape.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but later I looked up some information—this was to prevent the stench of the corpse from leaking out. Those who commit such grave acts of murder always think things through more thoroughly than I do.
Then came the cement. Iron-gray, heavy cement fell onto his chest and abdomen, gradually spreading toward both ends, finally smoothing over his body, his face, and his very existence.
And then, the mold. The mold was closed.
It was over.
Whether he had been dead or alive before, it was all over now.
The person in gray dragged the cart and casually walked away.
Again came the ‘clack—clack—clack—’ sound, gradually fading away, vanishing into the black temple that crouched there like a giant beast.
Leaving behind only the deserted construction site, and a Buddha statue with a corpse hidden in its belly.
I sat there in a daze for a long time until I heard another rustling sound. I knew I should leave immediately; if that person from earlier discovered me, I’d have a very slim chance of survival. But the curiosity of witnessing such an unprecedented event gripped my heart tightly, controlling my eyes, making me secretly peek through the rock toward the construction site again.
A short person whose face I couldn’t make out stepped lightly over the gravel on the ground.
His goal was clear; he walked with utter precision straight to the Buddha statue that had just been sealed.
He crouched down, placed a sign he was holding on the ground, and picked up the ‘Side Hall – Four Heavenly Kings’ sign from earlier. Then, he lightly walked away again without a single backward glance.
It was then that I realized the new sign read ‘Main Hall – Eighteen Arhats’.
Who was the person in gray? And who was the short person?
Why did he swap the signs?
Was the previous sign placed by mistake? Was the new sign the correct one?
When the temple reopens, with people coming and going, incense smoke lingering, and devotees piously bowing to the Buddha, will they know that what the incense masks is the stench of a corpse, and what the colorful paint covers is the soul of someone who died a wrongful death?
Among those statues with their varying forms and fiercely glaring guardian deities, exactly which one is hiding a corpse?”
“Did you call the police at the time?”
Ji Xun heard Huo Ranyin’s voice; his questioning was extremely direct. This was to be expected. For something that would pass as a top-tier bedtime horror story, if one didn’t call the police then, when would they?
“No,” Old Hu said.
“Why?” Huo Ranyin pressed.
“When you get old, you become afraid of trouble…” Old Hu said slowly. “I’m just an old man; less trouble is better than more trouble. If I rashly get involved and the information leaks, what if the murderer comes to take revenge on me? If I were a bit younger, I could maybe fight him, but at this age, if he just whacks the back of my head, I’d die on the spot.”
“Come with us to the police station now.” Huo Ranyin looked at Old Hu with an evaluating gaze. “Describe the murder scene you just told us about to the police again.”
Old Hu picked up his coffee cup and took a sip.
“I’m not going; I hate going to the police station.”
The sunlight from outside the window shone on the table, illuminating the sunglasses Old Hu had placed on it, illuminating the brooch pinned to his chest, and also illuminating the fava bean-sized age spots on his cheeks.
Living to eighty has been rare since ancient times.
At this age, no matter what, one couldn’t just roughly drag him to the police station and force him to talk just because he possessed some clues to a murder case.
Moreover, there was an even more crucial question.
Was what Old Hu said true or false?
The police couldn’t possibly open an investigation based on such a simple, vague statement anyway.
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin exchanged a glance.
In that glance, they shared a complete tacit understanding.
—Whether it was true or false, they would go up the mountain to take a look first.
Old Hu didn’t remember where the construction site and the temple were. In his words, back then it was all dirt paths, and now that it was paved with stone bricks and transformed, how could he recognize it?
Therefore, they could only search as they walked. The three of them entered Daye Temple. This temple required tickets. It was simple for him and Huo Ranyin, but complicated for Old Hu. The old man didn’t have a standard ID card; he held a Hong Kong and Macau Mainland Travel Permit and had to go to a different counter to process his ticket purchase.
Ji Xun originally wanted to ask him how he ended up with Hong Kong citizenship and what the story was behind him settling in Qin City, but as the words reached his lips, he remembered that his own grandfather, a native of Fu Province, also held Hong Kong citizenship and lived in Ning City, and he had never asked the old man why he had run off to Hong Kong.
Afterwards, they made their way all the way up. The young men had fast legs, but Old Hu actually refused to show weakness. Before long, they arrived at the first temple in the mountains.
Perhaps because of the story they had just heard, when Ji Xun now looked at the temple, filled with swirling incense and seated bodhisattvas, he couldn’t help but feel a bizarre sensation. He felt that the thresholds were too high, the window lattices too deep, and that the light couldn’t reach inside, rendering the colorful paint on the Buddhas heavy and dark.
“This isn’t the temple that was under construction last year.”
In the brief moment Ji Xun was sighing with emotion, Huo Ranyin had already, with exceptional drive, wandered all around the front and back of the temple, found the person in charge, and obtained a copy of the Daye Temple Chronicle from them.
This was a record of the temple’s history. Being brought out from the main hall, it naturally wasn’t the original, but a photocopy.
While Huo Ranyin was taking action, Ji Xun didn’t just stand around idly either. He found the stone stele erected outside the hall of Daye Temple. This was a merit stele, deeply engraved with the names of major donors. Ji Xun scanned it; from top to bottom, every entry was a large sum, ranging from millions to hundreds of thousands.
Among them, the one ranked first had a particularly large number of engraved characters—after all, the first one is always different.
“In 1997, the philanthropist Yu Cisheng donated 3 million in charity funds to help this temple undergo a complete renovation.”
“1997,” Ji Xun muttered. “That’s not too long ago. Is this temple relatively young, or is there another merit stele I didn’t see?”
The familiar name made Huo Ranyin look up.
Yu Cisheng was his neighbor, only four years older than him. In 1997, Huo Ranyin was 7, and Yu Cisheng was 11. An 11-year-old child certainly couldn’t produce such a massive donation—the donor was Yu Cisheng’s father, who simply made the donation in Yu Cisheng’s name.
Yu Cisheng was born with albinism. Father Yu, who only managed to have this single child in his middle age, was filled with a mix of grief and joy. Naturally, he treasured him immensely, afraid he would melt in his mouth or break in his hands. It was said that ever since Yu Cisheng came into the world, Father Yu began making massive donations externally. Whether it was to Buddhism, Taoism, impoverished people, or for rare diseases, as long as people came to Father Yu and were genuinely in need, they would always receive some degree of help.
Although he didn’t remember his childhood with complete clarity, Huo Ranyin still retained an impression of this fact.
Yu Cisheng’s family could be considered a charitable family with a long-standing tradition.
He flipped open the Daye Temple Chronicle.
The opening pages detailed the origins of Daye Temple, largely passed down from the Southern Song Dynasty. In the interim, due to dynastic changes and foreign invasions, it experienced multiple cycles of prosperity and decline, until 1997, when it was finally funded for reconstruction by the philanthropist Yu Cisheng.
Regarding the reason Yu Cisheng rebuilt this temple, a short anecdote was briefly recorded.
It said that one day, the Yu family took Yu Cisheng on a spring outing. While passing by this location, Yu Cisheng suffered a sudden asthma attack. His family was panicked and at a loss, but just then, the temple’s abbot, Master Kuye, brought out a bowl of clear spring water from the back courtyard.
This clear water came from the “Shanjian Spring” within the mountain. Since the Southern Song Dynasty, when the spring dried up, the temple declined, and when the spring gushed forth, the temple prospered. That very morning, the spring, which had been dry for years, suddenly gushed with water, and the abbot knew that someone destined had arrived.
Afterwards, Yu Cisheng drank the spring water and was instantly cured of his illness. Subsequently, they donated 3 million to aid in the Buddhist temple’s restoration.
Every sip and every peck, is it not predestined by heaven?
Ji Xun read this short anecdote with great relish and praised without hesitation: “This Daye Temple Chronicle is written pretty well!”
Huo Ranyin wasn’t very interested. He flipped further back; the chronicle recorded everything. Even a small bridge changing its name or a Buddha statue having its materials replaced was meticulously recorded one by one, not to mention major renovations.
Aside from the large-scale reconstruction in 1997, there were records of renovations in 2002, 2008, and 2011, but there was nothing for last year.
Old Hu said, “Then it must have been a hall further back. I climbed along the mountain path for a long time back then.”
That possibility couldn’t be ruled out.
This mountain was so large, and Daye Temple wasn’t the only temple in it; there were plenty of different temples, even Taoist shrines.
The three of them continued forward. This time, following the map, they visited all the temples in the vicinity, but they still couldn’t find the temple that began construction last year.
At this point, Old Hu’s expression became a bit strange.
Of course, perhaps it was just because he was tired from climbing the mountain for so long.
Old Hu said, “Maybe the temple did undergo construction but didn’t record it. After all, when a guilty conscience is involved, covering things up is normal, right?”
“If construction really happened, it couldn’t be hidden,” Huo Ranyin said. “The pilgrims who come here regularly would definitely know whether the temples in the mountain had been renovated. I’ll go ask the pilgrims.”
“Wait,” Ji Xun called out to stop Huo Ranyin. When they came up, he had bought a bottle of water. After climbing the mountain for two hours, anyone would be thirsty. He twisted off the cap and first handed it to Huo Ranyin, “Take a sip before you go.”
Huo Ranyin took it, drank a couple of mouthfuls to moisten his throat, and handed the water bottle back to Ji Xun, saying, “Wait for me here.”
“Mhm.”
Ji Xun agreed, then continued to drink the water while watching Huo Ranyin walk away. When he had drunk about half the bottle, he shifted his gaze and caught Old Hu sneaking glances at him red-handed.
“Old man—”
“What is it?” Old Hu grew alert. “I remember it perfectly clearly, it was a temple on this mountain!”
“I wasn’t asking about that. What I want to ask is,” Ji Xun smiled, “why have you been sneaking looks at me this whole way? Checking out how handsome I am?”
“You young man, have you no shame.” Old Hu paused, “However, you are handsome. If you weren’t handsome, the Huo family wouldn’t be left without an heir.”
Ji Xun choked on a mouthful of water.
