The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 172: Listen to the Story

I really didn't expect the lecturer's sudden outburst. I had assumed that someone like him might have been used to it, and wouldn't have become emotional whenever he heard vicious curses. It wasn't like I understood this kind of person, but I had been in this state for some time.

I didn't react for a few minutes. When the lecturer left and slammed the door on his way out, the old lady wailed and lost control of her emotions. She kept slapping her thighs while cursing incoherently.

For a brief moment, I didn't know which one to deal with first. I stood up, opened the door, and looked out to find that the lecturer and my classmate had met below and were quarreling.

My classmate was a person who was very good at calming things down. When I saw that he had grabbed the lecturer's hand during their quarrel, I knew that he could handle whatever else happened after that.

I retreated inside, righted the table, and put the ashtray back on top. I patted the old lady and said, "Don't cry, don't cry. It's a good thing he's gone. Let's hurry up and talk, it's getting late."

The old lady didn't listen to me, so I handed over one of my cigarettes and lit it. She took two long drags before she could get her emotions under control.

The whole process seemed a bit fake, but it was common for an old lady at this age to exaggerate and act like a child. I said to her, "Tell me about the time you moved the grave for the first time. Maybe I'll know what's going on once I hear it."

The old lady looked at the door. It seemed that although her mouth was very poisonous, she was still a little afraid of her son when it came to this matter.

I could almost imagine her son's character. His usual persona was probably very obscure, quiet, and submissive, but when he lost control, it would be very terrible. He seemed to have a high-pressure personality, and it was that kind of person who would dare sleep in the same room as a corpse.

I said to her, "He's gone, don't worry!"

"He must have gone back to the city again. If it weren't for moving the grave, he wouldn't have come to see me until I died." The old lady kept muttering in the Yinchuan dialect. She suddenly looked up at me: "Mister, this old woman doesn't have much money. How can I ask for your help?"

I knew good feng shui masters here charged very high fees. It appeared the old lady was either poor or naturally stingy, and was very sensitive to such things as money. Of course, I wouldn't accept her money since feng shui was nonsense in itself, but I had no choice but to accept it, because no true feng shui master in this world would do it for free, especially for the victims.

I thought for a moment, and then said, "Well, I don't want your money either. Just let me pick a bowl from your kitchen and take it with me."

This move was very strange, but I figured it would earn me some points at this time. I had hoped we could quickly move past this topic and get to the main point immediately, because I was really a little sleepy. Drinking all that beer, and going through such hardships made it hard to persevere. After hearing this, however, the old lady unexpectedly trembled, and even dropped her cigarette on the floor.

Her face suddenly became extremely furious, and I didn't know whether it was because she was upset, or because she was old and the light exaggerated her distorted expression. She stared at me, completely speechless for a long time.

My heart thumped. It was obvious that I had hit a certain nerve. Bowl... was there something wrong with the bowls in her home?

Her expression indicated that what had happened in this home definitely wasn't as simple as moving the body to a new grave. The cause and effect of everything was definitely more complicated than the strange phenomenon we were facing.

I calmed myself down, knowing that I had gained the upper hand by mistake. I pulled the ashtray closer to me, lit a cigarette, and put it in the ashtray.

As the smoke began to rise, I said to the old lady, "I'm here to save you. Whether I can or not depends on your own luck. Now talk!"

The old lady's expression slowly eased up, but she completely collapsed the moment she returned to normal. She didn't even look like an earthly creature anymore, and I felt that her old and distorted appearance in the darkness was almost like a monster.

"Mister, if you know the origin of those bowls, why do you want me to talk about them? I really don't want to think about them," she said.

When I merely shook my head and made an insistent gesture, she paused before finally telling her story.

Because the whole story was told in the Yinchuan dialect, I won't bother showing off when I paraphrase it, and will just directly translate it into something that can be understood. The story was long and frightening. When it came to everything regarding this incident, there were a lot of details involved. The whole thing had been so shocking that the old lady memorized countless irrelevant details.

It was with these details that I finally discovered how horrible the whole thing was, but that was later.

The old lady's story started from the day when her daughter—whom she called NanNan [1] – had an accident. In fact, I never heard her call her daughter by her name, but she did say the lecturer's name in a very cold tone of voice. The lecturer's name was Lin Qizhong, and the old lady's name was Lin Amei. I knew as soon as I heard it that this was a divorced or widowed family, because all the children had taken their mother's surname.

NanNan was very young at that time, and Lin Qizhong took her to pick up slack on the dirt road in the mountains. It was slack that had fallen from a coal truck.

They were on a dirt road specially built by the mine for transporting coal, and it was very rugged since there was no asphalt or cement. The coal mine was some distance away from their desolate village, and it would take more than an hour to get there by mule. Lin Qizhong had discovered that somebody had buried several stones on the road in this area. When the coal truck came here, it must have been jostled too much and dropped a lot of slack.

The coal mine was very secluded, so Lin Qizhong felt that he was probably the only one who knew that there was a mine in this place. The direction of the road was also very strange, and he didn't know where it led. He tried to follow it once, but found that there were more weeds the further he went, so he didn't dare keep going.

If he picked up something here once a day, he could get back more than half a yuan, or even three times the coal needed for their stove. Lin Qizhong's family was very poor, and this coal was very precious to them. He had to take care of his sister after school, so he simply brought her along while he picked up the coal slack.

It was fine on any normal day, but they had come early on this particular day, so they had to hide in the grass. Lin Qizhong made grasshoppers out of the leaves for his sister to play with. She was very obedient, while Lin Qizhong at that time was a quiet, but persistent child.

When a truck drove over the dirt road with a bang, they waited for it to pass before going up and picking some of the slack up. Lin Qizhong didn't dare risk showing himself to the driver, because what he was doing at that time was very immoral.

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Note:

[1] So the name appeared as (奻奻). Pinyin for that character is "Nan" or "Nuan" so I went with Nan. It can mean stupid, foolish, dolt. But I also found that the characters (囡囡) also have the pinyin "nan". NanNan in that context can mean "little darling" or "baby". Considering how the woman hates her son, I'm going with the latter.