"Are we really headed for the old dirt in Eryuan?" Officer Li asked, his voice sounding thin in the cabin of the car as he settled into the seat.
"Yes. The trail leads back to the nest," Zhao Feng replied, his expression as flat as a washed blackboard. "I need you to help me bird-dog the history of that 'Happy Farmstead' operation."
"Happy Farmstead... sure, I can help you process that," Li Guoming said, but his pulse was starting to red-line with curiosity. "What's the play? Do we go through the bureaucratic channels, checking the dead-letter files, or do we start knocking on doors one by one?" Li looked at his old friend, noticing a mask of cold knowledge—and perhaps a clammy sliver of reluctance—settling over Zhao's face.
"Ming-zai... I need you to lead me to Great-Uncle Wen," Zhao Feng said softly. "Based on the math I've done, he's the only soul left who can tell us how the gears turned when they sold the land for that 'Happy Farmstead'."
"Ah... Lao-Gong Wen," Li Guoming murmured, the name drifting through his mind like cigarette smoke. He thought of the old man—Li Wenrong (李文荣)—the older brother of his own great-grandfather. A ninety-five-year-old relic of a man, an ancient soul who was still somehow holding his own against the clock. In Li's memory, the old man had always been a stone effigy of age. It had been nearly three years since Li had entered his world, but the family grapevine said he was still upright and sniffing the air—even if his eyes and ears were starting to give up the ghost, his memory remained as sharp as splintered glass.
The old man lived in a private, faraway static, tucked away in an ancient square wooden house with a courtyard that held the silence like a heavy blanket. Li could still recall the musty odor of old paper and the sharp, swampy reek of sandalwood incense that lived in those rooms. He remembered the black ebony table—a dark monolith in the center of the house— And the taste of Baba cakes (粑粑). Those sticky rice treats, slathered in brown sugar and grilled over a low flame until they were sweet and mellow—the kind of childhood daydream a man never truly outgrows. Great-Uncle Wen always had them ready, a small ritual of nursery-rhyme sweetness during every visit.
"You think my Great-Uncle is the one who fed the land to that Deng bastid?" Li Guoming asked, his face becoming a mask of deep, cold knowledge.
Zhao Feng shook his head slowly. "I'm not sure if the gears mesh that way yet. We need to confirm it with the old man first. This rot... it might go back further than we think. Much further."
Zhao Feng fell into a choking emptiness of thought. He reached out and clapped the driver's shoulder—a signal of focused, urgent haste. The black Hongqi sedan—that heavy, silent monolith of steel—began to roll, leaving the sarcophagus of the Anning Recovery Center in its wake as they pointed their nose toward the mountains.
"Never mind that for now. We'll find the truth soon enough once we hit the dirt in Eryuan," Officer Zhao Feng said, his voice flat as a washed blackboard. "But first, let me lay out the math on that poem—the one those kids and Ah-Ling were spitting out. It's a nasty little knot in the thread... and it's old. We're talking Three Kingdoms old."
"The Three Kingdoms?" Li Guoming let out a low, shivering rattle of a groan. Zhao Feng didn't answer right away. He reached for his Panasonic Toughbook G2—a blocky, rugged monolith of magnesium alloy and thick rubber armor designed to survive a world of pain. He tapped the glass, waiting for the digital fog to clear, before he started the gospel.
"There's a record of the 'Martian Twins' (荧惑童子 : Yinghuo Tongzi) in the Sou Shen Ji (搜神记)—that ancient collection of spooks and shadows by the scholar Gan Bao (干宝)," Zhao said, his face becoming a mask of cold knowledge. "It says that in the second year of Jingyao (景耀)—around 259 AD, when Liu Shan (刘禅) was still sitting on the throne—a mysterious boy in a bleeding red suit materialized in the middle of a market. He gathered the local small-fry and got them to sing a prophecy: 'The three realms shall return to Sima (三公归于司马 : Sān gōng guī yú Sīmǎ).' They made a hell of a racket, a high-voltage shriek that wouldn't stop. When the crowd tried to box him in, the boy performed a final rubber acrobatics act—he transformed into a sheet of white silk, jacked himself into the sky, and vanished into the stagnant air."
"It's a mirror image of Ah-Ling's testimony!" Li Guoming barked, his pulse starting to red-line. "Is it just in that one dead-letter file, or are there others?"
"It's not a one-off," Zhao said, his eyes becoming twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness. "The Jin Shu (晋书)—the official chronicles—backs it up in the chapters on astronomy (天文志) and the five elements (五行志). They call it Mars descending as a child (荧惑降为儿童 :Yinghuo jiang wei er tong). The theory in the old texts is simple: when the Red Planet wants to warn the human machinery of a coming slaughterhouse event, it concentrates its power into the shape of a child. It uses their play as a medium for prophecy, because a child's words are a washed blackboard—pure, uncorrupted. They call it the 'Voice from Heaven,' but to guys like us, it's just a chemical curse from the stars, warning us that the world is about to go entirely sideways."
"It's not just the ancient scrolls," Officer Zhao Feng added, his voice dropping into a dry, shivering rattle as he consulted the digital fog of his tablet. "The Shiji (史记)—the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (司馬遷)—specifically the 'Tianguan Shu' (天官书) chapter, states that when the world begins its slide into the slaughterhouse, stellar energy leaks into the minds of the small-fry, twisting their words into prophecies with a mechanical, terrifying precision. Even the God of Fire—Huo De Xing Jun (火德星君), the Lord of Mars—prefers to use the bodies of children to broadcast news of a coming world of pain. It all tracks with our matched set of twins in their bleeding red finery."
Zhao Feng finished his gospel and let out a heavy blanket of a sigh.
"Based on the math we have, we're looking at omens of disaster," he continued, his face a mask of cold knowledge. "Those two are the Martian Twins, here to announce the coming unmaking of man. But how bad is it going to get? The song they spit out says: 'All shall be white bones, stripped of their might.' I'm afraid the profit margin on that prophecy is all blood and no mercy. It's an apocalypse of our own making on the horizon."
"You mean... that nursery-rhyme static they were chanting is a countdown to the final door-slam for humanity?" Li Guoming blurted out, his pulse starting to red-line. To his ears, those verses weren't just lyrics; they were the sound of a primordial engine of nightmare starting up.
"I'm afraid that's exactly the math, Ming-zai," Zhao rasped. "Humanity has received its warning from the dark galleries of heaven, delivered by a representative who just witnessed the blackest rat-warren of cruelty man can build. That kidnapping ring didn't just snatch a king's ransom; they triggered the machinery of judgment."
"But why the hell did those Martian Twins bring a blind beast with them?" Li asked, his face a mask of vacant incomprehension. "I've been chewing on that, and it just tastes like spoiled meat, Xiao Feng."
"It's a setup, Ming-zai," Zhao said, his eyes becoming twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness. "A focused, urgent haste to speed up the slaughterhouse revolution. If you line up these events—the charnel house in Thailand, the void of logic at the Cambodian casino, and now this kidnapping in Eryuan—you see the gears meshing. These monsters from the Shanhaijing are being jolted awake by the swampy reek of human evil. And the ghost in the machine for all three is that grey-market magnate, Deng Liangcai. The man they call Bao Zheng Deng."
"Aha... so it really is him," Li Guoming said, the realization feeling like jagged glass in his throat. "Deng might be the monolith of doom behind this, but how? Can a man—even a piece of human wreckage like him—really reach into the choking emptiness of the past and call up ancient devils to run riot?"
"That's the riddle we need to solve... and the truth is, I'm not even sure what thing this Deng character really is," Officer Zhao Feng said softly, his voice like a shivering rattle. "That's where we start. We bird-dog the paper trail of the land deal—the dirt they used to build that 'Happy Farmstead' operation in Eryuan. And... that's where I need your help to find the key in the lock."
"Done!" Officer Li Guoming said, his voice a heavy, solid thud of certainty. "I'm giving you my word again. No matter how the wind blows, I'm with you on this one until the gears of the machine stop turning." The two old friends exchanged a look—a mask of cold knowledge and mutual trust.
The Hongqi sedan—that heavy, silent monolith of steel—ate the asphalt of Highway G214 with a focused, mechanical hunger. During the first leg of the run, the world outside was a tableau of jagged contrasts: to their right, the Cangshan Mountains (苍山) loomed like a dark, jagged wall of stone; to their left, the great expanse of Erhai Lake (洱海) stretched out like a cold, flat mirror of gray glass.
Within the hour, they breached the perimeter of the old world. The houses here were artifacts of the Bai people (白族 : Báizú)—stark white walls as pale as bone, topped with dark gray tiles that looked like overlapping armor. Stone archways stood as sentinels at the village gates, guarding a landscape of rice paddies and winding streams. It was a riot of memories, pulling at the childhoods of both men like a physical weight.
Zhao Feng lowered the window, letting the stagnant air of the cabin escape. He turned to his friend with a jagged scrawl of a grin. "Almost back to the old dirt, Ming-zai."
"Almost there," Li Guoming nodded, drawing in a long, deep breath. A faint, swampy reek of sulfur—that familiar, chemical ghost of the area—began to seep into his nose. It mingled with the sight of the white mist, a thick veil of steam rising from Eryuan's hot springs, drifting over the ground like the ghosts of old laundry. To Li, it usually felt like a nursery-rhyme sweetness, a gentle welcome from a home lost in a private, faraway static.,
But tonight, the math felt wrong. Deep in his gut, a cold lead of certainty settled in—it felt as if that mist wasn't just drifting; it was performing a silent patrol, trying to keep a secret tucked away in the dark galleries of the town.
"Maybe I'm just spooking myself," Li muttered under his breath. He watched as the driver turned the wheel with focused, urgent haste, taking them off the main ribbon of concrete and onto the village road. The machinery of their journey was finally pointing them toward the house of Great-Uncle Wen—the final stop at the end of the line.
.........…..