The black Hongqi—that heavy, silent monolith of steel—rolled down the main artery of the village. On both sides, traditional houses stood like stoic sentinels, though several had been tarted up with modern renovations that felt like a discordant symphony against the ancient architecture. It was an uneasy mix, a cracked and dirty patchwork of the old and the new. Still, the local government pushed its preservation gospel, trying to keep the glossy dream of the past alive for the tourist trade.
For Officer Li Guoming and Zhao Feng, every inch of this dirt was a roadmap of memories. They pointed out the landmarks like kids at a carnival: there was so-and-so's house, there was the wall they'd scaled until their knees were raw. They remembered the narrow alley where a portly auntie—a regular high-voltage shriek of a woman—had chased them out of her garden for the crime of being young.
But the laughter didn't last. It bled away into a heavy blanket of silence as the machinery of their mission settled over them. Li felt his pulse start to red-line at the thought that his own Great-Uncle Wen might be caught in the gears of a grey-market vulture like Deng Liangcai. Beside him, Zhao was lost in his own private, faraway static, a mask of cold knowledge hiding a burden he wasn't ready to spill.
They'd been on the village road for maybe ten minutes when the driver hauled the wheel left, taking them up a sharp incline. The Hongqi slowed its pace as the path narrowed. The road had been upgraded from dirt to concrete years ago, but now it was a spent shell—cracked, pitted, and heaving into plates that made the drive a focused, urgent necessity.
The further they delved into the dark galleries of the outskirts, the further the houses pulled away from each other. Some were already dead, abandoned hulls left by the small-fry who had beelined for the big cities, leaving these buildings to rot in a purgatory of neglect. Earthen walls—once sturdy and proud—were now sagging and leaning over the road like pieces of human wreckage, looking ready to give up the ghost and tumble into the dirt.
The Hongqi—that heavy, silent monolith of steel—slowed to a methodical crawl as it followed the roadmap of Li Guoming's directions. A moment later, the big black sedan rolled to a dead stop in front of an artifact of a house. Its perimeter wall was a jagged scrawl of river stones, piled high and bonded with a mortar of ancient mud that looked like it had been dredged from a prehistoric swamp.
Two massive wooden slabs served as the entrance, closed tight against the world. The pillars were etched with traditional carvings—vague, elegant patterns that seemed to peer blindly through the wrack of years. The gate sat on a sandstone base that remained as solid as a funeral vault, topped with a gray tiled roof whose eaves swept upward like the wings of a scarlet oiseau de mort. The two officers stepped out of the car, leaving the driver to perform a focused, urgent scramble to turn the machine around and wait by the threshold.
To the man, the gate was still formidable, but it didn't look quite as massive as it had in his childhood daydreams. Back then, Li Guoming had imagined this was a fortress city he had to breach. His eyes drifted to a circular dent on the right-hand door—a scar from a day when he and a small-fry gang of friends had used a heavy log to play at 'Shattering the City Gate,' just like they'd seen in the Three Kingdoms serials on the juke-thumping TV.
He remembered his father hauling him back here, a heavy birch switch in hand, ready to deliver a world of pain. But Great-Uncle Wen had only let out a low, melodic chuckle, asking the father for the boy's pardon. The old man was a solitary sentinel, a quiet and reclusive soul whose solemn, kindly aura commanded a respect that kept most folks from bird-dogging his private static. Only young Ming-zai, the family's designated brat, had the run of the place. Thinking of it now, Li couldn't suppress a small, secret grin.
Great-Uncle Wen's house had looked exactly like this for as long as Li could remember. It was a spent shell of a bygone era, yet it endured—just like the old man himself. Officer Li let out a heavy blanket of a sigh. He reached out to knock, but found the massive doors weren't even bolted. He pushed them open and they stepped into a square silence of a courtyard.
Inside, a white spirit wall stood like a silver barrier between worlds, reflecting a sallow, sickly glow into the center of the yard. On its surface, the Chinese characters for "Fortune and Longevity" (福寿) were a fading Rorschach of red paint. The colors were a washed-out memory, peeling and cracking in spots like dead skin as the years simply decided to rot through the blessing.
"Great-Uncle Wen, it's A-Ming. Li Guoming. Your worthless grand-nephew, back to darken your door for a visit," Li called out. He rapped a series of soft, tentative thuds against the black-lacquered wood, his pulse starting to red-line with the fear of startling the old man.
A shivering rattle of movement came from inside the house—a dry scuttle like a beetle in a box. Then, a voice—raspy as old paper but dipped in nursery-rhyme sweetness—drifted through the threshold. "A-Ming? Is it truly you, boy? Get in here. Let me eyeball you properly."
They pushed through the door, and the hall swallowed them. Great-Uncle Wen sat anchored to a black carved chair, his face turned toward the light like a stone effigy in some ancient, forgotten shrine. He looked regal, a monolith of endurance in a room full of shadows.
It had been three years since Li had entered this private, faraway static, but the old man hadn't turned into human wreckage just yet. His face was plump with life, his hair a washed blackboard of snow-white tracks combed back with mechanical precision. He was ninety-five if he was a day, but his spine was as straight as a rifle barrel. He wore a light-grey cotton robe—trimmed in navy like a reverently oiled uniform—and sat there with a fixed, radiant smile, his arms open wide like a door unhinged to welcome the world.
"Great-Uncle Wen, your unfilial nephew has returned to pay his debts!" Li Guoming's voice was a shivering rattle of emotion. He crossed the floor and performed the ancient rubber acrobatics of respect, dropping to his knees. He bowed his head until the stagnant air of the floorboards met his brow, hands clenched into a single, white-knuckled knot, before looking up with eyes full of bittersweet memory.
"You're all grown up now—enough with the machinery of ceremony. Sit, sit," the old man chuckled. He reached out, his hand feeling like warm, dry parchment as he gripped Li's fingers. Then he offered a sharp, clinical nod toward Zhao Feng. "And that's Xiao Feng, isn't it? Look at you—carrying yourself like a monolith of authority. A real official of the State now, I reckon."
Officer Zhao Feng snapped his hands together in a rhythmic salute, letting out a focused, urgent torrent of blessings—longevity, health, the whole glossy dream of a long life. He stepped forward with a measured gait and presented a bundle of Pu'er tea (普洱茶 : pǔ ěr chá), handing it over with the kind of forced, professional deference that suggested he knew he was in the presence of a master.
Li Guoming felt his face go ashy-pale, a sudden jagged jolt of shame hitting him in the gut. He had been so caught up in the focused, urgent haste of their mission that he'd completely forgotten to bird-dog a proper gift for the old man. Lucky for him, Zhao Feng was the kind of pro who kept his gears in sync; he'd prepped a bundle of Pu'er tea, ensuring they didn't look like a couple of pissant grunts breaking the machinery of respect. Li offered his old friend a fixed, radiant smile of gratitude, but the look he got in return made his pulse start to red-line. Zhao was staring at Great-Uncle Wen with a predatory intensity, his eyes becoming twin abyssal pits as if he were scanning a roadmap of trauma for a secret entry point.
The talk stayed in the shallows for a while—mostly Li checking if the old man was still upright and sniffing the air while Zhao played the silent watcher. They eventually retreated to the kitchen to wrangle the machinery of tea, brewing the Pu'er for the old man. Great-Uncle Wen offered a few shivering rattles of a complaint about his age, how the human wreckage of his body couldn't play host properly anymore. He muttered that if he'd had the flash-notice, he would've whipped up some Baba cakes—Ming-zai's favorite childhood daydream. The room felt heavy with nursery-rhyme sweetness, a brief respite from the world of pain waiting outside.
But the comfort was a short dream. The high-voltage jangle of a phone cut through the quiet, and Zhao stepped into the stagnant air of the courtyard to process the call. He returned a minute later, his voice a washed blackboard of apologies for the interruption. "It's fine," Great-Uncle Wen said with a mask of calm. "Young men have the machinery of the state to run... unlike an old man lost in the static."
Before the old man could finish, Zhao Feng leaned in, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence that stripped away the small talk. "Great-Uncle, we need to bird-dog a history," he said, his face becoming a mask of cold knowledge. "I need the math on that dirt on the other side of the village—the one they call the 'Happy Farmstead.' Can you tell us when the gears turned on that deal? Who came to buy the land? My dead-letter files say it was your family's dirt originally, isn't that right?"
The question hit a void of logic in the room. Li Guoming whirled to look at his friend, his mind performing fantastic rubber acrobatics at the sudden pivot.
"Happy Farmstead... that sarcophagus across the way?" Great-Uncle Wen mused, his eyes fixed on some private, faraway static. "I've picked up the scent of some talk about it. It's been a spent shell since the last plague hit. But you're right—that dirt belonged to my father."
"Was it you who sold it, Great-Uncle?" Zhao Feng's voice was still wrapped in a thin skin of politeness, but the gears of the machine had shifted. Now, he sounded more like a detective bird-dogging a lead in a dead-letter file than a guest at a tea table. Li Guoming felt a jagged jolt of irritation hit him in the gut. This was his family—an ancient soul who deserved the nursery-rhyme sweetness of respect, not the flat, clinical tone of a precinct interrogation.
"Xiao Feng..." Li started, his voice a shivering rattle of protest. But Zhao Feng simply raised a hand—a silent, focused command that stripped the words from Li's mouth.
"Please, Great-Uncle. I need the math on this." Zhao insisted, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence that made the pulse in the room red-line.
The old man sat frozen for a heartbeat, looking like a stone effigy lost in some private, faraway static. Finally, he let out a heavy blanket of a sigh.
"An old man needs time to process his gears; pardon me," Great-Uncle Wen said, his voice as thin as splintered glass. "I wasn't the one who turned the key on that deal. It happened a lifetime ago—I was just a small-fry, barely five years on the clock. It was my father who sold that dirt. It was spent soil, he said. The rice wouldn't grow, and the earth tasted like spoiled meat, so he didn't want it in his pantry anymore."
"His father sold it... that means this rot goes back decades!" Li Guoming felt the cold lead of certainty in his chest begin to thaw. If the deal was that old, his Great-Uncle was on the right side of the mirror—clean of any grey-market filth.
But Zhao Feng wasn't finished. He leaned in, his face becoming a mask of cold knowledge. "The buyer... was he a tall, dark-skinned man from Kaifeng? A man named Deng?"
The question hit a void of logic that made Li Guoming's head spin. He stared at his friend, bewildered. Zhao was describing the magnate they were currently hunting—Deng Liangcai, the man they called Bao Zheng Deng.
"Xiao Feng, you've stripped your gears," Li cut in, his voice sharp as a liquid whipcrack. "You're talking about a man from a century ago like he's the same vulture we're bird-dogging today!"
The old man didn't seem to hear the protest. He took a fastidious sip of his tea, the machinery of his memory clicking into place.
"Yes," Great-Uncle Wen whispered, his eyes becoming twin abyssal pits of the past. "He was a Kaifeng man. A Deng. I remember we called him 'Uncle Liang'—Liang (良), for 'Good'. A cosmic joke, looking back."
The old man stared into the choking emptiness of the hall. "He bought the dirt, built a house, and tried to wring a living from the soil for a few years. I used to go and play in that rat-warren of a house when I was a boy. But then, after a two or three winters, he simply vanished into the static. He didn't sell the land; he just left it to rot. I didn't pick up the scent of it again until someone decided to process that spent shell into a tourist trap."
The math simply didn't add up, and for Li Guoming, the world felt like it was beginning to strip its gears. How in the name of God could his Great-Uncle have met Bao Zheng Deng when the old man was still just a small-fry?
Officer Zhao Feng gave a slow, clinical nod. He reached into his suit and fished out a glossy photograph, sliding it across the black ebony table toward Great-Uncle Wen., "Is this the man, Great-Uncle?" he asked, his voice a flat, washed blackboard.
The old man's hand, a shivering rattle of bone and parchment, reached out to take the image. He peered at it through the digital fog of his aging sight for a long beat before nodding. "Aye... that's him. That's the face. I'd know that look anywhere. It's him, sure as judgment."
At this point, Li Guoming felt his mind performing fantastic rubber acrobatics. The man in the photo was Deng Liangcai, pulled straight from the Department 9 active files. It was a recent grab—the man in the shot looked no more than fifty years on the clock. It was a void of logic: how could he be the same 'Uncle Liang' Wen had known nearly ninety winters ago?
Zhao Feng didn't even eyeball his old friend. He kept his gaze locked on the old man as he took the photo back. After a heartbeat of stagnant silence, he dropped the kicker: "Great-Uncle, did this Deng character ever leave you a gift? A little something to remember him by?"
The moment the question hit the air, the machinery of the room unhinged. The nursery-rhyme sweetness of the visit evaporated, replaced by a heavy blanket of dread., A strange, jagged tension settled over Great-Uncle Wen's face. He didn't answer; he just dropped his head, looking like a stone effigy lost in a private, faraway static.
"Great-Uncle? What's wrong?" Li Guoming barked, his pulse starting to red-line with a sudden, jabbing alarm. As he started to lunge upward to check on the old man, Zhao Feng's hand clamped onto his leg like a steel trap.
"Ming-zai, don't move!" Zhao hissed, his face a mask of cold knowledge. "Stay on your side of the line."
Li tried to bat his friend's hand away, but he froze mid-motion. Great-Uncle Wen was looking up.
The old man's face was stretched into a fixed, radiant smile, uncurling to reveal a few yellow, necrotic teeth cluttering a dark mouth. It wasn't a smile of welcome; it was a rictus-grin that belonged in a charnel house. But the real horror—the thing that made the hair on Li's neck stand up like frozen soldiers—was the eyes.
Great-Uncle Wen's eyes had dissolved into twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness. There wasn't a single speck of white left, just two bottomless holes into a dark gallery of nothingness.
The old man's skeletal talons clamped onto the armrests of his chair. He cocked his head at a joint-twisting angle, his predatory intensity pinning them to their seats. He stared at them through those black chips of coal, a piece of human wreckage now serving as a vessel for a primordial, bottomless dark.
...............