Chapter 61.2: Where the Hell Did My Dad Go?!
It was a holiday.
As dawn began to break, Qian Le placed a bulging cloth bag and a water flask into his bicycle basket. He tied a shovel and a sickle to the crossbar, put on his straw hat, and swung his leg over the seat. Pushing down hard on the pedal, he rode out of the alley.
He was planning to visit his old man outside the city.
His father had been gone for four years now.
In the city, most people were cremated, and their ashes were buried in public cemeteries. But his father simply couldn’t accept that. He believed cremation was no different from having one’s bones ground to dust, leaving the dead unable to find peace in the afterlife. He had insisted on a traditional burial.
Fortunately, their family still had relatives in the countryside, and they were fairly close kin, sharing a great-great-grandfather several generations back. With a little help from money and connections, his father had secured a plot beside a small hillock. A proper funeral had been held, complete with music and ceremonial processions, and he had finally been laid to rest. At least that way, his last wish had been fulfilled.
The only problem was that the grave was rather far away. Apart from the Qingming Festival and the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, he hardly ever had time to visit and pay his respects.
The previous year, especially, the snowfall had been so heavy that he’d worried about slipping on the road and being unable to make it back. After agonizing over it for a long time, he’d ultimately decided not to go.
But this year’s Qingming Festival, he’d made the trip. He’d even borrowed some tools and done a rough cleanup of the area around the grave.
There had simply been too many weeds to clear them all. He’d removed the growth in front of the tombstone and pulled up some of the weeds around the burial mound, but there was still plenty left unfinished when time ran out.
For some reason, though, after that visit, everything had been fine for about a month. Then, over the past month or two, he’d started dreaming about his father repeatedly.
At first, his father berated him for being an unfilial son. Not only did he rarely come to visit, but when he finally did, he couldn’t even clear away all the weeds! The grave soil had eroded away, and he hadn’t bothered to add any fresh earth, either.
Later, his father inexplicably began to cry, mumbling something indistinctly as he did so.
No matter how hard Qian Le tried to listen, though, he couldn’t make out what his father was saying.
At first, Qian Le hadn’t taken the dreams seriously. But eventually, his old man started crying so miserably that Qian Le could barely sleep anymore.
So he’d taken care of his family affairs, arranged shift swaps and compensatory leave with his colleagues, and finally managed to free up two days. Now he was going to give the grave a thorough cleaning.
Once he finished, he’d burn some extra paper money for his father, hoping the old man would finally stop visiting him in his dreams at night.
Otherwise, he was seriously considering hiring someone to perform an exorcism!
With that thought in mind, Qian Le pedaled and puffed his way along for most of the morning. At long last, he arrived at his father’s grave.
The entire area was covered in lush, thick weeds of all kinds. Some were blooming, while others had shot up wildly to heights well over half a person’s height. The tombstone was almost completely submerged in this sea of greenery.
The burial mound behind it was in even worse shape. It had shrunk to less than half its former size and was now entirely concealed beneath the weeds.
A burial mound was formed by piling the excavated soil back over the coffin after burial. The earth wasn’t packed down particularly tightly, so wind and rain gradually washed it away. Without regular additions of fresh soil, the mound would steadily shrink.
One look at this grave made it clear that no one had tended to it for a very long time.
Qian Le sighed, a pang of guilt rising in his heart. He took the bicycle off his shoulder and leaned it against the side.
After resting for a few minutes, drinking some water, and eating a couple of steamed buns with pickled vegetables to fill his stomach, Qian Le took out his sickle and began clearing the weeds around the grave.
As a city dweller, he rarely did this kind of work, so his movements weren’t particularly quick. Fortunately, he was patient. After four or five hours of work, he finally managed to cut down all the weeds in front of the tombstone, on the burial mound, and in the surrounding area.
But that alone wasn’t enough.
Without digging out the roots, the weeds would grow back wildly before long.
Qian Le cleared away more weeds around the area to create a firebreak. Then he took a bottle of gasoline he’d prepared in advance from his bag, found a fairly thick branch, and fashioned it into a torch. He began burning the remaining weed roots and stems.
This method wouldn’t solve the problem once and for all, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry too much about the weeds for the rest of the year.
As he burned the weeds on the grave, he muttered, “Dad, I’ve cleared all the weeds off your grave now. I’ll add some fresh soil in a bit, too. Just sleep peacefully down there, okay? Please, please don’t come looking for me again.”
As he continued burning the weeds, Qian Le began to feel as though he’d finally fulfilled one of his obligations. His body was exhausted, but his heart felt considerably lighter.
He poured a little more gasoline onto the torch, then circled around to the side. Just as he was about to continue burning the remaining roots, he suddenly noticed a small piece of brown wood sticking out beside them.
What was that?
Puzzled, Qian Le reached out and brushed away the surrounding weeds. He picked up the object and examined it. It was only about the size of the tip of a finger, and its reverse side was black, as though it had been coated with black lacquer.
Wait. Black lacquer?
His father’s coffin had been coated with black lacquer on the outside!
A sudden sense of dread washed over Qian Le. He looked down again and suddenly realized that the soil in this spot seemed a little different from the soil elsewhere.
The dirt nearby was grayish, the old surface layer that had been exposed to the elements for years. But here, the soil was brown, as though fresh earth had recently been dug up from below.
Qian Le’s heart gave a sudden lurch.
He hurriedly stuck the torch into the ground, grabbed his shovel, and began digging furiously.
More than twenty minutes later, a large, unmistakable hole had appeared before him.
Suppressing his disgust at the stench, Qian Le strained to peer inside.
The coffin, which had once been intact, had begun to rot. Overall, though, it was still holding together and hadn’t collapsed inward. The end where the feet should have been, however, had completely rotted away, leaving a gaping hole. Through the opening, he could just make out what lay inside.
Nothing but dirt.
There was nothing else at all.
Qian Le’s mind went blank for several seconds before he gradually began to comprehend what he was seeing.
Where’s my dad?!
Which bastard stole my father?!
Are they even human?!
Paying no attention to anything else, Qian Le grabbed his shovel and sickle, hoisted his bicycle onto his shoulder, and ran toward the road dozens of meters away.
No wonder his father had been coming to him in tears! Even after being buried underground, the old man couldn’t rest in peace!
He had to call the police. Right now!
He needed to find his father as quickly as possible—and then make the bastard who’d dared to steal his dad pay with his life!
…
Jiang Xia had finally returned to work.
She’d been away for several days, and seeing this familiar environment again gave her a surprising sense of nostalgia.
But why did she feel as though people kept looking at her?
Puzzled, Jiang Xia went upstairs as usual. The moment she pushed open the door to the Technical Division, every single person inside turned to look at her in perfect unison.
What was going on?
“Jiang Xia, you’re finally here!”
Zhao Zhaoxiang was the first to greet her. With a broad smile on his face, he picked up the journal and waved it around.
“Your paper got accepted by Forensic Science and Technology! It’s on page eighty-six!”
Accepted?
So soon?
Jiang Xia’s breathing caught, and she suddenly felt a little dizzy.
She was confident that the techniques described in her paper were good. But then again, what technique published in a journal like this wasn’t good? She’d been fairly certain her paper would be accepted, but she hadn’t been one hundred percent sure.
Now that she’d heard it had actually been published, the weight she’d been carrying in her heart suddenly lifted. She felt as though she might float right off the ground.
It had really been accepted!
No wonder people had seemed to be staring at her as she’d come upstairs. So that was why!
Jiang Xia took a deep breath and hurried forward.
“Quick, let me see!”
“It’s right here.”
Zhao Zhaoxiang had already placed a bookmark on that page. He immediately opened the journal and handed it over.
“Look, your name is right here! By the way, I didn’t really do anything. Why did you include my name, too?”
“Aren’t we all in the same division? Besides, everyone helped me a lot with this project.”
Jiang Xia smoothly delivered the usual polite response, but as she gazed at her name printed on the page, she was absolutely delighted.
To have her name published in a journal of this caliber—she could finally say that her transmigration into this world hadn’t been in vain!
The more Jiang Xia looked at the journal, the happier she became. Forensic Doctor Sun rarely lifted his head from his work, but now he looked up with a cheerful grin.
“I still remember, Section Chief, you said that if this paper really got published, you’d treat us all to a meal. So, when are you treating us?”
Zhao Zhaoxiang immediately chimed in. “Exactly, Section Chief! What about that celebratory dinner?”
“Oh, honestly! Every last one of you is eyeing the few coins in my pocket!”
Liao Zhongsheng pretended to be displeased as he pointed at them one by one with his index finger. Then he turned to Jiang Xia and said,
“But this is such wonderful news that we really ought to celebrate. Jiang Xia, where would you like to eat?”
Speaking of dinner reminded Jiang Xia that she’d also promised to treat someone to a meal.
It would be a perfect excuse to meet up with him in private.
I’ll go find him later.
She raised her head, just about to answer Liao Zhongsheng, when someone suddenly appeared in the office doorway.
It was Chen Dong.
He first looked toward Trace Examiner Li’s desk, but then his peripheral vision caught sight of Jiang Xia.
“Trace Examiner Li, there’s a—Jiang Xia, you’re back! Congratulations!”
“Same to you, same to you,” Jiang Xia replied, playing along.
Seeing how hurriedly he’d arrived, she asked, “Is there a case?”
Chen Dong nodded slightly. “Yes. Someone came to report that his old man back in the countryside is gone. I was going to ask Trace Examiner Li to come take a look with me.”
“If someone’s died, shouldn’t you be looking for Forensic Doctor Sun?”
Trace Examiner Li, meanwhile, looked confused.
“What use would a trace examiner like me be in this situation?”
“Listen to me, I misspoke.”
Chen Dong slapped his forehead. “I didn’t explain it clearly. His father died four years ago, but someone dug up his grave and stole everything—the corpse and all the burial goods!”
“Someone dug up a grave?”
Jiang Xia immediately perked up. Puzzled, she said, “It’s not an ancient tomb, and there shouldn’t be any valuable antiques inside. Who would go to the trouble of robbing it? This doesn’t sound like the work of professional tomb raiders. It sounds more like someone in the countryside stealing corpses to sell…”
She paused, then added, “But isn’t that usually done with female corpses? Why would they even steal someone’s father?”
The moment she said this, both Chen Dong and Liao Zhongsheng turned to look at her in surprise.
How did Jiang Xia even know about this sort of thing?
And she’d casually thrown around all that underworld jargon, too. She sounded just like someone who worked in the trade!
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