Chapter 16: Smearing on the Fertilizer to Grow Strong
The group coming down from the mountain looked exactly like a traditional funeral procession.
Leading the way were vividly colored paper effigies, carrying a two-story Western-style house complete with a courtyard and a paper sedan. Close behind came the funeral band, the booming drums shaking the heavens while the cymbals and suonas blared louder than one another. On both sides walked the mourning sons and grandsons dressed in coarse hemp mourning clothes, while in the center seven or eight sturdy men carried a coffin on their shoulders.
Women carrying baskets of spirit money walked at the front and rear of the procession, scattering white paper coins as they went. The fluttering paper filled the road like falling snow.
Ji Kailang stood among the mourners, white mourning bands tied around her head and arms. Holding her bright-red loudspeaker, she shouted toward Xiang Yu,
“Where’s the child trafficker?!”
“On the ground!!!”
Xiang Yu shouted back. She was completely dumbfounded herself. She had asked Liu Bo to call for reinforcements, and he’d somehow summoned an entire funeral procession.
Were they here to bury the trafficker?
Then she witnessed one of China’s oldest forms of collective strength—the solidarity of a village clan.
The two burly men at the front, their heads wrapped in white mourning cloths, grabbed their carrying poles and charged forward. The old man holding the suona remained perfectly calm, switched from Hundreds of Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix to a rousing military bugle call:
“Doo↑ doo↓ doo-doo↑↑ doo-doo-doo↑↑↑!”
To the sound of the charge, the coffin bearers worked together flawlessly. With synchronized shouts of “One! Two!” they gently lowered the coffin to the ground, seized the iron shovels they’d brought for digging graves, then lowered their heads and charged like enraged bulls.
“May it land! May it take root!”
Setting a coffin on the ground during a funeral was considered inauspicious, but an energetic old man in his eighties immediately took charge of the situation. Raising his voice, he declared,
“May the departed remain attached to their homeland and bless their descendants!”
The entire funeral procession exploded into action like a disturbed hornet’s nest.
A pale-faced woman rushed out, screaming hoarsely,
“My son! My son!”
Xiang Yu was quickly squeezed out of the center of the melee. Watching several powerfully built men swarm onto the van, she opened her mouth, only to find herself speechless. She turned to Ji Kailang.
Ji Kailang rubbed her hands together and said, “The moment I saw Liu Bo’s message, I knew something had gone wrong.”
“Then… who are all these people?”
“Grandpa Liao passed away a couple of days ago. Today the whole village is helping carry him up the mountain for his funeral. He was good to everyone, so those of us stationed in the village joined the procession too. We’ve also been making sure it’s a civilized funeral—stopping people from setting off firecrackers or burning the mountain. Then Pingping’s mom called me, and Mrs. Liao said her little grandson had disappeared…”
So that was it.
All the adults in the village had been occupied with the funeral, and some blind fool of a child trafficker had taken the opportunity to kidnap their grandson.
Xiang Yu couldn’t help feeling a little impressed by the traffickers.
They had an incredible talent for picking the absolute worst possible moment.
Xiang Yu, Shen Jiu, Liu Bo, and Ning Qiaoqiao—who had only come to soak in the hot springs—couldn’t even squeeze into the encirclement.
On the outskirts, Ji Kailang was shouting herself hoarse, “Don’t beat them to death! Don’t beat them to death!”
Meanwhile, the center had descended into utter chaos.
The man with the bronze cymbals simply swung them straight at the traffickers’ foreheads, each strike producing a ringing clang powerful enough to echo through the mountains and intimidate tigers. Those with iron shovels smashed away with heavy bang! bang! blows. Others provided “support”—two women grabbed handfuls of imitation copper coins used as funeral offerings and flung them into the traffickers’ faces and eyes.
In the middle of it all, one man bellowed,
“I’m earning merit for the old man!”
He ripped off the white hemp mourning sash from his head and used it to tie up one of the traffickers as tightly as if trussing a pig for New Year’s slaughter. Then fists rained down from every direction.
Xiang Yu: “…”
Grandpa Liao was definitely going to have more merit in the afterlife than he could ever spend.
Outside the crowd, Ji Kailang was still screaming at the top of her lungs, “Don’t hit their heads! Tie them up! Stop beating them…!”
A little while later, a chubby little boy was carried out of the van.
The child’s crying instantly pushed the atmosphere to a whole new level.
For a moment, curses, the blaring of suonas, people using a trafficker’s head as a gong, and the little boy crying desperately for his mother all blended together into an intensely dramatic soundtrack for this righteous group beating.
Ji Kailang and the other village officials had completely lost control of the situation and hurried off to the side to call the police.
“Who the **** is setting off firecrackers?! Everyone calm down! Calm down!”
By the time the police arrived, this was the scene that greeted them.
…
Early that morning, Hama Valley was hit with a top-priority emergency.
First came a call from a village cadre reporting that a child had gone missing. Moments later, another call came in saying they’d found a child trafficking ring. Then yet another reported that gunshots had been heard.
The severity of the situation kept escalating.
The police officers on morning duty had still been slurping rice noodles for breakfast. They immediately holstered their pistols, tossed them onto their belts, and rushed out.
From a distance, all they could see was complete chaos. They couldn’t even tell how many people lying on the ground were traffickers and how many were villagers.
Ji Gang, the deputy police chief, a man well into his fifties, hitched up his trousers, rested one hand on his holstered pistol, and jogged toward the crowd.
Shouting loudly, he called, “Where’s the gun?! Where is it?!”
For some reason, the moment the villagers heard the police sirens, the punches started falling even faster.
Probably because they were afraid that once the police arrived, they wouldn’t be allowed to keep beating the traffickers.
Several officers pushed their way through the crowd, trying to restore order.
“Everyone, make some room! Please cooperate with the investigation! Is anyone injured…?”
“Officer!”
Mrs. Liao, clutching the chubby little boy in her arms, rushed over and dropped to her knees in front of Ji Gang, tears streaming down her face.
“Those bastards tried to kidnap my son! Officer, you have to stand up for ordinary folks like us!”
The way she addressed him—as if he were an official from another era—made Ji Gang’s legs nearly give out.
His body camera was still recording.
He hurriedly knelt halfway himself to help her up, stumbling over his words.
“Please, don’t say that! Get up, hurry and get up! That’s exactly why we’re here—to stand behind everyone! Xiao Liu! Xiao Liu! Help her over to rest. Bring the first-aid kit and bandage the little boy!”
The chubby child in her arms was bawling his eyes out, crying, “Mama! Mama!”
The terror of almost losing her son completely overwhelmed the woman. She beat her chest with all her strength and sobbed, “My son… If you’d really been taken today, how could I go on living…”
“Moooom! Waaah! Waaaaah—!”
Mother and son cried together, one high-pitched and one low, like a tragic duet.
Ji Gang’s head was buzzing.
Grabbing his radio, he shouted,
“Team Two! Team Two! Check the van! See if there are any more hostages inside! Protect the hostages!”
The police surged forward, and under the direction of Ji Kailang and the other village officials, quickly made their way into the center of the crowd.
The traffickers had already been tied up in a neat row.
Every one of them had been beaten beyond recognition. Their faces were covered in blood, marked with welts from whips, bruises from carrying poles, and all sorts of other injuries. One man’s face had been caved in, and he’d even lost control of his bowels. He lay on the ground with his mouth hanging open, making only incoherent “ah… ah…” sounds, unable to speak.
Ji Gang sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of their injuries.
“Who did this? What happened here?”
He looked around.
Men and women, young and old, tall and short, thin and heavyset—every kind of villager was present.
They all smiled with utterly honest, guileless expressions.
Then they all started talking at once, indignantly explaining that they had been in the middle of a funeral procession when a gang of child traffickers tried to steal one of their children. Worse still, they had targeted a young boy and a young girl. The old man’s coffin hadn’t even been buried yet.
That was simply more than anyone could tolerate.
“Hold on, hold on—one at a time,” Ji Gang interrupted. The villagers already spoke with a strong local accent, and all of them talking over each other was giving him a headache. “What funeral? You mean… you were holding a funeral for the traffickers?”
“No, Officer. We’re the ones who restrained them.”
The elderly man who had shouted “May it land, may it take root!” stepped forward. He straightened the white mourning cloth on his head, stood respectfully before the deputy chief, cleared his throat, and spoke solemnly.
“My elder brother, Liao Hongwen, ninety-three years old. Today was the day of his funeral. We brothers were carrying his coffin, with music and ceremony, to send him on his final journey.”
“These heartless beasts!”
“They took advantage of our family’s funeral—in broad daylight—to kidnap the little great-grandson my brother treasured most!”
“If it hadn’t been for those kind people who stopped them… if it hadn’t been for the old man watching over us from above… I’m afraid the child would have been lost.”
With that, Elder Liao pointed toward the coffin behind him, then called to the tearful woman who had nearly lost her son.
“Liao Juan! Bring the child before your grandfather’s coffin and have him kowtow to his great-grandfather!”
Then he turned back to the police, cupped his hands in a respectful salute, and bowed with dignified righteousness.
“We ask the police to uphold justice for us.”
“Elder, please, you’re giving me far more respect than I deserve.”
Ji Gang was a broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned deputy police chief, famous for being a tough-as-nails officer. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been the first to lead the team after hearing reports of gunfire.
But now, staring at the pitch-black coffin before him, he felt like his composure was falling apart.
This callout hadn’t been nearly as dangerous as he’d expected.
But it had taken years off his life in an entirely different way.
He’d weathered plenty of storms in his career, yet the heartfelt sincerity of these villagers—from the young wives to the elderly patriarchs—had unexpectedly brought him close to tears.
The villagers all chimed in at once again.
“It wasn’t just Old Master Liao’s family! Little Pingping was almost kidnapped too!”
“Oh, heaven have mercy! Poor Widow Wang… if she’d lost Pingping, how could she have lived?”
“Exactly! Her husband’s already gone. If she’d lost her daughter too, she’d have gone completely mad!”
“Those monsters… absolutely heartless…”
Ji Gang took off his cap and rubbed his forehead. Turning to Ji Kailang, who seemed a little easier to talk to, he asked, “And what happened with Pingping?”
“Oh, Officer, it’s like this…”
Before they could exchange more than a couple of sentences, Ji Kailang’s expression suddenly sharpened.
She grabbed Ji Gang and yanked him sideways.
An overpowering stench swept toward them at astonishing speed.
The next instant, someone charged into the circle like a whirlwind, rushed straight at the traffickers, and dumped two full buckets of manure from a shoulder pole directly over them!
Ji Kailang: “…”
Ji Gang: “…”
A notification sounded in Xiang Yu’s mind.
[Achievement Unlocked: “Smearing on the Fertilizer to Grow Strong”.
[Reward Obtained: Pure Lotus of Cleansing Waters.]
Xiang Yu quietly tugged Shen Jiu backward.
The two of them had been among the people beating the traffickers the hardest…
But right now, they wanted to get away from the scene more than anyone else.
The thin woman—Pingping’s mother—had somehow summoned astonishing strength.
Wielding a long-handled manure scoop, she repeatedly smashed it onto a trafficker’s head while cursing through gritted teeth,
“I’ll teach you to steal children!”
“I’ll teach you to cover my little girl’s mouth!”
The traffickers had already been trussed up like pigs awaiting slaughter, each one howling with their mouths wide open.
Now, with manure slurry being poured straight into those open mouths, the crazed woman kept scooping fresh manure off the ground and splashing it over them. Like basting a half-cooked steak with melted butter, she made sure the yellowish-brown muck coated every inch of them—their hair, eyebrows, clothes… everything.
Even the ones who had already been beaten unconscious started writhing awake under the assault of the overpowering stench.
It was truly a scene of maggots squirming in a sea of manure.
Everyone present—dozens of villagers and even the fully armed police officers—was so stunned that not a single person stepped forward to stop her.
Xiang Yu silently gave a thumbs-up in her heart.
*A mop smeared with feces is like Lü Bu reborn.
For a slight woman like Wang Guixiang, bucket after bucket of manure was probably the smartest—and most devastating—weapon she could think of in retaliation.
“Uh… Sister Wang… Pingping’s okay, right?”
Ji Kailang awkwardly tried to greet Pingping’s mother.
“You were just… fertilizing the vegetable patch, weren’t you? Then you accidentally slipped… and, well… the manure got spilled everywhere.”
Pinching his nose shut, Ji Gang gave the seemingly reasonable young woman a long, meaningful look.
His eyes plainly told her: My body camera is still recording.
Now that someone had finally “played dirty” with the traffickers, everyone very orderly backed away from them.
The funeral procession also returned to lifting Old Master Liao’s coffin.
“We can’t delay the auspicious hour,” they said.
Then a police officer searching the van suddenly shouted.
“Chief! There’s someone hidden in the back!”
Ji Gang immediately forgot about the mountain of manure before him. Taking three quick strides, he rushed over to help open the van’s rear compartment.
It was a concealed compartment built beneath the seats.
When they opened it, they found an unconscious young woman lying inside.
Watching from the sidelines, Ning Qiaoqiao let out a scream.
She hurriedly hid her camera and phone behind her back, grabbed Xiang Yu’s arm with trembling hands, and looked ready to cry.
“Boss… this… this isn’t something we can livestream, is it?”
Xiang Yu stared at her.
“…You…”
“You’re still livestreaming?!”
<< _ >>
**TN
“A mop dipped in feces is like Lü Bu reincarnated” – This jokes about the Chinese meme, meaning that even an ordinary object becomes terrifying once coated in something so disgusting that no one wants to touch it.
Smearing on the Fertilizer to Grow Strong (A pun on 发奋图强 (“strive to become strong”)—here written as 发粪涂强, replacing “奋” (strive) with “粪” (manure/feces) and “图” (seek) with “涂” (smear), suggesting “getting stronger by smearing on fertilizer.”)
