Otherworldly Merchant

After the event in the Dai village came to an end, Yin Xinyue took me to visit Xishuangbanna, the autonomous prefecture where her clan lived. 

We also went to see the Lancang River, the Ancient Tea Horse Road, the Big Buddha Temple and all of the other famous attractions. We then drove home, exhausted from the day we had.

Then, I got a call from the man that was wearing the Kumamon t-shirt.

I was really excited as I hadn’t seen or heard from him in ages and I had been missing him recently.

However, when I started talking to him, he sounded feeble, like he was hurt. 

“Are you alright?” I asked him promptly. 

The man coughed for quite a long time before he could manage to reply. He eventually asked me where I was. I told him I had just finished my tour around the attractions and that I was now on my way home. 

The man screamed, “Don’t go home. Go travelling. The further the better!”

His voice was hurried and he sounded panicked. 

I was scared. “Why?” I asked. 

“There’s a group of people asking where you are. They are really intimidating and look like they could hurt you. You’d have to be stupid to come home now, you would be handing yourself to them,” he said.

I took in a deep breath and tried to process the situation. The man made it sound like they were really bad people and that I needed to be really careful.

Maybe they were my grandfather’s enemy!

I wanted to ask him more but he had already hung up. I knew if I tried to call later, his phone would be off and I wouldn’t get any response…

I brought Li Mazi and Yin Xinyue to stay in a small town nearby. We were helpless and I wasn’t sure what else I could do.

The town we were staying in was really small and very poor; it didn’t even have a gas station. 

Although we had found the best hotel available here, it was still a horrible place to stay. The bed sheets were filthy and had black stains all over them. The bathroom was no better. It made me feel sick. 

We didn’t dare to leave the hotel for several days. We called the man wearing the Kumamon t-shirt to tell him that we were fine. 

However, I was worried something bad had happened to him. We couldn’t get a hold of him. 

Helpless, we could only wait and see. 

Eventually, Li Mazi snapped; he couldn’t stand it anymore. He suggested that we go and have a look around the town. We had been trapped in that hotel room for very long, so he was bored to death.

I thought it could be a good way to change the mood, so I agreed. 

We walked around the small town and bought some stuff and then it began to get dark. As we were walking back to the hotel, we saw crowds of people flocking to the outskirts of the town. 

Li Mazi was extremely curious about the situation. He caught up with a man and asked him, “What’s happened?”

The man told him that someone had been found dead on the outskirts; the entire village got wind of it and they all wanted to see as this person had died in a bizarre way.

This made Li Mazi even more curious and so he decided to go and see. I pulled him back, “Where are you going? The crowd is too large, we can’t protect ourselves or each other.”

But Li Mazi was as stubborn as a turtle. Helplessly, we had to follow him. 

When we arrived at the scene, it was overflowing with people wanting to know what exactly had gone on. I looked around and it appeared to be some sort of graveyard. There were no houses nearby, only some tall grass and crooked tombstones. 

The villagers had filled all the space in the area. I tried to nudge and squeeze but I couldn’t get through them all. 

I felt weird. Has someone really died? Why has this created such a commotion? 

Li Mazi finally pushed through the crowd and I immediately followed him. When I got through the crowd and saw the dead body, I was startled! 

The body was curled up, wrapped inside a gold silk quilt. His face and hair were frosted. It looked like he had frozen to death! However, the dead body had a strange smile on his face as if he was smiling a moment before his death. 

It wasn’t right. It had just turned autumn so it was still warm, yet this body was wrapped up in many layers looking as if it had just been taken out of a freezer? 

At first glance, I knew this corpse was abnormal. 

I asked Li Mazi, “Did you find anything else?” 

Li Mazi nodded, pointing at an unearthed grave next to the corpse. “This guy was a grave robber, I suppose. He had just fished up some stuff when he got cold and froze to death. Right, you see the quilt on his body? The pattern and color look old. Maybe it came from one of the graves. But something is off…”

At this point, Li Mazi’s expression changed and he looked skeptical. “You see, this boy had soft flesh and fair skin. He had a golden chain, so it didn’t look like he was poor. Why did he have to come to a remote town to rob a random grave?”

Yin Xinyue snorted. “Rich boys want to seek excitement! I think he just came here to seek some thrills.”

I nodded, looking pensive. “Right, he must be some second-generation rich boy, who had joined some thrilling game.”

But I couldn’t figure out how he had frozen himself to death...

Police sirens arose from a far distance. Three police cars arrived shortly after and pulled to a halt. 

The police hurried to disperse the crowd. A woman and a man got out of the car. They were both very well-dressed. From the first glance, I knew they were rich, the woman in particular. She wore lots of expensive jewelry, too much to count. 

She screamed and cried, dashing toward the graveyard. She hugged the corpse, howling. The man stood next to her, crying silently. 

It seemed the dead boy was in fact part of a rich family! Shortly after, a forensic doctor came to check the body. He looked bewildered after he had finished investigating the corpse. 

The boy had frozen to death. 

But summer had just ended, so how could someone possibly die from the cold weather at this time of year?

And, the dead boy was covered in a thick quilt, so he shouldn’t have frozen to death. 

But his arms and legs were really icy. If they used a knife and scratched his skin, they could scrape some chipped ice. 

After the police brought the corpse away, my eyes lay on the quilt they put aside. 

I thought I should check if something was wrong with the gold silk quilt he had taken from the coffin. 

Could it be related to the death of the boy? 

However, Li Mazi stopped me. “That stuff belongs to the dead and it brings misfortune. If you touch it, you will be unlucky for three years.”I couldn’t do anything else but give up the idea, following Li Mazi back to the hotel. 

For the next several days, we stayed idle in the small hotel. Sometimes we would go for a walk when we got really bored. 

Then, I rang the man wearing the Kumamon t-shirt. I had been trying to contact him several times over the previous days, and the call got through a few times.

He repeatedly warned us that we should never go home. 

I was reluctant but I knew he wanted the best for me. 

Life was dull and depressing. As so much time had passed, I had forgotten about the corpse in the graveyard. 

Today, I decided to stay back in the hotel room when Li Mazi went out to buy some food.

However, not long after he got out of the hotel he had come back with an excited tone in his voice. “There has been another body found in that graveyard! It’s in the exact same place!”

I laughed. “Are you sure? That’s too much of a coincidence.”

Li Mazi pulled me over. “Why would I try and deceive you? Everybody is talking about it. We should go and check it out.”

I couldn’t talk Li Mazi out of it, so I had to follow him. 

On the way, Li Mazi told me, “Everyone is talking about what they think is happening. Some believe that there are paranormal activities going on in the graveyard. The dead were captured by the lone souls and ghosts.”

I of course knew that they were just babbling. If the lone souls or ghosts could kill people deliberately, they’d have killed everybody by now, wouldn’t they? 

When I squeezed and got through the crowd, I saw the dead body and I shuddered in fear. At that moment I almost believed in the legend that it was the lone souls or ghosts that were killing people!