Chapter 46: Stubborn to the End

2022-05-20

“So that’s why you’re set on killing all five of us?” Qian Er just couldn’t wrap his head around that kind of feeling. “Seriously, you belong in a psychiatric hospital! Every day is the same in there for ten years straight. Fits you perfectly!”

Hearing him mention a psychiatric hospital, I couldn’t help clicking my tongue. Qian Er had it all wrong—life in those places is actually way more colorful than he thinks.

Lao Liu burst into laughter. “That’s right. I did it, every last part of it. I never planned to act this soon, but then you all came back to Lord Chu’s tomb. That was something I just couldn’t forgive. So no way could I wait twenty years, or even ten. I had to make my move now.”

He went on, “That woman named Zhao asked us to help her find someone, but she wanted that male corpse for a ghost marriage first. So, we snatched the corpse during the ceremony. Even then, I’d already hatched my own plans. The day of the ghost marriage, I slipped away—and no one even noticed.”

I never would have guessed Zhao Mingkun wanted them to steal the male corpse from the ghost marriage. Who knows what that body meant to her?

“I figured it out a long time ago—you all have never trusted me. You always have people tailing me,” Lao Liu said, obviously proud. “After all, I’m the only one you guys forced onto the boat five years back. I never volunteered.”

“San’s told us time and again you’re trouble,” Qian Er spat, anger burning in his voice. “Last time, if we hadn’t held him back, he would’ve killed you himself. Looking back, we should’ve finished you then. Would’ve saved us all from this mess!”

“You’re right. Should’ve killed me long ago,” Lao Liu replied right away. “San was the smartest of you, but also the most naive. I already had everything in place. The corpse in the coffin? I moved it myself to throw you off—stealth is what I do best.”

“San cursed at me the whole way, but I ignored him,” Lao Liu said, sounding almost thrilled by the memory. “I pretended to take a shortcut and he bought it—never saw it coming. One slash, and he was finished. How did you all get to thinking your knife skills were better than mine? San didn’t even put up a guard.”

With a sharp scraping noise, Lao Liu dragged his dagger across the wall.

He kept going: “I stuffed his body into the coffin. Right then, the guys carrying the coffin showed up. Timing couldn’t have been better. They had no idea I was right there, just out of sight.”

“When I climbed out through the tunnel, someone handed me something—a small portable speaker. It played these haunting ghost sounds all on its own. I couldn’t see who gave it to me, but I knew she was a woman. Chu Mei’s back—and she wants your heads as much as I do.”

So that’s it—female ghost Chu Mei! Those eerie ghost noises were just from a speaker. If that’s the case, why bother at all? Since when do ghosts start using high-tech gear?

Lao Liu continued, “While you were busy at the ghost marriage, I skinned that male corpse with my dagger. You know—it’s an old family rule. I tied the dagger to the corpse’s hand with fishing line, then smeared on San’s blood. In the dark, you were sure to think the body was freshly dead—you’d take it for me.”

So the corpse really was Lao Liu’s handiwork. From the start, I figured it couldn’t be him who died. If it were me, I would’ve never left the dagger with the corpse. Sometimes, the best disguise is doing nothing at all.

Some hide in the woods, but the cleverest hide right in plain sight.

“Then I scrawled messages on the wall—stuff only you guys would understand,” Lao Liu said, grinning. “That way, you’d think Chu Mei was back from the dead. I wasn’t far off, just up in a tree watching you all. You left, and you really thought the corpse was me.”

Wei Changfeng and his crew really did believe the body was Lao Liu’s, all because of what was written on the wall. But why were they so dead certain Chu Mei had come back? Did they really believe in ghosts? And if so, how did they have the nerve to stick around?

Lao Liu kept scraping his dagger against the wall. “I know you all started suspecting each other. Only the six of us knew what happened before. Someone must’ve tipped Chu Mei off, but no one would have risked their own life doing it. So you figured there had to be a traitor among the four still breathing.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Master said it himself—you all betrayed him once, you’d betray each other just as fast. None of you trust the rest anymore. That’s why you came to the tomb—so you could finish each other off. As long as you’re the only one left standing, it doesn’t matter who the mole really is!”

The rest, Zhao Mingkun and I had already been through.

Qian San was the most simple-minded. Even when everyone else was plotting, he probably thought they’d come to the tomb just to lay low. No one dared strike first, because once a fight started inside, no one would get out alive.

Once everyone crowded into the burial chamber, there was no reason to hold back. In the darkness, someone finally took action.

Qian San was first to fall. He bolted for the stone doors, running straight into another chamber and diving into a coffin. Wei Changfeng and Dadan chased him, bursting through a side door themselves. After that, the two of them started fighting in the dark—neither making it out alive.

Qian Er was the smartest of them all. He probably hid in the shadows from the start, and only moved when everyone else scattered. In the end, though, he and Lao Liu crossed paths.

Sometimes, you don’t have to get your own hands dirty. Letting your enemies turn on each other is the sharpest weapon of all. None of the four trusted anyone, but nobody knew what the others were really thinking. Lao Liu’s plan was cruel—he left them no way out.

Each one measured the others by his own worst instincts. After all, that was who they really were.

Wei Changfeng did send me a desperate text asking for help before they entered the tomb, but it didn’t matter. Everything happened too fast. Life can be that fragile—snuffed out before you have time to react.

Now it was down to Qian Er and Lao Liu.

“So that means you have to kill me too?” Qian Er said. “I’ll tell you one thing—my knife skills are leagues beyond yours.”

Lao Liu paused his scraping. The sound stopped cold in the dark. “You might be a better knife fighter than me, but do you even have a knife now? When Wei Changfeng snatched a dagger in the dark, you know whose it was. No one knows these tunnels better than I do.”

“Your brother had one, the corpse had one, Dadan had one, and Wei Changfeng had two. That’s five. The last one’s with me. So what knife are you going to use?” Lao Liu laughed harshly, and suddenly I heard footsteps—Lao Liu had already rushed forward.

“Move!” Zhao Mingkun’s voice rang out, just as a flashlight flared to life.

I looked over—Lao Liu’s dagger was buried in Qian Er’s chest. But another dagger was stuck in Lao Liu’s body too.

“You thought you could take me down,” Qian Er spat, blood splattering across Lao Liu’s face. “I’m Qian Er, remember? I’m the clever one. I knew something was off from the start, but those idiots never listened to me. Did you really think I’d only bring one knife?”

The more excited Qian Er got, the faster he seemed to fade. But he cared little now. “Who says you can only carry one dagger? You’re all so… rigid. Who says the only point of having a master is learning skills? Rigid…”

Qian Er collapsed. His last words were, “I’m the cleverest of all of you. How could I die here…”

Qian Er was gone.

Whether he saw through Lao Liu’s scheme or not, in the end he died all the same. Smartest or not, he’d reached the end of his story too.

Lao Liu sat on the ground with a quiet, calm look. “So it’s you guys. It’s nice, having someone know all this before I go. The six of us… we should’ve died five years ago.”

“They all deserved it, but why steal those corpses and kill the folks running the ghost marriage?” I supported him, asking gently.

Lao Liu was barely hanging on, weak and unsteady. He didn’t have many steps left in him.

“Who did I kill? Only those who deserved it! I never touched those others!” he insisted.

Lao Liu was on death’s door. I didn’t know if the dying tell lies, but Lao Liu didn’t seem the type to bother. So if he says he didn’t kill those other people, then who did?

“Then Chu Mei—the speaker she gave you. How did she hand it off?” I pressed him for answers.

“She just left it by me. What does it matter…” Lao Liu’s mind was slipping—his dagger buried right in his heart.

“You say you only killed those you had to—so who killed Chu Mei?” I pushed again.

Lao Liu already closed his eyes. “Chu Mei—she died?”

“You all crushed her with a boulder!” I shouted.

“No, no one killed Chu Mei then,” Lao Liu mumbled, barely holding on.

What? It was like my brain got hit by a meteor—ringing and numb. No one killed Chu Mei? She’s still alive? No, she was definitely dead—Zhao Mingkun wouldn’t have gotten that wrong. So what was the truth?

Lao Liu was teetering at death’s edge.

He murmured, “Lord Chu… he was the only one in this world who truly understood me. I—I want to see him again. I never cried for anyone but myself. But when Lord Chu died, I wanted to cry so badly. I still want to now, but I just can’t…”

“What I’d give for a bowl of noodles with fried bean sauce…”