Chapter 64 Whose Hand? "Oh dear, my own mother died in the hands of her own daughter..."

The villagers immediately started chattering: "A battlefield?"

"What battlefield?"

"What impure land?"

"I don't know."

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

"I don't recall our area ever being the site of a war, Grandpa Sheng. Do you know anything about this?"

Grandpa Sheng shook his head, indicating he didn't know.

Clearly, the villagers living here did not know what had happened here. They only knew that this was a mass grave, where those who died of disease, the poor and destitute, or beggars who froze or starved to death on the street, as well as homeless and lonely people who had no relatives or friends to send off after their death, and whose bodies would be unsightly if thrown on the roadside, would be dragged to the mass grave.

Those who die young and violently, like Huang Xiaoyun, will be temporarily buried near mass graves in preparation for bone replacement.

Huang Dashan and the two young men had climbed out of the grave pit and were looking around, checking the terrain. He held up a lantern and became more and more puzzled as he looked: "Something's not right. There's a dead tree on the right side of the grave mound. Isn't that right? Hey, it seems... it seems that the dead tree isn't this tall or this thick, and it's been burned."

Huang Dashan stood over and compared his height to the withered tree. It wasn't much taller than him. "I remember now," he said, "I cut a section of the trunk when I came to see Xiaoyun last year."

However, the tree's branches had not been cut down, nor were there any signs of fire. Huang Dashan slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "Damn it, we really dug up the wrong grave!"

The villagers commented, "Huang Dashan, how could you even find your own daughter's grave wrong? What kind of father are you?"

Huang Dashan retorted gruffly, "It's pitch black, and there are graves everywhere. Who can see anything clearly?!"

"So what do we do now?"

"Of course we left!"

Upon hearing this, Zhou Yaren couldn't help but ask, "You're leaving already? Aren't you going to fill the grave back in? Are you just going to leave the bones exposed in the wilderness?"

Huang Dashan, who was already picking up his shovel and preparing to leave, paused for a moment, giving the meddlesome Zhou Yaren a displeased look. Seeing that the man's appearance and demeanor were extraordinary, and wondering about his background, he suppressed his temper and turned back to the grave pit: "Fill it up, of course we have to fill it up, you two hurry up." He then instructed the two younger men to shovel soil and fill the pit, muttering resentfully, "Aren't there enough corpses left to rot in this mass grave already?"

Bai Yuan wouldn't tolerate him: "Since you dug up the wrong grave, it's reasonable for you to fill it back in, right?"

Huang Dashan, with his neck stiff, said irritably, "I'm filling this out, what nonsense are you spouting!"

He had barely finished speaking when the young man opposite him yelled "Ah!" and shoveled a shovelful of foul-smelling dirt directly onto Huang Dashan's face. Huang Dashan spat out the dirt a few times, touched his face, and was furious: "What are you doing? Don't you have eyes?"

The young man was also frightened. He felt as if his elbow had been hit by something, and it was both painful and numb. He lost control of his hands in an instant, and the grave soil flew all over his uncle's head and face.

The young man hugged his aching, numb elbow: "Uncle, I didn't mean to."

At that moment, Xiao Dinggua, who was following Zhou Yaren, suddenly turned his head to look into the depths of the mass grave. The place was pitch black, as if covered by a curtain of night.

He glanced at the villagers surrounding the grave, whose attention seemed completely unaffected by anything else, and asked uncertainly, "What was that sound?"

Everyone was engrossed in watching Huang Dashan vent his anger on his nephew when Xiao Dinggua shouted, "Did you hear anything?"

Everyone looked at Xiao Dinggua with some confusion: "What was that sound?"

Zhou Yaren asked, "What did you hear?"

Before Xiao Dinggua could answer, a scream from the side pierced the silence of the night.

The villagers panicked: "What happened? What's wrong?"

"What happened?"

"It sounds like Sister Huang's voice, doesn't it?"

"It sounds similar, it came from over there."

Only then did everyone realize that they had been there for quite some time, but Sister-in-law Huang and the others who went to chase after Tiezhu's mother had not yet returned.

Huang Dashan recognized his wife's voice immediately. His expression changed drastically, and he turned and rushed toward the source of the sound, shouting his wife's name.

Another scream responded to him, and the villagers followed Huang Dashan into the mass grave, weaving through the undulating mounds of graves.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

"Something's happened up ahead! Something's happened!"

Zhou Yaren was unable to dodge in time and was knocked back by the villagers rushing forward, causing him to stumble a few times. Due to his limited hearing, he could only keep his eyes fixed on Bai Yuan's back to determine his location, and he followed him along the way, stumbling and falling.

Little Dinggua's face turned deathly pale as she stared fearfully at the darkness ahead, backing away step by step as if something incredibly terrifying lay before her.

No one noticed that a little kid had been overlooked. Huang Dashan, who was running at the forefront, suddenly lost his footing and plummeted to the ground with a scream.

One after another, the crowd rushed forward, nearly losing their footing along with Huang Dashan, and came to a terrifying stop at the edge of the cliff: "Dashan!"

Huang Dashan clung to the rock with incredible fright, hanging precariously on the cliff face, breaking out in a cold sweat and letting out another scream.

The crows that had been perched at the foot of the cliff took flight.

Unfortunately, Huang Dashan's finger, which was gripping the rock, was stepped on by his nephew who was standing at the edge of the cliff. The nephew almost crushed Huang Dashan's finger, and the pain caused Huang Dashan to lose his strength and fall off the cliff.

At the critical moment, a pale, cold hand suddenly gripped Huang Dashan's wrist with tremendous force, pulling the eight-foot-tall, nearly 160-pound farmer back from the brink of death and throwing him to the ground like a plucked onion.

Having survived the ordeal, Huang Dashan lay sprawled on the ground like a rag doll, staring blankly with his large, round eyes, panting heavily as if his soul had left his body, his heart nearly leaping out of his chest.

The villagers who witnessed the whole thing looked at Huang Dashan, then turned to Bai Yuan, who had just pulled Huang Dashan up. This hero who had performed a miracle with great strength was actually a slender and extraordinary woman.

You really can't judge a book by its cover.

"A false accusation?" The blind and hard-of-hearing Zhou Yaren followed closely behind. Before she could figure out what was going on, she keenly smelled a bloody odor. "Who's injured?"

Before the crowd could express their gratitude to the extraordinary woman for saving their lives, or comfort the terrified Huang Dashan, they witnessed a truly horrifying scene below the cliff.

Actually, the cliff wasn't very high, only about four or five zhang (approximately 13-14 meters), but a fall from it would still be fatal.

“There have been fatalities.” Bai Yuan lowered his eyes and stared down at the cliff below, answering him, “Two people accidentally fell off the cliff and were impaled by the dry branches of trees below.”

The two victims lay face to face, impaled one above the other on the same tree trunk. One had been pierced through the chest by a sharp branch, while the other had been pierced through the abdomen. They were still breathing, their limbs convulsing in agony.

It was pitch black below the cliff, and the group could only make out a vague outline. When they heard Bai Yuan's whisper, Huang Dashan, who had been scared out of his wits, rushed to the edge of the cliff like a zombie. As if recognizing the familiar figure pierced by the tree trunk, he let out a low, hoarse hiss as if his throat was being choked.

The crowd erupted in an uproar and scrambled to find a slope to descend.

When they reached the bottom of the cliff, they dared not get too close.

Bai Yuan first recognized the faces of the two victims: Tie Zhu's mother and Huang Dasao, their limbs hanging limply, lifeless. Their blood flowed down the charred trunk to the roots, nourishing the soil like dew.

Then a broken cry rang out. Bai Yuan stepped aside, and Huang Dashan, filled with grief and indignation, rushed towards her, brushing against her clothes.

"How could this be? How could this happen?"

How did they fall?

"how so?!"

Old Zhang, on the other hand, sat slumped on the ground, his legs shaking, staring wide-eyed in disbelief, completely numb.

Everyone was finding it hard to accept this sudden accident; several people were so frightened that they turned pale and lost their composure.

Huang Dashan stood under the withered tree, completely flustered, murmuring his wife's name countless times without receiving a response.

The slightly scorched, deadly tree wasn't very tall, with thorny vines wrapped around its trunk. The two corpses stuck in it were within reach. Huang Dashan raised his hand several times to touch them, but then pulled his arm back. He was at a loss for a long time before finally daring to put his hand to his wife's nose. After confirming that his wife had stopped breathing, he knelt down under the tree, swaying uncontrollably, and wept uncontrollably.

His wife had suddenly died tragically, and at that moment, no one could offer him words of comfort. His nephew, who was with him, went forward to help Huang Dashan up, worried that he might collapse from the shock.

"How could this happen?" Huang Dashan kept repeating to himself. After looking up at his wife's tragic death several times, he seemed to realize something was amiss.

Huang Dashan's mournful face suddenly froze. He slowly stood up, his hands smeared with blood: "What is this?"

Bai Yuan had been observing him secretly, and now he turned to look at him.

Huang Dashan stared blankly upwards, "This tree... why does it look so familiar?"

Huang Dashan blinked away the tears in his eyes, examined the face closely, and found it increasingly familiar.

The tree trunk bears signs of fire damage, as if he saw that the top few branches of the tree had been burned to charcoal, so he chopped off a section with a wood-splitting knife. Because he cut it at an angle, the branch was sharpened into a pointed shape.

Huang Dashan stared at the sharp, pointed tip, which was dripping with blood from piercing two women.

He felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave, and his whole body shivered from the cold: "This tree... seems to be... the one at Xiaoyun's grave."

After he finished speaking, his gaze suddenly shifted, and sure enough, he saw a small, inconspicuous grave not far from the tree, which was Huang Xiaoyun's burial place.

As soon as Huang Dashan said this, the villagers present couldn't help but start whispering among themselves.

Zhou Yaren overheard snippets of conversation from the villagers about how Huang Dashan and his wife favored their son and treated their daughter like a servant, often beating and scolding her if things didn't go their way.

This was not surprising to Zhou Yaren, as many families had a deep-seated preference for sons over daughters. He pressed Huang Dashan, "Is this the place where Huang Xiaoyun is buried?"

At the same time, someone, seemingly eager to stir up trouble, asked, "Could it be Xiaoyun?"

These words exploded in Huang Dashan's ears like a thunderclap.

"How could it be such a coincidence?"

"Oh dear, a mother actually died in front of her own daughter's grave!"

Huang Dashan felt a constant chattering and commotion around him, so loud that he couldn't make out the last word. He couldn't help but imagine what would happen next, his mind racing with terror as he scanned the surrounding mounds of graves, muttering repeatedly, "No, no, how could Xiaoyun have harmed her mother?! Xiaoyun..."

At this point, he recalled how he had almost fallen off the cliff with a misstep, and immediately became fixated on the idea: "How could Xiaoyun harm her parents? No way." Huang Dashan clearly couldn't accept it. He looked up at Tiezhu's mother, who had also died tragically, and immediately became extreme, saying, "It must be that woman who dug up my daughter's grave, stole Xiaoyun's bones to arrange a ghost marriage with her short-lived son. Xiaoyun disagreed in the afterlife, so that's why—"

That's why they came to take her life, but how could her own mother also suffer such misfortune? So this must have been an accident, definitely an accident!

Huang Dashan's mind was completely in a mess.

Old Zhang, who was slumped on the ground, finally recovered a little from the huge shock, his weathered and miserable face already streaked with tears.

Perhaps his legs were too weak to support him, so Old Zhang dragged his frail body across the ground, tears streaming down his face and onto the back of his hands: "Damn it..."

Old Zhang's voice was terribly hoarse, as if he had swallowed a piece of red-hot iron.

He hadn't crawled forward a few steps when he suddenly widened his eyes and stared at the side of Huang Xiaoyun's grave mound. His whole body stiffened abruptly, and a strange sound, like a startled cry, escaped his throat, but he managed to suppress it.

Such a commotion drew the attention of Bai Yuan. Old Zhang, who had been crawling towards his deceased wife's body, suddenly veered to the side, his hands clenching tightly, almost trembling, as he gripped a handful of soil and stared in panic at a spot on the side of the grave.

Bai Yuan followed Lao Zhang's gaze and saw a crow not far from the grave mound that hadn't been startled by the crowd. Its slender claws were grasping a bluish-purple object, and its little head was pecking at it up and down.

It looks like a rotting severed arm.

Bai Yuan quietly approached, without even startling the crow that was pecking at the carrion.

Sure enough, it was a purplish-blue, rotting limb.

Bai Yuan squatted down, and a carrion-eating crow pecked at the tip of the severed arm's fingertip, revealing something inside the finger bone.

So Bai Yuan brushed aside the troublesome crow and pulled a thin silver needle from the broken finger bone.

The crow, its food stolen, flew angrily toward the white-faced man, intending to peck at his eyes.

Bai Yuan frowned slightly, slapped the crow unconscious to the ground, and unabashedly picked up the severed arm to examine it closely—the fingernails had been forcibly pulled out before the hand died, and the five bloody fingers had already scabbed over.

"Ah!" someone suddenly shouted, "It's manpower!"

Only then did the villagers notice the severed hand Bai Yuan was holding, and they all retreated in fright: "Where did this hand come from?!"

Old Zhang, witnessing Bai Yuan's actions, stared so wide his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He opened his mouth, but fear gripped his throat, and he choked out, "Ghost...ghost..."

Bai Yuan keenly sensed something, pinched the severed limb with three fingers, and turned to look at the terrified Old Zhang: "You recognize this hand?"

Compared to the tragic death of Old Zhang's wife who fell off a cliff, this severed arm seemed to terrify Old Zhang even more.

Old Zhang's pupils trembled, the blood vessels in his whites resembling a spiderweb, and he shuddered uncontrollably, only able to utter the same word repeatedly: "Ghost...ghost..."

Bai Yuan, dressed in white robes that resembled mourning clothes, stood in the dark and windy mass grave, clutching half a severed hand in his hand. His expressionless appearance truly terrified Old Zhang.

Her long hair was loose, and she exuded a chilling aura that almost blended into the eerie atmosphere of the mass grave, like a ghost emerging from the tomb. She asked menacingly, "Where are the ghosts?"

Bai Yuan slowly walked towards Old Zhang, his chilling aura enveloping him like an invisible threat. The latter was so frightened that tears streamed down his face, and he kicked his legs backward in terror, crying, "Don't... don't come any closer... don't come any closer!"

Bai Yuan pressed closer: "I'm asking you, do you recognize this hand? Whose hand is it?"

Old Zhang stared intently at the severed limb in her hand, his face deathly pale, trembling like a leaf, and his crotch instantly became wet with urine.

Zhou Yaren grabbed Bai Yuan's wrist in time to stop her, feeling a chill emanating from Bai Yuan, a coldness creeping up her spine and into her brain: "You'll scare him crazy."

The chilling aura emanating from Bai Yuan suddenly dissipated: "If you have a clear conscience, you have nothing to fear. I just want to ask him whose severed limb it is."

“Ordinary people can’t withstand your fright,” Zhou Yaren said. “Logically speaking, this is a mass grave, and most of the nameless corpses are hastily buried. Some are buried deep, and some are buried shallow. The corpses buried shallowly are likely to be dug up and gnawed by wild dogs that smell the stench as they rot, and the rest will be pecked by this pack of carrion crows.”

Therefore, it is not unusual to see some severed limbs in a mass grave.

This burial ground is overgrown with weeds, and the undulating mounds are all of varying heights and depths, inevitably leading to them being dug up and eaten by birds and beasts.

"You're blind, you can't see it, but Old Zhang's reaction clearly shows he recognizes this severed hand..." Bai Yuan's words were interrupted by Huang Dashan's cries.

"Help me!" He disregarded everything else, stood on tiptoe under the charred tree, and raised his hands to support his deceased wife's body, carefully and laboriously trying to pull her down from the trunk. But he couldn't lift her by himself, and the body slid down another half inch. Huang Dashan collapsed and shouted, "Help me put her down!"

So several brave men stepped forward to help, and with considerable effort and time, carefully and cautiously lifted the two women who were nailed to the tree down.

Huang Dashan couldn't bear to look at the hole in his wife's belly. But as he turned his head, he inadvertently caught a glimpse of a piece of cloth clutched in Tiezhu's mother's hand. He wiped away his tears, stepped forward, and pulled out the cloth. He discovered that it was torn from his wife's clothes.

Countless thoughts raced through Huang Dashan's mind like a tidal wave. His teeth clenched so tightly they pounded. It was obvious that this woman must have dragged his wife off the cliff. Huang Dashan's eyes were bloodshot as he held up the torn piece of cloth, his heart filled with bloodlust. Then, like a maddened beast, he lunged at Old Zhang on the ground: "It was you!"

Caught off guard, Lao Zhang was suddenly grabbed by the neck and forced to the ground.

The unexpected happened so suddenly that no one was able to react in time.

Huang Dashan's face was contorted with rage, and his strength was immense. Zhou Yaren seemed to hear a crack in Old Zhang's neck, and the bamboo cane struck Huang Dashan's armpit with lightning speed, dissipating Huang Dashan's force.

Taking advantage of the situation, Bai Yuan grabbed the rolling-eyed Lao Zhang and quickly pulled him out from under Huang Dashan's control.

Huang Dashan tried to pounce again, but was blocked by the bamboo cane. In the repeated attempts to stop him, Zhou Yaren was worried about hurting him by using too much force, so she struggled to defend herself and was knocked back by the reckless Huang Dashan.

"It was your wife who dragged my wife down!" Huang Dashan roared, about to pounce and kill her.

Bai Yuan immediately grabbed Lao Zhang by the shoulder and dragged him away, but the other party was not willing to give up and attacked again. Bai Yuan had no choice but to drag the boneless Lao Zhang and deal with him.

After several rounds of turmoil, Old Zhang finally showed some signs of a "last gasp of life," shaking his head and denying everything under Bai Yuan's clutches: "No, no..."

As he shook his head, he inadvertently caught sight of the severed limb in Bai Yuan's other hand. He struggled in Bai Yuan's grasp as if he had seen a ghost, crawled out in a panic, pointed at Bai Yuan, and cried out frantically, "It was her! It was her! She pushed me!"

Huang Dashan was furious: "Bullshit! She was with us the whole time. Don't try to frame me!"

Actually, Old Zhang wasn't pointing to Bai Yuan, but rather to the severed arm in Bai Yuan's hand: "It wasn't her, it was her, it was her, it was that severed hand, that severed hand pushed them down! It was that severed hand!"

These incoherent words inevitably caused panic, and the villagers immediately started talking at once: "What do you mean?"

"Is he referring to the severed hand that killed him?"

“How could a severed hand kill someone?! Could it be…” The villager’s voice trembled as he finished speaking.

One of them, thinking himself clever, said, "Didn't Old Zhang dig up Huang Yatou's grave to make bone lining for Tiezhu? This is right on Huang Yatou's grave site. Could that severed hand be Huang Yatou's?"

"Maybe when Lao Zhang and his companion were collecting the remains, they accidentally left behind a hand?" That's why the severed hand pushed Tie Zhu's mother off the cliff, and before falling off the cliff, Tie Zhu's mother grabbed someone else to take her down with her.