From my grandfather, I learned that there is a mortal world and an underworld.
These two worlds are like parallel universes, with identical buildings but no interference between the two. The court of Yama is like the government institution in the mortal world, where people report after death. If they have unresolved matters, they will not be reincarnated, but remain in the underworld.
After death, some spirits have their previous illnesses mostly cured, with only rare exceptions.
Just like humans, ghosts are good and bad. Some extremely wicked people, after death, use all means to evade the court of Yama and roam between the mortal and underworld, harming the living.
After hearing all this, everything suddenly made sense to me.
When I was at Liu Jiguang's house, although his mother, Zhang Yan, was dead, her mental illness persisted, causing her to uncontrollably desire to kill me.
I didn't hold any hatred toward them; instead, I felt some pity. The entire Liu family came to a tragic end.
Having understood all this, I scratched my neck and asked, "Grandfather, there's something I still don't understand. Why did Liu Jiguang and Li Qingqing want me to be a witness at their wedding?"
My grandfather mumbled, "It was a ghost wedding, requiring a witness who must belong to the ghost destiny."
"So, I am of the ghost destiny?" I nervously swallowed and looked at my grandfather.
His cloudy eyes stared at me for a long time, before nodding and saying, "You were born with an incomplete Feng Shui, your fate is unbalanced, and you are surrounded by yin energy. Seeing ghosts can be major or minor, and you can move between the mortal and underworld without hindrance."
"What?" I exclaimed and stood up hastily.
My grandfather was not shocked by my actions. He tapped the tobacco pipe and said, "You're half human, half ghost. Although you can't freely move between the mortal and underworld now, you will definitely reach that level in the future."
His words made my heart race. I just wanted to be an ordinary person and had no interest in being this kind of nonsense.
Grandpa said nothing about this, and we heard grandma's voice outside, so we got up and went outside.
Grandma cooked a table of good dishes, grandpa picked up his own homemade white wine and took a sip, the spiciness made him squint. I looked down at the food on the table, but I had no appetite at all.
After struggling to finish the small bowl of rice, there was a sudden rush of footsteps outside the door, followed by the courtyard door being pushed open, and a woman in her fifties walked in urgently.
Seeing grandpa, she burst into tears and knelt on the ground with a 'plop', begging, "Brother Yin, please save my grandson."
I was shocked by this scene, but grandpa was much calmer than me, and put down his chopsticks before saying, "Get up and talk, what exactly happened?"
The woman got up from the ground, sat on a stool with a crying tone, and started to sob.
She was a villager from the neighboring village of Langjiawan, known as Mrs. Du. Yesterday, at noon, her ten-year-old grandson, Du Feng, went swimming in the river, and when he returned, he felt exhausted and lay on the kang.
At first, Mrs. Du didn't pay much attention, thinking that the child was just tired from playing. But in the evening, Du Feng was still lying on the kang, feeling completely weak, and even unable to speak.
Mrs. Du then realized the seriousness of the situation and hurriedly took her grandson to the village health center, but after an examination, they did not find any problems.
When they returned home with Du Feng on their backs, he suddenly burst into terrified tears, saying that a soaked woman was smiling at him. This frightened Mrs. Du, who quickly lit a fire to carry her grandson out, fortunately, nothing happened that night.
This morning, Mrs. Du woke up and called out to Du Feng to have breakfast, but to her surprise, Du Feng had lost a lot of weight overnight. He said that he had a dream at night, in which a soaked woman told him to go to the creek to find her. Mrs. Du had no choice but to inquire around and finally ended up here.
After listening to her grievances, I also began to understand.
The Judges of the Underworld do not admit the drowned spirits. If a drowned spirit wants to be reincarnated, it must find a person with bad luck to pull into the water. After the person drowns, the spirit can be reborn.
Grandpa took a deep breath, looked towards the sky, then muttered some words while pinching his fingers, and finally stood up and said to her, "Let's go, take me there to take a look."
"Brother Yin, let's hurry and go." Mrs. Du wiped away her tears and hurried outside.
I sat on the stool not knowing what to do, and grandpa turned his head to beckon to me, saying, "Mingyang, come with me and lend a hand."
Even if I didn't want to, I had no choice, so I went into the room and picked up grandpa's things and walked out.
There was an electric tricycle parked outside, and we quickly arrived at Langjiawan.
I was not unfamiliar with this place, as when I was a child, no one played with me, so I would come here to swim and catch loaches. I was very familiar with this little river.
The water was less than one and a half meters deep, and the flow was very slow, making it unlikely to drown someone, unless they were drunk and accidentally fell in.
Entering the village and arriving at the door of Mrs. Du's house, I was about to go in when grandpa stopped me and looked at me with the open courtyard door, saying, "Mingyang, if you see anything later, don't make a sound, just pretend you didn't see anything."
I nodded, and honestly, what grandpa said was a little scary.
Mrs. Du went inside, and we followed. Most of the houses in our area had the same layout, so as we passed through the front yard and entered the rear yard's bungalow, I didn't notice anything unusual.
But when we entered Du Feng's room, I couldn't help but shudder. The room was so cold, and the floor was covered with water stains, as if someone had just splashed a bucket of water on the ground.
Ignoring all this, grandpa walked to the kang, took a look, then turned to me and instructed, "Mingyang, carry this child outside and put him in the center of the courtyard."
I walked over and saw Du Feng lying on the bed with his eyes closed. Just as Du Niang had mentioned, the guy was extremely skinny, bare-chested, and his collarbone and ribs were clearly visible. There was barely any flesh left, just bones.
Despite being ten years old, when I held him, it felt like I was holding a large rabbit, he didn't have the weight a ten-year-old child should have.
As I picked him up and turned around, I saw a damp woman standing behind the open door.
Her hair covered her face, and she kept her head down, so her appearance couldn't be seen. She was wearing a white dress with water stains dripping from the hem.
She stood there motionless, and even though I knew she wasn't human, my grandfather had told me not to show too much emotion, so I pretended not to have seen anything.