The Origin

I stared at the two six-digit numbers on the back of the photograph, as though struck by lightning. Two strings of digits I had typed into my novel without a second thought — and here they were in the real world, written on the back of an intimate photo of my wife and Wu Wei.

I opened the map on my phone and entered the coordinates. A result appeared: White Stone Township, Yongning Village, Tiaoshan, Shawozi, No. 45.

An inhabited village. Not far from here, either — only eight hours by car. Was that where the answers were? I had to try. There was nowhere else to go. If the skeleton-in-skin's curse was real, I had less than a day left. I didn't want to die without understanding why.

I reached into Wu Wei's jacket pocket and found a set of car keys. I walked out of the tunnel, and sure enough, a pickup truck covered in sand dust was waiting at the exit.

I pulled the door open and settled into the driver's seat.

The leather was hard and cold, like sitting inside a body shell. I put my hands on the steering wheel, and a thought moved through my mind: when had Wu Wei last sat here? He drove in from somewhere on this road, then died against a wall in the underground tunnel. Now I was in his seat, driving toward the place he had set out from.

I turned the key. The engine caught. The tank was full.

A half-bottle of water sat on the passenger seat.

I looked at it for a long time without touching it.

I drove out of the city at speed, watching the time erode. By the time the sky was lightening at the horizon I had cleared the city and joined the national highway. Traffic was sparse; the roadside was empty, uninhabited land stretching away without even a tree, only the occasional clump of yellowed weeds shivering in the night wind, like something clinging on despite itself.

I drove for hours along that featureless, lifeless road until, around midday with the sun high overhead, occasional sparse trees appeared along the roadside, along with scattered small houses. Then, as the houses became more frequent, small vendors appeared on the roadside selling walnuts and chestnuts. I hadn't eaten anything in more than twelve hours; my stomach felt emptily, uncomfortably hollow. A bun stall happened to be set up by the roadside. I stopped and bought five, eating them standing in the wind. But when I tried to pay, the old woman at the stall didn't accept mobile payment — cash only. My wallet had nothing in it, not a single coin.

I stood there at a loss. The old woman waved me off — just go, she said. I thanked her repeatedly and got back in the car.

The moment I turned the key and was about to drive away, a voice came from inside the small house behind the stall — not loud, but like a needle driving directly into the back of my neck: "Why'd you let him go for nothing!"

My hands went rigid on the steering wheel.

Why did you let him go.

That accent. That sentence. I had heard this before — outside Dr. Xu's clinic. I was inside the skeleton-in-skin's territory.

I stamped on the accelerator and didn't dare stop again.

Not far from the bun stall, the navigation told me to leave the national highway and turn onto a side road.

This side road was gravel and earth, rough and uneven. In the rear-view mirror I watched the car kick up curtains of dull yellow-brown sand — the same colour as the dust that coated the truck. Wu Wei must have taken this road into the city. His last look back through this same mirror would have shown this same sand.

Less than an hour further on, the road worsened. The shaking had my whole body aching. Then the car's nose dipped and the front wheels plunged into a sand hollow — the vehicle stuck solid. I pushed the accelerator to the floor; the tyres spun uselessly, digging two deeper and deeper trenches.

I released the accelerator and leaned my head back against the seat. A scene from my dreams surfaced: the pickup sinking, yellow sand rushing in, everything plunging into a cockroach-filled black pit.

I shoved the door open and jumped out. My feet landed on firm ground.

The ground was firm. I crouched, scraped at the sand with my hand, and felt hard bedrock under my fingers. I let out a long breath, stood up, and looked around: wild land, sand, a few dead trees in the distance. Nothing else.

No pit.

But I still had about an hour's walk to reach the coordinates. The car couldn't take me any further. I looked up at the blazing sun, then turned back to look at the half-bottle of water on the passenger seat.

What did I have to lose? A few hours left, at most.

I picked up the bottle, unscrewed the cap, tipped it back, and drank it dry in one go. Just ordinary mineral water. Nothing happened. I tossed the empty bottle back onto the seat and started walking in the direction the navigation had last shown.

Not far along, my phone died completely.

I had lost navigation and lost track of time. Around me only the wind, and the flat sound of my own footsteps on gravel. I kept walking mechanically, telling myself: at the end of this road there is a village. And in that village, there is something I need to know.

The sun began to angle westward. My shadow stretched long in front of me, slanting across the sand, like a person walking ahead of me. I followed my own shadow; it grew longer and paler and finally dissolved entirely into the twilight.

Night fell.

I could see nothing on any side. Only the faint outline of the gravel path underfoot was still barely discernible. I slowed my steps and felt my way forward. Hungry, thirsty, exhausted — all three pressing down on me simultaneously; every step felt like spending what was left in a nearly empty account. I had no idea how much further I could go, or how far the village was.

And then the wind shifted.

A smell came on the wind. Not earth, not dry grass — something I almost never encountered in the city: the smoke of incense candles, mixed with the scorched smell of paper offerings, heavy in the air.

Then I heard weeping.

Not one person — many. Men's low voices, women's high voices, old voices rough, young voices thin — all layered together, carrying from somewhere in the darkness, distant yet deep, as though welling up from under the ground.

I stopped.

This weeping again. I had heard it twice before and knew it too well. But this time I was certain it was not a hallucination. I was standing in the real world's wasteland, in real darkness, and this weeping was real — entering my ears from the outside.

I followed the sound forward, rounded a slope of packed earth, and saw fire.

A funeral procession.

Not long — perhaps fifteen people. Some holding incense sticks, some holding paper effigies. They moved slowly, footsteps in unison, as though pulled by a single thread. At the front, two men carried white funeral banners; the white cloth turned and twisted in the night wind, like two struggling hands. At the centre of the procession, they carried a black coffin, thick wood, lacquer surface casting a dim glow in the firelight.

No one noticed me.

I fell in at the back and walked with them — footsteps in sand as heavy, as slow as theirs. The incense smoke curled past my nose; the weeping didn't stop, wrapping around me entirely.

The procession turned around a ridge of earth and entered an open ground.

I raised my head, and recognised where I was.

Dozens of tombstones, large and small, standing at random in the darkness — some leaning, some already worn smooth by wind and sand until the inscriptions had disappeared. Far ahead, at the edge of the burial ground, a weathered wooden shack stood alone, a thin thread of yellowish light showing through the cracks in the walls.

That shack. That graveyard.

Standing here, I knew every corner of the place. I had been here before. I was certain.