September 17, 2013, near Mount Tang in Jiangning District, Nanning City.
The sky was overcast, and the atmospheric pressure was low, creating an uncomfortably oppressive heat.
Mount Tang, for the most part, remained undeveloped. Though bisected by two intercity highways, its interior was largely a labyrinth of sparse dirt tracks. Just a few years prior, whispers of wildmen inhabiting the area had circulated. While the wildmen were undoubtedly a fabrication, other tales persisted, such as elderly residents, their minds clouded by age, wandering into the wilderness surrounding Mount Tang, never to return.
Li Feifei remained noncommittal about such rumors. They could be true, or they could be false. If an elder suddenly vanished, who could truly discern whether they had perished on their own or if their family had played a hand in their disappearance?
Back in his hometown of Qingdao, Shandong Province, a solitary mountain stood beside his family home. It was a lone, bald peak, resembling nothing more than a large mound of earth. During holidays, it invariably attracted groups of off-road vehicle enthusiasts. They would spend an entire day playing in a single mud pit, and those unable to climb out would have to be towed from the mire.
Such a desolate hill could never give rise to tales of lost elders or children. At most, someone might snap an axle while off-roading, becoming a source of amusement for others.
Li Feifei had always firmly believed himself to be a good person in the traditional sense.
Though he frequently perused unsavory content and enjoyed regional discrimination jokes, he remained convinced that he was a traditional man. Born into a small merchant family, he had served in the military, possessed a respectable academic background, and was not unattractive—a handsome young man with classic thick eyebrows and striking eyes. He had passed the civil service exam on his first attempt after graduating with a master’s degree. Next month, he was due to report to the Nanning Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Forestry, securing himself a lifelong, stable career.
Yet, being a “good person” did not necessarily mean one had never committed an illegal act. If he genuinely believed his actions were righteous, then even if they were against the law, they remained good deeds in his eyes. The old saying went, ‘judge by actions, not by intentions.’ Li Feifei’s interpretation of this was to simply do what he believed was right.
Just like today.
Li Feifei, masked and dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans, carried a small knife and a neatly folded nylon fishing net in his backpack. He only entered the van after confirming it was Liu Wantong’s vehicle waiting at the intersection.
Someone was already in the driver’s seat. The moment Li Feifei stepped in, Liu Wantong, in the driver’s seat, flinched. After confirming it was Li Feifei, he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. He tossed Li Feifei a bottle of water. Catching the bottle, Li Feifei closed the door and glanced towards the back seat of the van.
A dead person occupied the back seat. According to Liu Wantong, it was a corpse, and Li Feifei’s own assessment confirmed it.
“Feizi, I’ve already changed his clothes. I checked his teeth; he had dentures, and I pulled out both the fake and real ones, smashed them all, and flushed them down the toilet. I also cut off the skin from his fingertips. I didn’t see any surgical scars on him, so he probably hasn’t had any operations. The pacemaker, artificial bones, and joints you mentioned—those should be absent. This guy definitely still has money in his cards, but I didn’t dare withdraw it. The bag he was carrying had 130,000 yuan in it; I counted it. Once this is handled, I’ll give it all to you, plus an additional 100,000.”
Liu Wantong’s voice trembled slightly. He placed a bulging shoulder bag from by his feet onto Li Feifei’s lap. Then, he drove deeper into Mount Tang.
He recognized the dead man in the back. He was a Korean. Two years prior, he had been doing business in Suzhou, claiming he would establish a canning factory in Nanning. Liu Wantong’s father, trusting him, had invested a considerable sum in the Korean, only for the man to abscond with the money. At the time, only the land had been purchased, and his family’s entire savings had been swindled by this fellow. However, fate had intervened. After Nanning’s property prices soared, his family’s investment had recouped its losses due to the land’s increased value. Not only had they broken even, but they had also made a significant profit. This was why the Korean had returned, hoping for a share of the spoils. And then, the Korean accidentally stopped breathing, now relegated to the back seat.
Liu Wantong had been Li Feifei’s old squad leader during their service in the military’s motor transport company. Li Feifei regularly shared a truck with Liu Wantong, making Liu Wantong the person he spent the most time with in the army.
Li Feifei was in his first year of service, while Liu Wantong was in his eleventh. They were discharged roughly a month apart. Despite being a veteran, Liu Wantong carried no airs. They would chat idly about all sorts of nonsense when alone in the truck, and despite a generational age gap, they got along remarkably well.
Unlike Li Feifei, who was a quintessential “city person,” Liu Wantong was not a high-achiever, having only attended a vocational college. Unable to find a job he desired after graduation, he simply enlisted as a technical soldier. Later, by a stroke of luck, he earned a third-class merit citation, allowing him to complete his full twelve years of service. Having served for twelve years, the state arranged a position for him at the Nanning National Tax Bureau. In his words, serving in the military had been an absolute windfall. Coupled with his father’s thriving barbecue restaurant in Suzhou, his life was quite comfortable and enjoyable.
Liu Wantong hailed from Arxan City, Inner Mongolia, and was still herding sheep at the age of ten. It was only when his father opened a barbecue restaurant in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, that he finally left the frontier region.
China was vast. Its frontier, inland, and coastal regions were three entirely distinct worlds, and even within the frontier, the south and north were worlds apart. The northern frontier was desolate and wild. Liu Wantong had learned to drink at a young age. As a child, he wore no underwear, simply wrapping himself in a sheepskin robe. He likely spent more time wrestling sheep than attending classes back then.
The car turned off the intercity highway, and rain began to fall from the sky, patches of pattering drops drumming against the van’s roof. The van lacked sound insulation, and the sound of the rain started to irritate Li Feifei.
“Brother, I asked some people here in Nanning. They said people die on Mount Tang every year. Their bodies are swept into the Qixiang River, flow into Anji Lake, and then are completely devoured by fish that have lived there for who knows how many years. By the time they emerge from the lake and flow downstream, they’re nothing but bones.”
Liu Wantong swallowed hard.
“Grandma’s whistle! What kind of nonsense did you even ask about? Does that even sound reliable? So, the lake is full of piranhas? A body gets tossed in, flows a few kilometers, and turns into bones? Are you sure no one will report us? My son was just born, damn it! If I’d known, I would’ve just given that bastard a good beating. I just wanted to get all his money; I really didn’t mean to kill him.”
“He’s dead, so he’s dead. What’s the rush? Didn’t you used to boast in the army that on the Inner Mongolian border, you’d just toss bodies anywhere in the wilderness after a killing?”
“That was my grandpa’s time! Back then, there were still Soviet soldiers in Mongolia! What the hell are you talking about!”
Li Feifei’s breathing grew ragged, and he felt a wave of dizziness. He pressed his tongue against his front teeth, biting the tip to keep himself lucid.
“Think about how your grandpa killed people. Didn’t you say your family’s sidecar and binoculars were acquired after your grandpa butchered a lone Soviet soldier? Your old man was so fierce, and here you are, dawdling.”
“Can back then compare to now? My grandpa married my grandma when he was thirteen or fourteen. How old was my dad? How old am I? Back then, they’d just strip off their fur robes by the bonfire and get to it. Can it be the same now?”
Liu Wantong was on the verge of losing his mind. He steered the van off the dirt track. The road ended ahead, requiring them to proceed on foot through the wilderness. Another half-mile forward lay the lower reaches of the Qixiang River. By now, night had fully descended. There were no streetlights in this desolate area, and the rain continued to fall, creating an inexplicably eerie atmosphere.
Donning a raincoat and rain boots, Li Feifei, with his backpack, moved the Korean’s corpse and two sacks of rice from the back, piling them onto a handcart. He then walked over to Liu Wantong, flashlight in hand.
“Do you know about the wildman rumors here?”
“Don’t you dare scare me, damn it!”
“You’re afraid of childish ghost stories like that. Then how did you dare kill someone?”
Liu Wantong’s face was pale, and he stammered slightly.
“How could I have known he’d die? I just covered his mouth; I truly didn’t mean for him to stop breathing.”
Li Feifei shrugged.
“My hometown is very close to Korea. When I was a kid, South Korea had just established diplomatic relations with us. These guys came to invest—no, not really invest. Most of them weren’t rich; they were mainly here to scam subsidies. They’d talk to the government about building some factory, the local authorities would give them subsidies, and then these bastards would just vanish, moving on to another place to scam more subsidies.”
“Suzhou isn’t any different. South Koreans are everywhere, and they’re mostly scammers. Only big corporations are worth collaborating with. If it weren’t for the land prices soaring, my family would probably still be in debt now.”
“It’s the same with the North Koreans. You send a train in, and those poor devils only send the people back. They confiscate the carriages, the locomotive, and all the goods, and don’t pay a dime. When you do business with Koreans, you need to wield a stick, make them kneel before you. If they dare bare their teeth, beat them, beat them to death. After all, these guys are running around everywhere in the world.”
“Damn it, Feizi, where did you learn all this?”
“I know an old buddy from Dandong; he told me. Whenever he had free time, he’d set up a telescope by the Yalu River and gaze across. He said it was more entertaining than the monkey mountain at the zoo.”
Liu Wantong’s expression turned bitter.
“What’s the point of talking now, damn it, I’ve already killed someone! Next time I do business with a Korean, I’ll call you. Won’t it be enough for you to just beat them with a stick?”
“If he hadn’t come, you wouldn’t have killed him. No, wait, Brother Liu, you shouldn’t think that way. He came here to die.”
Li Feifei spoke, half-concealing his thoughts. The overflow of light from his flashlight, mixed with the raindrops, struck his face, yet he seemed to have grown calm. As the handcart jostled over a small pit, the corpse nearly tumbled off.
“What do you mean? He came all this way just to offer his head?”
“Look, you’re from Suzhou, he’s South Korean. There shouldn’t have been any connection between the two of you. He helped your father buy the land, and now the land has appreciated in value. Logically, he should indeed be entitled to a share of the money. But he committed suicide right in front of you. Now, no matter the selling price, that land is all yours.”
“What suicide? I accidentally suffocated him.”
“Don’t think that way. Can you really be blamed if he stopped breathing? Alright, he suddenly vanished in front of you. Does that sound more comfortable to hear?”
“Feizi, you really know how to comfort a person.”
“You have to consider, you’re not from Nanning, and neither is he. He disappeared in Nanning on a muggy, rainy day. Nanning has so many rivers, so many mountains, and in the rain, the river water is turbulent. He chose to disappear at this very moment.”
Liu Wantong shivered upon hearing this, whether from cold or fright, he couldn’t tell.
“When I was a kid, I was afraid to use the knife when my dad slaughtered sheep. I never thought I’d do something my dad never did.”
“There’s a lot your dad never did. You think your grandpa butchering a lone Soviet was impressive, but consider this: if your dad had seized the opportunity in the nineties to sell counterfeit liquor to the Russians, he alone might have crippled hundreds of high-ranking Russians in the cities.”
Liu Wantong gave a wry laugh.
“And why don’t you mention the Chinese who were caught selling fake goods to the Russians and were directly hanged? The Soviet Union is gone, and the average Russian lifespan has significantly decreased, hasn’t it? How is that any different from the apocalypse?”
“So, it’s just killing a person. Isn’t society just you killing me and me killing you? What are you so worried about? Your grandpa had to kill a Soviet soldier just to get a sidecar and binoculars. Now it’s your turn. You want that land in Nanning, to sell it and become a wealthy old man, so you made a choice. If you truly regretted it, you wouldn’t have let that Korean die, right?”
“Don’t twist my words! I really didn’t mean to! If I had intended to kill him from the start, would I have left money in his cards?”
“Alright, Brother, I believe you. Hear that water? That’s the Qixiang River.”
Li Feifei tilted the handcart forward, and the corpse, along with the sack of rice, rolled onto the ground. Liu Wantong walked to the river’s edge and shone his flashlight into it. It was pitch black, and the riverbed was completely invisible.
“Damn, that’s scary. Why doesn’t this river have banks?”
“Nanning has a lot of trees, so soil erosion isn’t significant. There’s plenty of rain, and the water is swift. It’s perfectly normal for there to be no sediment build-up on the sides.”
Li Feifei covered the corpse and the rice with a coarse fishing net. Using his small knife, he savagely scraped the corpse’s face, then cut a large triangular gash into its stomach. The knife went too deep, even exposing the intestines. After finishing, he cut several holes in the fishing net and, in passing, tore open a corner of the sack of rice.
“Brother Liu, come. I’ve got everything ready here. He’ll disappear without a trace.”