A Prophet - Chapter 17 (Part 4)
Chapter 4 - Grandpa's Ancestral Tombs Dug Up
"Grandpa, this is terrible! This is terrible!" Amidst Grandpa's melancholic musings, the Second Gang Leader rushed in frantically, closely followed by Little Liu.
A shock ran through Grandpa's heart. "What is it?"
"Grandpa, take a look at this." The Second Gang Leader handed a newspaper over to Grandpa.
"Where did you get this?" Grandpa asked doubtfully.
"Liu picked it up while scouting the city," the Second Gang Leader said.
Grandpa lowered his head to look. A thunderous roar erupted in his mind, and fighting back the tears threatening to spill, he gripped the newspaper tightly as a surge of fury welled up in his chest.
"Grandpa?" the Second Gang Leader and Little Liu called out timidly.
With a grave expression, Grandpa stood up after a long silence, clenched his teeth, and said, "They dug up my ancestral tombs! Such a sinister and vicious method to pull!"
"Grandpa..." The Second Gang Leader waited for Grandpa's decision. "Shall we slaughter our way back to Jianghuai?"
Grandpa remained silent, his eyes filled with grief and indignation.
The Second Gang Leader and Little Liu dropped to their knees side by side. "We swear to follow Grandpa to the death!"
Excavating tombs and unearthing corpses to utterly wreck the geomantic feng shui of a dwelling of the dead—since ancient times, this kind of hatred could not coexist under the same sky! Grandpa's entire family of old and young had already died tragic deaths, after which the local folks kindly helped bury their remains. When Grandpa joined the "River and Commercial Faction," he had once returned to his hometown to pay his respects, and every time he recalled the wretched manner of his family's massacre, tears would stream down his face. Now, Zuo Yongchan had actually dug up Grandpa's ancestral tombs in Jianghuai, dragged out the skeletal remains to flog and burn them, and even deliberately hyped up the news, proclaiming broadly in the newspapers that he would make this monster known as Grandpa leave no surviving descendants!
The foremost master of Jianghuai, "Master Tieban," had abruptly been transformed into a monstrous fiend. This left the ordinary folk of Jianghuai, who had long enjoyed his benevolence, utterly shocked. In the newspapers, Zuo Yongchan and Jiang Tiancheng fabricated an endless list of heinous crimes against Grandpa, making it seem as though "Master Tieban" truly was a wolf draped in human skin. Meanwhile, Zuo Yongchan experienced a sudden burst of "benevolence." At that time, Shanghai was plagued by a cholera outbreak; the epidemic spread wildly, with the wealthy receiving prompt medical rescue and surviving, while impoverished common folk perished in massive batches. In Zhabei, the corpses piled up into a small mountain in a single day. Zuo Yongchan personally performed Daoist rituals to dispel disasters and pray for blessings on behalf of the commoners, while distributing free herbal medicine to relieve everyone. In an instant, the numb common folk forgot all about Grandpa, and the virtuous benefactor Zuo instantly transformed into a beloved father and living bodhisattva.
Grandpa helped the Second Gang Leader and Little Liu to their feet, telling them to withdraw first. He closed his chamber door, held the newspaper, and pondered quietly: Who leaked the information regarding my ancestral tombs? I have entered the path for over a decade, and no one has ever dug up my background. How could they suddenly pinpoint my ancestral tombs with such precision? Qi Chunfu! It can only be him! This traitorous old gang leader! Digging up my ancestral tombs is meant to infuriate me and lure me out. A setup of this magnitude is not something the likes of Zuo Yongchan could orchestrate alone; the Japanese must be meddling behind the scenes, trying to force me to show my face. If I return to Jianghuai right now, the portents are ominous, and my brothers would throw away their lives for nothing. Suddenly recalling the scattered bones of his family, an overwhelming sense of melancholy gripped his heart, and tears slid down unstoppably.
Grandpa fought desperately to restrain his grief and anger, slowly organizing his thoughts and plotting his counter-strategy... By the dead of night, he finally formulated a countermeasure and hastily summoned a hall assembly!
"Grandpa, shall we slaughter our way back to Jianghuai and slice down that scoundrel Zuo Yongchan?" the First Gang Leader demanded fiercely.
Grandpa shook his head and replied, "Since we are playing this game, let's play it on a grander scale. We've barely stirred up a few ripples, and already we can't sit still? Where is the sense in that?"
"Does Grandpa mean to muddy the waters?" the Third Gang Leader asked.
Grandpa nodded. "Muddy waters make it easier to catch fish."
"What fish are we talking about catching now? The tombs of our venerable grandfather and grandmother have been dug up! I am heading straight to Shanghai with Liu right now to slice that bastard Zuo Yongchan!" the First Gang Leader declared viciously.
"Zuo Yongchan is merely a clown dancing on stage; cutting him down is easy. The crucial issue is the Japanese devils. We ruined their major operation on Zhoushan Island and burned their sorcerer to death in Wuhan; they are not going to let this rest..." Grandpa said.
"Grandpa, perhaps things are not that simple," Little Liu, who had recently been promoted to the Sixth Gang Leader, suddenly spoke up. "If Grandpa considers this: the Zhoushan Incident happened over two years ago, and the Japanese military has been bogged down in the war, taking no actions specifically targeted at our 'River and Commercial Faction.' Could this sudden outbreak of trouble in Shanghai be... could it be related to us intercepting their corpse-driving team?"
"Surely not, aren't those just a few rough sketches?" the Fifth Gang Leader chimed in.
Grandpa pondered for a moment, then abruptly ordered: "Bring those sketches out for another look!"
Grandpa and the gang leaders re-examined the sketches. The mountain and river veins were clearly delineated, and counties and cities were arranged in orderly fashion. After studying them for a long time, they still could not discover anything out of the ordinary.
Grandpa smacked his lips. "Hmph, let's play along with their game for now... Since the Japanese devils want to fight us to the bitter end, we will accompany them all the way to the finish! Here is what we will do..." The gang leaders listened intently, nodding continuously.
That night, the First Gang Leader, the Sixth Gang Leader, and Fan Yifei braved the moonlight and dashed toward Jianghuai. Concurrently, the Second Gang Leader, the Third Gang Leader, and the Fifth Gang Leader led the brothers, armed with newly captured guns, to scour for other corpse-driving teams along the routes provided by Fan Yifei.
Within a few days, a massive volume of leaflets began appearing across Shanghai. The leaflets declared that Zuo Yongchan had turned traitor as a Japanese running dog, that he had murdered his own master—Zhang Jiyao, the former sect master of the "Heavenly Sage Dao"—and that he had slandered the sage-like Grandpa, which would inevitably bring down divine retribution. Heaven had deliberately crippled his leg as a preliminary omen, and furthermore, the divine Thunder God was enraged, unleashing heavenly lightning to blast open his family's ancestral tombs! As the saying goes, "The sins of heaven may be forgiven, but self-inflicted sins are inescapable." Zuo Yongchan himself was destined to suffer a strike by the fivefold divine thunder within the month. When that time came, the five types of divine thunder would strike simultaneously: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth would assail him together. The old scoundrel would be struck by fire thunder within, causing his hair to catch fire from the roots; wood thunder within his chest, rupturing his internal organs; gold thunder across his back, shattering his shoulder blades; water thunder within his abdomen, tearing open his guts; and earth thunder beneath his feet, sinking him five feet into the earth!
Upon reading this leaflet, Zuo Yongchan grew so furious that his mustache stood on end. "Very well, very well! We shall see whose life ends faster!"
Though he spoke with such bravado, misgivings still gnawed at his heart.
"Someone come!" Zuo Yongchan summoned a dharma guardian and lowered his voice. "Take men immediately to our ancestral hometown and see if the graveyard has truly been destroyed."
"As you command!"
That guardian led several blue-robed followers and rushed toward Anhui under the cover of night.
A few days later, at the foot of Mount Huang in Anhui, the guardian and the blue-robed men arrived beside the graveyard of Zuo Yongchan's ancestors. Glancing over, they saw the graveyard was quiet and orderly; a few crows hopped about among the weeds, and the entire burial ground bore no signs of disturbance whatsoever.
"Ha ha ha ha!" the guardian burst out laughing. "Such absurd rumors collapse on their own!"
"Ha ha ha ha!" A cold sneer rang out from a fold in the hills. "You blockheads, you've fallen into a trap!"
"Who's there?" The guardian instantly felt a sense of foreboding.
"Don't you recognize your grandfather?" The First Gang Leader materialized vaguely out of the mountain hollow.
"Damn your mother! I was just looking for you! And you've delivered yourself right to my doorstep!" The guardian shouted as he moved to draw his pistol.
With several rapid gunshots ringing out—bang, bang, bang—the Sixth Gang Leader and Fan Yifei rushed out from behind the guardian with their weapons raised. "Don't move!" Several blue-robed men had already been hit and killed, and the guardian's arm had also been pierced by a bullet, bleeding incessantly.
The First Gang Leader strode forward, leveling his gun at the guardian's head. "I'll let you die with your eyes open! We had no idea where Grand Master Zuo's ancestral tombs were located, so we deliberately planted a false rumor. Grandpa anticipated that the big blockhead would inevitably send men to inspect the ancestral graves upon seeing the news. Sure enough, you set out the very same day, and we trailed right behind you. We must thank the High Guardian for leading us straight to your sect master's ancestral tombs!"
"I fuck your mother..." The guardian seethed with anger and humiliation.
Before he could finish cursing, the First Gang Leader violently pulled the trigger. With a loud bang, a bullet penetrated the guardian's skull. His body stiffened and he collapsed, brain matter and fresh blood gushing out in streams.
The First Gang Leader looked at the Sixth Gang Leader and Fan Yifei. "Brothers, don't just stand there staring. Let's begin!"
The three of them produced the thunder-explosives wrapped around their waists, wedged them into Zuo Yongchan's ancestral graves, set the fuses, and lit them. With a deafening roar, the burial mounds were blasted wide open!
"Avenge our grand-uncle and grand-grandmother!" Little Liu shouted as he leaped straight into the crater of the grave, kicking and trampling wildly!
"Sixth Master, hold on, hold on! Take out the gold, silver, and valuables first!" Fan Yifei urged anxiously.
"Liu, be careful not to damage the skull!" the First Gang Leader instructed.
After half an hour of frantic rummaging, the money and treasures were thoroughly plundered, and the skeletal remains were utterly mangled. Only a single skull remained intact. The First Gang Leader wrapped it in cloth, sliced off the guardian's head—dripping with fresh blood—and wrapped that in cloth as well, tucking both spherical objects into his waist before the three of them headed back to Shanghai.
Late at night, in front of the newly completed Shanghai Museum, three shadowy figures moved about with tense diligence.
"Liu, is everything set?"
"All set!"
"And Yifei?"
"No problem!"
"Good! Execute!" the First Gang Leader commanded.
Channeling internal energy into their feet, the Sixth Gang Leader and Fan Yifei took a running start to scale the towering pillars of the museum's outer wall. Then, adhering to the wall surface like geckos, they scrambled upward and executed a synchronized backflip to land atop the clock tower on the roof of the building. They hung the two severed heads from separate corners of the eaves, and unfurled a banner several yards long bearing the inscription: The Arch-Collaborator Zuo Yongchan Has Met Divine Retribution; Heavenly Thunder Has Blasted His Tomb, and the Skulls of His Parents Are Right Here!
Once everything was properly arranged, the three of them quietly slipped away and vanished.
The reason Grandpa had instructed the gang leaders to choose this specific location to display the heads was because it experienced the heaviest foot traffic. Following the completion of the Shanghai Museum, nearly 45,000 people visited during its inaugural exhibition. Sure enough, early the next morning, as the bustling crowds surged toward the museum, they froze in shock. Within moments, the crowd erupted into chaos—some rushed to report the incident to the authorities, others shrieked in terror, and reporters from the Shanghai Press who had come to visit immediately whipped out their cameras to snap endless photographs.
Meanwhile, Zuo Yongchan of the "Heavenly Sage Dao" had just finished breakfast and was pondering why the guardian and blue-robed men sent to inspect the graves had yet to return, when a servant suddenly rushed in shouting: "Sect Master, this is terrible! This is terrible!"
That cry made Zuo Yongchan's heart skip a beat. "What is there to panic about like this?"
"Your ancestral tombs really were blasted apart by thunder!"
"What?"
While they were speaking, men from the Garrison Headquarters arrived, carrying two round, bulky packages. "Sect Master Zuo, do you recognize these two individuals?"
The packages were unwrapped, and a head and a skull tumbled out together. Upon laying eyes on them, Zuo Yongchan let out a miserable shriek—"Ahya!"—and beat his chest in despair. "I've walked right into a trap!"
Anyone capable of heading a sect possessed a high level of intelligence; the moment Zuo Yongchan saw the guardian's head roll out, he grasped the truth instantly. Needless to say, the other skull must undoubtedly belong to his own ancestral tomb.
"Ah—" Zuo Yongchan let out another prolonged sigh of grief and fury. "If I do not wash away this hatred, I shall live in vain as a human being!" In his heart, he cursed Grandpa's extreme malice.
The First Gang Leader and his companions traveled day and night to return to Hunan, where Grandpa personally hosted a feast to welcome them back and wash away the dust of travel. Meanwhile, the Second Gang Leader, the Third Gang Leader, and their men wiped out several more of the Japanese corpse-driving units, slaying dozens of men and capturing dozens of firearms. Every single brother in the hall, big or small, now wielded a Mauser C96 box cannon; the "Wood-Child Lotus" had genuinely transformed into a small-scale armed militia unit.
Grandpa raised his wine cup, brimming with ambition. "Brothers, you've worked hard! The devils won't let this rest, and there are tougher battles ahead of us!"
"We swear to follow Grandpa to the death!" the brothers shouted in unison.
"Bottoms up!" Grandpa and all the brothers drained their cups in a single gulp.
Suddenly, the flame of the oil lamp on the table slowly dwindled, flickered a few times, and went out. Everyone looked around—the doors and windows were tightly shut, and no breeze had blown in.
This was a supreme taboo within the "River and Commercial Faction": "the lamp wick extinguishing itself." For the oil lamp on the table to go out for no apparent reason was an ominous portent of disaster—what catastrophe was about to strike? Every pair of eyes turned toward Grandpa.
Only the Sixth Gang Leader remained completely calm and composed. "If it went out, we'll just light it again. What's so big about that?"
A heavy block weighed upon Grandpa's chest, but he still smiled and said, "When soldiers come, we block them with generals; when water comes, we dam it with earth. I have dozens of brothers, we've acquired firearms for support, and we share life and death with one another. What is there to fear?"
"Ha ha ha ha!" Laughter erupted across the entire room.
At that moment, the steward relighted the lamp. The Third Gang Leader stood up and smiled. "We are all fortune-tellers; the alternation of yin and yang is what we call the Dao. He who rejoices in heaven and knows its mandate has no anxieties. Ordinary people might be terrified, but we ought not to be. We are capable of predicting fortune and misfortune. This year is the Jimao year of the Tai sui, and the earthly branch is wood. The name of our 'Wood-Child Lotus' hall, when categorized according to the five elements, also belongs to wood. With wood matching wood, aided by the Tai sui, this is an omen of supreme fortune!"
The Fifth Gang Leader nodded in agreement. "Third Brother makes a valid point."
Grandpa was overjoyed upon hearing this. Even if it was merely words of comfort, it sounded exceptionally pleasant. Following Huang Farong's departure, the only gang leaders left in the hall with any genuine talent were Third Brother Xue Jiaren and Fifth Brother Zhang Qiling.
"Ah, stop talking about all that useless nonsense!" The Second Gang Leader cut off the Third Gang Leader. "Grandpa, how shall we arrange our next steps?"
Grandpa nodded. "Stand firm and make no rash moves, quietly observe the changing situation, counter every move as it comes, and await the exhausted enemy with our own ease!"
The Second Gang Leader lacked formal education and only grasped the phrase "stand firm and make no rash moves." Seeing everyone else nodding repeatedly, he nodded along as well.