Chapter 665: Chapter 227 Assassination
Debt note?
Everyone in the temple was immediately drawn to Cuicui’s words, and someone asked, "What debt note?"
Cuicui said, "See for yourselves, it’s engraved on the wall, clear as day—"
Lu Tong suddenly looked up.
The medical officers beside her, curious, took an oil lamp and squatted down next to Cuicui.
It was overcast every day in Su Nan, and today it was snowing, with no glimpse of the sun. Half of the plague hospital’s door was closed, making the temple as dim as night. The medical officer closest held the oil lamp up to the wall. Indeed, there was a deeply engraved line of characters beneath the offering table, in front of the statue:
"On this day, I have borrowed two taels of silver in the name of Seventeenth Miss with the agreement to repay with interest at any time without delay for fear that verbal agreements hold no proof hereby have this debt note engraved in the year of Yongchang thirty-five, in the midst of deep winter, signed, assassin young master."
The characters engraved on the wall were strong and sharp, remarkably beautiful.
Yet, the mention of "assassin young master" and "Seventeenth Miss" made it seem somewhat like a joke.
"Yongchang thirty-five in the depth of winter..." Cai Fang hesitated, "Six years ago?"
This was a debt note from six years ago.
Six years ago, in the deep of winter, who had come here and carefully engraved a debt note on the mottled wall, completely obscured by the offering table?
Lu Tong was sitting among the crowd, watching the people exclaim in surprise and felt a wave of distraction.
Six years ago...
She still remembered that winter day.
She had demanded silver from the man in black, but instead got a worthless silver ring, which she begrudged, compelling him to write a debt note on the wall.
Back then she had not grown up yet, shorter than she was now, and when she bent down to crawl under the offering table and made him carve the characters on the wall, he only looked at her with a mix of laughter and helplessness.
"So hidden?"
"Of course," the young Lu Tong looked at him solemnly, "If it’s written in a conspicuous place, it could be seen and defaced or scribbled over, rendering the debt note null and void. Naturally, it needs to be somewhere not easily discovered."
The man in black reminded her, "But this is a temple wall in Su Nan. Next time you come to collect the debt, are you going to scrape off the wall plaster and take it to Shengjing?"
"Who says it has to be scraped off?" Lu Tong retorted, "Maybe, after all our wandering, we will return to this place. By then, with both the personal and material evidence, I hope you won’t go back on your word."
He scoffed, calling her "small-minded," but he complied, bending down and using a sharp stone from the ground to inscribe the characters onto the wall.
His writing was very beautiful, each stroke full of character. Lu Tong watched him carve, thinking that if her father were here, he would certainly ask for a piece of the man’s calligraphy to force her to practice writing.
When he got to the part about the borrower, he stopped and asked, "What’s your name?"
"Seventeen."
"Seventeen?"
"Is there a problem?" she answered openly, "I’m the seventeenth in my family."
He glanced at her and lazily agreed, "Alright, Seventeen it is."
The noise around her brought Lu Tong back to reality, and she looked up over the crowd, locking eyes with Pei Yunmeng’s gaze.
He was sitting next to Chang Jin, surrounded by a throng of people eagerly chatting. The young man’s expression was indifferent, a dark look in his eyes as he watched her.
That debt note, that same debt note she had long forgotten, was merely a fleeting snapshot in the busy journey of her life in Su Nan. Six years had passed, the temple’s statues had crumbled further, the temple doors had been repaired and dismantled, and many a traveler had rested within its walls. Yet, that debt note carved in a corner of the wall, after being carefully hidden for many years, was unexpectedly exposed to the light of day.
It remained.
Clear, as if brand new, as explicit as if it were written yesterday.
"Ah! Now that you mention it, I do recall something!" Li Wenhu, sitting by the doorway, suddenly exclaimed, "Our temple here, it once had a haunting!"
With that, everyone turned to look at him. Cai Fang was clueless, "A haunting?"
Li Wenhu scratched his head and said nonchalantly, "Well, the execution ground was under my watch, it’s only natural that you don’t know. About ten years ago, or maybe earlier, I can’t remember, there were often ghost stories at the Su Nan Execution Ground."
Cuicui climbed into her father’s arms, her eyes wide as she stared at him. Chang Jin puzzled, "What do you mean by haunting?"
"Well," Li Wenhu glanced around before lowering his voice and whispered, "There were ghosts stealing from the bodies in the Su Nan Execution Ground."
The wind howled outside, and at his words, everyone couldn’t help but shiver.
"I was in charge of overseeing the execution ground then. The executed criminals whose families still cared would pay to take the bodies for burial. But those without kin, or whose crimes were so heinous that their families didn’t want to deal with them, their bodies were left in the grave mounds behind the execution ground."
"Later on, I discovered several times that the abandoned bodies were tampered with—missing their hearts or lungs, or lacking liver or intestines."
"At first, I thought they were mangled by stray dogs from the mountain, but then, it struck me as odd. What sort of selective eating was that, taking just a piece of the heart or liver each time? And the wounds didn’t look like they were made by dog bites, either," Li Wenhu said with a haunted tone.