Chapter 2: Will you hurry up and come deliver the baby?

Translator's note: curious about why I'm working on the earlier chapters? You can find an explanation in the translator's note on the ninth chapter. Now that there's a couple of chapters in succession, I've put in links to last and next chapters, as well as a link to the entire list of currently-translated chapters. Hopefully this will make reading easier in the future!

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“En.” Tu Laoyao nodded his head, picked up the branches, and followed Li Shiyi in walking back, but only upon standing up did he realise that something was wrong and said with a slight stutter, “That, that, that…that, this thing, if it isn’t put it back, how can I know that wife of mine will be okay?”

Li Shiyi cast him a cold look and returned her smoking pipe back to her bag. Tu Laoyao saw that she was stubbornly pursuing this,^[1] not anxious in the slightest, and so he headed towards the southeast end of the tomb by himself, his right foot digging into the dirt before it exposed a piece of oilcloth that had been hidden beneath the soil. He pulled at his trouser legs and crouched down, pulling at the oilcloth, and beckoned at her. “Shiyi-jie, come.”

Li Shiyi furrowed her brows, casting a glance at the pitch-darkness of the tomb’s entrance, and raised her chin to indicate to him to speak clearly. “I opened it, that robber’s hole. Look, doesn’t it look proper?” Tu Laoyao presented it as if it were a treasure and tilted his head up. Li Shiyi looked down and then bent over, tilting her head to get a look around, and laughed coldly without saying anything. Tu Laoyao’s eyes darted from side to side, and he quickly snatched her smoking pipe from her bag and tossed it into the hole, where it rolled with a clatter a few times before the sound faded in the deep hole.

“You!”^[2] Li Shiyi grabbed him and dragged him up, lifting up her foot and pulling a polished dagger from where it had been placed in a hole in her boot, turning her hand to the side to approach his throat horizontally with the blade. In the moonlight, the mottled skin on her face gave the impression of oppression, and she said, “I won’t go down, fish it up.”

Crows’ calls sounded from every side, and Tu Laoyao stared at her indifferent countenance, the chilliness that had been spat from between her thin, sealed lips, and her deep, serene eyes, and suddenly shivered uncontrollably. He withdrew and had to suppress the urge to wet himself, making an effort to stretch his neck, seeming as if to seize at what face he still had, and tugged at Li Shiyi’s cuffs, and said, “Fishing it up…that’s okay too.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he turned into a broken jar thrown at the ground, his shoulders collapsing, and he inclined his eyes towards Li Shiyi. “My original issue, Shiyi-jie, you know it entirely,^[3] this tomb is really strange, and if I go in a second time,^[4] I’m afraid that there’ll be an entrance but no exit. If I die, then that family of yours will bother you next time. Going down early is going, and going down late is going, why bother adding in this life of mine?”

Li Shiyi narrowed her eyes at him, and listened to his glossy hair shaking, and he continued, ”You’ll come down with me, preserve my life for me, and I, Tu Sanping, from now on, will be your man. The dish from the south of the city, you already know, and although you Shiyi-jie are outstanding, you’re a blossoming woman,^[5] a drifter, and having a man is always convenient.”

Li Shiyi’s eyebrows twitched, and she smiled thinly, a snort issuing forth from her nose, unclear as to whether it was a sneer or her heart being moved, but Tu Laoyao was like an old lamp that had had oil added to it, and grinned from ear to ear and proclaimed, “When my son comes out, you’ll be his aunt, and from now on he won’t dare to be unfilial to you.”

When the incredibly sharp blade was pulled away from his throat, it left a deathly pale, thin mark, and Tu Laoyao hurriedly narrowed his eyes as the threat was removed and his shoulders loosened, and Li Shiyi drew her hand back, shoving the dagger back into the hole in her boot, straightened her clothes, and walked a semicircle around the hole, then using one hand, agilely dropped down into the tomb. Tu Laoyao stared open-mouthed and without words, unable to come out of his daze for a long time. “Come down!” came the hum of a voice from the depths of the hole into the tomb.

The tomb was incredibly small; one glance and everything could be seen, and the inside and the wall were just as unremarkable as the outside, two or three metres, and it was merely a four-walled stone room, and seeing this, Li Shiyi lit a bamboo torch^[6] and hurriedly cast an eye about, and found the room lacked any murals, nor any carvings, and judging from the amount of erosion the stone wall showed, it wasn’t built too long ago, and everything appeared to be so ordinary as to be unbelievable. The only strange thing about it was, the tomb lacked the dust of decay, and actually had the faint hint of fragrance, and the closer one got, the stronger the fragrance became, as if someone had lit a number of mixed incense sticks, the scent overwhelming.

Tu Laoyao covered his nose, drew in a breath, and said with a small voice, “Shiyi-jie, this scent smothers a person, my head hurts.”

Li Shiyi put her hand out in front of him, stopping him in his steps, her eyes shifting down, a warning to him to remember the water that had collected on the ground. Tu Laoyao drew in dizzied breaths as he cast his gaze at the sluggish water, both shallow and muddy, seeming as if to have seeped up from the ground below, the ripples radiating outwards as if the growth rings of a tree. With a ge-deng of his heart, Tu Laoyao said, “Last time, inside, there wasn’t…”

He breathed deeply twice, and cast a gaze at the ripples, seeming to move as if in unison with the fragrance; when the water ebbed outwards, the fragrance became stronger, and when it retreated, the fragrance also became weaker, the ebb and flow seeming to have certain implications.

Li Shiyi raised her and and rubbed her nose, searching for a long while, but was unable to find any trace of her smoking pipe, and her heart, too, was uneasy, but her smoking pipe had entered the tomb, and she naturally couldn’t cast aside her responsibility—maybe it was like Tu Laoyao had said, and once that copper jar was put back in the coffin, and it was sealed properly, then it might be able to escape. With that thought, she signaled to Tu Laoyao to circumvent the water as she did, walking on the stone steps beside the outer coffin, and part of her carefully counted the steps she took, while the other part of her lit a glass lamp, and just before she reached the coffin, stopped on an odd step, and placed the lamp at the due south corner, and it was only then that she straightened up and cast an inspecting gaze at the coffin.

The coffin was in the shape of a yuanbao ingot,^[7] its central portion protruding and both ends raised, made of nanmu^[8] worth a decent amount, its outer layer of lacquer peeled off in places, deep red beneath, the four coffin nails removed, and its outer lid halfway pushed open, presumably because Tu Laoyao hadn’t had the courage to take a closer look, and had only taken two copper jars and slipped away.

Tu Laoyao put his wrists in his sleeves and drew his neck back, looking on from behind as he trembled with fear, while in the bright light, Li Shiyi’s tall, slender figure appeared as if a gongbi^[9] painting, having a very closed off temperament, which also hid the half of her face with the scar, unexpectedly causing her cheek to appear smooth as jade, the features of her face refined and seeming to glow with a cold light.

If in every trade, a master appears, then there were those who could make even crowing like a cock and stealing like a dog appear dignified and not lose face over it. Tu Laoyao found himself mulling over this, astonished. Then he laughed twice, neglecting that before him, and Li Shiyi said in a cold voice, gaze doubtful as it fell before her, “A pregnant woman?!”

Tu Laoyao was startled, both astonished and doubtful, and stepped forward, wanting to cling to the coffin and settle his mind, but pulled back in disgust, and then bent his knees, crouching, hooded eyes^[10] widening. Last time he hadn’t seen clearly, but this time he got a closer look, and saw a woman inside the coffin, her complexion intact, the texture of her skin soft and sleek, her hair a shiny black, not even the dawn having the same careless composure, but alas, her clothes were a buttoned Qing mandarin jacket, and the luminous black rot of the cloth exposed and made clear the age of it, and even the gold-plated hairpin had tarnished, and it was no longer possible the distinguish the gold-outlined pattern.

The old-fashioned clothes and ornaments and the woman’s appearance were in sharp contrast, and paired with the fragrance that emanated from her hair, it made one’s heart fearful. Next to the woman, black granules were scattered about, and Tu Laoyao swallowed repeatedly, and said, in a voice as unpleasant as if affected by poison, “This…what is this?”

“Dead corpse worm eggs.”^[11] Li Shiyi had never acted as Tu Laoyao’s teacher, only roughly explaining, and she cast her gaze towards the woman’s bulging abdomen. Just now, she had clearly seen that abdomen shake, and it was possible that everything was an illusion. She clenched her hands, breathed in deeply, and urged the person standing stiffly at her side, “Quickly, put the copper jars back!”

Tu Laoyao quickly came out of his daze, and quickly took out the copper jars, hands shaking as if shifting chaff, repeating Guanyin and Bodhisattva over and over as he put them back into the coffin. Li Shiyi moved aside and took in the surroundings, still looking for the whereabouts of the smoking pipe, but the wall right ahead of the coffin had engraved upon it a number of clearly carved^[12] short strokes, and when she counted them, she found there were ten strokes. She didn’t have the time to think deeply about the meanings of these marks, though, before she felt her wrist tighten, and turned towards Tu Laoyao, who said with a high^[13] voice, “Shi, Shiyi-jie, it, it, it…the mother is moving!”

Li Shiyi frowned, and followed her gaze to where Tu Laoyao was pointing, and saw that the woman’s rounded abdomen was roiling like a snake, expanding and contracting, pushing outwards as if her belly was pulled taut. Li Shiyi was just about to speak when she saw Tu Laoyao withdraw his hand, and hiss doubtfully, “How come it’s similar to the foetal movement of that wife of mine?” At the thought of his wife, Tu Laoyao finally retrieved his sense of masculinity, and his calves no longer trembled, and he gathered up the courage to circle the coffin, looking around a couple of times, and then hit his thigh. “I understand!”

Li Shiyi tilted her cheek towards him, looking at him askance, and listened to him come confidently to his conclusion. “I dug into this tomb, and then it was used by the village, which upon finding that the fengshui of this tomb wasn’t bad, took out the original body, and filled it with things from a family of their own. This woman’s appearance, I fear she only recently died, and the baby in her stomach was already carried to term, and right now it’s trying to get out!” Then he added, “I’ve guarded the cemetery a few years, I’ve seen it happen once or twice.”

The mother dying and the child surviving, and the pregnant woman being buried couldn’t be counted as novel, and Li Shiyi had heard of it before, but what Tu Laoyao was saying was too simple, no matter how one looked at it, this tomb was completely bizarre. Before she could speak, she saw Tu Laoyao jump into the coffin, taking the father’s responsibility that knocked on the door, pushing the woman’s clothes aside as he said, “Hurry up and come deliver the baby!”

Deliver the baby? Li Shiyi’s mouth opened, desiring to shout at him to stop, before seeming to think of something, and curled her index finger, and knocked on the stone softly, and, not hearing the remainder of the movement, stopped in her place, only then blinking a couple of times, and then heard a sound she knew well.

Dong-dong, dong-dong, dong-dong—

That sound was louder than all the other returning sounds, seeming as if more than a hundred, more than a thousand footsteps stamping at once, shaking her eardrums as if they were being pounded violently like drums. The longer she listened to the sound, the force in the moment, Li Shiyi’s chest felt as if it was stopped up, the hidden passage no good, and she shouted to Tu Laoyao, “Cease!”

Tu Laoyao fell to the ground, not turning his head, only staring forward in a daze. In an instant, the thudding disappeared, as if had never even happened, only leaving behind the soft sound of dripping water.

The moment it hit the water with a plop, Tu Laoyao turned around slowly and exclaimed, “Out, come out!” Then he turned his head once more to stare at his own hands, a lotus root-sized segment of a leg in his large, rough grasp, unexpectedly having pulled out a small girl child who seemed as if carved from jade, neither crying nor making any sound, who opened her grape-sized eyes to look at him, her small mouth pouting out as she spat out bubbles of saliva.

Just like that, she was pulled out? Tu Laoyao looked and looked at her, then looked at his own hand, finding it outrageous.

Li Shiyi approached and cast a gaze at the baby, whose entire body was snow-white, seemingly made of dense reflected light, her appearance pale as if she was plated with powder. From head to foot, not a trace of blood, lacking as well any trace of amniotic fluid, so much so that there wasn’t even an umbilical cord linking her to the mother’s body, her beautiful jet-black hair as if a wood ear mushroom in water.

Seeming as if to be thinking deeply about something, she gazed at Li Shiyi steadily. Li Shiyi frowned faintly, and the girl seemed stunned for a moment before she lowered her brows in a similar fashion. When Li Shiyi lifted her brow, she also followed suit, raising her right brow.

Li Shiyi’s heart shook, and she involuntarily cocked her head, and unexpectedly, the child did the same, leaning her small head to gently to the right side. In her heart, Li Shiyi cursed, letting out a number of words of profanity.

“Shiyi-jie.” Tu Laoyao looked at her gaunt face, unable to help falling out to her.

Li Shiyi raised her eyelids and cast a glance at him, and took a few sniffs of their surroundings, and said, “That smell…it seems to be gone.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: The phrase 不油不盐 (bu you bu yan) literally means “without fat/oil or salt”, but colloquially indicates that someone is obstinate and nonplussed.

[2]: Li Shiyi switches from using the formal pronoun 您 (nin) to the informal pronoun 你 (ni).

[3]: Tu Laoyao uses the phrase 千知道玩知道 (qian zhidao wan zhidao) which means literally “you know a thousand and you know ten thousand”, and is used here in the metaphorical to indicate an entirety, similarly to how 千万 (qian wan, thousand-ten thousand) is used to indicate an extreme measure.

[4]: 二进宫 (erjingong) is also the name of a famous opera, but I’m assuming in this context QXHS is using it in the colloquial of going somewhere (usually jail) for a second time.

[5]: 掐尖儿嫩芽 (qia jian’r nen ya) refers to the practice of pruning trees or flowers so they will bloom more vibrantly.

[6]: 火折子 (huozhezi) were a type of rudimentary predecessor to matches which were first attested in use in the Northern and Southern dynasties era (420 CE to 589 CE). They were created by placing rolled paper and sulphr into the natural cylinder formed by bamboo, which had been lit on fire, and then closing the cap to cut them off from oxygen. When the cap was removed, the contents could be blown on to encourage reignition, which would allow one to use them similarly to a torch.

[7]: 元宝 (yuanbao), known in English as sycee, were a type of gold or silver ingot used from the Qin dynasty until the fall of the Qing dynasty. Their shape was highly variable, but the most common depictions are boat-shaped. In the modern day, their image is associated with wealth and prosperity, and often depicted during 春节 (chunjie), or Chinese New Year. Paper imitations are also burnt during the Qingming (清明节, Tomb Sweeping day) and Zhongyuan (中元节, Ghost Festival) festivals as a form of ancestral veneration.

[8]: 楠木 (nanmu) wood is a precious wood native to China that was historically used in a variety of building projects. Nanmu wood comes from a number of species, and the nanmu refered to in the raws is likely Machilus nanmu, which comes in colours varying from olive-brown to reddish-brown, and is very dense and highly resistant to decay, and as such, was used in boat construction. The Forbidden City, constructed under Ming emperor Zhu Di, was originally constructed using Machilus nanmu wood.

[9]: 工笔 (gongbi) is a type of realistic Chinese painting technique. Gongbi paintings are created using highly detailed strokes, often in extensive colour, and depicting figural or narrative subjects.

[10]: 三角眼 (sanjiao yan), literally “triangular eyes”, are an eye shape where the eyelid causes the visible portion of the eye to appear triangular, as in this eye type chart. This eye shape is associated with maliciousness and ferocity.

[11]: 尸虫 (shichong) literally means “corpse bugs/insects”, and here is probably a reference to the burying beetle, Nicrophorus, a type of carnivorous beetle which uses carcasses as the primary food source for its larvae, though it may also be a nod to the Doaist belief of 三尸/三虫 (sanshi, sanchong), Three Corpses/Three Worms.

[12]: The raws say 深深浅浅 (shenshen qianqian), a contradictory phrase meaning both deep and shallow, as with the depth of water, but which means figuratively something that is clear or easily-visible.

[13]: 凉飕飕 (liang sousou) literally means “chilly”, from 凉 (liang, cold) and 飕飕 (sousou, the sound of the wind). Here I have chosen to translate it as “high”, as in the high sound of a chilling wind.