Uncle Three grunted in acknowledgment but otherwise ignored me.
Instead, it was the white-haired old man who respectfully addressed another, "Master He, about this matter…"
Uncle Three reassured him, "Rest easy, elder, I'll pack up and be right there."
Overjoyed, the old man expressed his gratitude, "Thank you, Master, for taking up our cause. Rest assured, we understand the protocols."
He then withdrew a thick stack of banknotes from his bag and placed it directly on the counter.
Uncle Three, without so much as glancing at the money, instructed me, "Xiao Jiu, put down your luggage and come with me to handle some business. I'll welcome you properly tonight."
I quickly stowed my luggage behind the counter and watched as Uncle Three retrieved a box from the corner, instructing, "Lock the door, let's go."
"Where are we headed?" I inquired.
"To Maiden's End Mountain," he replied, causing a chill to run through me and my face to pale instantly.
I had read about Maiden's End Mountain in my grandfather's notes—it wasn't a specific mountain but rather a term for places where women went to end their lives.
In feudal times, women's status was abysmally low; bound by paternal authority before marriage and by their husbands after, shackled by oppressive norms like the 'Three Obediences and Four Virtues.'
Some families even regarded daughters as mere tools for political or familial alliances.
Under such suppression, women often saw suicide as their only escape. Those who took their own lives were either tossed into mass graves or discarded on desolate hills designated for this purpose.
Such hills, known as Maiden's End Mountains, were said to be fraught with heavy yin energy. If the living wandered into these areas, they often encountered ghostly phenomena like being trapped in endless loops, losing their way, and eventually perishing.
Decades into the new social order, such mountains had either been flattened and redeveloped or gradually forgotten. How could such a place still exist?
Seeing my change in expression, Uncle Three's drooping eyelids lifted slightly, as if reassessing me, before he hurried me along, pulling down the shutter and boarding a Jeep Cherokee.
The Jeep, belonging to the old man, sped away as soon as we were settled inside. Worrying about the thirty thousand yuan hidden in my bag, I asked, "Uncle Three, you don't think thieves could get into your shop, do you?"
He gave me a sharp look and retorted, "The Pentagon got robbed, my shop won't be!"
I secretly thought him boastful, but resolved that if my money were lost, I'd hold him accountable. Given the substantial sum the old man had just handed over, Uncle Three didn't seem to be in want.
Realizing this, I ventured another question, "Do places like Maiden's End Mountain still exist nowadays?"
He nodded, "Wherever backward customs thrive, so too do such places."
"And what are we going there for?" I pressed.
"To collect a body," he replied tersely.
Whose body? Naturally, it was a woman's—a woman who had hung herself.
Ordinarily, no one would summon help from the city to retrieve an ordinary corpse. But this body was nearing a monstrous transformation, and no one in the village dared touch it, so they had pooled funds to summon Uncle Three.
This woman, Xiao Yan'er, had a story too. She had been married off from a neighboring town, her life marked by misfortune from the start, treated as less valuable because of her gender. After elementary school, she was sent to work in a factory, and by her twenties, she was married off.
Her marriage might have been bearable had her family not demanded a hefty dowry of over a hundred thousand—a fortune at that time.
The excessive dowry caused discontent in her marital home. Thus, Xiao Yan'er faced constant berating from her mother-in-law and scolding from her husband—a man prone to violence and heavy drinking, who beat her mercilessly whenever intoxicated.
After enduring years of such abuse, she could stand no more. One night, she donned a red dress, took a rope, and stealthily made her way to the cemetery behind the mountain. There, she chose a crooked tree, tied the noose, and ended her life.
Her suicide caused a local uproar, with many condemning her in-laws. Yet, her thick-skinned mother-in-law ranted publicly about the wasted dowry and refused to collect the body.
The kind-hearted in the village wanted to intervene, but were quickly cautioned—touching the body without the family's consent could lead to severe legal troubles.
Xiao Yan'er's mother-in-law, known for her cantankerous nature across the region, ensured no one dared interfere. Thus, the body remained hanging from the crooked tree for days.
Logically, after five days, decomposition should have set in, or at least the neck would break under the strain, right?
But when someone later passed by and checked, they were nearly scared witless—the corpse showed no signs of decay; instead, her teeth and nails were still growing.
The villagers panicked, fearing Xiao Yan'er's restless spirit might cause havoc. Eventually, her in-laws, alarmed, sent her abusive husband to retrieve the body. Tragically, he went mad upon reaching the site, insisting on dying right there.
Unable to restrain him, he fatally injured himself and died proclaiming his remorse to Xiao Yan'er.
As Uncle Three narrated this, I turned pale and asked, "The tree she hung herself from, was it a willow?"
"Yes," he confirmed.
The books my grandfather showed me noted that a woman hanging herself in red is an ominous sign, the malice accumulating under her feet, turning the soil pitch black.
Such spots, if not excavated, transform the dwelling above into a nexus for malevolent spirits.
Willows, being yin in nature, are adept at absorbing such negative energies. If the body remained unclaimed, the malignance could re-enter the corpse via the tree's branches.
Undoubtedly, if Xiao Yan'er didn't transform into a revenant under these conditions, that would truly be the anomaly.