Chapter Twenty-Nine: Who Is Without Weight

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It was a quarter past eight when our car left Gu Jing’s villa. The neighborhood, worried that I might be short-handed, had sent four bodyguards to assist me, closely following us. Though such situations are rarely resolved by mere numbers, I had other considerations in mind and did not refuse their help. Among these bodyguards was Gao Jian; the four of them rode in another car. Clearly, those assigned to help me were all highly capable.

The two cars sped toward the university where I worked part-time, one after the other. Knowing time was tight, Ma Junfeng drove as fast as he dared.

In the car, I dialed Old Ren’s number. Ren Tianxing was surprised to hear from me again so soon, having already received a call from me just half a day ago.

This time, I didn’t disclose what was happening on my end. Instead, I shared with him some of my conjectures.

It was about the box that had vanished at the research institute—the one that once housed that strange pistol. The gun had been taken out for study, and the box was placed in a safe without a refrigeration system. Yet, when the safe was opened, the box had inexplicably disappeared, and frost had formed inside, as if it were a refrigerator.

After the frost appeared, we’d had an occultist, Old Du, discuss the phenomenon, but we’d reached no real conclusion. When I brought this up to Old Ren, he asked excitedly, “Do you have a lead?”

He was surely under immense pressure—perhaps more than anyone could bear. A terracotta warrior, a two-thousand-year-old pistol, four mysterious scientist deaths, a missing box—all converging in one place, and he was the man appointed to oversee the investigation. How could the weight not be crushing? It was no wonder he was thrilled to hear from me, eager for a clue, as if he could fly to me right that instant.

I gathered my thoughts and spoke calmly: “The disappearance of the box and the frost are just my speculations for now. Whether my guess is correct, you’ll need to verify. But first, there’s something you must do, before I tell you more. Check everyone in the institute—everyone, not a single omission. See if anyone is behaving abnormally, anything unusual compared to before.”

I emphasized “everyone” twice, determined he leave no one out. From Gangzi’s case, I’d seen how uncanny the person employing both the Money Curse and the Corpse Gu was. When Gangzi was afflicted by the Corpse Gu and I forced it out, frost appeared at his mouth and nose—if this phenomenon mirrored what happened in the institute’s safe, Old Ren would have a direction for his investigation.

Old Ren was highly efficient. Less than ten minutes later, he called back, panting, “Changfeng, what’s the point of checking this?”

“Don’t ask yet. Any result?”

“No one—everyone’s been checked. There are eighty-two people at the institute, including Dr. Wang, twenty-two of them visiting scientists, thirty institute staff, and the rest are security.”

Hearing Old Ren’s breathless report, I muttered, “Not one person showed any abnormality?”

“I saw each of them with my own eyes. All normal.”

“What about the deceased?” I recalled Gangzi’s experience. If the safe’s frost was related to whoever afflicted Gangzi, there might be a clue among those who had died—perhaps a subtle sign overlooked before.

“The dead?” Old Ren hesitated, uncertain whether “everyone” included the dead. He hadn’t examined them. Realizing this, he said he’d check and call me back, then hung up.

At night, the city of Guangzhou is at its most beautiful. Some say Guangzhou’s nights are like a beauty emerging from a bath, fragrant and alluring. The neon lights flicker, and the passing car lights shine like stars—so enchanting.

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But I was in no mood to admire these sights; perhaps such beauty is reserved for the fortunate.

In the car, Ma Junfeng and Wang Tingting took turns interrogating me, as if they’d conspired in advance, about the skill I’d just displayed—how I had floated in midair. I explained again and again that it was lightness skill, but they wouldn’t believe me. If it was lightness skill, how could I leap so high without bending my legs for leverage? Was it possible to spring so far with barely a brush of the toes? And from their experience, they couldn’t even discern which school of martial arts my lightness skill belonged to; they simply didn’t buy it.

The esoteric arts of Tibetan Buddhism are practiced differently from those of the Central Plains, and because of an oath, I would never reveal the origin of my skills.

Wang Tingting’s knowledge of Chinese martial arts was impressive. As she analyzed the characteristics of our martial traditions, I couldn’t help but see her in a new light. She spoke of Shaolin’s “crossing the river on a reed,” Wudang’s “cloud ladder,” and the lightness techniques of various schools, one by one. Sadly, thousands of years of martial essence had been eroded by history, especially by the past century’s national tribulations. Few authentic skills survive; what remains are mostly flowery routines, lacking the glory of old.

Despite all their guesses, Wang Tingting still couldn’t name my lightness skill. Ma Junfeng, too, listed many secret societies’ techniques, especially those from the Qing era—Heaven and Earth Society, Red Flower Society, and the like. Hongmen, he said, was the later incarnation of the Heaven and Earth Society. Even in that era, a leap of two or three zhang (with one zhang now being three meters) required leverage.

In the end, their only explanation was that if what I did counted as lightness skill, then my leg strength must be extraordinary—so great that I could spring up with just a touch of my toes, without bending or crouching.

How much force could a toe exert to launch a hundred-plus-jin body? It sounded just like the chivalrous heroes of the wuxia novels. But if they didn’t explain it this way, they had no other explanation. I didn’t argue with them; as long as they stopped pestering me, I was content.

Since the Ming dynasty, the Central Plains had been in turmoil, many martial arts lost. By the Qing, the government restricted civilian martial practice, causing a sharp decline in Chinese martial arts. After the Qing, China endured a century of foreign invasion, and even more martial traditions vanished. Yet, the region least affected was Tibet, especially among the esoteric Buddhist sects. Compared with the Central Plains’ arts, theirs might seem crude, but those arts endured while the others faded.

Yet, the esoteric sect’s supreme skills were reserved for a select few—without talent or standing, one couldn’t even touch them. Thus, true masters in the esoteric sect were rare.

After dealing with Ma Junfeng and Miss Wang, my thoughts turned inward. Academician Zhang’s death was exceptionally mysterious—three different methods, all at the same time, and other than a fallen chrysanthemum petal and a few small holes nailed to the window frame, the room bore no trace of the killer. Suddenly, I remembered what Li Baoguo had said: “The murderer’s footsteps were so light, it was as if he had no weight. Judging by the force used and the scene, he stood about one point five meters tall, male, with a scent of chrysanthemums. So, the person with the chrysanthemum scent—is he using chrysanthemum-scented cologne?”

“What kind of man, such a short man, would wear perfume?” What kind of person has no weight at all?

As the car turned a corner, I took a long breath. So much had happened in just a few days; my mind was in turmoil. Exhaling, I felt a little better. I rolled down the window and glanced at the scenery outside.

As the car sped past a street, I caught sight of a shop and felt a sudden jolt. I shouted, “Stop the car!”

The vehicle screeched to a halt. Miss Wang stared at me in surprise, and the bodyguards in the car behind us leapt out, thinking something was amiss, drawing their pistols and forming a wary ring around our car.

I couldn’t help but smile wryly and told them, “It’s nothing, please return to your car.”

A few shopkeepers on either side of the street, startled by the commotion, cowered in the shadows. Gao Jian waved his hand, and when he saw someone picking up the phone to call the police, he shouted, “Police business!”

The frightened shopkeepers relaxed a little at that, for after all, only police or criminals would draw guns so openly.

Miss Wang and Ma Junfeng stared in shock. “What’s going on?” they asked.

I stopped because I’d seen a shop outside. I pointed to it and said, “See that store over there?”

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Following the direction of my finger, they saw a “Longevity Shop” specializing in funeral goods—gold paper, candles, funeral wreaths, burial clothes, and so on.

Ma Junfeng was baffled. “It’s just a funeral supplies shop—what’s so special about it?”

Miss Wang glanced at me, then at the shop, and seemed suddenly to understand. She exclaimed, “Paper effigies! Paper effigies!”

Paper effigies are not unusual, but connected to the bizarre events we’d encountered in Xi’an, the answer became clear.

Li Baoguo once asked: what kind of person has no weight?

It was only when I saw that paper effigy in the shop that I suddenly realized: a person with no weight is a paper effigy.

Compared to a real person, a paper effigy’s weight is negligible—effectively weightless.

Once the car started again, I briefly recounted some of the incidents in Xi’an to Ma Junfeng—leaving out, of course, any mention of the terracotta warriors, as I had promised Old Ren and those matters were classified state secrets. I only spoke of the murders, but even that left him deeply impressed.

A few minutes later, Old Ren called back. From his tone, I could tell he had discovered something new. Sure enough, he said excitedly, “One of the four dead is very strange—his body decomposed extremely quickly, and he was riddled with holes. I remember when I first saw their corpses, none of them had this phenomenon. What’s going on?”

Corpses riddled with holes—almost certainly the work of corpse gu devouring the body. I told him with certainty, “That person was killed by a voodoo curse, the Corpse Gu.”

“Voodoo?” Ren Tianxing was shocked; he must have known that such curses originated in Southeast Asia, hence his reaction.

He pressed for more details, so I described the events involving Gangzi in Guangzhou. My reason for linking the freezing safe to the Corpse Gu incident was a hunch, which now proved correct. And I could now be sure—the one who set the Corpse Gu was a member of the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect, which included someone skilled in Southeast Asian black magic.

The involvement of the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect in the institute’s affairs was a grave matter. The sect was a secret group of the Yamaguchi-gumi, essentially a terrorist organization, secretly conducting all sorts of nefarious business in Xi’an and Guangzhou. Especially since these cases touched on state secrets, this was no longer a simple accident—it could easily escalate into a political struggle.

I told Old Ren with conviction: at least ninety percent of the four dead at the institute were connected to the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect. I also mentioned the murderer of Academician Zhang—the weightless killer was a paper effigy. Only a paper effigy would be weightless.

Old Ren clearly respected Li Baoguo. He trusted everything the man said, so when I explained that the “weightless person” Li Baoguo spoke of was a paper effigy, Old Ren fell silent for a moment.

Our car had arrived at the university where I worked part-time. The security guard at the gate signaled us to stop, giving me the perfect excuse to end my call with Old Ren, promising to contact him if anything came up, and that I’d meet him tomorrow if all went well.

Though the guard couldn’t recall my name, my face was familiar enough. I explained I needed to see a few professors, and he let us through without even bothering with registration.