Chapter 79: 79 The Previous Lover 3

Ni Min did not react to my surprise, saying, "At that time, I liked Wu Jian, but he was always with Wu Ting. Once, I went to meet a fortune teller outside a Taoist temple. An old Taoist priest gave me a doll and told me to write Wu Ting's birthday and name on it. He said that would make Wu Ting leave Wu Jian.

"I planned to prick the doll with a needle as the Taoist said, but...When Wu Ting entered the classroom that day, she had blood in the corner of her mouth. I heard my classmates say that a classmate of ours had taken a girl’s boyfriend and then locked her in the bathroom so she couldn’t get out. When Wu Ting heard that, she went directly to the bathroom and fought with the girl."

"You didn't end up doing it, did you?" I looked at Ni Min, who had started to cry, and handed her a tissue. She shook her head.

"So what happened to the doll?" I asked curiously. According to Ni Min, all of this happened in high school, but that was still several years before the shipwreck. So why did Ni Min blame herself for Wu Ting’s death?

Ni Min wiped her tears and said, "Shortly before Wu Ting's death, I was cleaning my room and I found the doll. I thought the whole thing was silly and childish, so I threw the doll into the River Lai. A week later, Wu Ting drowned." Ni Min began to sob.

I knew the River Lai. It was a shallow, muddy river nearby. It seemed impossible that Wu Ting really died because someone threw a doll into a dirty stream.

I tried to comfort Ni Min. "Hey, don’t worry. How could you possibly be responsible?"

Ni Min tearfully responded, "You’ve been asking about Wu Ting. Does that mean you suspect her ghost of taking Wu Jian? But I killed Wu Ting. I killed Wu Ting…"

Ni Min's words shook me slightly, and I realized why she was afraid. I knew ghosts really existed, so who was to say that a doll couldn’t control life and death?

I asked, "Do you remember the place where you got the doll?"

Ni Min nodded, but then shook her head. She replied, "After Wu Ting's death, I went back once. The Taoist temple was still there, but it’s a scenic spot now. The old Taoist is gone."

There must be a clue here, I thought. I took out a pen and paper and passed them to Ni Min, asking, "Do you still remember what the doll looked like? Maybe you can draw it and write what materials it was made out of." I spoke gently, worried I’d upset Ni Min to tears again.

She took the pen and paper and drew a small figure. Though her drawing was not good, I could make out the general shape of the doll.

She had drawn a big head, a few simple lines for limbs, and a body that was an inverted triangle. The hands and feet were round. The doll looked kind of ugly, not just because of Ni Min’s poor drawing skills.

“What were the eyes and mouth drawn with?” I asked. I felt like I didn’t want to know the answer.

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Ni Min looked up and said simply, “Blood.”

I shuddered. “And the hair was really human hair?”

Ni Min said uncertainly, "It seemed to be. Once when I was smoking…well, trying it…I accidentally touched the hair with my lit cigarette, and it let off the smell of burning hair.”

After chatting with Ni Min for a while longer, I felt like I’d learned anything she had to say about Wu Ting. We parted ways, and I took the drawing of the doll with me. I planned to ask Witch Yan and Sister Hua about the doll. Maybe they would know if such a thing really had powers. If it was at all possible that Wu Ting disappeared because of the doll, then it was likely that Wu Jian disappeared because of her ghost.

Where was Wu Jian? Where was Huang Xiaolong? Did I have to worry about finding a ghost now too? This was all getting really complicated.

When I got home, I went straight to Witch Yan and showed her the drawing. As soon as she saw it, she became very serious and asked me where I had gotten the drawing.

I told her about the conversation with Ni Min and the file I had on Wu Jian. She sighed, then said, “I knew you shouldn’t have gotten involved in the Jiang family’s affairs.” She then held something out to me as she said, “Once it started, it couldn’t be stopped.”

I looked down. In Witch Yan’s hand was a familiar white envelope. Inside, I found three photos.

The first: A brave-looking woman wearing a police uniform was saluting the camera. Her enormous smile told me that the salute was supposed to be playful.

The second: Dark water. A pale hand sticking out of the water, its five fingers opened as if trying to seize something. Closer to the camera, another pale hand, pushing down on the head that was trying to come out of the water.

The third: A woman dressed in black and soaking wet, standing in water up to her waist, her long hair blocking her face.

I looked over the photos, knowing this was probably Wu Ting. I picked up the second photo and realized that life was more like a movie than I had thought. If this was just a simple shipwreck, then who’s this trying to drown her?

After I’d looked at all of the photos for a long time, Witch Yan picked up the drawing and said, "The killing puppet. I haven’t seen something this evil for many years."

Then was the doll really responsible for Wu Ting’s death somehow?

I asked Witch Yan for more information, but she simply returned the paper to me and told me to find Sister Hua.

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