Chapter 19: Chapter 17: Infant Wine

“It’s so strong,” Rui Yifu complained as he held a hand over his face while his other arm kept the struggling Idony firmly on his hip. Her drool had soaked through the sleeve of the shirt she was biting into.

 

“I know, it’d probably kill a man if they drank it,” Bo agreed with Rui Yifu for once, holding the lantern out as though it would be a shield from the smell of rice wine. It was as overpowering as it was on the lady’s corpse.

 

“I don’t think it’s for drinking. Usually alcohol of this strength is used as offerings,” Rui Yifu explained. He sounded less hostile than usual which almost made Bo relax were it not for the oppressive atmosphere of the hall they were in.

 

“Who can afford that?” Bo asked. “It seems like a waste! When we made offerings it was usually the first bits of harvest or the first born calf or pig-” Baozi made a scared chittering noise and Bo immediately said, “not you.” Then he realized he had just spoken to a pig and slapped his face. All the ridiculous late night jogging and stone carrying Liu Xie was forcing him through was surely beginning to take a toll on his mind.

 

“People who aren’t mud-dwellers,” Rui Yifu sniffed haughtily before coughing. “Such as you.”

 

“Excuse me?” Bo turned his head to glare at Rui Yifu.

 

“Watch your fe-”

 

A sharp burning pain struck through the sole of Bo’s barefoot. He tightened his grip on the lantern as the pain surged upwards and he hopped back a step, lifting up his foot to look at a small pottery shard in it. Without thinking he pulled it out, allowing a small red stream to flow down his foot. “Fuck.”

 

“Excellent work, now you’re going to leave a blood trail,” Rui Yifu’s voice was dripping in scorn.

 

Bo huffed, “well help me bandage it then!”

 

“I can’t,” Rui Yifu explained, resting a hand on the child’s back. Idony was staring outwards, utterly still and paler than usual with her dark eyes locked upon something. “She might decide to run away in her fear and get hurt. So really this requires both of my arms.”

Bo decided to keep some of his dignity and not respond, instead he followed Idony’s eyes to an object on the ground. At first he thought it was a mound of abandoned whitish dough, surrounded by dozens of black pottery shards and a large puddle of rice wine. But as he got closer he felt his heart swallow itself in horror. Behind him he could hear a sharp gasp from Rui Yifu.

 

An infant.

 

It was curled up tightly, and despite his horror Bo pushed himself to reach over and gently turn the body over, the light of the lantern illuminating the folds of flesh and the stark paleness of it’s skin against his hand. The face was scrunched up, almost shriveled, and on its neck, next to the collarbone was a line that nearly faded into the color of the skin. “It’s just like on that lady,” Bo said as he withdrew his hand.

 

“It’s a girl,” Rui Yifu said quietly. Silence briefly passed between them before Rui Yifu broke into laughter. Bo nearly jumped from his flesh at its suddenness, the laughter was high and rolling, echoing through the halls. Idony’s eyes were wide in alarm as she watched him cackle. “Ah! It all makes sense now!!” He held a hand over his face. “I had questions earlier, but now this makes me certain I’m right.”

 

“What are you talking about!? What’s so funny?”

 

“Go on, go, take another jar down and look inside,” Rui Yifu encouraged giddily, although Bo noticed his grip on Idony had tightened.

 

So Bo, despite his better thinking, took another jar from the wall and looked inside. The shrunken face of an infant submerged in rice wine stared up at him with raisin like eyes. Bo nearly dropped it in shock. “...Why…” he asked no one.

 

“The reason the Li family doesn’t have any girls, their riches… Li Zhongshu’s wife…” Rui Yifu’s laughter finally ceased. “We need to go speak to Li Baobao.”

 

“Do you think he knows?”

 

Rui Yifu shook his head, “no, but he will soon. Take the jar with us.”

Bo felt something queasy in his stomach but held the jar tightly as he walked after Rui Yifu, leaning heavily on his uninjured foot. After a few steps, something under his foot gave out and he nearly toppled forward, only shaving himself by using his knees to arrest his fall. That turned out to hurt even more than the wound in his foot. Rui Yifu grabbed his arm and pulled him back up with an unimpressed frown. The ground beneath them rumbled slightly with a soft grinding noise coming from the wall facing the door. The painted wood sank into the floor, exposing a tunnel that extended into darkness. Bo heard a muted susurration coming from it. "Should we...?" Bo began but Rui Yifu shook his head, pulling him along.

 

Bo wanted to go find Liu Xie and alert him, but Rui Yifu had decided to tightly grip Bo’s upper arm and drag him to Li Baobao after they had both placed Idony in Rui Yifu’s room which he also promptly slapped down with talismans that turned an eerie blue color, like the light filtering through the depths, as they were placed against the door.

 

They both approached Li Baobao’s room only to find the serpent painted door already open. Inside ledgers and papers covered every inch of table, every bit of his bed, the floors only had enough clean space to provide a walkway between the bed, the table, and the door.

A sharp gasp filled their ears and both of them turned around to see Li Baobao standing behind them with yet more paper in his hands.

“H-hello!” He piped, wide eyed.

 

“Hello Master Li Baobao,” Rui Yifu said with a sweet tone. “We came to vi-”

 

Bo knocked the papers from Li Baobao’s arms to shove the jar into them, “why the fuck do you have babies in rice wine!?” He yelled. Rui Yifu’s hand slapped over his mouth to keep him from going any further. “Mmmph!”

 

“Hush, stupid dog, quiet your howling!”

 

Then with a grip Bo did not expect him to have, Rui Yifu yanked both into Li Baobao’s room and shut the door behind them. Li Baobao still held the large black jar in shock while Bo kicked away a few papers that had fallen to his feet.

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“B-babies in rice wine??” Li Baobao’s voice was tiny and confused.

 

“Yeah! In your family’s ancestral hall you have tons of these things!” Bo said, pointing at the jar and staring at Li Baobao. His face was still confused and vaguely horrified. He was looking at Bo as though he were praying for this to be a joke, and Bo realized that as much as he wanted to finger Li Baobao as guilty for a crime… he was just as lost as they had been.

 

“I didn’t… but there’s only tablets in there…” he whimpered, setting the jar down gingerly on the table.

 

“There’s a passage hidden behind the altar,” Rui Yifu’s voice was gentle. “Did you never know of it?” Li Baobao desperately shook his head but his eyes were firmly upon the jar. His hand slowly reached out to the reddish-brown fabric with ancient wax upon it.

 

“I… I was only allowed in there with my father, when we’d pray to…” his voice faltered and he withdrew his hands as he looked at the paper around them. “I… I’ve been doing a lot of bookkeeping, I would have noticed something that large missing. Money doesn’t just vanish, it’s like a robe dipped in ink. So I’ve been going over our records for the past two… three… six… years…” his voice was quivering. “I can’t find anything! The only strange thing I can find is payments to a Lu Gonghui in a Free City but those were made in my father's name and it might just be-"

“Why are you looking at money!? There’s a dead baby here and you’re more concerned about money right now?” Bo stomped his foot in frustration. “Listen, all those jars below are probably full of your dead female relatives!”

 

“I… I can’t find anything, I can’t! The gambling… it doesn’t add up! But my father wouldn’t lie about this, my father… he wouldn’t,” Li Baobao’s cheeks were turning red, tears falling from his eyes. Bo was amazed as he watched wheels turn in Li Baobao’s head. “But… I did find something else…”

 

“And what did you find, Master Li Baobao?” Rui Yifu’s tone was still warm, but had an interrogational edge to it.

 

“T-two years ago, my brother and his wife had paid for a tavern room in Clay Town and a physician-monk from a Black Temple,” Li Baobao hands scrunched up in their sleeves. “The only reason anyone would do that is if they’re looking to hide something. To take something without permission from a Black Temple is a grave taboo.”

 

“Sacrificing your children is a grave sin too,” Bo bitterly muttered, tearing off some fabric from his pants to finally wrap up his bloodied foot.

 

“I… I think… my brother and his wife had a daughter,” Li Baobao’s voice was quiet as he looked at his feet.

 

It made sense suddenly, Bo felt as though a light had filled his mind. “So when your dad said ‘gambling’, what he really meant was that your brother had lost a daughter.”

 

“No, not that he had lost her, he gave her up,” Rui Yifu corrected. “Rather than give up their child to your father and whatever is beneath the ancestral hall, they instead sent her to a temple.”

“But… but what happened to his wife I can’t understand,” Li Baobao’s tears were falling everywhere. But Bo could tell from the hardness in Li Baobao’s face these were not tears of just grief, but anger as well.

 

“Someone had to take her place.”

 

At the doorway stood Liu Xie. He looked particularly eerie, half-submerged in darkness that gave his features a strangely demonic shade. At his side was his sword, the hilt covered in some spare fabric.

 

“Master Liu Xie!” Li Baobao sounded relieved, the man’s appearance distracting him from his thoughts.

 

“Sorry I’m late, I had to get someone,” Liu Xie said as he moved to the side, fully enveloped in the darkness as a man with apple shaped cheeks wearing filthy clothing stumbled inside, nearly slamming his head on the table as his weak legs gave out on him.

 

“...You're safe!” Li Baobao cried, falling to his knees and embracing his brother.

 

His brother breathed laboriously, trembling as he reached over to hug his younger brother. Bo crouched down to check the man’s body. There were numerous old bruises racing over his arms alone, the fingers on his left hand looked crooked.

 

“Where did you find him?” Rui Yifu asked, Bo thought he sounded more curious than sympathetic to the man’s suffering.

 

“Beneath the stables,” Liu Xie answered. “I believe there’s underground passageways all over the estate, as your father earlier mentioned.”

 

A silence rested over everyone except for the two Li brothers who held each other tightly and sobbed into one another’s shoulders. Bo got up slowly and moved over to Liu Xie, leaning towards the taller man’s ear, “so what happened exactly with his wife then?”

 

“Whatever processes they were using worked fine for newborn infants who don’t understand anything,” Rui Yifu was answering instead, being close enough to hear Bo’s whisper. “But a grown woman who had a long life, who had a presumably loving husband, who had done what she could for her own child. The hate in her heart from what was done to her, for what might have happened to her child, it was too much. She escaped as a hateful corpse, full of hungry White Flame. That's my theory at least.”

“So did the thing fail or succeed?” Bo asked although he felt he already knew the answer. His stomach churned in horror filled anticipation. Li Baobao slowly uncovered the jar, old wax cracking and falling down in hundreds of pieces as the terrible sharp aroma of rice wine permeated the entire room. Another pale tiny body was curled within the liquid, sparse strands of black hair and a bleached umbilical cord floating at the surface. He shrieked, throwing himself into his barely conscious brother to start crying again.

 

Liu Xie looked at Li Baobao, “have you seen your mother lately?” He asked.

 

Li Baobao tore his snot and tear smeared face away from his brother’s shoulder to look up at Liu Xie. “After she passed out, my father had servants carry her to…” His face lost all its redness to turn as white as the moon. His eyes grew wide as he slowly detached himself from his brother and stood up.

 

Like the wind, Li Baobao was out the door. And much like the wind, he was shrieking.

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