Tricked 015: Four Missing One

The rear hall was quite ordinary.

Ordinary shrines, ordinary memorial tablets, ordinary cabinets.

But this ordinary now felt unsettling. With the likelihood of spiritual entities being present, all this calm seemed the prelude to chaos.

Shen Huanhuan cautiously scanned the surroundings for a long time, then was the first to step over the threshold. The big door didn’t slam shut behind her, and her back relaxed a bit. She turned to the others: “It’s fine for now, you can come in.”

The light inside was even dimmer than outside. After Jiang Yan entered, she turned on her phone screen. The faint glow swept over the layout, and she remarked, “Pretty devout.”

“Yeah.” Shen Huanhuan replied softly.

From their perspective, the memorial tablets, under faint light, looked as though they’d been oiled—dustless. Shen Huanhuan, still holding a talisman, carefully walked to the central tablet and looked at the name: “Sun Qizai.” The main altar hosted four tablets, all surnamed Sun.

Seeing this, it was obvious something was off.

The ancestral hall honored the village founders. Since all have the same surname and there’s only one ancestral hall, this wasn’t different families sharing a hall.

The answer was clear: Silkworm Village’s ancestors were surnamed Sun. This was a village of common descent.

Yet among the villagers they knew, not one was named Sun.

Shen Huanhuan tried to reason it out: “Maybe most folks don’t worship at the ancestral hall anymore. Only Sun-lineage households do.” But she quickly dismissed that: Wang Guilan had gone out with offerings last night, and the sheer number of offerings outside made it impossible it came from just a few families.

So why would those with other surnames worship at a Sun ancestral hall?

Maybe the genealogy could shed light. With this in mind, the three simultaneously looked around. By rights, the family register should be easy to find, but they didn’t see it, so they quickly spread out and started searching likely places.

Shen Xiaoxiao headed to the area by the tablets.

Shen Huanhuan already checked it, but in case of oversight, she carefully checked the tablets and the cabinets beneath.

After reviewing two of the main tablets, Shen Xiaoxiao picked up the one marked “Sun Qizai.”

This tablet was spotless, polished to a mirror; under her phone’s light, she could clearly see her own reflection.

Shen Xiaoxiao stared at herself in the tablet. Her brows were faintly furrowed, as if pondering something—such a novel scene that she stared, and stared… then suddenly felt something odd.

Didn’t her reflection just not blink?

She hurriedly blinked, and her reflection did the same. All was normal. Shen Xiaoxiao let out a long breath—she’d freaked herself out for nothing, as if thinking her reflection wasn’t her.

If not her, then who?

Shen Xiaoxiao squinted with a smile, set the tablet back, but glanced once more. Now her reflection was expressionless, eyes pushed to the corners, staring fixedly at her.

Her hand trembled and she jerked back a step. When she looked again, the face on the tablet was normal.

As if nothing had happened.

Shen Xiaoxiao shook her head. She must have been spooked by the atmosphere—but there was nothing to fear. Her sister carried a talisman powerful enough to protect all three, and she herself had ways to save her own life. Steeling herself, she resumed checking other places, uneasy but undeterred.

She picked up the last tablet, for someone called “Sun Baibu.”

As before, the front gleamed; the back was rough, as if carved. Shen Xiaoxiao turned it over, and found an eye, plus some lines that looked like water currents.

That was strange.

There shouldn’t be things like that carved behind. Shen Xiaoxiao was sure.

She quickly called the others, but before she could, she felt an itch on her face. Absentmindedly, she scratched, and something furry stuck to her palm, a tangled clump. The light was too dim to see clearly, but it seemed like spiderweb.

As she called out to the others, she fussed at her own face.

Their footsteps grew closer, but the stuff on her face multiplied. Shen Xiaoxiao, growing annoyed, tore the “web” away—until endless netting spilled into her hand.

What was this? She cranked her phone’s brightness to max.

The glare made her squint, but peering close, she saw flesh-pink fibers splitting in her palm—like an elastic web, globs of bloody porridge dropping from her face, bursting and bubbling.

Her hand held her own face.

That realization made her scream. She stumbled and fell. Her final glimpse before crashing down was of the tablet in front of her.

And inscribed on it were the characters “Shen Xiaoxiao.”

.

When Shen Xiaoxiao came to, she was resting on Shen Huanhuan’s shoulder, a faint glow coming from the talisman on her chest. Groggy, she couldn’t tell just then which was the dream and which was real. Slowly she remembered what happened, then shuddered, quickly glancing at the tablet.

“Sun Baibu” was clear as day.

It wasn’t her name.

Thank God… Shen Xiaoxiao panted, forcing her heartbeat to slow. Shen Huanhuan gently rubbed her back, not pushing her, but Shen Xiaoxiao tried her best to describe what happened.

“It’s malevolent,” she declared, “I can feel it, sis… it wants to harm me. It’s an “evil ghost.””

Jiang Yan’s voice overhead: “They were always scaring me before—why focus on you this time?”

“I don’t know…”

“Probably you just looked too closely.” Jiang Yan added.

Shen Xiaoxiao paused, then suddenly remembered the carving on the back. “At the back of the tablet—there was an eye and simple water lines!”

Jiang Yan turned and took down all four main tablets. Sure enough, each one had a different pattern carved on the reverse. Earlier she’d checked elsewhere, and Shen Huanhuan only checked the front; only Shen Xiaoxiao looked behind.

Jiang Yan checked the other memorial tablets too, and, soon confirming every one had patterns on the back, gathered them on the ground and squatted down to assemble the images.

Shen Xiaoxiao, after a moment, overcame her terror and helped. The three of them compared the patterns, silently and quickly piecing the puzzle together—the ancestral hall’s atmosphere tense and quiet.

Time ticked by. As suspense built, Jiang Yan suddenly spoke: “So, there are at least four ghosts in the village.”

Shen Huanhuan looked up, “Four?”

“Yes, three can move freely. They worked together to give me those nightmares, but I didn’t sense much hostility—they mostly wanted to scare me off.” Jiang Yan found two tablets with carved eyes, set them to the sides, and continued, “But since entering the ancestral hall, they’ve become hostile. Most likely, they don’t want us to uncover something here.”

“The other ghost is different, more like it’s trapped somewhere. The cocoon’s message came from it; it wants us to uncover the village relationships and come here.”

“Their intentions oppose each other.”

Shen Huanhuan thought it over: “Seems like the first three were complicit, the last a victim.”

Jiang Yan neither agreed nor refuted, focusing on shuffling dozens of tablets. She worked rapidly, taking plates from the sisters, arranging them on the floor, and then stood.

“I’ve solved it.”

Jiang Yan turned her phone brightness to full and looked down at the picture they’d formed.

It was an elderly man with whiskered Daoist topknot and a kindly face; what Shen Xiaoxiao mistook for water currents were his flowing whiskers.

Jiang Yan recognized him.

Among the burial goods of Empress of Chixi was a copy of his ‘Qian Jin Fang.’

“Sun Simiao,” she said.

Someone in the livestream helpfully explained: 【Medicine King, also called the Medicine King Master, a major Daoist deity, guardian of health and medicine. People often offer to him at Medicine King Temples.】

Although all three were called psychics now, the twins and Cheng Guang were technically Daoists, making them knowledgeable about Daoist deities.

“So the village originally worshipped the Medicine King—that’s why they use herbs as offerings.” Shen Xiaoxiao stood up too. Thanks to her height, she had to jump repeatedly to see the full image.

Shen Huanhuan thought more deeply: “But why worship the Medicine King? They do it so secretly—like they’re using the idol to cover up something shameful.”

Jiang Yan replied, offhand: “Suppression.”

Shen Huanhuan had had the same thought: “Right, the ghost sending us clues is likely trapped here and wants us to release it. But the heavier the town’s suppression, the heavier the grievance—the situation’s a mess.”

Shen Xiaoxiao nodded, “Yeah, even if it tried to help, there’s no guarantee it still has humanity. Once freed, it might go wild. Let’s find the genealogy first. Maybe we’ll learn who’s trapped.”

Jiang Yan agreed.

The urgent step was still to find the genealogy, confirm inbreeding, and check if Erzhuang’s name was there. If the trafficked kids aren’t on it, but other kids their age are, it’s almost definite there’s trafficking. That, plus checking which ghosts were suppressed in recent years, would narrow the range.

After all, if they weren’t hiding guilt or secrets, why not ask a real psychic for help, instead of suppressing the ghost themselves?

The three began searching again.

Now more careful, Shen Huanhuan finally found the thick genealogy book beneath a loose brick by the door.

It was a fat sheaf of paper, packed into a space two fists high, densely filled with tiny script. Likely over a century old and water-stained, many of the entries had bled into blurs, but the last few dozen pages remained legible.

They began reading from the clear pages.

“The state stricken by flood, my clan cast into catastrophe, our genealogy broken, our line interrupted. Now Sun Qizai, fifty-second patriarch, restores the genealogy of the Sun clan.”

The note dated to the late nineteenth century—over a hundred years ago.

What came after was a brand-new genealogy, tracing descent from Sun Simiao, with many gaps until about the fiftieth generation.

Shen Xiaoxiao then realized: “So there are two genealogies, one ruined by flood, one written later—in other words, we can’t tell if the villagers are true descendants of Sun Simiao…”

“Doesn’t matter.” said Jiang Yan.

Indeed. The new genealogy explained why Silkworm Village worshipped the Medicine King.

Shen Huanhuan sat beside her, flipping ahead—after the fiftieth generation, continuing for clues.

All three bent to look; the genealogy was meticulous.

52nd Generation: Sun Qizai.

His son: Sun Wu.

His grandson: Sun Hanyou.

His great-grandson: Sun Baibu.

Thus identifying the four main tablets; after these, the genealogy listed the lineage from Sun Baibu, many presumably still alive now.

Jiang Yan leaned forward, finger on “Sun Baibu”—then slid down to his son “Sun Shangnian,” then again to “Sun Baomin.”

Sun… Baomin?

Shen Xiaoxiao blinked: “Wang Baomin? That him?”

“Yeah,” Jiang Yan replied. “Wang Baomin calls the chief Uncle Nian, and the chief is Sun Shangnian—his father.”

She slid down further: under Wang Baomin’s entry, a blank space.

The meaning was clear: Wang Baomin had no son. But Erzhuang said he had a son, Wang Sun, who drowned a few months ago.

Traditionally, girls don’t enter family records; boys do at age six or ten. Wang Sun was school-aged, so at least past six.

Did this village enter names at age ten?

Jiang Yan looked carefully. At last, she found a name—Sun Liangzuo.

Shen Huanhuan remembered: Cheng Guang had met that boy by the creek, folding paper boats. Seven years old—called “Xu Liangzuo.”

So the village enters boys at six, but not all children make the list, and those who do have scrambled surnames.

Jiang Yan almost had to laugh.

She flipped to the last pages: these listed the Sun clan rules.

The script pressed through the paper, every word moving, full of feeling.

“Calamity and misfortune, the ancestral line broken. From the 52nd generation on, descendents of Sun must not migrate, may not marry out or marry in, must guard the bloodline, generation by generation.”

“As with silkworm and cocoon, pure and firm, tenaciously preserved.”

“Sun Qizai, the year of Tongzhi Jiazi.”

*

Shen Huanhuan pressed her lips together; her mood was clearly heavy.

Regardless, the facts were clear. The villagers were the product of inbreeding, and child trafficking was almost certain.

Now came the question: why did the genealogy’s surnames differ from those in daily life?

But that was easy to guess—

Though isolated, the village was known to the state, which even sent volunteer teachers to support the children. If everyone in the village, of all ages and genders, shared the same surname, officials would notice.

So the daily surnames were a cover.

Only the genealogy’s were real.

Shen Huanhuan said quietly: “With people always called by those names, do they even remember they’re Sun?”

“Who knows.” Jiang Yan replied flatly.

“So after the clan rules, the marriages got close, more and more deformed die young, soon the line will be cut off—so they kidnap kids and raise them like their own, thinking that fulfills the clan rule?”

Shen Xiaoxiao scowled: “That’s not ‘fulfilling’ anything. Blood aside, those trafficked kids can’t even enter the genealogy. How are they villagers?” As she said this, she stomped the genealogy several times.

Jiang Yan didn’t join in; when Shen Xiaoxiao finished, she picked up the genealogy and paged through it—one thing still unexplained.

She still didn’t know what those ginseng whiskers were.

By Shen Huanhuan’s reasoning, ghosts’ tangible tokens are their essence.

The ginseng whiskers in the steamed bun were real.

Some sort of herbal spirit had to exist. Yet Shen Huanhuan had confirmed—no sign a spirit ever appeared here.

It made no sense.

Paging back through the thick genealogy, from the rules to the clan injunctions, apart from the bizarre opening there was nothing much unusual; flipping to the end, a slip of paper suddenly emerged.

It was folded, tucked between the last and second-last pages.

Jiang Yan narrowed her eyes.

Without hesitation, she opened it.

“Huh?” Shen Xiaoxiao caught sight of her movement and peered over. “What’s that?”

Jiang Yan didn’t answer as she read through it.

Shen Huanhuan wasn’t distracted either, and after reading she said, “A prayer, I think.”

“Since abiding by the clan rules, many descendants have been sick, few have survived, with upside-down faces, living in daily fear. After years of reflection, at last came understanding. With all effort and care, carefully set, today in the ancestral hall an altar is prepared to implore divine favor, and beg the Medicine King to show mercy and bless the descendants.”

Below was a list of offerings, naming common herbs as well as rare ones.

Last came the chief offerings.

Maybe by custom, their names were smeared with incense ash, totally illegible. Jiang Yan tried scraping off the ash—fingernails raw, she could only make out one word in the last offering.

Ginseng.

Outside, rain came down in sheets. Busy with the genealogy, none of them had noticed a storm had burst. Wind howled, rattling doors and windows—and from within, they looked out on darkness, no daylight at all.

“With a direct beam, maybe we can see better,” Shen Huanhuan suggested. She didn’t know why Jiang Yan was so focused on the offerings, but shone her phone’s flashlight on the slip.

The three other names meant nothing, but the second one, under the light, faintly exposed the top of the character “共,” and two dots.

Jiang Yan’s gaze was obscure.

Finally she clicked her tongue and pocketed the slip.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I get it.”

Shen Xiaoxiao: “???”

Jiang Yan grabbed an umbrella. “We’ll talk at home. We’ve been out long enough.”

Still full of questions, Shen Xiaoxiao blinked at her sister.

Though it had only been three days, Shen Huanhuan had come to trust Jiang Yan’s judgment. They’d been out long; they’d learned enough. Hearing the analysis would take more time anyway; better to go back.

She didn’t hesitate, put the genealogy back in its place, replaced the brick, and hurried after Jiang Yan—whose long hair blew in the wind. Shen Huanhuan reached out and put the hood of Jiang Yan’s coat over her head.

“Let’s go.”

No one was outside. Braving the storm, the three rushed back. Newly planted saplings had been uprooted, lying across the street like corpses. Overhead, wires flapped like dangling guts. Shen Xiaoxiao, scared but determined, hopped over a fallen tree. Curiosity soon overtook her fear; glancing at Jiang Yan, she was visibly hoping for answers.

Jiang Yan, sensitive to stares, glanced her way. Shen Xiaoxiao flashed her little fangs, grinning, “Jiang Yan-jie!”

“Beautiful, gentle Jiang Yan-jie!”

The chief’s house came into view. Jiang Yan stepped over a filthy puddle and spoke, “Remember Wang Baomin’s son?”

“Yeah,” Shen Xiaoxiao quickly replied, just as the wind gusted into her mouth, but she persisted, “his son was trafficked, not his real child, really sad. Drowned a few months back, named Wang Sun!”

“As far as I know,” Jiang Yan said, looking ahead, “Wang Sun is a medicinal herb.”

Shen Xiaoxiao thought she misheard and asked again, “What?”

“Wang Sun is a medicinal herb.”

Suddenly, Shen Xiaoxiao felt cold; the rain numbed her wrists and she almost lost grip on the umbrella. Shen Xiaoxiao slowed, and so did Shen Huanhuan, staring in shock at Jiang Yan’s back.

Jiang Yan kept her pace. Her voice, melding with rain and wind, floated to them.

“There were five drowned.”

“They’re He Miaomiao’s brother, Huang Erzhuang’s sister, Wang Sun, a girl called Niao Niao, and Teacher Xia Qing.”

“I didn’t know the first two’s names before, but now I do.”

“He Shouwu and Huang Jing.”

Jiang Yan stopped, turned to look at them, her expression emotionless—just reciting inferences and facts.

“So now, four offerings, one missing.”

“Who do you think was the ginseng? And who got caught up by accident?”

*

The rain was so heavy that Shen Huanhuan could barely see Jiang Yan.

Ice-cold rain stung her hands, prickling every pore. She shielded her eyes and through the rivulets saw Jiang Yan’s calm face.

So composed—not joking.

Shen Huanhuan’s thoughts blurred for a moment. Suddenly, she remembered the “共” radical and two dots from the slip. When cross-checking with herbal medicine, wasn’t that “huang jing” (polygonatum)? Wang Sun was a person, named after a herb, and drowned the same day as a girl surnamed Huang—so why couldn’t her name be “Huang Jing”?

If two kids with herbal names died the same day, what about the others? Maybe it was the same.

He: He Shouwu.

Niao Niao, whose surname she didn’t know, was the ginseng.

Xia Qing was the outsider, collateral death; she’d only come recently, while the children’s names had long been decided before her arrival.

Shen Xiaoxiao figured this out too. She looked to Jiang Yan, who had already started forward. A few steps behind, she took her sister’s hand, whispered, “What if Jiang Yan’s wrong?”

“There’s no surname ‘Ren’ in the Hundred Family Surnames, right? That girl Niao Niao can’t be ginseng. The others aren’t herbs either.”

Shen Huanhuan hoped so too.

If the kids were abducted, at least one could save them, heal them, and let them grow up—there was hope.

But when kids are written into the offering list and made into sacrifices, there’s no hope. Their deaths were fated from the moment they were named—none of it was an accident, it was forced.

She lowered her lashes, lifted her sister’s hand, and carefully wrote “human body” on her palm.

“Maybe it means this,” Shen Huanhuan explained softly, “ginseng, human body. It doesn’t matter what the surname is; whoever dies can be used.”

“Shit,” Shen Xiaoxiao kicked a stone, “this village is disgusting. Once we deal with the ghosts, let’s have the police arrest everyone!”

Shen Huanhuan nodded, said nothing more, and hurried after Jiang Yan.

Soon, the three stood at the chief’s outer wall. Shen Huanhuan closed her eyes for a moment: “Listening through the paper man, the main house is leaking. The chief and Wang Guilan are both busy bailing water. When they go change buckets, we can sneak in.”

The wind masked the sound of opening doors. Their room was right by the gate, so they made it back to their cramped bedroom all soaked but safe.

Shen Huanhuan recited the spell and put up the paper man, leaning against the door with a sigh.

“First, let’s get changed,” Jiang Yan said.

“Okay.”

Once they were settled, Shen Xiaoxiao tossed out a few meat floss cakes. Jiang Yan casually dropped hers on the bed, where it started to leak oil onto the sheet.

Shen Xiaoxiao scratched her head awkwardly, “Eh, maybe the packaging’s bad…”

“No big deal,” Jiang Yan said. “We’ll be leaving today anyway.”

She sounded relaxed, but Shen Xiaoxiao took her seriously—and found it all too plausible.

“So cool,” she whispered.

Shen Huanhuan gave her a swat, “Business first.” Shen Xiaoxiao instantly sat up straight.

Shen Huanhuan asked Jiang Yan, “Jiang Yan-jie, who do you think is the ghost suppressed in the ancestral hall?”

At the title, Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow.

“Xia Qing,” she said.

Shen Xiaoxiao echoed, “Xia Qing!”

“Why not those kids?” Shen Huanhuan asked, “They were made into sacrifices—died wronged and should hate this village.”

Jiang Yan: “They don’t hate it. They side with Silkworm Village.”

Shen Huanhuan’s pupils shook.

Before she could ask, Jiang Yan explained directly, “You said there was never a trace of a herbal spirit here. And death strips life down to its essence—so there really are no herbal spirits; what we saw weren’t ginseng whiskers but the roots of He Shouwu—He Miaomiao’s brother.”

“It stands to reason that those children, treated as offerings, would see themselves as herbs while alive. After death, their spirit’s form was not human, but pure medicine. So, brainwashed as they were, they acted for Silkworm Village after death—spying on us and attacking us in the ancestral hall.”

“The villagers’ wishes are theirs.”

“So their wish is to cover up the secret, to be useful, so the village’s children will be healthy.”

Such a ghost would hardly be suppressed. Worshipped, more likely. Jiang Yan tore open a cake and took a bite. The room was quiet; the livestream’s chat rolled slowly by.

【“After death, the soul reveals its truest form.”】

【My master taught that too. Whatever a person truly believes themselves to be, that’s how they’ll appear after death.】

【Without the body’s limits, the soul is free.】

【Are these ghosts accomplices to evil?】

【No way. They were just little kids, never treated like human beings, never learned right from wrong.】

Shen Huanhuan was silent for a long while, then said firmly, “They aren’t accomplices. They’re victims.” She digested the info, then looked at Jiang Yan: “Then Xia Qing is the one suppressed, but we know too little—it’s hard to guess her obsession when she died.”

Jiang Yan nodded.

There was too little on Xia Qing; all they knew was she’d been a volunteer teacher, liked giving snacks, was pretty, and gentle by nature.

Jiang Yan asked Shen Xiaoxiao, “What do you need to channel a ghost?”

Shen Xiaoxiao replied quickly, “Something they used in life!”

“Then let’s go ask,” Jiang Yan said.

“Ask where Xia Qing held class.”