Chapter 3: The Mountain of Female Spirits

Third Uncle merely grunted in response before turning his attention elsewhere, as if I were suddenly invisible.

The elderly man with graying hair bent forward deferentially, his voice tinged with urgency: "Master He, regarding this matter..."

"Rest easy, old sir," Third Uncle replied with quiet authority. "I'll gather my tools and come at once."

The old man's face lit up with visible relief. "Thank you, Master He, for lending your expertise. And please be assured - we know well the proper... arrangements." His last words carried a weight of unspoken understanding.

The old man produced a thick bundle of cash from his bag, placing it on the counter with practiced discretion.

Third Uncle didn't spare the money even a glance. Instead, he turned to me: "Little Nine, set your bags down and come with me. There's a matter that needs attention. We can celebrate your arrival properly tonight."

I hastily stowed my bags behind the counter as Third Uncle retrieved a mysterious box from a shadowy corner. "Lock up," he commanded. "It's time to go."

"Where exactly are we headed?" I ventured to ask, a slight tremor in my voice.

"The Mountain of Lost Women," Third Uncle replied, the name itself seeming to chill the air around us.

The blood drained from my face as my heart lurched in my chest. I knew that name - and the dark history it carried.

I knew of this place from grandfather's ancient texts. The Mountain of Lost Women wasn't one specific peak, but rather a dark designation for any remote mountain where desperate women went to end their lives.

These mountains were remnants of China's feudal past, when women were trapped beneath the weight of tradition. They lived by suffocating rules - a daughter must obey her father, a wife must submit to her husband, all while adhering to the rigid 'three obediences and four virtues.' Their lives were not their own.

In the cruelest cases, daughters were viewed as mere commodities, birthed only to be traded away in political marriages that would benefit their families.

Crushed beneath this weight of oppression, with no voice to protest and no power to resist, these women found only one path to freedom - death. Even then, they found no dignity: their bodies were either cast into unmarked mass graves or abandoned on desolate mountainsides, far from consecrated ground.

These places became known as the Mountains of Lost Women, where dark energies gathered so thick that people said they could feel it in the air. Legends warned that any living soul who wandered into these cursed grounds would find themselves trapped in supernatural mazes, walking in endless circles until death claimed them too.

I had thought such places belonged only to history. In the decades since China's modernization, most of these mountains had either been developed or forgotten, their dark histories buried beneath progress. So why, in this modern age, did such a place still exist?

Third Uncle caught my reaction - his perpetually drooping eyelids lifted slightly, studying me with newfound interest. After a few brisk commands to hurry, he pulled down the shop's metal shutter and led us to a waiting Grand Cherokee.

The vehicle belonged to the old man, who wasted no time getting us on our way. My thoughts turned to the small fortune hidden in my backpack - nearly thirty thousand yuan. "Third Uncle," I ventured nervously, "will your shop be safe?"

Third Uncle shot me a withering look. "My shop?" he scoffed. "They'd have better luck breaking into the Pentagon than getting past my door."

I secretly thought he was full of hot air, but his confidence did reassure me somewhat. Besides, judging by the thick stack of bills the old man had just handed over, Third Uncle wasn't hurting for money. If my savings did disappear, I knew exactly whose door to knock on.

My mind still wrestling with our destination, I gathered my courage to ask, "Third Uncle, do such mountains... do they really still exist in modern times?"

Third Uncle's face darkened. "Old shadows linger where old thoughts persist," he said grimly. "Where backward traditions still hold power, the Mountains of Lost Women remain."

I swallowed hard before asking my next question, though part of me dreaded the answer: "What exactly are we going to do there?"

Third Uncle's response cut through the air like a blade: "Retrieve the dead."

Not just any corpse - we were going to recover the body of a woman who had chosen to end her life by hanging. Her final act of desperation had left a dark mark on the mountain.

This was no ordinary retrieval - if it were, they wouldn't have sought help from the provincial capital. But this case was different. The body was nearing that critical state between life and death that even the bravest villagers dared not approach. In their desperation, they had pooled together thousands of yuan to summon Third Uncle's expertise.

The dead woman's story was one that would haunt anyone who heard it. Her name was Little Swallow - Xiao Yan'er - a bride who had come to the village from a neighboring county, carrying dreams that would turn to ashes.

Her life had been marked by sorrow from the beginning. Born into a family that saw daughters as burdens, she was denied even the most basic joys of childhood. The moment she finished elementary school, she was sent to labor in a local factory. Before she could even taste her twentieth summer, she was married off like cattle at market.

If fate had been kinder, if she had married into a loving family, perhaps her story would have ended differently. But her family's greed sealed her fate - they demanded a bride price of a hundred thousand yuan from her in-laws, a fortune that would cast a dark shadow over her married life.

In those days, when a month's wages might only be a few hundred yuan, such a bride price was staggering - a king's ransom that would breed only resentment.

The exorbitant bride price poisoned her new life from the start. Her mother-in-law saw her as nothing but an overpriced burden, while her husband proved to be a monster wearing a man's skin. Violence lived in his fists, and alcohol fueled his rage. When he drank - which was often - Xiao Yan'er became his punching bag, her body a canvas for his drunken fury.

Each day bled into the next in an endless cycle of abuse and despair. What should have been the springtime of her life became an endless winter of pain and fear.

Finally, one moonless night, when her spirit had been thoroughly broken, Xiao Yan'er made her last, terrible choice. Donning a bright red dress like a final act of defiance, she took a length of rope and slipped away to the graveyard on the mountain. There, beneath the twisted branches of an ancient tree, she ended her suffering.

The tragedy sent shockwaves through the community, with fingers pointed squarely at her cruel in-laws. But they were beyond shame. The mother-in-law, a woman whose heart seemed carved from stone, actually stood in the street shrieking about her "wasted investment" of a hundred thousand yuan. "Now you want me to collect her body?" she sneered to the horrified onlookers. "Never!"

Some villagers, their hearts moved by compassion, wanted to give Xiao Yan'er the dignity of a proper burial. But wiser voices held them back, warning that touching the body without the family's permission would be financial suicide. "They'll bleed you dry with lawsuits," the warnings went. "You'll lose everything."

Their fears weren't unfounded. Xiao Yan'er's mother-in-law had earned her reputation for viciousness throughout ten villages. Dead or alive, Xiao Yan'er remained her legal daughter-in-law, and anyone who dared touch the body without permission would face her ruthless wrath - and expensive consequences.

And so the body remained, suspended from that twisted old tree, as four days stretched into five - each sunrise and sunset marking time's merciless march.

By all natural laws, five days should have brought the inevitable: decomposition should have taken its course, the weight of death should have proved too much for flesh to bear. Yet something was wrong - terribly wrong.

When a brave soul finally ventured near enough to look, what they saw turned their blood to ice - Xiao Yan'er's body showed no sign of decay. Instead, in a grotesque mockery of life, her nails and teeth were continuing to grow, as if death itself had been perverted.

Terror spread through the village like wildfire. The whispers began: Xiao Yan'er's life had been too bitter, her death too violent - her spirit could not rest. She was transforming into something ancient and terrible, a vengeful corpse demon of old legends. If nothing was done, they feared, someone would soon join her in death.

The villagers finally convinced Xiao Yan'er's in-laws to act, and even their arrogance crumbled before this supernatural terror. They sent her husband - the same drunk who had made her life hell - to retrieve her body. But something awaited him at that twisted tree. The moment he approached, madness seized him. His eyes went wild, and he began smashing his head against the gnarled trunk with inhuman force.

Two men had accompanied him, but they could only watch in horror as the scene unfolded. Before they could stop him, blood was already streaming down his face, his skull cracked open in a gruesome display of supernatural vengeance.

The two men dragged him away in blind panic, but they didn't get far. Halfway down the mountain, the husband's struggles ceased. With his final breath, he cried out in terror, his last words an admission that came far too late: "Forgive me, Xiao Yan'er! I was wrong!"

As Third Uncle's tale reached this point, I felt the blood drain from my face. A terrible suspicion had formed in my mind. "The tree," I asked, my voice barely a whisper, "the one she chose... was it a willow?"

Third Uncle's eyes met mine, a glimmer of approval in their depths. "Yes," he said simply. "It was."