Seeing the rope marks on the girls’ wrists, the bruises and scratches covering their bodies, and their feet rubbed raw and bleeding, Zhang Ming couldn’t bring himself to return them to their tormentors. Every part of him rebelled at the thought. Just imagining the suffering they had endured tore his soul apart. But he also knew for certain that he couldn’t leave them in the shed.

  “Damn it!” Zhang Ming groaned, crouching down and pressing his face into his hands. “Guess I’m doomed to become a mummy.”

  His head was still ringing from the previous night’s drinking, and no sensible thought would come to mind. To ease his hangover and calm his nerves, he sat cross-legged and performed the meditation technique from the scroll several times. As his mind gradually cleared, fragments of last night returned to him. Many of the bandits had shown their true faces then. Besides the horror of seeing a man turned into a dried corpse, Zhang Ming had witnessed countless other atrocities and real torture.

  His closed eyelids trembled, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple as scenes of savage cruelty flashed in his mind. He remembered a young woman kneeling before Tan Gui. Her tangled hair fluttering in the wind, her torn dress, her hands bound behind her back, her body covered in cuts and bruises. The bandits had truly enjoyed themselves.

  It seemed her mind had already left her body; her empty eyes stared at the ground. Tang Gui tapped her cheek with the flat of his sword, then pressed the blade against her throat, leaving a thin red line. Grinning, he loomed over her like a wild beast, a true predator. But the woman no longer reacted, she didn’t tremble, didn’t flinch, as if her soul had long since departed. Grimacing with boredom, Tang Gui swung his blade, severing her head in a single motion. The air filled with the stench of blood.

  Zhang Ming’s heart twisted in agony. He turned away instinctively, yet the dull thud of the falling body still reached his ears, drowning out all other sounds of the feast. Grabbing a jug of wine, Zhang Min drained half of it in one gulp, then silently bade farewell to the young woman’s soul and finished the rest in her memory.

  No film, no book, no painting from Zhang Ming’s former world could have conveyed the horror of what he witnessed that night. It was as if a pack of psychopaths had gathered in one place, competing to outdo each other in cruelty. The stench of death hung thick in the air, seeping under the skin, poisoning the spirit. The chieftain watched the spectacle, nodding approvingly.

  “Now I understand why I kidnapped them,” Zhang Ming murmured, opening his eyes after meditation. “Ughhh… It seems I’ve only made things worse… What do I do now…”

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  Unfortunately, he still couldn’t remember where or from whom he had taken the captives. He’d been far too drunk at the time, and the events were shrouded in haze. He only faintly recalled the laughing faces of bandits, the screams of women being dragged by their hair, and then running through the night fortress with three bodies slung over his shoulders.

  I hope I didn’t kill anyone, Zhang Ming muttered, drawing his sword and running his finger along the blade. Dry. Doesn’t smell like blood.

  Time for thought was running out, more bandits were waking up, and voices could already be heard in the distance. Despite his meditation, his head was still spinning, his thoughts muddled. He scanned the old shed: the pile of tools in the corner, the baskets, torn sacks, and other junk he hadn’t thrown away when tidying up. Zhang Ming picked up an iron pickaxe and weighed it in his hand. For a moment, he looked at the frightened captives.

  “I need to get rid of them. Fast. Erase all traces.”

  With all his strength, he drove the pickaxe into the ground, the metal sinking effortlessly up to the handle. He struck again and again, digging a small pit about a meter deep. The fortress, it turned out, stood not on solid rock but on a loamy hill at the base of a mountain ridge, perhaps formed by a landslide thousands of years ago. The soil yielded easily, especially with his newfound strength. Only small stones blocked his path, but even they shattered under the blows of the iron pick.

  “Mmmphhh…” the bound captives whimpered.

  “Stay quiet!” Zhang Min hissed. “Or I’ll… hurt you badly,” he threatened the frightened children with great reluctance. “Just shut up! Got it?”

  Soon a waist-deep pit appeared by the back wall of the shed, and the baskets and sacks were filled with dirt. Wiping his sweaty forehead, Zhang Min tossed his straw-stuffed mattress down into the hole and carefully seated the captives on it, doing his best to ignore their tears and resistance. He cut the coarse ropes from their wrists—ropes that had chafed their skin raw—but he didn’t dare leave them like that. Tearing off the sleeves of his robe, he tied their hands again, this time very gently. The gags in their mouths he left as they were.

  Setting the pickaxe aside, Zhang Min rushed outside. A few minutes later, he returned carrying a large door from the pigsty, which he laid over the pit. On top of it, he spread old sacks and shoveled the loose earth back, leaving a small gap in one corner for air. Then he replaced the wooden floorboards of the shed.

  The three girls were now sealed beneath the ground. All traces of them were gone, except for the scattered dirt. The shed looked almost exactly as it had before.

  “Not bad. No captives, no pit,” Zhang Min said, stepping back to inspect his work.

  He hastily swept the floor, carried the remaining baskets and sacks of soil to a nearby ravine, and covered them with weeds to make the place look less suspicious. Then he flung open the shed door wide, letting in the bright sunlight, and went over the floor once more with the broom. After confirming everything was in order, he returned to the barracks and pretended to be asleep.

  Will those I fought last night remember me? Did anyone see me heading toward the shed? Zhang Min wondered. I’ve done everything I could. Now all that’s left is to wait… and pray. Ha!

  . . .