Chapter 12: The Bottom of the Well
827 Words
Shen Moyan stood at the edge of the well in Chenghuang Temple's backyard, a charm pinched between his fingers.
The second stroke was complete now, the lines on the charm glowing faintly. Zhang Shouyi stood nearby, his face even more ashen than usual.
"You sure about this?" he asked.
"Sun Yunniang's still down there," Shen Moyan said. "Her daughter waited four hundred years. She's waited just as long."
"There's more than just her down there."
"I know."
Shen Moyan pressed the charm to his chest, took a deep breath, and jumped.
The well was deep. The fall felt like it lasted forever, and also like just a moment. By the time he came to his senses, he was standing at the bottom—not water, but dry ground, mud and crushed stones under his feet.
He looked up. The well opening had shrunk to a palm-sized dot of light.
Darkness surrounded him, but his eyes could see. Spiritual energy coursed through his body, pushing the darkness back inch by inch.
The bottom was bigger than he'd imagined. Not just a well bottom, but a cave, extending outward in all directions. The walls were caked with dried mud, and embedded in that mud were things—bones. Human bones.
He walked forward.
After a dozen steps, his foot sank into something soft. He looked down. It was a hand. Reaching up from the mud, withered, finger bones still frozen in a grasping position.
"Sun Yunniang?" he called out. His voice echoed in the cave.
No answer.
But he heard something else—crying. Many voices crying, coming from all directions, soft and thin, like wind through reeds.
"These are all the people who died in this well." Wang Qizhen's voice was heavy. "I've counted them. Forty-seven skeletons in total."
Shen Moyan kept walking.
The cave deepened, the crying grew closer. At the farthest point, he saw a coffin.
Not wood—stone. The lid was half open, and inside lay a person—a woman in Ming Dynasty clothing, her face pale, like she was sleeping.
Beside her stood a girl.
Sixteen, in the same style of clothing, her face also pale. She turned and looked at Shen Moyan.
"You came," she said.
Sun Shi.
"Where's your mother?" Shen Moyan asked.
Sun Shi pointed at the woman in the stone coffin.
"She's waiting for someone," Sun Shi said. "Waited three hundred years."
Shen Moyan approached the coffin and looked down at the woman. She was beautiful, features similar to Sun Shi's, but her eyes were closed, lips pressed tight, like she was enduring pain.
"Waiting for who?"
"For my father." Sun Shi said. "She thought he'd come to save her. But he never did."
Zhu Quan's voice sounded in Shen Moyan's head, very soft: "I didn't know... I really didn't know..."
Shen Moyan ignored him. He crouched down, looking at the woman in the coffin.
"Sun Yunniang," he said, "your daughter's already gone. She's waiting for you."
The woman's brow twitched.
Shen Moyan continued: "The person you're waiting for won't come. He's been dead three hundred years. But he asked me to tell you—he didn't know you existed. He only found out after death. He's regretted it ever since."
The woman's eyes opened.
Those eyes, empty and vast, like Sun Shi's, but deeper, darker. She stared at Shen Moyan for a long time.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice sounded like it came from far away.
"Someone repaying his debts."
Sun Yunniang slowly sat up. Her clothes were old but neat, like she'd just put them on. She looked at Shen Moyan with something unreadable in her eyes.
"He... regretted it?"
"He did."
Sun Yunniang lowered her head, silent for a long moment.
Then she looked up and smiled. A faint smile, a bitter one, but a smile nonetheless.
"Good."
She stood up and stepped out of the stone coffin. Walked to Sun Shi and reached out to touch her daughter's face.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Sun Shi shook her head. "I jumped myself. If I hadn't, that animal would've killed me anyway."
Shen Moyan's heart clenched.
"That animal," he asked, "who was he?"
Sun Yunniang looked at him, her gaze turning cold.
"The county magistrate's son. Surname Hu. He wanted my daughter. She fought back. He pushed her into the well."
"And you?"
"I came looking for her. He saw me. Afraid the truth would come out. Pushed me down too."
Shen Moyan was silent for a moment.
"What happened to him?"
"Dead." Sun Yunniang said. "But the others in this well—he didn't kill them."
She pointed at the bones embedded in the walls. "Some jumped themselves. Some were thrown down. Some were buried alive. This well, from the Ming Dynasty to now, forty-seven people died here. The last one, thirty years ago."
Shen Moyan froze.
Thirty years ago?
Zhang Shouyi's descent.
"That one," Sun Yunniang looked at him, "you know him."
- Writer
