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Yin Fa Jie: The Art of Shadow Magic
墨書 Inktalez
On the night of the seventh day of the twelfth lunar month in 1996, Qinghe Town experienced its first snowfall of the winter.
Li Xiuyun locked away the half-finished dark blue fabric in the iron cabinet, her fingertips still sticky with synthetic thread. The tungsten filament lights in the textile workshop flickered intermittently, and thirty-seven weaving machines lay dormant in the shadows like beasts waiting to pounce. As she wrapped her polyester factory uniform tighter around herself and stepped out through the iron door, the electronic clock on the wall of the duty room flashed its eerie green numbers: 23:47.
Snowflakes hit her face like grains of salt, and a layer of ice had formed on the asphalt road. She pulled out a small copper mirror from her keychain—this was a protective charm her mother had obtained from Jiuhua Mountain. The mirror reflected her burnt curls, which had cost her half a month's salary for a trendy perm last month in the provincial capital, but now the ends were as dry as sun-dried corn silk.
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the base of the Azure Brick wall at the alley's entrance. Li Xiuyun felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up; that sound was reminiscent of the brittle crackle of reeds burning in her hometown's stove. Turning past the weathered advertisement board of the supply and marketing cooperative, she saw a hunched old woman with her back to the alley, combing her hair.
The elderly woman wore a cotton coat with front buttons, and her silver hair cascaded down to her waist. In her right hand, she held a carved wooden comb, and with each stroke, fine wood shavings fell softly to the ground. "Grandma, it's cold and snowy tonight..." Li Xiuyun's words caught in her throat before she could finish.
The old woman's comb snagged in her hair, and with a fierce tug of her gnarled fingers, there was a sharp crack that echoed through the alley. Li Xiuyun caught a whiff of an odor that mixed decaying wood with scalp oil; a piece of comb flew past her ear and left a dark red mark on the snow. Suddenly, she recalled her mother's warning over the phone: "Combing your hair at midnight will entangle your soul..."
As she dashed out of the alley, her rubber shoes slipped on the icy surface, and she noticed that one side of her copper mirror had cracked without her realizing it. Clutching the broken plastic hairpin that had snapped in two, she rushed into the family compound. Old Zhang, who was on duty at the guardhouse, poked his head out: "Little Li, what’s stuck in your hair?"
She reached up to touch her hair ends and felt several grains of Huang Mu Zhu sticking to her fingertips.
Seven days later, the snow piled up behind the state-run department store had been trampled into black mud, and icicles hung from the corners of a green suitcase. Old Wang, the vegetable vendor, spat out his cigarette butt and kicked at the suitcase: "Whose is this...?"
Dark red ice shards oozed from the zipper seam and seeped into the snow like spilled rouge from a broken compact. Veteran detective Chen Guohua squatted in front of the suitcase, his old police cotton coat sleeves frayed at the edges. He pulled out a brass single-lens magnifying glass from his pocket; its lens skimmed over the frost covering the suitcase's surface—within two parallel drag marks lay several twisted gray-white strands.
"Captain Chen," said Forensic Xiao Zheng as he approached wearing rubber gloves, "the suitcase lock is an Ever-Strong model." He leaned closer to examine it further. "This old-style spring lock can be pried open with a metal piece easily, but it seems like the murderer used a key deliberately..."
Without finishing his sentence, Chen Guohua suddenly picked up a half piece of a wooden comb with tweezers. The comb still bore intricate carvings, and the twenty-two teeth were evenly spaced, with blood seeping through the wood grain at the break. He adjusted the angle to catch the sunlight, and the shadow of the comb on the snow faintly revealed the seal script character for "death."
The travel case slowly opened in the hands of the forensic technician. The first item to slide out was a dark blue polyester jacket, with a copper name tag from the Textile Factory pinned to the left chest. Chen Guohua flipped the name tag over with his tweezers, and within the congealed blood were embedded several yellow wooden beads, identical to those on the hairpin worn by the deceased, Li Xiuyun, on the day she went missing.
"The deceased's hair has issues," Xiao Zheng's voice trembled. Chen Guohua leaned in for a closer look; the woman's head was adorned with eighteen braids, each braid's end tied with carved yellow wooden beads.
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