"Qing Lin Zhi"
In the late summer of 1998, when I returned to my old house in Hebei holding the brass key my grandmother gave me before she died, the cobwebs under the eaves were dyed blood red by the setting sun. The moment the key was inserted into the mottled copper lock, the wind chime at the corner of the eaves suddenly moved automatically without wind. I was so shocked that I almost dropped the musty carved wooden box in my arms.
Inside the wooden box lay three notebooks bound in blue cloth. The title page of the top one clearly read, "On the twenty-third day of the winter month of the Dingyou year, I saw a snake protecting the family in Li's house." I recognized it as my grandmother's handwriting. She always used homemade locust sap ink to write, and now the dark brown handwriting glowed strangely in the dusk.
Early the next morning, I followed the instructions in my notes and found Mrs. Li's old house. Behind the collapsed courtyard wall, wild wormwood grew wildly, reaching half a person's height. Only the firewood stack that my aunt had described was completely barren of grass. When I used a branch to push away the floating soil, my fingertips suddenly touched something cold and slippery - a complete snake slough, with dark red blood stained three finger widths.
"You can't enter this house."
The hoarse voice from behind made me fall to the ground in shock. He turned around and saw an old man in a navy blue cloth coat. His muddy right eye was covered with a white shadow, and three fingers were missing from his left hand. "In 1973, when the reservoir was built, the mountain was bombed and the Shexian Cave collapsed. The nest of green-scaled snakes moved to Granny Li's house." His missing fingers pointed at the blood on the snake's slough, "Did you see this cinnabar mark? The Bao family snake recognized its owner."
The old man claimed to be from the reservoir demolition team back then. He said that Mrs. Li's only son never went to the south to work. On the Qingming Festival in 1975, heavy rains washed away the cemetery in the back mountain. Someone saw Li's eldest son holding a soul-calling flag in the mudslide.
