Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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Content Warning; gory scenes
On Friday noon, Jiang Lan took Jiang Chi to a tutoring class.
The tutoring class was small, and the teacher was a middle-aged woman in her thirties surnamed Ruan. After Jiang Lan explained Jiang Chi’s “strange illness” to her, she was surprised for a moment but quickly composed herself and began to communicate with Jiang Chi as if she didn’t care at all about the horns on his head.
Jiang Chi’s slightly tense body relaxed, and he naturally answered about his study progress.
After chatting for a while, Ms. Ruan had a basic grasp of Jiang Chi’s self-study progress. Perhaps surprised that Jiang Chi had learned so much on his own, she said to Jiang Lan with a slightly amazed tone, “Jiang Chi is very smart. I estimate he won’t need long to learn from me.”
Jiang Chi subconsciously glanced at Jiang Lan, then pursed his lips somewhat shyly.
“He is very smart, but he was studying at home before. There are differences between studying in class and studying at home. I am sending him here mainly to let him get used to class life in advance.”
When Jiang Chi’s intelligence was mentioned, Jiang Lan couldn’t hide his pride.
Seeing this, Teacher Ruan smiled, patted Jiang Chi on the shoulder, and helped them with the registration process. She also carefully explained the class schedule and what they needed to prepare.
After agreeing to come to class early the next morning, the two of them came out together.
Although Jiang Chi pursed his lips and remained silent, his eyes shone brightly, like a small flame was burning within them. His lips were also slightly pursed, as he tried his best to suppress his excited emotions.
Suan Ni poked its little head out of Jiang Lan’s backpack, looked at him sympathetically, and sighed in an old-fashioned manner, worried about his future: “At such a young age, he has to go to school early and come back late, and he will even have to do homework in the future. It’s so pitiful.”
Just thinking about it made him realize how tough life was.
Anyway, he was determined not to go to school anymore!
Jiang Chi turned his head and saw his big, round, hairy face scrunched up, clearly genuinely worried. He couldn’t help but laugh: “I think going to school is great; you can learn a lot.”
In the past, going to school would have been something he wouldn’t have dared to even think about.
When he used to collect garbage with his grandmother, he would pass by the elementary school and see children around his age carrying their schoolbags to school. He was incredibly envious.
Grandma also said that once they saved up some more money, she would see if she could ask the government for help to send him to school.
However, not long after, Grandma fell ill, and the matter of going to school was naturally never mentioned again.
Now that he could finally go to school, rather than Suan Ni’s worries, he was actually filled with a great deal of anticipation for the future.
Suan Ni looked at him with incomprehension, then pulled his head back into his bag and muttered to Jiao Tu, who was sitting inside quietly, “Jiang Chi will definitely regret it later. He might even cry and ask us to do his homework for him.”
That’s how it was portrayed on TV: children go to school happily on the first day, cry to go home on the second day, and cry while doing their homework on the third day.
How pitiful.
Playing video games at home was still the most enjoyable thing.
Jiao Tu: “…”
He painstakingly pried the lion’s claws off the large snail shell, thinking that Jiang Chi would never cry because of doing homework; he had never seen Jiang Chi cry.
Jiang Chi wasn’t a myna bird.
Jiao Tu thought this to herself, but mumbled aloud, “You should watch less TV dramas.”
“…” Suan Ni just used its hind paws to lift its ears, pretending not to hear.
….
After returning from the tutoring class, Jiang Lan took the kids home before heading back to work alone.
“You’ve signed up?” Xiao Xiaoyu, who was scrolling through her phone, looked up and asked when he returned.
“I’ve signed up. Classes start tomorrow. Ms. Ruan is a very nice person, and Jiang Chi gets along quite well with her,” Jiang Lan said.
“That’s good.”
Upon hearing this, Xiao Xiaoyu buried her head in her phone and looked at it for two seconds. Then she looked up and waved to Jiang Lan, showing him her phone screen: “Do you think what’s being said in this video is true or false?”
“What?”
Jiang Lan sat down in his seat and peeked at her phone, where he saw a short video playing on the screen.
The video feed was shaky, the picture was dark and blurry, and it must have been shot at nighttime. There was a lot of background noise, and a male voice said in a low, frightened voice, “They’re here.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the dim screen flickered, and the faint light of torches illuminated the darkness, revealing several men dressed in ethnic minority costumes and carrying long knives.
These men wore black headscarves, bamboo collars around their necks, short, collarless shirts, and loose, baggy trousers that revealed their strong, muscular physiques.
They were all burly men, carrying gleaming longswords that reflected in their fierce eyes.
They searched around, and then one of them shouted in an unintelligible language. The others immediately surrounded him and dragged a young man out from behind the bushes. Two well-dressed men, with long swords tucked into their belts, examined the terrified young man, who was begging for mercy, for a while. After exchanging a few words with the others, everyone erupted in excited cheers.
The group had a clear division of labor. Two men forcefully pinned the young man to the ground, while the others scattered around to watch and be on guard. Only the leader walked in with a long knife, looked the young man over, and then swiftly beheaded him.
Blood spurted more than a meter high from the severed neck. Although only a blurry black liquid could be seen in the dim light and it wasn’t particularly bloody, the whole incident was still incredibly gory.
The video shook violently a few times, and the sound of the person filming could be heard in the background, followed by a sudden blackout.
The entire video was less than thirty seconds long.
Jiang Lan frowned as he watched the video, noticing the small print at the bottom. The blogger who posted the video was a second-hand poster, who only briefly typed one line: [#Wa Ethnic Hunter Head Sacrifice#, save it for later, hopefully this one will last a few more minutes, shh]
There were already over a hundred comments under this Weibo post. Jiang Lan clicked on it to take a look but found that the entire post had been deleted.
Where did this video come from?
Xiao Xiaoyu said, “It was posted by a blogger who claims to be a backpacker. He said that when he and his friends went on an adventure to the border of Yunnan Province, they were unlucky enough to run into a Wa ethnic group headhunting sacrifice. He and his friends escaped death, but other backpackers in the same group were killed and used as sacrifices.”
This video attracted a lot of attention as soon as it was released due to its bizarre and bloody nature. However, most people initially thought it was fake. After all, we live in a modern society governed by law, and the strangely dressed people in the video, carrying knives, seemed out of place. With the proliferation of short videos, it’s not uncommon for people to create and stage videos to grab attention. Just watch it for fun.
Moreover, this blogger posted a video claiming that a fellow traveler had been murdered, but didn’t even post a police report, so it was most likely fake.
Therefore, most of the reposts and comments on the original video praised the acting skills and the post-production.
Some people from Yunnan even commented on the old custom of Wa head sacrifice, emphasizing that the Wa people did have the custom of headhunting and live sacrifice before the reform and opening up, but it was forcibly replaced by bull head sacrifice after the reform and opening up. They also pointed out that there were sacred sacrificial sites in Yunnan that had been included in scenic areas and were open to tourists.
At first, no one believed it. In the reposts and comments, many people tagged the directors and actors of various thriller and suspense film crews, telling them to stand up straight and take the blame, and learn how to create atmosphere.
Shortly afterward, the video was deleted due to its graphic violence. The initial buzz and attention gradually faded.
About two days later, the blogger, who had previously received no response even after mentioning him in private messages, suddenly started a live stream. In the live stream, he was in a dark rainforest with no visible boundaries, pleading for help with a terrified expression. He incoherently said things like, “I’m back, they’ve come looking for me, I can’t escape.” Before the viewers could ask for clarification, the live stream suddenly ended.
This caused an uproar among netizens, and some even reported it to the cyber police.
The previously deleted video has been found again. Tech experts had analyzed that the video’s effects were not post-production; it was simply a direct shot from the phone’s camera.
So it was highly likely that this blogger didn’t stage the whole thing to attract attention.
However, the blogger provided too little information beforehand. Although the cyber police had contacted the local police to verify the information, the rainforest area of Yunnan Province was too vast, and the investigation would take time. Therefore, these two videos were now circulating all over the internet, attracting considerable attention.
With more attention came more skepticism.
Viewers who watched the live stream insisted that the fear was definitely not something that could be faked, and that the incident might be real; however, some people thought that the blogger was either staging the whole thing to get attention, or that he had a mental illness or delusions. They argued that in today’s society, there still being such a thing as human head sacrifice, it was just ridiculous.
Amid the two opposing sides of the debate, a small group offered a more unique perspective, suggesting that the bloggers might not have encountered human beings.
The evidence was that two days ago, the blogger posted a video mentioning that after narrowly escaping death, he and his friends bought tickets home overnight. But in a live stream two days later, he was clearly in Yunnan Province, saying things like “I’m back again.” Isn’t this a classic ghost story scenario?
This argument gained considerable support, thus turning into a three-way battle.
The Wa ethnic group’s head-hunting ritual had thus gained increasing attention.
Xiao Xiaoyu stumbled upon this video. Because of what she had experienced recently, she clicked on it on a whim. After watching it, she also felt that the video and the blogger’s performance did not seem fake.
“I think this is true.”
She showed Jiang Lan another video: “But are there really that many ghosts and demons in this world?”
She originally thought her experience was one in a million, but she didn’t expect that not long after, she would see another one, which made her start to doubt her life.
Jiang Lan took the phone and opened it. The first thing he saw was a blogger with a terrified expression, stammering for help. Behind him was a dark forest, with tall trees stretching out in a continuous line, and flickering flames in the distance, like silent, lurking monsters.
This video was shorter than the first one. The blogger only said a few words, and in just over ten seconds, the screen suddenly went dark. In the instant it went dark, Jiang Lan noticed a dark shadow flash by in the woods behind the blogger, and then the video abruptly ended.
He recalled the fleeting shadow, opened the video again, played it, dragged the progress bar to the end and paused it, staring at the blurry shadow on the screen to confirm that it wasn’t just his eyes playing tricks on him.
The dark figure in the video resembled a jackal, with two horns on its head curving backward and pressed tightly against its back, and something held in its mouth…
It was clearly his long-lost seventh brother, Ya Zi[1].
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[1]Ya Zi (睚眦) is one of the “Nine Sons of the Dragon” in Chinese mythology, characterized by a dragon head and a jackal/leopard body. Known for a fierce, aggressive, and bloodthirsty nature, Ya Zi symbolizes supreme martial power and is traditionally depicted on weapons— particularly sword hilts and blades— to ward off evil and enhance lethality.
