Volume One Chapter One Witnessing One’s Own Death

Volume One: If Only We Had Met for the First Time

Chapter One: Witnessing One’s Own Death

No one in this world can escape death. But who, when their time comes, has the chance to see the manner of their own demise?

If anyone could, Tu Zhe must be one of them.

Tu Zhe’s death was abrupt and inexplicable.

He’d thought, at the very least, he’d be arrested first, then tried, and only then face execution or something of the sort. That would have been a normal way to die.

But fate had other plans. When he brought home a live pig, intending to slaughter it illegally, the demolition squad, organized by the Relocation Office, just happened to besiege his house with a dozen roaring excavators bent on forced demolition.

That alone was bad enough. What he shouldn’t have had to see was this: his elderly mother struck down by a squad member’s mattock, her head hitting a brick, blood streaming down her face.

Tu Zhe’s vehicle, laden with the pig, was parked behind hundreds of the squad—he couldn’t get through, so he sat in the cab and watched.

His mother’s cries and her bloodied face sent a surge of hot blood to his head. He slammed into gear, floored the accelerator, and the truck roared as it charged into the squad.

What happened next? Tu Zhe only remembered chaos, bodies flung aside, screams filling the air.

How many did he knock down?

He’d lost count.

Seven or eight? A dozen? Twenty?

In the end, his vehicle stalled after crashing into a half-collapsed courtyard wall.

He sat there in the driver’s seat, dazed, his mind blank.

When thought returned, he was already in a prison van, surrounded by a circle of faces.

His body ached, his hands hurt, his head throbbed.

He forced open his bloodied eyes and saw his clothes in tatters, soaked black with blood. His shoes were gone, and his wrists were bound in cuffs.

A twisted, contorted face pressed toward his eyes, its glare incandescent with fury.

“Do you know how many of my brothers you killed? You beast—” the man spat, spraying Tu Zhe with saliva.

Tu Zhe grinned, “How many heads?”

This likely squad leader looked more a gangster than anything. Stunned, he flew into an even greater rage, landing a heavy slap across Tu Zhe’s face. “I’ll beat you to death, you bastard.”

Tu Zhe spat blood, baring his teeth in a grin, squinting through a slit of an eye. “Can’t you be a little more civilized? Violent demolition, brutal enforcement, torture—treating the common people like straw dogs, and you wonder why they see you as enemies? If you can’t understand that, then you and your kind—well, your days are numbered…”

The man’s mouth hung open, speechless. He scratched his head, uncertain, his eyes glinting coldly. “You, a butcher, talking philosophy with me?”

“I am a butcher, but I graduated from Peking University with a degree in Chinese language and literature,” Tu Zhe mocked.

The leader hissed as if his teeth ached. “So you’re the one who passed the civil service exam but got pushed out? Now you’re butchering pigs?”

Tu Zhe laughed uproariously, nearly breathless.

The leader roared, “What the hell are you laughing at?”

Tu Zhe coughed to stop laughing. “Did you ever go to school? Or were you born an idiot? I don’t butcher pigs anymore—I butcher people now. Look, I’m even picking up foul language. But see, I’m just a butcher turned killer. Swearing is nothing to me. You, on the other hand, you’re living off public funds. If you curse and insult people, that’s not what a proper civil servant does. Ha!”

The leader’s rage was volcanic; his face nearly touched Tu Zhe’s nose. “You killed seven people and wounded eleven, even took out the deputy county chief. You’ve brought the sky down, you know that—”

Tu Zhe smiled. “Has the sky really fallen? All I see are the houses in my village flattened. By the way, would you mind moving your face? Your breath is terrible. Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Strange, isn’t it…”

The leader swallowed, pointing at him, “Seven dead isn’t enough for you? How many more did you want?”

“How many of you came?”

“Three hundred and ten squad members. What, you wanted to kill us all?”

Tu Zhe sighed. “Reality never matches our wishes. I only had one farm truck, and there wasn’t enough room to turn around. Wiping you all out wasn’t possible, even if I wanted to.”

That was as far as he got before fists and boots rained down on him. Tu Zhe felt every piece of flesh beaten away, every bone broken, but he didn’t cry out. He kept grinning until he lost consciousness.

When he came to again, it was already night.

The prison van was parked on a deserted road. The interior lights flickered on.

He saw a circle of expressionless faces staring at him.

Tu Zhe coughed, spitting out blood, and chuckled, “So, what are you all waiting for?”

“For you to wake up.”

“Oh? And what does that mean?”

“Time to go to the detention center.”

“Then let’s go, shall we?”

“Don’t you need to take a piss or a dump first?”

“The detention center doesn’t have toilets?”

“There are, but at night the cells stay locked. You’ll have to use a bucket. And as a newcomer, you’re not afraid of a beating?”

“Hah, haven’t I been beaten enough already?”

“One more beating and you might not survive the night.”

“Oh…”

“If you don’t want to die, hurry up and get out. Go relieve yourself in the field. We’re only letting you because you seem educated. Don’t refuse our kindness.”

Tu Zhe thought, once inside, it would be the firing squad for him. He’d probably never breathe outside air again. So he said he’d go.

The whole squad got out, dragged him from the van like a dead dog, released him, and urged him, “Hurry up, go further out, you’ve got five minutes.”

Staggering down the roadside embankment, he faced a pitch-black field. The damp air was sweet in his lungs.

He wobbled forward, his legs barely holding him up, his body on the verge of floating.

“Hurry up, can’t you even run a couple of steps? Look what time it is!” the leader barked from behind.

Run? I could fly if I wanted.

I’ll show you flying.

And then—

He felt himself lift off, as if he’d grown wings, body rising from the earth, soaring into the air.

That’s when he saw his own death.

He watched as his body, in the act of a feeble run, suddenly froze. Blood burst in jets from his back and the base of his skull. Perhaps it was a long moment—or just an instant—before his body collapsed with a thud, motionless.

He knew then he was dead. So sudden, without warning.

He felt himself rising, as if his eyes had broken free from his body, floating in the air. It was a strange sensation—no pain, no physical feeling at all.

He saw the squad members standing on the road. Before, they’d been like shifting shadows; now, in his vision, they were clear and distinct, though darkness still surrounded them.

He felt as if, in flight, his sight had become sharper, penetrating even endless darkness.

He saw the leader holding a pistol, its barrel still trailing smoke.

The squad members’ faces—damn, not a flicker of expression.

They stared at Tu Zhe’s corpse in silence for a moment. Tu Zhe knew it wasn’t out of respect.

He saw the leader—the one who had roared at him—let out a long breath, then pull out a phone, dialing a number with obsequious tones: “Boss, it’s done, yes, the guy escaped, yes, Boss, what you promised, yes, I know, Boss, always loyal, yes, yes…”

Then he dialed another number, his voice cold: “Chief, it’s me. The suspect Tu Zhe tried to escape while relieving himself at kilometer 349 on National Highway 208, was shot and killed on the spot. Scene is secure, awaiting instructions…”

Damn it…

So this is how it ends?!

Escaped? That’s what they’re saying?

When he’d floored the pedal and rammed into the squad, he never thought he’d survive. Still, he’d never imagined such a bizarre way to die.

In this era, there were all sorts of strange deaths—drowning in water, dying in sleep, overdosing, slicing oneself to ribbons before jumping off a building… He’d seen it all online. These “forced” deaths had long made him, with his leftist inclinations, jump up and down.

But what use was protesting?

Break your own leg and you still have to limp to the hospital—and is the hospital somewhere common folk can just walk into? If you’re not ready to be skinned alive, lose everything you have, you can forget about it.

He graduated, passed the civil service exam, got pushed out by someone with connections.

What good was top marks in the written exam? Or being first in the interview? Your degree just wasn’t a good fit, you see?

Fine, so he gave up on being a civil servant. Butchering pigs—no one would push him out of that, right?

No one pushed him out, but someone demolished his house and struck his mother down with a mattock.

So he switched from butchering pigs to butchering men.

And then he was “escaped.”

Tu Zhe laughed aloud in the void, feeling tears fly. He reached up to touch his eyes, but his hands were insubstantial, and he couldn’t find his eyes at all.

He raised his hands and saw, in the transparent darkness, that his arms were nothing but faint blue shadows.

Only then did he realize his soul had left his body.

So, there really is a soul after death?

It seemed so.

Tu Zhe had been a staunch atheist. Now that he was dead, he still didn’t know about gods, but he was sure ghosts existed.

He felt himself drifting deeper into the void, light as a feather, as if flying.

There is death as light as a feather, and death as heavy as Mount Tai. Whether the ancients were right, he could not say.

He only knew his body had crashed to earth with a thud; his soul floated lightly in emptiness.

Was this his summons to the City of the Dead?

Where were the Ox-Head and Horse-Face demons? Where were the Black and White Impermanence?

Damn, he’d died like this, without even seeing his father and mother one last time.

His tears flew, but neither his eyes nor himself could see them.

The ground grew ever more distant, the void colder and colder.

Was he leaving Earth behind?

Was that spinning round ball the planet that had birthed and raised him?

Wasn’t the City of the Dead supposed to be on Earth?

Where was he drifting?

Into the void?

Was he to wander this emptiness forever?

Damn, not even the shadow of a ghost.

The void was endless. That was the sun, that was the moon, that was Venus, Mercury, and countless nameless stars.

The stars stretched like an ocean!

So Tu Zhe drifted on and on in the void, with no sense of time or destination, only endless starlight and loneliness swallowing him up.

Let a ghost appear—just one!

No female ghost? A male ghost would do—

Driven nearly mad with loneliness, Tu Zhe howled.

But no male ghost appeared, nor any female.

Just as he was about to go mad from solitude, a dog appeared.

A dog, running in the void.