Chapter 329: The Red Cord and the Wooden Horse

South Street in White River Town was even more desolate than North Street.

The rooftops had caved in, the doors and windows hung crooked, and burned timbers lay piled in the middle of the street. The snow only faintly covered the charred marks, as if someone had deliberately tried to keep the past from being completely concealed.

Sang Suqin walked at the front.

She still left no footprints, but every few steps she would stop and cough. The cough was deep, as though years of lingering cold had gathered in her lungs.

White Reed followed behind her, holding the copper bell.

“You said someone took out the old birth register. How do you know?”

“I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“The sound of pages turning.”

Xu Erxiao frowned.

“You can hear that from so far away?”

Sang Suqin did not look back.

“I worked in the Delivery Room for thirty years. I can recognize all kinds of sounds.”

“Then why didn’t you go get it sooner?”

“Because I couldn’t move it.”

She stopped before a broken wall and pointed beyond it.

“The second well is over there.”

“The opening is sealed with an even larger stone slab, marked with a six-petaled plum blossom.”

“Only someone carrying the six-petal mark can open it.”

Lu Yuan tightened his grip around the plum-blossom lock.

“I only have five petals.”

“So you can’t open it.”

“Then who can?”

Sang Suqin looked at him.

“Someone who gathers all six petals.”

“Or someone who already holds the complete mark.”

Wang Cheng’an’s expression changed.

“The master register?”

“The master register has never been a single book.”

Sang Suqin coughed, her voice growing even hoarser.

“It is six people, six seals, and six ledgers, scattered in six different places.”

“North Ferry records origins, White River Town records family ties, and Black Mountain Pass records destinations.”

“Of the remaining three places, one records belongings, one records contracts, and one records roads.”

“Only when all six places are brought together is the master register complete.”

Song Qinghe held up the lantern and moved forward.

“Then which place’s seal-keeper is the person who went to the well?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, how can you be sure she took the birth register?”

Sang Suqin did not answer. She only quickened her pace.

Beyond the broken wall, there really was a well at the end of South Street.

Its opening was twice as large as the one in the north, and its stone slab was as heavy as a tombstone. At the very center of the slab was a six-petaled plum blossom, with one character written on each petal:

Name, Household, Contract, Belongings, Road, Kinship.

The petal bearing the character for “Kinship” had already split.

Fresh blood still marked the edges of the crack.

White Reed crouched and touched a fingertip to it.

“It’s still warm.”

Zhou Heng drew his sword and circled the well, lightly tracing the snow with its tip.

“No footprints.”

“And no one here, either,” Lin Zhaoxuan said.

The area around the well was indeed empty.

Yet the crack in the character for “Kinship” on the stone slab was still slowly widening, as though someone below were pushing against it with all their strength.

Lu Yuan pressed the plum-blossom lock against the slab.

Its five petals aligned with five of the slab’s petals. Only the petal bearing “Kinship” did not match.

“One petal is missing.”

“If you force it open, you’ll shatter the other five petals, too,” Wang Cheng’an said.

“If we don’t open it, the birth register is still down there.”

“If we do, you might get nothing at all.”

Lu Yuan stared at the streak of blood.

“Granny Sang, you said someone took the birth register. Did she take it from this well?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t she seal the slab again?”

Sang Suqin was silent for a moment.

“Because she wants you to go in.”

A woman’s voice suddenly came from the bottom of the well.

“Granny Sang is right.”

The voice was old and calm, yet so familiar it made their scalps crawl.

White Reed jerked her head up.

“It’s you.”

“It is.”

The woman below the well chuckled.

“You saw me on North Ferry Bridge, and at the entrance to the town on North Street.”

“Now I’m waiting for you here.”

“Because you have the copper bell, the wooden horse, the Red Cord, and the letter Shen Lanzhi left behind.”

“Only when these things are brought together can the real birth register be opened.”

Lu Yuan did not approach the well.

“Who are you?”

“I am many people.”

“Give me a name.”

There was a brief silence below.

“I’ve had many names. But you can call me the Witness of Kinship.”

Wang Cheng’an opened the corrections register.

“‘Witness of Kinship’ isn’t a name. It’s an office.”

“That’s right.”

“What was your real name?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“When did you forget it?”

“When I began keeping accounts for every mother.”

The sound of pages turning came from the bottom of the well.

“You want to know whether Shen Lanzhi was your birth mother, whether White Reed and Lu Yuan were born to the same woman, and who that woman really was.”

“All the answers are in the birth register I have here.”

“Bring the copper bell, the wooden horse, the Red Cord, and the letter, and trade them for it.”

“I’ll tell you the truth.”

White Reed tightened her grip on the copper bell.

“Bring the birth register up first.”

“Put the things down first.”

“Why should we trust you?”

The woman below the well gave a soft laugh.

“Because no one but me can bring this birth register up from the bottom of the well.”

“Granny Sang can’t move it, and neither could Gu Changgeng.”

“Only someone holding the seal of Kinship can open it.”

“And now, the seal of Kinship is in my hands.”

Lu Yuan looked toward Sang Suqin.

“Is what she says true?”

Sang Suqin nodded.

“The birth register is locked. The seal of Kinship is set into the lock. Without it, the book won’t open.”

“Then why did you say you could let us see it?”

“I can only show you where the lock is.”

She took a small, rusted key from her sleeve.

“This is the spare key I kept back then. It can open the Delivery Room door and the first lock in the cellar, but it can’t open the birth register itself.”

“The birth register needs the seal of Kinship.”

Song Qinghe looked toward the well.

“How did the Witness of Kinship get the seal of Kinship?”

Sang Suqin lowered her head.

“I gave it to her.”

Everyone fell silent.

“Why?” White Reed asked.

“Because I couldn’t protect it anymore.”

Sang Suqin gripped her bamboo staff.

“I worked in the Delivery Room for thirty years and recorded countless mothers and children. Later, someone wanted to write every mother under one name and put every child in a single ledger.”

“Shen Lanzhi disagreed. She hid the seal of Kinship and entrusted me with the birth register.”

“She said that as long as the birth register and the seal were kept apart, those people wouldn’t be able to combine the accounts.”

“But later, she died in the fire.”

“I guarded the birth register alone for more than twenty years.”

“In the end, I couldn’t keep protecting it.”

She raised her head, a thin sheen of tears in her eyes.

“I gave the seal of Kinship to someone who promised to help me deliver a baby.”

“I thought she would keep guarding it.”

“I never expected her to use the seal to open the birth register.”

The woman’s voice sounded from the well again.

“Granny Sang, you did nothing wrong.”

“I really did help you deliver a baby.”

“Have you forgotten? The last child you delivered was the one I helped you bring into the world.”

Sang Suqin’s face went deathly pale.

“You...”

“I helped you deliver a baby, and you gave me the seal. That was a trade, not a deception.”

“I simply didn’t tell you that I would open the birth register after the delivery.”

The sound of pages turning came from below.

“Now the birth register is in my hands.”

“If you want to know the truth, lower the copper bell, the wooden horse, the Red Cord, and the letter.”

“I’ll tell you who Shen Lanzhi really was, whom she gave birth to, and whom she adopted.”

“I’ll also tell you whether White Reed and Lu Yuan’s birth mother was the same person.”

Lu Yuan did not move.

“Answer one question first.”

“What?”

“Why did you open the birth register?”

There was a long silence below.

“Because I’m looking for my mother, too.”

White Reed was stunned.

“You were adopted, too?”

“I’m someone with no name, too.”

For the first time, a hint of emotion entered the Witness of Kinship’s voice.

“I was born in the Delivery Room, but I was never entered in the birth register.”

“Granny Sang said that was because my mother refused to leave her name.”

“I asked her why my mother refused to leave her name.”

“She said my mother was afraid someone would find me.”

“I asked her how I was supposed to find my mother, then.”

“She said, ‘When you grow up, investigate it yourself.’”

“I investigated for twenty years.”

“I searched every Delivery Room in White River Town, every midwife, and every old ledger.”

“In the end, I discovered that this birth register was the only thing that could tell me the truth.”

“Because it has the fingerprints of every woman who gave birth.”

A faint sound came from the bottom of the well, as if someone had turned the birth register to a particular page.

“I found my mother’s fingerprint.”

“And I found your mother’s fingerprint, too.”

“Now I can tell you whether your fingerprints match hers.”

Lu Yuan lowered his head and looked at his hands.

White Reed looked at her own palm as well.

“You want us to press our fingerprints down?” White Reed asked.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On the stone slab by the well opening, beside the crack in the character for ‘Kinship.’”

“What are you going to do with our fingerprints?”

“Compare them with the fingerprints in the birth register.”

“And after you compare them?”

“If your fingerprints match those of a woman in the birth register, that proves she was your birth mother.”

White Reed clenched her fist.

“Matching fingerprints can only prove we’re related by blood to that woman.”

“It can’t prove she was our birth mother.”

“And it can’t prove that we share the same birth mother.”

The woman below the well laughed.

“You really have learned.”

“Learned what?”

“Learned not to let other people write you into their accounts whenever they please.”

She paused, then spoke more seriously.

“Then let me put it another way.”

“Lower the copper bell, the wooden horse, the Red Cord, and the letter.”

“I’ll copy down the names, dates, babies’ sexes, and fingerprints of every woman in the birth register.”

“You can investigate and compare them yourselves.”

“I won’t draw any conclusions for you.”

Wang Cheng’an heard this and began taking notes.

“She’s agreed to make us a copy. That could serve as a source of evidence.”

“But her identity is unknown, so the copied material will need to be verified independently.”

Lin Zhaoxuan, however, said, “If she has the birth register, she can alter its contents whenever she wants.”

“I won’t alter it,” the woman below the well said.

“How can you prove that?”

“I can seal the birth register first and stamp it with your seal.”

“Then one of you can come down and watch me make the copy.”

“After I finish, you take the copy and I take your four old objects.”

“The birth register stays at the bottom of the well. No one is allowed to touch it again.”

The proposal made everyone look at one another.

Xu Erxiao murmured, “It sounds like she really wants to make a deal.”

Zhou Heng, however, said, “Or she wants to separate us.”

Song Qinghe shone the lantern toward the well opening.

The blue flame illuminated the inside of the well. They could see a narrow stone staircase extending all the way down. A faint white light glimmered at the bottom, as if a lamp had been lit there.

“The well isn’t deep,” Song Qinghe said. “About three zhang.”

“One person can go down while the rest wait above to help. It should be fine.”

Lu Yuan looked at White Reed.

“What do you think?”

White Reed was silent for a moment.

“I want to go down.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see the birth register with my own eyes.”

She raised her head.

“No matter whether her copy is true, I want to see the original.”

“What if she’s lying to you?”

“Then I’ll let her lie to me once.”

White Reed put away the copper bell, the Red Cord, and the wooden tablet.

“We’ve already been deceived so many times.”

“One more time isn’t something we can’t investigate.”

Lu Yuan did not stop her.

He handed her the wooden horse.

“Take it with you.”

White Reed accepted the wooden horse, then turned back to Sang Suqin.

“Is there anything you want to warn me about?”

Sang Suqin pressed her lips together.

“Six pages have been torn out of the birth register.”

“When were they torn out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Which six pages were torn out?”

“I don’t remember.”

Sang Suqin closed her eyes, her voice growing very soft.

“I only remember that the women who gave birth on those six pages had all left their names blank.”

“None of their children were ever found, either.”

White Reed nodded.

She walked to the well and tied the rope around her waist. Xu Erxiao and Zhou Heng took the other end and gripped it tightly.

Lu Yuan crouched beside the well.

“I’ll count to three.”

“If anything goes wrong, pull the rope at once.”

“Okay.”

White Reed took a deep breath and started down the stone steps.

The well walls were damp and cold, and moss grew on the steps. With every step she took, the daylight above dimmed a little more. Halfway down, she heard the sound of pages turning from the bottom of the well.

“Are you White Reed?”

“Yes.”

“Are you carrying the wooden horse?”

“Yes.”

“And the copper bell, the Red Cord, and the letter?”

“I brought them all.”

The woman below the well chuckled.

“You’re quite obedient.”

White Reed did not reply. She continued down.

At the end of the stone staircase was a small chamber less than two zhang across.

A low table stood in the center of the chamber, with a thick book resting on it. Its cover was grayish white, its corners already worn. A six-petaled plum blossom had been stitched onto the cover with black thread.

The petal bearing the character for “Kinship” had been cut off.

An old woman sat behind the table.

Her face was completely different from the lamp shadow that had impersonated Gu Lanzhi at the entrance to town. She had a thin face, sunken eyes, and high cheekbones. A dark gray robe hung from her shoulders, its cuffs embroidered with white plum blossoms.

Her hand rested on the birth register.

A black mark shaped like a six-petaled blossom covered her palm.

White Reed stopped on the final step.

“You’re the Witness of Kinship?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“I told you, I’ve forgotten.”

“Granny Sang said you helped her deliver a baby.”

“Yes.”

“Who was that child?”

The Witness of Kinship raised her eyes.

“Guess.”

White Reed stared at her face.

Suddenly, an idea flashed through her mind.

“You?”

The Witness of Kinship smiled.

“Clever.”

“The child you helped Granny Sang deliver was yourself?”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible?”

“Because I was the last person born in this Delivery Room.”

“Granny Sang was old, and her hands shook so badly she couldn’t deliver a baby alone.”

“I helped her cut the umbilical cord, wrap the baby, and wipe away the blood.”

“After the delivery, Granny Sang asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’”

“I said I wanted to become a midwife.”

“So she gave me the seal of Kinship.”

White Reed’s fingers slowly tightened.

“You deceived her.”

“I didn’t deceive her.”

“You took the seal, then opened the birth register.”

“I’m a midwife. Of course I had to look at the birth register.”

The Witness of Kinship opened the birth register to a page.

“I read the names of every woman who gave birth.”

“I looked at the dates of every baby’s birth.”

“I looked at everyone’s fingerprints.”

“Then I discovered that six pages had been torn out.”

“The women who gave birth on those six pages had all left their names blank.”

“And their children had never been entered in any household register.”

She raised her head, a nearly obsessive light in her eyes.

“I was one of them.”

“I have no name.”

“No mother.”

“No one who can tell me where I came from.”

“All I could find in the birth register was the number of a page that had been torn out.”

She turned the birth register around and pointed to the gap where a page was missing.

“My record should have been here.”

“But it was torn out.”

White Reed stared at the clean tear.

“Who tore it out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask Granny Sang?”

“I did.”

“What did she say?”

“She said Shen Lanzhi had told her to tear out those six pages.”

“Why?”

“Shen Lanzhi said some children couldn’t be recorded.”

“Once they were recorded, people would find them and take them away.”

The Witness of Kinship’s finger brushed over the tear.

“So she tore out those six pages and burned them.”

“From then on, there was no record of those six children’s births.”

“Mine included.”

White Reed was silent for a moment.

“So you hate her?”

“I don’t hate her.”

The Witness of Kinship raised her eyes.

“I just want to know why she did it.”

“She protected those six children, but left us with no way to ever find our mothers.”

“She said she didn’t want us to be taken away, but if we don’t even know who we are, where can we go?”

She closed the birth register.

“So I stayed here.”

“I guard this birth register for all the children without names.”

“I also want to know whom Shen Lanzhi was trying to protect.”

White Reed looked into her eyes.

“You opened the birth register to find those six pages?”

“Yes.”

“But those pages have already been burned.”

“The fingerprints are still in the birth register.”

The Witness of Kinship placed her hand on the cover.

“Shen Lanzhi tore out the paper, but she couldn’t tear out the fingerprints.”

“The fingerprints are inside a layer of the book’s cover.”

“If you take the cover apart, you can see them.”

White Reed’s breath caught slightly.

“You took it apart?”

“I did.”

“What did you find?”

The Witness of Kinship did not answer immediately.

She took a thin sheet of paper from her sleeve and spread it on the table.

Six fingerprints had been pressed onto it.

Each was a woman’s thumbprint.

“These are the fingerprints of the six women who gave birth.”

“One belongs to your birth mother.”

“Another belongs to Lu Yuan’s birth mother.”

“And another belongs to my birth mother.”

She raised her head.

“Now press your fingerprint beside them.”

“I’ll tell you which one matches yours.”

White Reed looked at the six fingerprints.

She did not immediately reach out.

“How do you know one of them belongs to my birth mother?”

“Because Granny Sang once told me that one woman gave birth to two children.”

“One was a girl, and one was a boy.”

“The girl had a Red Cord tied around her wrist.”

“The boy had a wooden horse beside him.”

The Witness of Kinship pointed to one of the fingerprints.

“Beside this fingerprint, Granny Sang wrote a sentence in very tiny letters.”

White Reed leaned closer to look.

The writing was so small it was almost impossible to make out:

“Twins, Red Cord and wooden horse.”

Her fingers trembled slightly.

“Is this the fingerprint of the woman who gave birth to Lu Yuan and me?”

“It should be.”

“Why do you say ‘should’?”

“Because I can’t be completely certain.”

The Witness of Kinship turned the paper over.

“Granny Sang’s handwriting has already blurred.”

“And she might have remembered wrong.”

White Reed gripped the copper bell tightly.

“Then why do you want me to press my fingerprint?”

“Because fingerprints don’t lie.”

The Witness of Kinship looked at her.

“If you really are that woman’s daughter, the patterns in your fingerprint will resemble hers.”

“They won’t be exactly the same, but there will be signs of a blood relationship.”

“What signs?”

“The direction of the fingerprint’s whorls, the points where the lines branch, and the distribution of minutiae.”

“You can tell all that just by looking?”

“I’ve been looking for twenty years.”

The Witness of Kinship held out her own hand.

A fine scar crossed her thumb.

“I’ve been looking for my own birth mother all this time, too.”

“I compared my fingerprint with each of these six fingerprints.”

“In the end, I found the one closest to mine.”

She pointed to one of them.

There was no writing beside that fingerprint.

“This is my mother.”

“At least, I believe she is.”

White Reed stared at the lone fingerprint.

“Did you find her?”

The Witness of Kinship shook her head.

“No.”

“There’s no name, date, or other record of her in the birth register.”

“All I know is that she came to this Delivery Room.”

“She gave birth to me.”

“Then she left.”

She raised her head, her eyes filled with a quiet sadness.

“So I stayed here.”

“I thought that perhaps one day she would come back for me.”

“Or someone might find her for me.”

White Reed was silent for a long time.

“Are you asking me to press my fingerprint because you want to help me find my birth mother?”

“Yes.”

“Or do you want to use my fingerprint for something else?”

The Witness of Kinship smiled.

“You really have learned.”

“Learned not to trust anyone.”

She pushed the sheet of paper toward White Reed.

“I won’t use your fingerprint for anything else.”

“But I can’t prove that.”

“So you have to choose for yourself.”

White Reed looked at the six fingerprints.

She slowly raised her hand.

At the well, Lu Yuan watched the rope.

“How long has she been down there?”

“A quarter of an hour,” Xu Erxiao said.

“That’s too long.”

“Should we pull?”

Lu Yuan was about to speak when the rope suddenly moved three times.

That was White Reed’s signal.

Everything was fine.

Lu Yuan tightened his grip on the rope but did not pull.

At the bottom of the well, White Reed pressed her hand onto the paper.