Daomu Biji: The Southern Archives

The lieutenant sat on the side of the ship, watching the reef explode and the other ships sink into the sea one by one. He was sitting ramrod straight as he clung to the airtight jar.

Since they were heading home, all of the soldiers were very happy, and no one had noticed that the seated lieutenant had actually died.

Everyone was destined to meet someone, and their lives would change because of it. After completing his mission, no one knew what the lieutenant had been thinking as he sat there dying.

Zhang Haiyan pushed the rubble away and climbed onto the reef, finding that the ships around him had already been sunk. There were only a few hundred laborers left on the reef, and they were all huddled together like penguins.

He coughed violently, and pulled the unconscious Zhang Haixia up. He couldn’t hear a thing at all, and knew there was blood trickling out of his ears and nose. He felt as if his chest had been hit by a pile driver more than a dozen times, and thought that his internal organs had probably become something like mushy watermelon. Despite all this, he still desperately shouted Zhang Haixia’s name several times.

His hands suddenly started to feel unbearably itchy, and he pulled his clothes up to find that his body was covered in a layer of blood blisters.

But they weren’t burns from the explosion. He turned to look at the other laborers and saw that they had also discovered they had blood blisters on their bodies, and were starting to scratch them.

Zhang Haiyan felt cold all over. He knew this was the result of the disease infecting their bodies after the explosion.

On such a small reef, the next few months would be a real hell on earth without any boats or food. To him, plague and hunger always seemed to follow him wherever he went. (1)

Even though the Flower Reef case was closed, there were still some unsolved mysteries. But even to this day, Zhang Haiyan never revealed the details.

Six months later, Chen Libiao’s family took a fishing boat out to look for them. They found Zhang Haiyan and Zhang Haixia on the reef, but no one else was with them. They took the two back to Malacca.

No one knew where the other people on the reef had gone, except for those who read the confidential telegram from the Southern Archives.

In the end, the Flower Reef case was marked as unresolved. The so-called "unresolved case" meant that there was a result, but they couldn’t publish it.

A single piece of information entered the archive room in the basement of the Southern Archives, while all the other files were destroyed.

The Southern Archives’ Southern Xinjian branch had taken over the investigation as to why a Guixi warlord wanted to look for a plague ship in the South Sea and obtain the source of the wudou disease that was inside. Whether they found the answer or not, Zhang Haiyan would never know.

Three years later. The Southern Archives.

It was dusk, and Zhang Haixia was sitting on a wicker chair as Zhang Haiyan silently washed his feet. Zhang Haixia looked towards the sea, and saw a bunch of children running up and down the beach.

“Just let me lie on the bed. Why bother moving me around every day?”  He was still a little embarrassed to see Zhang Haiyan washing his feet with so much care.

“A person who is paralyzed will develop bed sores if they don’t turn their body.”

“I don’t feel any pain.” Zhang Haixia said.

“Whether you feel pain or not, the bedsores are still there.” Zhang Haiyan took the water that had been used to wash feet and poured it downstairs.

The official residence of the Southern Archives in Malacca was actually a two-story Indian building with a small courtyard and an arched door that looked quite spectacular.

The buildings at the back were very simple, but had been built like small European-style villas. There were many kinds of these buildings in Gulangyu (2), so Zhang Haiyan was quite familiar with them.

Since both of their rooms were on the second floor, they could view the sea from the corridor. There was also a large room on the second floor that acted as a conference room, but it had never actually seated more than three people. Telegraph instruments and a large sea map had been placed inside, but the sea map had become moldy and curled after so long, rendering it as more of a decoration.

There were three rooms with the same structure on the first floor, but one was an archive room, and the other two were filled with groceries.

Since they had a spectacular arched door, people who came and went thought that there were foreigners living inside, so they didn’t dare make too much noise.

Zhang Haiyan had set up a stall to sell some imported products. His English was very good, so his stall was often visited by foreigners.

The sign of the Southern Archives still hung on the arched door, but the locals had no idea what it meant.

“There’s still no news from the Archives?”

Zhang Haiyan massaged Zhang Haixia’s feet and shook his head. “Not only is there no news, but the payment hasn’t been issued either. If it weren’t for the fact that we've been saving money since a few years ago, we would’ve already been begging for food by now.”

“What about the telegram?”

“There’s no response.” Zhang Haiyan stood up and stretched his waist. “I heard that the Cantonese fraction (3) has full control of Xiamen now. Will the Archives be implicated? Or did they withdraw or disband?”

“What are you going to do if they disband?”

“We don't know anything besides being spies. With all those wars going on, I don’t believe spies like us can’t find jobs.” Zhang Haiyan said. “We’ll go back to Xiamen, find godmother, find a new boss, and continue to mess around.”

Zhang Haixia smiled. “If it weren't for me, you would have been promoted and gone back to Xiamen by now.”

“Stop it. I’m the reason you signed your life away. Since we came here together, we’ll go back together.” Zhang Haiyan leaned on the railing and saw black smoke rising up in several places along the distant coast. He didn’t know if it was because of a fire or something else.

“What did that Maleficium (4) master on east street say about your legs when he was doing fortune telling? Can he treat them?”

“He said that he can’t treat my legs. He also said that I’m dying, and I won’t be able to rest in peace because I’ll become a monster.” Zhang Haixia said. “I won’t die because of my legs, but I’ll die because of other things.”

Zhang Haiyan was angry upon hearing this. “That stupid guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’ll burn his house later and see if he dares talk nonsense.”

Zhang Haixia interrupted him, “He said I’ll die for what I should have died for before.”

Zhang Haiyan was silent for a while, and then sighed. He knew that Zhang Haixia was upset about what happened on the reef, but he didn't want to talk about what happened back then.

“Oh yeah.” Zhang Haixia took a newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket, “Look at this and see if it’s what I think it is.”

Zhang Haiyan took it, and found that it was a simple article. There was a strange disease in Penang and its nearby villages that was spreading very fast. It was suspected to be an infectious disease brought by foreigners, much like how syphilis had been brought over back then.

But the newspaper clipping described the patients as having many tiny blood blisters in the early stages of the disease.

Zhang Haiyan frowned. “Wudou disease?”

“Although there’s no payment from the Southern Archives anymore, we still have a duty to warn the locals. It’s convenient to travel by boat in the South Sea now, so thousands of people end up traveling between Xiamen and Malacca every day. If it really is wudou disease, then it can easily spread all over the world. Shouldn’t you go and check it out?”

Zhang Haiyan lit a cigarette, which was a brand Zhang Haixia had recommended to him. He took a puff and faced the wind, vaguely feeling like something was wrong.

If it really was wudou disease, then the unresolved case from that year would have to be reopened. What kind of conspiracy was behind it?

Zhang Haiyan said, “Penang… isn’t it that guy’s territory?”

Zhang Haixia nodded. “Yes, exactly. It’s that guy, so you have to be careful when you go there. In Penang, people are rewarded with a thousand dollars if they can kill someone from the Southern Archives. You’d better change your appearance before you go—Oh, and by the way, take a proper shower.”

****

TN Notes:

(1) Zhang Haiyan had the nickname “Plague God”, and it was mostly because he was famous for killing people when he was in the South Sea area.

(2) The Gulangyu, Gulang Island or Kulangsu is a pedestrian-only island off the coast of Xiamen. Wiki link here

(3) This refers to Cantonese warlords.

(4) Just think of him as a witch doctor. If you don’t remember, Maleficium is an act of witchcraft performed with the intention of causing damage or injury. In general, the term applies to any magical act intended to cause harm or death to people or property.