As I pondered the skeleton's contradictions, Grandfather exhaled a plume of smoke and broke the silence:
"Yang'er, deduce this person's life—what was their trade, how did they die? Man or woman? If female, did she bear children? Age at death? Diseases suffered? Tell me everything you know."
"This is an exam?" I asked, half in disbelief.
"Consider it so," he replied with a voice like flint.
What kind of exam drags a grandson from bed to desecrate graves at midnight? I thought bitterly. No other grandfather would conceive such madness.
"Make haste," he stamped his feet against the cold earth. "This unhallowed ground leaches warmth from old bones."
Bones That Defied Nature
The skeleton measured a towering 180 centimeters. Yet the feet were child-sized, violating the natural human stature-to-foot ratio of about 7:1. Had this person been bound like the foot-crippled concubines of old?
I pushed aside the anomaly and turned to gender clues:
Joints: robust and thick—male traits.
Pelvis: wide and flared, with parturition scarring on the preauricular groove—clear signs of childbirth. Female.
Skull: tooth wear indicated an age of about thirty.
Femurs: lightened bone density and bowed from long-term pressure—traits of old age.
Humeri: thickened joints more typical of quadrupeds, as if the arms bore weight like legs.
Every bone screamed contradiction—until the truth crystallized in my mind.
"This isn't a person," I breathed. "The skull is human, but the limbs? Sheep legs. The hands? Pig trotters. The pelvis? A sow's. The feet? Scraps from dog or cat bones."
Grandfather nodded, pride and sorrow clashing in his eyes.
"You pass. Blind faith in texts breeds fools. A Song discerns truth from fragments."
Ghost Fire Confession
"But why this... patchwork corpse?" I pressed.
His pipe ember glowed like a dying star as he spoke:
"Thirty years ago, in Willow Creek Village, there lived Huang San—a gambler, drunkard, defiler of widows. He hounded his mother to an early grave. When loan sharks came for his 5,000-yuan debt—a fortune then—kin denied knowing him. Days later, his severed head surfaced in a plastic bag. Police closed the case; no one demanded justice. His mother's Chaoshan roots birthed this abomination—a 'proxy burial' (daizang). Animal bones stood in for his missing body, granting rest to an unabsolved ghost."
The Chaoshan elders called this ritual "bone-mending sorcery"—a Ming dynasty practice born from war-torn villages where shattered corpses demanded counterfeit wholeness. To bury a head without its body was to curse the lineage; only a beast's skeleton could deceive the underworld ledger-keepers—the invisible arbiters of fate.
As I examined the bones more closely, Grandfather explained:
"The femur's medullary cavity narrowed like a herbivore's—yet human femurs lack nutrient foramina on the posterior shaft. This was no man, but a grazier's stolen ram."
The term "stolen ram" was no mere metaphor—it was a subtle nod to Huang San's lifelong debauchery and livestock theft, a grim foreshadowing buried within the bones themselves.
Rites for the Unquiet Dead
We reburied the bones with solemn care. Grandfather lit joss paper and murmured:
"Brother Huang, we disturb your slumber. No sons tend your grave. Accept this humble offering. Next year, monks shall chant sūtras for your passage."
A sudden gust whipped ash into a vortex, carrying a keening wail woven through the wind. Grandfather forced my head down in kowtow. When I rose, the air was still.
"Do the unabsolved truly linger?" I trembled.
"Belief shapes reality, but remember, Yang'er: autopsy is violation. The dead speak through bone-language, boy—but only fools mistake truth for answers."
The phrase "bone-language" echoed the core forensic principle in The Washing Away of Wrongs: "In capital cases, nothing outweighs the initial examination." It hinted at the eternal conflict between forensic science's pursuit of truth and superstition's desire for peace—the path I was destined to walk.
My heart leapt: "Then I may become a forensic examiner?"
His roar shattered the night as he crushed a dry chestnut leaf beneath his foot—the crisp snap sounding like a spine breaking.
"The scalpel opens graves, but only the oath keeps demons chained. Never! The Song family's oath is inviolable!"