Daomu Biji: The Southern Archives

The person they were talking about was named Zhang Ruipu.

When Zhang Haiyan and Zhang Haixia arrived in Penang, their first mission was to assassinate this Chinese man living in the South Sea.

Zhang Ruipu managed two huge rubber plantations in Penang and possessed vast amounts of land and wealth. His territory was so large, in fact, that after they got lost in one of the rubber plantations, they discovered that there were local indigenous tribes living there.

The indigenous natives of Perak at that time still had the custom of headhunting. It was said that Zhang Ruipu had a good relationship with them, and had been buying corpses to feed them in order to gain their protection. This matter couldn’t be verified, because Zhang Haiyan and Zhang Haixia couldn’t be sure if the natives were chasing them because they wanted to protect Zhang Ruipu, or if they were just hungry.

During that time, they were almost trapped to death because they had to avoid the natives while looking for food. By the time they found Zhang Ruipu’s mansion, they were completely exhausted and were immediately discovered. The guards chased them all the way to the outskirts of Perak.

After that, Zhang Ruipu offered a reward in Penang. It didn’t matter if it was the police or gangs, they would be rewarded with a thousand coins if they saw either Zhang Haiyan or Zhang Haixia, alive or dead.

Now it wasn’t as easy to enter Penang like it was before. Even though they had been in the South Sea for a long time, their skin color was still different from the locals’, and their facial features were different from the biracial Chinese here. Coupled with years of wanted posters being put up, even children in Penang would probably recognize them.

To enter Penang, not only did he need to change his skin color, but he would also need a face that looked like a local.

In the Southern Archives’ basic training, there was a training course about human skin masks, which both Zhang Haiyan and Zhang Haixia passed with flying colors. Moreover, Zhang Haiyan was famous for pretending to be a woman, so it wasn’t difficult for them to change their appearances.

But to do so, they needed a high-temperature steamed environment. In the past, they used to sneak into the hot water bath at the Ipoh governor-general’s house.

Ipoh was the capital of Perak, and also the place where the British government stationed a governor-general. Governor-generals were the highest law enforcement officers of the military regime. They had luxurious mansions and Indian guards, and even a local army right outside.

There was a hot bath in the governor-general’s house that people here would never understand. Malacca was hot all year round, so taking a bath was just a matter of rolling in a roadside pool. But the British still retained the tradition of taking hot baths.

After Zhang Haixia had been paralyzed, they had hardly been there.

After being mocked by Zhang Haixia, Zhang Haiyan smelled himself. Sure enough, it had been too hot these days. He looked at Zhang Haixia and asked “How about we both go and take a hot bath?”

Zhang Haixia shook his head. “I’m not going to Penang. Plus, I can’t walk. We can’t go there like we did before. Go by yourself. I’ll look after the house and sell some of the goods.”

Zhang Haiyan pulled Zhang Haixia onto his back and started walking. “We’re already familiar with the governor-general’s house, and I have to change my appearance. I can’t do it alone.”

Zhang Haixia was unable to fight against him and smiled helplessly as he was carried away.

Of course, this was a reckless decision, but Zhang Haiyan’s long-cherished wish was to try his best to help his friend live like he used to before he was paralyzed.

To make a long story short, Zhang Haiyan already looked different by the time he came out of the governor-general’s bathroom. Afterwards, Zhang Haixia stayed in Perak, and Zhang Haiyan went to Penang alone.

It normally took two weeks to walk to Penang, but it just so happened to be the rainy season and he needed to travel through primitive jungle. When Zhang Haiyan arrived, it was already three weeks later.

Malacca didn’t have a convenient way to communicate to the outside world, so when he arrived in Penang, he realized that the situation was much more serious than he had expected.

Uncollected corpses littered the roadside.

Generally, when a plague had reached this extent, people’s fear of the disease far surpassed their responsibilities to their loved ones.

Since the weather was hot and humid, the corpses were bloated and gave of an unbearable stench. There was a team of people wearing monks’ robes that were burning the corpses, and Zhang Haiyan realized that many of them were Zhang Ruipu’s workers.

After looking at the corpses’ states, Zhang Haiyan was completely certain that this strange disease was wudou disease.

There was no medicine to treat this disease, and those infected could only rely on their own self-healing ability. It had a ten percent survival rate, but those who survived would never be infected with it again, even if they soaked in a pile of the diseased corpses.

Zhang Haiyan was the only person on the road who was walking fearlessly, and the passers-by looked at his calmness with both surprise and admiration.

He went around investigating and discovered that the plague didn’t start from one place, but three. Those three villages had all been outside of Penang.

The three villages were important villages for tin processing. Many Xiamen, Turkey, and Indian businessmen had workshops there. It was the first week in July when the people in the villages started to get sick at the same time.

Zhang Haiyan visited these three villages to find out if something similar had happened in them during that first week.

The situation in the villages was even worse than the city. Rotting and swollen corpses could be seen lying everywhere in the puddles.

It was inconvenient to make fires here during the rainy season, and the soaked corpses were difficult to burn, so they had been thrown into the puddles. It rained every day, so the corpses were all green and yellow, and a layer of grease floated on the water's surface.

He soon discovered that all three villages had people who had returned from Xiamen during that first week of July. There were three people who arrived in Malacca on the same ship.

The ship was called Nan'an. It was a four-hundred seat passenger ship belonging to the Dong family in Xiamen, and could be said to be the largest passenger ship Xiamen had.

Of course, the three people died and their corpses were burned, so Zhang Haiyan couldn’t learn any details from them.

At the village entrance, Zhang Haiyan saw a dull-eyed little girl hugging a boy who looked to be about three years old. Zhang Haiyan lit a cigarette. He didn’t need to ask where the little girl’s parents were. He knew they had all died of illness.

When he came back from Penang, he brought the little girl and her brother with him. Zhang Haixia was running the stall by the spectacular arched door and looked dumbfounded when he saw two children standing on either side of Zhang Haiyan, holding his hands.

“Don't worry, I waited outside the city for three days. They’re not sick. They should be safe. They’ve been disinfected and bathed repeatedly. You and I are familiar with this disease. As long as someone’s infected, they’ll definitely get sick within three days,” Zhang Haiyan said. After speaking, he looked at the older girl, who was Chinese.

“Zhang Haijiao, call him Uncle Shrimp.”

“Uncle Shrimp,” The girl said in Cantonese.

Zhang Haixia looked at Zhang Haiyan. “You’re naming people who are younger than us with our generation name?” (1)

“Godmother said that those who live overseas all carry the word “hai” (2) in their names to show their distant and wandering lifestyle,” Zhang Haiyan said.

Zhang Haixia looked at the children and sighed. “My name is Zhang Haixia. “Xia” means “hero”. His name is Zhang Hailou. “Lou” means “building” Listening to the spring rain all night in the small building. How many years have passed since becoming a wandering hero in Xianyang?”

“Are you making a fucking poem?” Zhang Haiyan lifted Zhang Haixia up and said, “Are you still brooding over what happened on the reef? You’ve always been like this. When I saw these children, I knew I couldn’t leave them alone.”

Zhang Haixia looked at the children who followed them, and felt as if the haze in his heart was swept away all at once.

Once the kids were settled down, the Southern Archives immediately felt different. With more people around, it didn’t seem so empty and cold anymore.

As the children leaned on the railing and watched the sea, Zhang Haiyan lit a cigarette and showed Zhang Haixia his notes.

“Nan’an?”

Zhang Haiyan nodded. “There’s no wudou disease outbreak in Xiamen, so that means the people were infected on the ship. In addition, you can see that the locations of these three villages happened to be at three strategic points in Penang. Someone picked these three people on the ship on purpose. They wanted these three people to get sick at the same time in these three villages, so that the plague would spread at the fastest rate. Based on my calculations, the disease will reach Ipoh in two weeks at most.”

As Zhang Haixia thought it over, his face looked very puzzled. “Why? If this plague was caused artificially, then why Penang? If it’s a result of the confrontation between the British and the Dutch, it should be in Singapore, or even in Ipoh at worst. Why Penang? There’s nothing but rubber trees there.”

He looked up at Zhang Haiyan. “Have you asked about Zhang Ruipu's current situation? I have a hunch that the plague this time is directed at him.”

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TN Notes:

(1) Zhang Haixia was talking about “generation name”, the custom of naming kids from the same generation with the same characters in them. They may be the first or second character in a given name. In this case, it was the “hai” in their names. Zhang Haixia and Zhang Haiyan were from the same generation, so he found it strange to also name the girl with “Hai” in her name since they weren’t from the same generation.

(2) “Hai” means “Sea” in Chinese. Their godmother meant that Foreign Zhangs have the word “hai” in their names so people would know they were the overseas branch of the Zhang family. For example, Zhang Haike lol. (To avoid confusion, I feel that I should clarify that Zhang Haiyan and Zhang Haixia didn’t know this at the time, because they were adopted.)

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Merebear note: Tiffany won't come out and say it, but I will. Little Brother Zhang is officially "Daddy Zhang" now (¬‿¬). You can't leave the man alone for two seconds before he's adopting people into the Zhang family lol. Fun note, I found that Haixia's poem is eerily similar to two verses from Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei's poems.