Chapter Twenty-Five: The Red Chopsticks

Little Chili’s mouth grew wider and wider, and before long it had stretched to the very limits of what a human body could endure. Yet even so, his jaws continued to creak and groan, making noises like ligaments and facial bones being forcibly wrenched apart. It was as if something was clawing its way out of his throat.

That grating, mechanical sound pushed my terror to the brink. And as his mouth grew ever larger, I couldn’t help but recall that episode with the beauty bass and the hair, and felt an itch in my own throat, as though something were lodged deep inside.

I knew, of course, that it was only a fear-induced hallucination.

Earlier, the old squad leader had tried to prepare me, and it helped a little. As I stared at this hair-raising scene, I kept murmuring to myself, “Fear arises from the mind,” hoping to calm my pounding heart, if only a little.

Perhaps because of this, I somehow managed not to vomit—looking back, it felt nothing short of miraculous.

After a moment, Little Chili’s mouth finally ceased its dreadful noises, and the “thing” inside finally crawled out.

At first, I saw only a silvery-gray shadow. As the candlelight flickered, the shadow seemed to grow, like a white lotus blooming from within Little Chili’s mouth.

But as the “lotus” continued to open, I suddenly realized that it was actually... a hand stretching out from his mouth!

A pale, slender human hand extended from Little Chili’s gaping mouth. Five long fingers, as delicate as a baby’s willow twigs or a woman’s fair scallions, slid out along the traces of egg white, slowly reaching for the egg on his forehead.

As the process continued, I soon noticed that this “hand” emerging from his mouth was visible only as fingers—there was no palm or arm. Most astonishing of all, those fingers soon grew far longer than any human’s could, like five thin, pallid chopsticks, stretching seemingly without end toward the egg on Little Chili’s brow.

In the flickering candlelight, the old squad leader’s face came in and out of the shadows. One hand held a cigarette, the other gripped a pair of chopsticks, poised and ready.

Soon, the five fingers gently “grasped” the egg. With a series of crisp, squelching sounds, the fingers pierced the egg, plunging deep inside—and then stilled.

Still, the old squad leader did not move. He didn’t even look at the hand that had impaled the egg; instead, he lowered his gaze, watching his cigarette burn down, so indifferent that, had his eyes been closed, I’d have thought him asleep.

And so, in utter silence, we waited for the life of a single cigarette.

When the cigarette was nearly burnt out, the old squad leader suddenly flicked it away and swiftly clamped the blood-red chopsticks onto the “finger” protruding from Little Chili’s mouth. With a sharp tug, he yanked it out!

With a wet, tearing sound, the “finger” was pulled clean out by the red chopsticks.

Then the second, the third... but when he reached the fifth “finger,” the last one refused to submit.

Just as the squad leader was about to clamp down, the final finger seemed to sense the danger. In a flash, it shot out from the eggshell on Little Chili’s forehead and darted back down his throat—so quickly that none of us could react.

Seeing this, the squad leader’s face turned ashen. He muttered, “This is bad,” and hurriedly withdrew the chopsticks, grabbing the half-burned white candle.

He shot a glance at me and Zhao Hong, then in a voice of utmost gravity, commanded: “Pin down his limbs!”

After issuing the order, he quickly brought the tip of the chopsticks to the flame, then forced open Little Chili’s mouth and lightly pressed the charred tip against the vomiting region of his tongue.

That single touch made Little Chili convulse as if struck by lightning.

He thrashed with sudden, wild strength, coughing and moaning uncontrollably. Though we used all our might to restrain his limbs, his spasms were so violent and unpredictable that he broke free several times, nearly throwing the whole scene into chaos.

I don’t know how long we struggled, but at last, Little Chili coughed up a mouthful of dark blood, and mingled in the crimson froth was a slender shadow.

The old squad leader, watching carefully, lunged out and caught it!

Then he laid what he’d caught on the table and told me to turn on the light.

Sweating, I scrambled for my bunk, grabbed my flashlight, and shone it at the table.

Only then did we see it clearly—and to our shock, it was not a finger at all, but a fleshy worm, remarkably like a human finger.

From where I stood, it was as thick and pale as a human finger, though much longer. Holding out my own hand as a comparison, I saw it was at least twice the length of my middle finger.

Even after being extricated, the things were still alive, but away from Little Chili’s body, their power seemed spent. They could only writhe feebly on the table, sickening to behold.

The old squad leader picked up his red chopsticks again, placed the worms one by one into a porcelain dish, then carried them into the kitchen... and deep-fried them.

Five minutes later, he returned with five golden, crispy worms. As he sprinkled on some pepper and salt, he said offhandedly, “You two did the hard work—I’ll take one, you each get two. Eat up, it’s good for you.”

“Huh?” Zhao Hong and I were dumbstruck.

Who would ever want to eat the worms that had driven Little Chili to madness? It was all we could do not to look at them, let alone eat them.

Seeing the distress on our faces, the squad leader didn’t scold or mock us. Instead, he began to explain the origin of these worms.

He told us that many corpses lay buried in the shooting range behind our camp. Perhaps because of this, the place was thick with the lingering resentments of the dead. This resentment was much like the “yin energy” of Chinese medicine—intangible, imperceptible, yet undeniably real.

And these finger-like worms were a product of a particularly cruel punishment called “Swallowing Execution,” inflicted upon certain condemned prisoners under special circumstances.

The true name of the worm was “Egg-Eating Finger” or “Egg-Eating Worm.” Legend had it that they were maggots, transformed by absorbing the resentment of the executed.

At this point, I was speechless. He had actually deep-fried a plate of giant maggots for us to eat!

Helpless, I tried to distract myself from my roiling stomach and changed the subject, “Um... Squad Leader, maybe we could hold off on the maggot-eating for a bit? Could you tell us what exactly ‘Swallowing Execution’ is? Let us catch our breath…”

The squad leader smiled and went on. This punishment, he said, was a particularly brutal form of execution passed down among the ancient southwestern chieftains. It satisfied their sadistic tendencies, and also allowed them to cultivate a type of “poison sorcery”—one of the so-called “Living Curses” among the Five Poisons and Thirteen Gu of Yunnan.

Before such an execution, the victim would be starved for about seven days, pushed to the limits of endurance. Then the executioner would toss them a boiled goose egg.

He warned us that when a man is starving and parched, the worst thing to eat is an egg, because the overwhelming hunger drives people to swallow it whole, shell and all, without chewing, risking deadly obstruction of the throat or windpipe.

Goose eggs, being large, are even more dangerous. If not chewed, they get stuck in the throat, causing the victim to choke to death—a slow, torturous process. In their agony and desperation, the condemned would claw at their own necks, trying to force the egg down.

But it was futile. Their frantic scratching only caused the neck to swell and fester, adding to the pain.

And so, the prisoner died amid hunger, pain, suffocation, and despair. Their final, most poisonous breath of resentment was said to collect at the site of the egg’s lodging.

Later, if the chieftain wished to use the corpse for sorcery, he would extract the goose egg from the dead man’s throat to serve as the “mother curse.” Through secret arts and poisons, this would hatch maggots within the egg.

These maggots, born from the egg, would become the insatiable “Egg-Eating Fingers.” In the dialect of Guizhou, they called this curse “Plum Seed.”

If such a “Plum Seed” entered a living person, it would quickly nest in the brain, merging the dying despair and memories of the victim with the present reality, gradually leading the host into a dreamlike confusion, and ultimately to suicide.

Thus, the squad leader surmised that Little Chili, while resting in the old target trench, had probably stumbled upon the abandoned corpse of a choked prisoner. Coupled with his recent weakened state, it gave the thing its chance, leaving him dazed and lost.

When he finished, the squad leader picked up a plump worm with his red chopsticks, tossed it into his mouth, and chewed with calm indifference.

Watching his unflinching expression, I nearly retched. Zhao Hong’s face was as pale as death.

Still chewing, the squad leader continued, saying that these Egg-Eating Fingers craved fresh eggs most of all and dreaded rooster’s blood, being nothing but maggots. The chopsticks, having been stained with rooster blood, were as deadly to them as a rooster’s beak—they couldn’t resist.

That was all he explained, but my questions only grew. How did a Shandong-born cook like him know so much about Miao sorcery and voodoo, and why was he so adept at breaking curses? And what was the meaning of Little Chili’s half-real dream?

But before I could ask, the squad leader, as if he’d anticipated my thoughts, made a silencing gesture and pushed the plate of “giant maggots” toward us.

“Eat up!” he ordered.

“Squad Leader!” Zhao Hong and I protested, on the verge of tears.

It felt like being forced into something unspeakable.

The squad leader tapped the plate with his blood-stained chopsticks and said, “Think I’m making things hard for you? What I’m asking you to eat isn’t maggots—it’s your own fear!”