1
Mrs. Ho was famous throughout our county of Ha Nhi. Not for any particular reason—just for her animal releases.
She said that she had been vegetarian and chanting the Buddha’s name since she was twenty-eight. Now, thirty-four years later, she was the most devoted lay Buddhist in the area.
She believed that all the merit she’d accumulated came from her decades of persistent animal releases, and that the karmic rewards she’d built up by now were as high as… a telephone pole. Naturally, she kept at it.
Who knew where she’d heard that the merit from releasing living creatures was proportional to how rare they were. From then on, her releases grew downright bizarre.
Little fish and ducklings no longer interested her. She only chose creatures that were as unusual as possible.
She once released Brazilian turtles that had crossed an ocean to get here, then dumped whole barrels of golden apple snails, each the size of half a fist, into the river.
And she didn’t stop at animals. She released plants, too, dumping sacks of water hyacinth seeds into the water.
All of these were invasive species that caused serious damage to the ecosystem. Before long, reports and complaints started pouring in: golden apple snails were overrunning the area and destroying lotus ponds, predatory fish had appeared in ponds and were even putting children at risk. When the environmental protection agency learned what was happening, they went to see Mrs. Ho several times.
At first, Mrs. Ho made a scene, saying no one was allowed to stop her from accumulating good karma. Then she denied everything and argued, demanding to know who could prove it was her fault. Finally, she threw herself on the ground and pretended to have a seizure, loudly declaring that her son was an important official and would have them all fired.
After a few such outbursts, county leaders met privately with her son, Deputy Director Ho, hinting that he ought to talk some sense into his mother. It seemed to have some effect, but not much.
Mrs. Ho went on releasing increasingly bizarre things. Someone saw her leading a group of people to… release mineral water, dumping cases of bottled water into the river.
She even released cotton clothes, claiming that clothes worn for a long time took on spiritual energy and developed souls. So the cotton garments drifted down the river, half-submerged, frightening plenty of people who thought a whole bunch of corpses were floating by. One elderly man was so badly startled that he had a heart attack; no one knew whether he made it through at the hospital.
Mrs. Ho’s reputation shifted from “silly” to “crazy,” but the number of people following her only grew.
They even formed a group called the “Society of Good Men and Devout Women Who Follow Heaven’s Supreme Energy in Releasing Living Creatures,” with dozens of elderly men and women in its ranks.
2
Mrs. Ho was always proud of her good deeds and believed she was sure to receive karmic rewards. After finding things on the street for three days in a row, she became even more convinced that those rewards had finally arrived.
On the first day, she found a gold ring. On the second, she spotted a cloth bag containing 2,000 dong. On the third, she picked up a silver ingot, the kind she’d only ever seen on TV.
When she found the gold ring, even she could hardly believe it. That day, she was out walking with a group of old women. The three people ahead of her hadn’t noticed the glittering object underfoot. When it was Mrs. Ho’s turn, it bumped her foot, and she was about to curse in annoyance. But when she bent down to look, it turned out to be a large gold ring.
The cloth bag with the money was much the same. It lay in a secluded corner of the street, with people streaming past, yet no one noticed it. Mrs. Ho had only to walk by to spot it. It was as if these things were seeking her out.
At first, she didn’t tell anyone. But when nobody came looking for their lost property, she couldn’t help bragging about it. She said these were the karmic rewards of the merit she’d accumulated over the years.
Someone advised her that this wasn’t normal, and finding money on the street wasn’t necessarily a good thing—especially three days in a row. It seemed rather strange.
Mrs. Ho curled her lip and mocked them for being jealous. “Jealous of me? Heaven itself favors me. If you can’t stand it, go die!”
Word reached Mr. Li the Half-Immortal, a fortune-teller famous throughout the county. He went to Mrs. Ho’s home and asked to take a look at the things she’d found. He said that there was such a thing as a “ghost buying a life” and that she’d better not covet strange treasures.
Mrs. Ho glared at him. Not only did she refuse to show him the items, she cursed him out until his face turned red, nearly making him run away. Before leaving, Mr. Li warned her again: “If you find anything else on the road over the next few days, don’t pick it up. If you make it seven days, not even the gods will be able to save you!”
All Mr. Li got for his warning was a slipper to the face. Mrs. Ho shouted, “You, Li! How dare you curse me? I’ll smash up your shop!”
And yet, strangely enough, Mrs. Ho kept finding things in the days that followed. Six days in a row.
Even the luckiest person would be hard-pressed to have such a run of good fortune. She herself began to wonder, but when valuable items were lying right by the roadside, just within reach, she couldn’t resist.
On the seventh day, Mrs. Ho fell ill, with a fever and a nonstop cough. She was relieved, thinking, “That’s it, then. If I don’t go outside, how can I find anything? What was that Li saying about seven days bringing bad luck? Haven’t I already broken his curse?”
It was the first time she’d felt that being sick wasn’t such a bad thing. She was even happy to endure the fever.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang.
Mrs. Ho lived alone now. Her husband had passed away. Her two sons treated her well enough, but her daughters-in-law couldn’t stand her temperament, so she lived on her own. Whenever anything came up, she only had to call and her sons would come right away.
This time, it was a delivery driver with a rather heavy box. She had no idea who’d sent it.
After the driver left, Mrs. Ho opened the box out of curiosity. She peeled away layer after layer of wrapping, until at last a box appeared.
Mrs. Ho recognized that kind of box—her husband was now lying in one just like it.
It was an urn for cremated remains.
A photograph was attached to the urn: it was Mrs. Ho herself, with rolled-back white eyes and a vivid red X marked across her face.
3
Mrs. Ho hurriedly threw the urn out the second-floor window. Below, an electric scooter was struck with a clattering crash, followed by shrill cries. She immediately called her two sons and told them to get to her house as quickly as possible.
Her younger son arrived first. As soon as he stepped inside, he saw his mother huddled on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket and trembling. After hearing about the urn, he scoffed and said maybe someone was just trying to scare her for fun. He’d seen plenty of things like that in real life.
“Since you threw it away, it should be fine now,” he reassured her.
Then he abruptly changed the subject, asking about the things Mrs. Ho had found on the street. He said he had a friend who specialized in appraising antiques and could take them over to have a look. They might be worth a fortune.
Mrs. Ho paid no attention to her younger son’s words. Seeing that, he took a carton of milk and a bag of fruit from his pocket, saying he’d meant to visit her these past few days, but every time he came by, no one was home. As he spoke, he set the items on the little table in the living room, where odds and ends were usually left.
Suddenly, his voice faltered, and his gaze fixed on the table. “That dark red box… is that it? The one carved with snakes, centipedes, toads… and with a picture of Mom on it?”
Mrs. Ho hadn’t looked closely at the carvings on the urn, but she clearly remembered its dark red color and the photograph of herself.
Her younger son pointed at the box, his face drained of color. “You said you threw it away, Mom. Why is it here?”
Mrs. Ho was just as frightened. She immediately told her son to get rid of it again.
But the longer he looked at it, the stranger the box seemed. He didn’t dare touch it with his bare hands, so he hurriedly wrapped it in an old bedsheet and ran outside. It was a long time before he returned. He said he’d taken it somewhere far away and burned it to ashes.
He had just breathed a sigh of relief when his gaze froze. At that moment, his older brother arrived. On the floor beside his feet sat a dark red box—the very urn his younger brother had just burned.
His older brother took a drag on his cigarette and said in a low voice, “I just kicked this thing under the table.”
The whole family was suddenly plunged into an eerie atmosphere.
Mrs. Ho didn’t dare stay in that house any longer. After discussing it for a while, the brothers decided to rent a hotel room for their mother, and the three of them would split the cost equally.
The box was disposed of for the third time. This time, it was thrown into the water.
4
But it seemed the urn had latched onto Mrs. Ho.
The next morning, as she turned over, something hard suddenly jabbed into her. She muttered a few curses, then jolted as she realized it was the urn. Terrified, she screamed and frantically shoved it off the bed. As she pushed, she felt as if a heavy object had slammed into her hand, causing unbearable pain.
She looked down at her left hand and went pale: it was badly misshapen, as if it had been struck by a hammer over and over.
Her two sons hurried over. One was still half-asleep, while the other looked annoyed. But when they saw their mother’s condition, they immediately took her to the hospital.
The diagnosis: a broken bone.