The Desecrated Grave — Noli Me Tángere

Ibarra reaches San Diego's cemetery to honour his father and finds the cross burned, the grave disturbed, and the body gone. His old servant planted flowers and carved a marker, but Capitan Tiago's promised niche never appeared and no neighbour dared protest when the friar's will became law. The grave-digger confesses Damaso ordered exhumation and claims he threw Rafael into the lake rather than bury him among Chinese dead, because a poor man's obedience is cheaper than his conscience.

Ibarra calls him a miserable slave and storms out, stepping on graves in anguish without caring whose ancestors he offends or who watches. Walking home bareheaded as a storm gathers, he meets Fray Salvi and demands what was done to his father. The new curate crumbles, blames Damaso, and escapes when Ibarra releases him rather than strike a man on his knees in the rain.

The chapter turns grief into confrontation: desecration becomes proof that church power outranks family mourning, and Salvi inherits guilt he tries to outsource to his predecessor. Ibarra leaves with facts sharper than rage, knowing the outrage began in Manila and finished in mud beside a lake that may still hold his father's bones and his own childhood trust.