Lingxia-Vorfall

Kapitel 2

I started to realize that something was amiss. If it were an ordinary cat, Wei wouldn't have been holding her amulet up to it.

Guazi, unaware of what I was thinking, continued to chatter on: "You don't know, when Wei went to Tibet, the high lama said that she had accumulated merit and done good deeds in her life, saving many lives, all because she had a connection with immortals and Buddhas in her previous life. She has a keen sense of perception, and nothing dirty can escape her eyes!"

Her words made it even clearer to me that the cat was definitely not a simple creature.

I immediately started to worry about my second aunt: would having such a strange thing squatting in front of her house cause trouble?

This is no small matter. I picked up the phone and dialed Wei's number, but she was doing something and it rang many times before she answered.

Wei, tell me, will that cat affect the safety of my aunt's house? I didn't mince words and asked her directly.

She thought for a moment and said calmly, "I don't know either. But I could sense a deep resentment surrounding the cat."

Resentment! So that means the cat came for revenge?! I was extremely anxious.

I really don't know, Kinu. If I had known, I wouldn't have kept it from you. That's all I could sense. But its resentment wasn't malevolent; instead, it was incredibly pitiful. When I looked into its eyes, I almost cried.

What can I do? I can't just leave it at my aunt's doorstep! I'm about to cry too.

Don't worry so much. Animals are different from people. I think even if it has a huge grudge, it won't take revenge on others casually.

But... but... but...

"Kuanzi, you know me. I do have a little spiritual energy that allows me to sense these things, but I haven't cultivated myself, nor am I a practitioner of this path. I can't decipher what she's saying. Is she telling the truth? In the end, she's just an animal lover, not some kind of sorcerer." I said goodnight and stared blankly at the monitor.

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [6]: Cat spirit? How could there be a cat spirit?

The most absurd thing is, how come I can see this cat spirit too? Is it not invisible, or am I just incredibly unlucky and can see it on purpose?

Does that mean... if a ghost were to float past the window now, I could see it...?

Thinking about this, I broke out in a cold sweat. Luckily, the curtains were tightly closed, and I didn't have the curiosity to pull them open and take a closer look outside.

Hey, where the hell have you been?! Guazi is frantically calling me online.

"Don't ask anymore, I'm possessed by a ghost." I replied to her irritably.

What's going on? Why don't you go to the temple to draw a fortune stick and ask what happened?

She reminded me. Yes, I should go to the temple to draw a fortune stick tomorrow. I quickly logged off and lay on the bed, lost in thought. I've never encountered anything so strange in my entire life, how could it happen to me this year?

The next day, I was woken up by my mom knocking on the door before seven o'clock.

"Huang Juan, Huang Juan, get up and answer the phone! What happened to your second aunt? Has something serious happened?!"

As soon as I heard the name "Second Aunt," I immediately remembered my worries from last night. I jumped out of bed, ran barefoot to the phone, and when I answered, my voice was trembling with tears: "Second Aunt, what's wrong!"

My aunt's voice came through the phone, sounding anxious but confident: "Me? Nothing's wrong with me?"

"Oh? What's the urgent matter?"

"I'm asking you, did you talk about cats with your brother Songming yesterday?"

I rubbed my eyes for a while before I remembered that I had said a few scary things to Songming before dinner yesterday, and I was quite disdainful that he wouldn't admit he was afraid of cats. "Oh, we just chatted about cats for a bit." "Just chatted for a bit? Then why was he so scared?"

"What's wrong, Auntie?"

"He didn't seem to sleep well at all last night. He got up early this morning and left before six o'clock! Your second uncle got up in the middle of the night and heard him calling out desperately, as if he were having a nightmare: 'Cats, cats, lots of cats!'"

I was both amused and exasperated, so I said, "Good Auntie, can you be reasonable? If I could scare away such a big man with just a few words, I wouldn't be writing romance novels at home; I'd definitely be telling ghost stories on the radio!"

"You didn't scare him?" Auntie was also a little skeptical. "Then what could have scared him like that? I happened to see him carrying his bag and walking out this morning. I asked him where he was going, but he didn't even answer. He just ran away trembling!"

"So what if they ran away? It's perfect, it saves you the trouble of not staying at our place," I replied carelessly.

After hanging up the phone, I couldn't fall asleep. My mom kept interrogating me about what heinous things I had done at my aunt's house. I stammered and quickly ran into the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I brushed, all sorts of random thoughts suddenly started to come together in my mind.

Cat... Resentment... A man afraid of cats... Running away.

I stopped brushing my teeth, looked at myself in the mirror, and murmured: It's him, the cat is looking for him!

I ran to the living room, foaming at the mouth, to call Wei. My mom followed behind, relentlessly eavesdropping. To avoid letting her know that I was discussing something terrible with Wei, I very subtly told her, "I understand what happened yesterday."

"What do you understand?" Wei had probably already gotten up and was getting ready for work, so her speech was a little clearer than mine.

Do you remember the man I saw at my aunt's house?

"I remember, isn't he your cousin?"

"It's him."

Wei was confused for a moment, but immediately understood what I meant. "You mean, that cat spirit is looking for him!"

"Yes! Think about it, the first time I saw that cat was the day he came to my aunt's house; yesterday when you went to wash your face, I mentioned to him that there were stray cats near our house, and he was terrified, and he ran away first thing this morning!"

"Oh?! We'll go to your aunt's house right away and see if the cat is still there!"

The cat was gone, of course. Wei and I sat in my aunt's living room at 8:30 in the morning, looking at each other in bewilderment.

"Can you sense that it's gone?"

Wei shook her head in confusion: "I don't know, I just can't feel its presence anymore."

My aunt had no idea what we were busy with. She thought we were still catching stray cats and tidying up the room in the guest room. She called to me, "Juanzi, bring me the clean set of pillowcases from the sofa!"

I took the pillowcase as instructed and went into the room. I saw my second aunt changing the sheets and duvet cover, and then I remembered that Songming had stayed in this room yesterday. I couldn't help but take a second look. Then, my gaze settled on the hardwood double bed.

The double bed was probably about 80% new, likely added specifically to create a guest room after the move. It was made of hardwood with a clear varnish, and the headboard, about a foot and a half high, was a carved wooden panel; the style wasn't particularly fashionable, but it was still elegant.

However, right on the headboard, there were several very obvious scratches, as if something sharp and multifaceted had been used to scratch them with great force.

I walked over and touched the scratch; I could still feel how rough the wound was. It was a fresh scratch.

"Second Aunt, how did this bed get scratched?"

My aunt exclaimed in surprise, "Oh dear, how come the bed is covered in so many scratches after just a few days of not paying attention?!"

Wei came over at that moment and stood at the door looking at the scratches. We looked at each other and nodded silently. Yes, those scratches are very familiar to anyone who has owned cats for a long time; they are cat claw marks. As for Songming, I think I should forget about that man named Songming, who looks like a reincarnated rat spirit, always bowing and scraping, and ignore whether he has a grudge against cats and is on the verge of death.

I should: 1. Go home, take a shower, dress up nicely, then call my favorite man's number from my phone's contacts and force him to treat me to dinner. 2. Reply to my few dozen readers. 3. Gather information online about my next novel and arrange to meet the person involved. 4. Take a long nap.

However, when Wei and I walked out of my second aunt's building, I grumbled that I really wanted to find Songming.

"Why are you looking for him? Each person has their own karma to resolve; you can't help him anyway," Wei said coldly. I knew what she was thinking; she was definitely siding with the cat spirit, believing it died unjustly and had the right to revenge.

Actually, I think so too, but I can't say it out loud because Songming is still my relative.

"I have compassion and want to help him~~~~" I grinned at her.

"You'd be more accurate to say you're just curious," she said, rolling her eyes at me.

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [7]: "Please help me~~~ I'll definitely go with you next time you go catch stray cats."

"What can I do to help you?" Wei said dejectedly. "I'm not a living god."

I could tell she also wanted to find Songming, but was too embarrassed to say so. Of course, my desire to find Songming was merely out of curiosity, while she intended to gloat.

A week later, I wondered, if we had known what we were going to see, would we still have been so curious to search for pine torches?

Just as Wei and I were hesitating about whether to look for Songming and how to find him, Songming called my second uncle and said he had already rented a place in the west of the city. He said he was using a public phone because there was no phone in the apartment and he was out of money on his cell phone. When my second aunt called my mother, she brought up this incident as a follow-up to Songming's crazy departure that morning. Coincidentally, I was right next to my mother at the time, rummaging through drawers looking for my earrings.

And so, I got a phone number on the third day after Songming moved away.

Then I learned the approximate location of Songming's residence within half an hour of getting his phone number.

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” I said to Wei triumphantly.

“Anyone can do that,” she replied, mercilessly.

Nothing could stop us from heading towards the notorious migrant neighborhood where Songming now lived.

Because Wei had to go to work, we set off at six o'clock in the evening. The afterglow of the setting sun shone on the entire row of bungalows, and the faint aroma of cooking wafted through the air. There were at least a thousand bungalows of the same style, crisscrossing across an area of nearly two miles.

However, finding Songming was easy. On the roof, the wall, and the windowsill of the bungalow where he lived, there were at least thirty cats of all sizes, black and white.

Cats aren't social animals, and they don't like to be out during the day. I admit, each one of them is adorable, but when they gather together like this, defying all convention, I just feel a chill.

Even as I stepped into Songming's room, I was filled with worry. I didn't know when the cats would make their move, or if Wei's luck would allow them to give us the time of day and remain calm. I didn't even dare to look up to search for the big tabby cat, because all the cats were watching us with their eerie gazes—the gazes of these little creatures were so cold.

Strangely enough, Songming was actually cooking inside the house, and on the simple folding table was a small bottle of Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor) and a cold dish of pig's ears—did he find being chased by a cat to be a bit of a fun experience? Given his courage, I highly doubt it.

Wei and I had already discussed it beforehand. We told him that we were just passing by and visiting him at his request. He warmly invited us to sit down, rubbing his hands together and saying that he hadn't bought enough groceries and it was inconvenient to serve us. Of course, we were too embarrassed to accept his meal—we'd never heard of someone eating at someone else's house after just watching their celebration—so we only sat for ten minutes before hurriedly running out.

In those ten minutes, I saw that Songming had arranged the simple furnishings in the room quite cleanly. There was a framed photo on the headboard, and I guessed that the woman and child in the photo were his wife and children.

As the sun set and darkness fell, Wei and I squatted under the eaves of someone else's house, pitifully listening to Songming humming a tune while cooking and eating.

The cats multiplied, filling his entire roof and starting to spread towards the neighbors' houses. None of them meowed or wandered around; they just lay there lazily. Wei said she had looked carefully, but the big tabby cat wasn't among them. Where had it gone? Had it gone to call for more help?

After it got completely dark, we heard Songming, who had been eating while sitting on the bed, get up. He paced around the room, stopping every few steps before continuing. He did this about two or three times before returning to the bed, and it sounded like he lay down again.

"The talismans from Baiyun Temple are truly miraculous," Songming sighed contentedly.

“He went to get a talisman. No wonder he wasn’t afraid,” Wei whispered to me.

"If there were talismans, what would these cats be doing here?" I asked in a low voice.

"I don't know, maybe that cat has other ways to deal with him."

"Understood... Let's keep squatting."

Hours passed by. I was starting to lose track of whether it was cat's eye or stars; everything was sparkling when I looked up. Just as I was getting sleepy, Wei nudged me: "It's here."

She stood up and looked up at the roof. In the darkness, the large tabby cat descended with an air of nobility, like a true elf. It stood among the other cats, surveyed its surroundings, and then suddenly raised its head and let out a long meow.

I cannot describe its cry; it is like a baby's cry, like a night owl, like a long laugh, like a wail, as eerie as a human voice, as furious as a wild beast, its voice containing such a dense, suffocating sorrow and resentment.

The cats chimed in.

The night began to turn strange from this moment on. The surroundings were as still as a stagnant pool, save for the incessant mournful cries of the cats.

I saw the moonlight turn blood red, and the stars lose their light. The big tabby cat slowly took two steps forward, stretched out its paw, and through the reflection, the tips of its paw were as blood red as the moonlight.

Songming's door creaked open. He stood in the doorway, gave a cold laugh, and said, "Not bad, you've found me again, but let's see what you can do to me now."

Another, even more piercing cry rang out. The big tabby cat stood frozen in place, not moving.

"You dead cat, if I can let you die once, why can't I let you die again?" Song Ming's voice rang out. He turned and went into the house, then came out again with something in his hand.

Wei trembled slightly, and I quickly understood why she was trembling. The thing in Songming's hand was emitting a faint white light, enveloping an area of about three meters around him.

"What is that?" I asked Wei.

“A statue of Guanyin. It seems he not only visited Baiyun Temple, but also Guangji Temple.”