Poisson coulé - Chapitre 27
"Your Majesty, I beg you..." The boy's hand slowly slipped from Situ Xiang's grasp, "Please don't tell her that I actually feel..."
He finally fell towards the tower, the sound behind him drowned out by the wind.
He landed among the 'Wandering in the Saha World' flowers, stirring up a large swarm of bright yellow 'Ghost Butterflies'. These butterflies, which are said to be transformed from human souls, flocked together towards the distant horizon, and from afar, they looked like a brilliant Milky Way.
The flames died down, and wisps of smoke rose. Caesar frantically swept away the smoke with his hands and rushed to the spot where the fire had burned, but suddenly froze. The ground was charred black, but there was no body there.
Qin Wen and Yin Li have disappeared!
Situ Xiang rushed over and tapped the ground. There were no hidden mechanisms or passages underneath. Had they simply vanished into thin air?
"Did it turn into those fiery wings and fly away?" Caesar was actually in the mood for a joke. Situ Xiang glanced at him, his brows furrowing deeply. Just then, the two suddenly heard a clatter of rubble. They turned around simultaneously and saw a hand reaching out from the pile of rocks: "Ouch..."
"It's Wen!" Caesar rushed over, cleared away the rubble, and pulled the two girls out. Qin Wen clutched her arm, wincing in pain, "My arm must be dislocated!"
"I'm not much better off," Yin Li said, rubbing her lower back. "To think I'd strained my back at such a young age!"
"How did you get here?" Situ Xiang asked, supporting her. "Weren't you struck by lightning just now?"
"We're lucky to be alive!" Caesar set Qin Wen's bones, and she cried out in pain, "The lightning didn't hit us, it just threw us out by the impact! It hurts so much! Caesar, be gentle!"
With a crisp crack, the bone was finally put back in place. Qin Wen screamed in agony, almost fainting: "Couldn't you be a little gentler?"
"I thought you didn't know what pain was," Caesar laughed. "Why didn't I hear you cry out when you were carving patterns on your shoulder with the knife?"
"Times have changed." Qin Wen glared at him with dissatisfaction. Was this man's mouth always so foul?
Yin Li shook her head helplessly. It seemed that these two were destined to be a pair of bickering lovers.
Just as the four were about to breathe a sigh of relief, the ground suddenly began to shake. Situ Xiang's expression changed drastically, and he rushed to the cave entrance, where he saw the Thunder God Beast lying on the ground, barely alive, its tail twitching and striking the base of the pagoda. With each strike, a new crack appeared on the base, rapidly widening like a spider web.
"Oh no, the tower is collapsing!" Situ Xiang's face turned pale, and Qin Wen felt a chill run through her chest. She asked urgently, "Is there any way to open the Gate of Limitlessness?"
"Even if we could open it, it would be too late!" Situ Xiang grabbed Yin Li's hand. "Come with me."
The three followed him to the back of the altar. He groped around behind the statue of the evil god Shaluo for a while and found a small protrusion. He pressed it hard, and the statue slid to the side, revealing a small hole that could only be passed through by one person.
"What is this?" Yin Li asked.
“This is a secret escape route that the king left for himself when the pagoda was built,” Situ Xiang said. “Inside is a spiral slide that leads to the bottom of the pagoda.”
A slide? Qin Wen was taken aback: "Is it safe?"
The pagoda shook even more violently, with huge stones falling one after another. Situ Xiang shouted angrily, "This is the only way to escape! If we don't leave now, once this path is blocked by stones, no one will be able to get out!"
Caesar acted decisively, grabbing Qin Wen's hand: "So be it, I'll die with you, that would be a wonderful thing!" Before Qin Wen could react, he pulled her and jumped inside. Qin Wen's screams echoed from the secret passage. Yin Li bit her lip worriedly, still hesitating. Situ Xiang grabbed her shoulder and said, "Hurry, it'll be too late if we don't leave now."
Yin Li was taken aback: "What about you?"
Situ Xiang gave a faint smile: "I'm not leaving."
Yin Li's heart skipped a beat, and she said urgently, "What's wrong with you? Have you forgotten what the director said? You still have to drive his beloved car back!"
“I cannot leave Mano Kingdom, I am its king.” Situ Xiang was very calm, a calmness that was frightening. “When the country falls, the king must die for his country. This is the ancestral precept of Mano Kingdom.”
"Don't be silly!" Yin Li was so anxious she was almost crying. "You are Situ Xiang, not the Ebony King! Even if you had to die for your country, you did it more than 2,500 years ago!"
“Every king of Mano Kingdom has another task.” Situ Xiang gently brushed the stray hairs from her forehead, “which is to protect the Triple Treasure Chest. Although I once abandoned Buddha, I have never forgotten this responsibility.”
“Situ…” Tears streamed down Yin Li’s dark face. Situ Xiang didn’t let her continue. He slapped her on the back of the head, and she went limp, falling into his arms. “Forgive me, Li.”
He lifted her face, gently kissed her lips, took off his coat, put it on her, and then pushed her into the secret passage. Hearing the sound of her body sliding down, he breathed a long sigh of relief, closed the passage, sat down against the altar, and picked up the triple treasure box.
A faint golden glow emanated from his hand, and the world seemed to quiet down. He closed his eyes, and past memories flashed through his mind like a flood.
He would never forget the first time he saw her. At a grand banquet, she held a konghou in her arms and smiled at him. At that moment, his world darkened, leaving only her smile.
“You love my heart, I pity your beauty, and because of this cause and condition, we are bound together for hundreds of thousands of kalpas.” He murmured, clutching the three treasure boxes tightly. “Buddha, is this your punishment for me? That girl is destined to be my eternal tribulation.”
When Yin Li woke up, she was already in a hospital in Karamay City. Qin Wen was lying on the bed next to her, eating bananas voraciously.
"Hmm, tastes good." Qin Wen tossed one onto her stomach. "You've been unconscious for three days and three nights without eating or drinking. If you don't eat something soon, you'll probably develop anorexia."
Yin Li felt weak all over. She finally managed to sit up, picked up the banana blankly, and stared at it for a long time, still not quite understanding. Qin Wen, her mouth full of food and her speech slurred, said, "What? Did you sleep too much? Xiao Li, do you remember who I am?"
“I remember.” Yin Li nodded. “A troublemaker in Class 1 of the Chinese Department at C University, who enjoys causing trouble and bullying the weak. He’s twenty-two years old this year, and his measurements are 76, 62, 80, in centimeters…” Before she could finish speaking, an apple was thrown at her, hitting her on the forehead. “Judging from your smug look, I knew you were alright. I was worried about you for days, and this is how you repay me?”
Yin Li rubbed her forehead, full of questions, and was about to speak when Qin Wen launched into a rapid-fire monologue: "I know what you're going to ask. When we came out of that slide, we didn't see any Buddhist cemetery or the River of Oblivion. All we saw was endless yellow sand and the ruins of the Mano Kingdom's city walls behind us. We didn't even know where the slide's exit was. You seemed to have been knocked unconscious by Situ Xiang, and we couldn't wake you up no matter how much we called you. Caesar carried you, and the three of us followed the sun eastward for a whole day. Finally, we saw the oasis we had visited before, but everything was different now."
"It's different now?" Yin Li was taken aback.
"Yes, that oasis has long since dried up, and the poplar forest has turned into fossils."
Yin Li blinked, taking a long time to react: "Have you come to the wrong place?"
“Absolutely right!” Qin Wen shook her head decisively. “We found Situ Xiang’s Hummer H1 in the Populus euphratica fossil forest. The water and food inside were still there. If it weren’t for that car, we would all have perished in the desert!”
Yin Li was even more bewildered. If the oasis had long since dried up, then what were the monsters and lakes they had seen? She had even bathed in the water, and she still remembered that comfortable feeling clearly.
“I don’t know what’s going on either.” Qin Wen shrugged. “But I guess the Mano Kingdom ruins have a strong magnetic field, right? Maybe everything we’ve encountered is just an illusion caused by the magnetic field.”
Hallucination? Yin Li rolled up her sleeves and saw the scars on her arms. If such a harrowing experience was an illusion, then what was real?
She could no longer distinguish between reality and illusion; perhaps everything she was seeing now was nothing but an illusion.
This feeling is truly terrifying.
"By the way," Qin Wen suddenly asked, "Where's Situ Xiang? We've been waiting outside the ruins for a long time, but he hasn't come out. Could it be that he's already..."
Her shoulder started to ache again. Was that man destined to be just a fleeting moment in her life?
“He said he could not leave his kingdom,” Yin Li said with difficulty. “It is the king’s responsibility to die for his country.”
Qin Wen paused for a moment, then took a big bite of the banana and muttered to herself, "What a big fool."
A dull ache settled in her chest, as if a large stone were pressing down on it. She shook her head, banishing Situ Xiang's shadow: "Xiao Wen, where's your Caesar?"
Qin Wen's face froze, a banana stuck in her throat, and she coughed violently. Yin Li quickly got out of bed to pat her back: "Don't get so agitated, do you?"
Qin Wen's face flushed red with anger, and she retorted, "Don't talk nonsense! There's nothing between Anthony and me!"
Anthony? Yin Li's eyebrows twitched. You called him by a nickname, and you still dare to say it's nothing? Qin Wen was anxious when she saw that she didn't believe her. She was about to argue when she saw her expression soften: "Xiao Wen, do you remember what Zhen Yan said to Kui Ji at the end?"
Qin Wen was stunned. After transforming into a butterfly, Zhen Yan said that in her next life she would follow this Western Regions route to come back and save her.
“I’m sorry, she didn’t do it.” Yin Li’s eyes were full of apology. “After her reincarnation, she became a princess of the Han Dynasty. Although she returned to the Western Regions, she had no memory of Kui Ji.”
"Tch," Qin Wen said nonchalantly. "Let bygones be bygones. I still don't believe in reincarnation. I remember my grandfather saying that so-called past life memories are just illusions caused by carbon-14 atoms. To this day, no biologist has figured out which part of the body memories actually come from. Some have hypothesized that memories are stored in carbon-14 atoms. Whether it's an animal or a plant, after death, the body decomposes, and the carbon-14 atoms merge into nature, reforming into new life. Once the brainwaves of the new life match those of the carbon-14 atoms, the memories reappear. That's what past life memories are, not reincarnation!"
Yin Li only half understood what she was saying, and gave an awkward smile: "You're always right."
As soon as she finished speaking, a middle-aged man, about fifty years old, walked in. Yin Li smiled at him and said, "Hello, Director Leda."
Leda's face was grim, and her sharp gaze swept across the two girls' faces. After a long while, she finally said, "Where is Situ?"
Yin Li lowered her eyes. She didn't know how to answer. Even if she told the bureau chief the whole story, would he believe her?
"Where is Situ?" Leda emphasized, asking again. Yin Li gestured for Qin Wen to take out the car keys and hand them to him: "Director, Situ asked me to give this to you. He said he has kept his promise."
Leda took the keys, his face ashen. "That brat!" After a long pause, he finally asked, "Where's the young man who brought you back?"
"In the next ward."
“I’ll go talk to him. You two get some rest. Someone will come tomorrow to ask you what happened.” Leda went out the door, but came back in less than a minute later, looking rather grim. The two girls exchanged glances. He handed them a letter and said, “Read it yourselves.”
The envelope was addressed to: Qin Wen. She unfolded the letter, and her eyes were met with handsome yet domineering handwriting, much like his.
Wen:
I deliberately left without saying goodbye, so curse me all you want.
I believe you know why I left, but don't miss me, I'll be back soon. I can't face you with this disfigured face; plastic surgery will take some time.
There's no need to worry about the Gu poison. The person who cast the Gu is dead, and the Gu poison will disappear as well.
The diamond I left behind was dug out of 'Demon God' by Miller at great personal risk. I don't know how it ended up in my pants. Anyway, it's not mine. You can keep it; it might come in handy.
This is my first time writing a letter to a girl, so please forgive my incoherent writing.
Love you, Anthony
February 18, 2008
"You big idiot!" Qin Wen yelled at Leda, her face contorted with rage. "Where are the diamonds?"
Lyda held a pink diamond in her hand, as big as an egg, reflecting the sunlight and looking absolutely stunning. Qin Wen gasped and snatched it away: "So beautiful! That brat, he finally did something good!"
Leda frowned; it seemed he would need to spend some time having a serious talk with the two girls. Their trip to the sacred Buddhist cemetery was definitely not simple.
31. Old houses in Jiangnan
A light drizzle fell, like a net gently enveloping this small town in Jiangnan. The Ming and Qing dynasty buildings along the roadside exuded an ancient elegance. Rainwater, forming a thin stream, flowed down the eaves of the roof tiles, landing in the small water troughs used to collect water in front of the doorways, and then flowing off to some unknown destination.
"Your hometown is so beautiful!" Qin Wen felt like she couldn't take it all in. "This is the real Jiangnan region!"
Yin Li smiled but remained silent.
The two of them, holding an oil-paper umbrella with forty-eight ribs, crossed a stone bridge, and Yin Li said, "We've arrived."
Qin Wen looked up and saw a large red door with peeling paint and faded paint on the beams. The painted decorations on the beams had also almost completely fallen off, making it look somewhat forlorn, like a fallen nobleman.
Clearly, this is a Ming-style building, and a large courtyard.
Qin Wen opened her mouth wide, and Yin Li stretched out her index finger and waved it: "Don't be surprised, my ancestors were imperial physicians during the Ming Dynasty, and this courtyard was a gift from the Jiajing Emperor."
Upon hearing this, Qin Wen's mouth gaped even wider, and she stared in disbelief as she took out the key, opened the door, and a bluestone-paved path led directly to the main hall. As soon as they entered the main hall, the two of them smelled a pungent odor of dust, and the furniture was covered with a thick layer of dust.
Qin Wen grinned: "Has it been a year and a half since it was cleaned?"
"There's no other way, nobody's home." Yin Li threw her suitcase on the ground. "You'd better pack properly, otherwise you won't be able to stay here tonight."
Qin Wen sighed helplessly, feeling that her future was bleak.
Six months had passed since their trip to the sacred Buddhist cemetery, and Caesar was nowhere to be found. The two had gone to great lengths to persuade Leda to go. They had originally intended to return to the school they had previously signed a teaching contract with, only to discover that their positions had already been taken by two children of high-ranking officials. Filled with righteous indignation, Qin Wen stormed into the principal's office. The principal gave each of them 20,000 yuan in compensation and had security escort them out of the school.
The two stood in front of the school gate, on the verge of tears.
In the end, they had no choice but to return to Yin Li's hometown, preparing to become complete recluses and make a living by writing books. Qin Wen thought to herself, tears streaming down her face, "This kind of life is truly miserable."
"Xiaowen, how about we go on an adventure around the house tonight?" Yin Li said while wiping the table. Qin Wen shivered. Yin Li looked at her curiously, "What's wrong?"
"It's nothing, I just get chills whenever I hear the word 'adventure'," Qin Wen said. "This house may be big, but it's unlikely to be hiding an ancient tomb, is it?"
“Where are there so many ancient tombs!” Yin Li rolled her eyes. “But there’s a legend about this old house. I once heard my grandfather say that somewhere here, there is a blue and white porcelain vase.”
"Blue and white porcelain? That's very ordinary."
"The key point is that the blue and white porcelain is from the Yuan Dynasty," Yin Li said mysteriously. "Another bottle from the same period sold for five million eight hundred thousand US dollars at auction."