fragments d'os oracle

Chapitre 13

Disappointment showed on Tang Wan's face. She turned back and shook her head at Tan Dong, who sighed and stepped forward, saying softly, "Let's look at other places."

Tang Wan nodded, glanced once more at the elderly couple who remained frozen in their pose, and turned away with a sigh.

Before the two had even stepped out of the courtyard, they suddenly heard a sound behind them. They turned around and saw the old woman rushing out. The old woman was quite old, but she was still very agile. She ran up to Tan Dong and Tang Wan, her wrinkled face still blank and expressionless, but she opened her palm towards the two of them, and on it was a brass key.

Tang Wan was slightly puzzled, but then she understood what the old lady meant. For the first time, a smile appeared on the old lady's stiff face.

The old lady's smile was simple and clear, as innocent as a child's.

Tang Wan smiled too, and a brass key opened the first door to her life in the small town.

Chapter 16: The Madwoman on the Chain Bridge

The self-guided tour group became defunct in name only after Tan Dong and Tang Wan left.

Shabo had no interest in exploring the scenery around Sleepy Hollow; his disappointment had left him listless. Yang Xing, upon arriving at Sleepy Hollow, found his loss of appetite worse. He was tired of grapes, and now, faced with mountains of them, he couldn't bring himself to eat a single bite. Losing his appetite left him listless, but another thought occurred to him: he refused to believe there wasn't something in the world he could crave. So, for the next two days, Xiao Fei accompanied him as they searched for something to eat throughout Sleepy Hollow.

The food in Sleepy Valley is mostly sourced locally: wild animals roam the mountains, fish swim in the rivers, vegetables are grown by local farmers, and livestock are raised in enclosures. Some local snacks are also quite unique, such as dried beef pudding and leaf-wrapped rice cakes, both made by mixing meat with glutinous rice. Tuotuo meat is grilled over a wood fire, initially tasting slightly burnt, followed by a fragrant aroma that fills the mouth. Another local specialty is Chuanqian rice noodles, made with rice noodles but seasoned with over twenty different spices. It's spicy enough to make you sweat profusely, but it doesn't numb your tongue or dry your throat; after eating it, you feel refreshed, as if every pore on your body has opened up.

The wisdom of the people is boundless. Sleepy Valley, isolated from the world for centuries, has created its own unique way of life. Food culture undoubtedly occupies an extremely important place in this.

Xiao Fei ate with gusto, but Yang Xing remained troubled. Any food seemed like a monster to him; he avoided it like the plague. Xiao Fei, feeling sorry for him, forced him to eat something, but he vomited uncontrollably afterward. Xiao Fei stood by, tears welling in her eyes, but she was at a loss for what to do.

"Then let's eat grapes," Yang Xing thought. Although he was tired of grapes, they were the only thing he ate without any adverse reactions. Sleepy Valley had plenty of grapes; the mountains on both sides of the town were covered with dense vineyards. It was harvest season, and many local residents were picking grapes in the vineyards. If you walked into any vineyard, the family would generously let you pick as many as you wanted.

Eating grapes every day isn't sustainable; Yang Xing's face is now completely green from the grapes. On the third day, he lay motionless in his room at the Night Sleep Inn. Xiao Fei knew he couldn't move and regretted coming all this way. Xiao Fei went out to find Sha Bo to discuss it, and Sha Bo took him to see Jiang Nan, the owner of the Night Sleep Inn.

Jiangnan had never heard of such an illness before. After thinking for a while, he said, "We have a doctor here who has inherited his skills from his family. Over the years, the residents of Sleepy Valley have all sought his medical advice for headaches and fevers. If you don't mind, you might as well ask him to take a look."

Even if it seems hopeless, it's better than doing nothing and staying indoors.

Jiangnan took Yang Xing and Xiao Fei to see the doctor. The doctor was surprisingly young, only in his early thirties, but he looked much older than his age, with deep wrinkles around his eyes when he spoke. After listening to Yang Xing's symptoms, he remained silent for a while, then told Yang Xing to come back tomorrow so he could thoroughly review his medical books.

Yang Xing had little hope for the doctor in this small town, so he went back to rest as advised.

The next day, Jiang Nan had something to do, so he told Yang Xing and Xiao Fei to go find the doctor themselves. He said the doctor had sent word early that morning that he had found a way to cure Yang Xing's strange illness. Yang Xing mustered his strength and, with Xiao Fei's help, went to the doctor's residence.

Yang Xing no longer has the strength to even walk.

The doctor's house was like any other in the town—old, dark, and perpetually shrouded in a gloomy atmosphere. The mature-beyond-his-years doctor, dressed in a long, coarse gray robe, sat behind a square table, carefully perusing a thread-bound book by the light of a kerosene lamp.

Yang Xing and Xiao Fei knocked and entered. The doctor, with a gloomy face, didn't say much, but simply got up and went to the inner room to fetch a wine bottle filled with red liquid. The room was unusually dark, and the liquid rippled slightly in the bottle; its crimson color reminded Xiao Fei of blood.

Seeing the fear on Xiaofei's face, the doctor's stiff expression turned slightly disdainful. Without saying a word, he opened the bottle, held it out to Xiaofei, and gestured for her to smell it. Xiaofei flinched slightly, but still brought her nose close, and after smelling it, she chuckled to herself, secretly amused by her own overthinking.

The liquid in the bottle had a faint aroma of wine, mixed with the scent of Chinese medicine.

Xiao Fei took the bottle and handed it to Yang Xing. Yang Xing frowned, his eyes full of suspicion. He brought the bottle to his lips and tentatively took a sip. The liquid went down his throat, a cool sensation followed, and then it felt as if a force instantly flowed into his body. Yang Xing's spirits lifted, and without further doubt, he gulped down the liquid.

Xiao Fei smiled and shook her head. Yang Xing was truly starving; he drank most of a bottle of liquid in one gulp. Towards the end, he probably choked and coughed incessantly, the bottle still tucked into his mouth even as he coughed. Xiao Fei gently patted his back and said, "Drink slowly, no one's going to take it from you."

Yang Xing finished the entire bottle of liquid before catching his breath. He was panting heavily as he put down the bottle.

Yang Xing didn't know what the doctor's medicine contained, but he felt a surge of power coursing through his body, and he couldn't wait to release it. Xiao Fei, seeing the look on his face, was also amazed.

"May I ask what medicine is in this bottle?" Yang Xing was now completely convinced of the doctor's abilities.

The doctor remained expressionless and coldly said, "It's not medicine."

"If it's not medicine, then what is it?" Yang Xing asked in confusion, then suddenly realized, "I know, it's not medicine, it's wine."

The doctor nodded.

Xiao Fei recalled the scent she had smelled when she brought her nose close to the bottle opening, and now she remembered it—it had a strong aroma of wine. She blurted out, "It's wine."

—The magical Sleeping Valley. The magical wine.

"How much of this wine do you have left? I'll buy it all," Xiao Fei said generously.

The doctor shook his head and said, "I only have one bottle."

"One bottle?" Yang Xing and Xiao Fei exclaimed in unison, disappointed.

The doctor hesitated for a moment, then raised his head and said slowly, "This kind of wine is not something I can brew. If you really want it, I can point you to a place."

Yang Xing blurted out, "Where?"

The doctor hesitated for a moment before slowly saying, "Sleeping Manor, the Sleeping Manor Master."

Late at night, Shabo was still in the town's only internet cafe.

The internet cafe was housed in an old building, but it had clearly been carefully renovated before opening. The walls were snow-white, and a few incandescent bulbs illuminated the interior brightly. It was rare to see such a brightly lit place at night in Sleepy Valley.

Forty computers were neatly arranged in four rows inside the room. Shabo had inspected them beforehand; the machines used 17-inch TCL monitors, Celeron 1.7G CPUs, and 128MB of RAM—meaning the configuration of the computers in the small-town internet cafe was exactly what was currently popular.

Around 11 p.m. that night, there were still more than twenty teenagers engrossed in the internet cafe. They were typing away on their keyboards, some muttering to themselves, just like in other internet cafes. Unlike the adults in Sleepy Hollow, these teenagers were dressed in only gray and blue, and their clothes reflected many of the popular colors of the outside world.

Shabo sat in front of the computer and opened the QQ account with the Forget-Me-Not icon. There were other friends online on QQ, but Shabo had no interest in communicating with them. He just stared blankly at the gray Forget-Me-Not icon.

Forget-Me-Not still didn't leave him a message; it was as if she had truly vanished from the internet.

Shabo opened his mailbox again and opened the picture that Forget-Me-Not had sent him.

He still couldn't figure out the meaning of the picture, or whether it was related to her disappearance.

Shabo had already shown the internet cafe owner a picture of Forget-Me-Not, but a young man with dyed blond hair examined the picture for a long time before shaking his head and saying he had never seen this person before. Shabo was not satisfied, so he showed the picture to the other people in the internet cafe, and without exception, they all said that there was no such person in Sleeping Valley.

"We only have so many people using the internet here, and we know almost everyone. If this girl really was using the internet in Sleepy Valley, we couldn't possibly not know," the internet cafe owner concluded.

Shabo sat listlessly in front of his computer, feeling depressed. He only hoped that the Forget-Me-Not would suddenly appear out of the blue, answering all his questions. He simply didn't want to believe that everything that had happened was a lie told to him by the Forget-Me-Not.

How could such an innocent and pure girl be a liar?

Around midnight, Shabo walked out of the internet cafe disappointed; the town was almost deserted by then.

The town is divided in two by a rushing river. The internet cafe is located on the west bank, and to get back to the Night Sleep Inn, Shabo has to cross the suspension bridge over the river. Once you leave the alley where the internet cafe is located, there are no more lights to be seen. Fortunately, a crescent moon hangs in the sky, its hazy light casting a pale, desolate glow on the cobblestone pavement. The town still retains the custom of resting at sunset; it's already midnight, and all the houses are closed, silent and still. Silence flows through the alleyways, slipping through the shadowy eaves, creating a somewhat eerie atmosphere.

Shabo began to climb the steps leading to the suspension bridge. The steps were very high, and the bridge was not visible from below. On both sides of the steps were houses standing close together, with tall walls and soaring eaves facing each other, revealing only a very narrow patch of sky, where the slanting moonlight became extremely thin.

Shabo suddenly stopped, and in that instant, his heart raced.

He heard singing coming from the direction of the bridge.

The singing was extremely faint, and mixed with the gurgling of the water, it felt even more unreal. Shabo couldn't make out what the singing was; it was sometimes shrill, sometimes hoarse, and sometimes extremely disjointed, as if the singer was doing something else and the singing was just something she hummed unintentionally.

Shabo's steps were somewhat heavy, and a layer of sweat appeared on his forehead.

—In the dead of night in a quiet town, someone is singing on a suspension bridge over a rushing river.

Shabo climbed the steps one by one, and the suspension bridge finally came into view.

The steps are high up, and the moonlight shines on the bridge without obstruction. The mountain mist is heavy, and it mixes with the moonlight, making the scene appear hazy and indistinct, with the center of the bridge seemingly shrouded in a layer of mist.

Amidst the smoke, a woman dressed in white stood sideways.

The woman's long hair cascaded down, falling over her white dress, making the white appear even more eerily white. She stood motionless on the bridge, seemingly holding something in her arms, and a soft song drifted from the direction she stood. The song was less a singing and more a gentle narration.

Shabo steeled himself and stepped onto the suspension bridge. The bridge's tremors startled the woman; she glanced at this end of the bridge, then turned back, and the singing stopped abruptly.

The night was not actually quiet. Besides the sound of water, there were the mournful cries of night birds on the high mountains on both sides of the river, the rustling sound of the mountain wind blowing through the treetops like silkworms eating mulberry leaves, and even more so, the chirping of various small insects hidden in the mountains and forests.

There was no human voice.

Shabo walked slowly, seemingly trying to steady his steps. The suspension bridge swayed slightly in the night breeze. When Shabo had reached about a third of the way across, a mountain wind blew, making his legs feel weak and his heart pound. He looked down at the water below, where it splashed up many bubbles, swirling and flowing forward in white spray. The bridge was over ten feet high, and a thought suddenly flashed through Shabo's mind: if he were to fall off this bridge, he would truly disappear from this world.

By this time, Shabo was very close to the woman in white with long hair. He became even more careful, trying not to disturb her as he passed behind her.

But the woman suddenly moved, and in one motion, she moved to stand in front of Shabo.

Shabo was startled, his whole body suddenly convulsed, and he felt some power rushing straight to the top of his head.

In the moonlight, he saw a pale, ashen face.

The woman was quite pretty, but her face was almost transparent, devoid of any color. Her brows were furrowed, and two streams of tears were constantly flowing from her eyes. Shabo then understood; the singing he had just heard was actually this woman crying.

The woman faced Shabo, and sobs escaped from her tightly closed mouth. The weeping surrounded Shabo, sending shivers down his spine. His legs trembled slightly, and all he wanted was to cross the bridge as quickly as possible and get as far away from this woman as possible.

But the woman was standing in a position that blocked his way.

"You're back!" the woman suddenly said. "It's good that you're back. Come and see our son."

As the woman spoke, she took a step forward, and Shabo instinctively stepped back, only then realizing that the woman was holding a baby in her arms.

"Don't you want to see our son? I've been waiting for you to come back with him, why are you afraid?" The woman cried even harder, "I've finally found our son, I've found him."

Shabo's scalp tingled, and his palms and soles were drenched in sweat. Facing the woman, he desperately wanted to turn and run. But something about her seemed to draw him in; he slowly backed away, unable to turn, unable to leave.

The woman lunged forward, grabbing Shabo's arm with one hand, her voice filled with despair.

“This is our son. Take a look, even just one glance.”

Shabo struggled, but couldn't break free from the woman's grasp. Then, his gaze unconsciously fell on the child in the woman's arms. In that instant, his whole body stiffened, his blood rushed to his head, and his mind went blank, filled only with terror.

The baby in the swaddling clothes was just a rag doll. When the woman grabbed Shabo's arm, the cotton cloth covering the doll loosened, and in the moonlight, the doll's belly was cut open, with some cotton wadding falling out and covered in bloodstains, as if the baby had just been disemboweled.

Forced by fear, Shabo struggled and threw the woman off balance.

Shabo ran forward with all his might, and the bridge began to shake violently. Shabo didn't care about that anymore; he ran to the other side in one breath. He was panting, and as he descended the steps, he subconsciously looked back.

The woman was still slumped in the middle of the bridge, looking even more forlorn in the moonlight. Her song drifted over again, plaintive and sorrowful. That wasn't singing; it was her weeping, Shabo thought. His fear subsided considerably. Shabo was filled with doubt, but he ultimately lacked the courage to turn back and hurried down the steps.

The once-silent Sleeping Valley made Shabo realize that it was anything but tranquil.

"You must have run into that crazy woman," Jiang Nan said with a smile, though there was a hint of sullenness in it.

Shabo said with lingering fear, "Who is that crazy woman? Why doesn't anyone do anything about her? She was standing in the middle of the bridge holding a blood-stained doll. Luckily, I'm brave enough to be a little braver. If I were even slightly smaller, I would have been scared off the bridge." He sighed and then said with gratitude, "I'm lucky to have survived today."

"That crazy woman was quite pitiful. Three years ago, right after she gave birth, her husband went out to work. She was left alone at home with the child. But one evening three months later, she put the baby in a basket and went out to the river to wash clothes. When she came back, the baby was gone. At first, she searched house to house in the town, and then she ran all over the mountains and fields. During that time, almost everyone in the town heard her calling for her son in the middle of the night. She searched like this for a month, but in the end, she still couldn't find him. A perfectly healthy person went crazy from worry."

Shabo looked at him with sympathy: "How old was her child when she went missing?"

"How old can a baby still in a cradle be? Maybe six or seven months old."

"A six- or seven-month-old baby wouldn't just disappear on its own, and the town didn't investigate the matter afterward?"

"Why wasn't it investigated? When the crazy woman was searching for her son everywhere, the townspeople mobilized to help her search. They practically turned the town upside down. The town is so small, if someone stole her son, wouldn't no one know? Besides, what use would someone have for her son if he was perfectly fine? So in the end, this matter could only be left unresolved."

Shabo thought of Xianglin's Wife from Lu Xun's works—the same fate, but different people.

"What's even more pitiful is that when the madwoman's husband returned and found their son missing, he flew into a rage, beat her severely, and kicked her out of the house. She didn't want to leave, but if she went back, she knew she would be beaten by her husband again. So she started looking for her son again, telling everyone she met that she could go home once she found him."

"So how has she managed all these years?"

"She's like a ghost from Sleeping Valley, wandering around year after year. When she's hungry, she just barges into any house, and people, out of pity, give her some food. At night, she sleeps under the eaves of houses on the street. Later, an old lady, taking pity on her plight, gave her a spare room in her house, and that's when she finally had a home. In the last two years, her madness hasn't gotten much worse; she's pretty much like a normal person most of the time, but she often runs around at night with a rag doll, which has terrified many tourists."

Jiangnan smiled helplessly: "Actually, once you know about the crazy woman, you won't find her scary anymore."

Shabo remarked, "That crazy woman is rather pitiful."