Chapter 148 Who Spreads the Way (19) What is its benefit, and why is Gu Tu here...?
Humans are an insatiable animal.
When I had no money, all I could think about every day when I closed my eyes was making money.
Once their basic survival needs are met, they start to crave status and no longer want to live a life where they are at the beck and call of others. They are willing to sell their conscience to climb the social ladder.
But now, with wealth that the people of the Lower City could only dream of in their entire lives, and with A-level superpowered sheriffs clearing the way for her every move, Gu Tu watched as her nominal fiancé, "Bian Shaoyan," rushed into the library without looking back, her expression twisting uncontrollably for a moment.
Even though she knew she wasn't a good person, Gu Tu was still startled by her own greed.
When we accept the gifts of fate, aren't we already prepared to sacrifice some things?
She had long known that beneath Bian Shaoyan's arrogant, conceited, and generous exterior lay a stingy, greedy beast eager to extract profits a hundredfold. Tearing away the impeccable disguise, she found a rotting stench emanating from his chest.
Gu Tu never expected to find love in Bian Shaoyan.
Therefore, after being abandoned again, she was somewhat confused about where her emotions came from.
Has she been pretending for so long that she's even fooled herself? Or... in this seemingly generous deal, has she unknowingly lost more than she gained?
"Miss Gu, don't worry, I will take you away from here."
Shi Liuyi staggered to his feet, watching Bian Shaoyan leave without looking back. He frowned deeply, but fearing to upset Gu Tu, he didn't say anything. He observed his surroundings, but after a long while, he received no response. He turned back in surprise, his heart skipping a beat.
Gu Tu was looking at him with a strange expression.
"Miss Gu?"
Shi Liuyi softened his voice. The girl in front of him was wearing a nightgown that was already wrinkled beyond recognition, and her silky black hair was also disheveled and draped over her body. Even without direct combat, her face, arms, and exposed skin were inevitably stained with dirt and blood.
However, Shi Liuyi felt that Gu Tu at this moment possessed a quality that he had never seen in the Gu Tu who was the center of attention in the banquet hall. As a result, when those eyes looked over, there was no trace of embarrassment. In fact, the rare coldness of her face made people afraid to look directly at her.
"I've seen your file. You're from the Lower City and were lucky enough to awaken a special A-level trait, which is why you have your current position and salary. Why do you support Christina?"
"ah?"
Shi Liuyi's expression turned strange for a moment, as if he hadn't expected to hear such a question from Gu Tu, who seemed detached from worldly affairs.
Indeed, Christina Fisher has maintained her position as Sheriff for so many years with her strong, unreasonable sense of justice and her extremely uncooperative attitude.
But the stronger she became and the more assertive she was, the more enemies she made. Unable to defeat her, her enemies turned their full firepower towards Christina's supporters.
If it weren't for his special abilities, Shi Liuyi would have died countless times in high-risk missions. Even though he has escaped death countless times thanks to [Overload Refraction], Shi Liuyi's position in the Public Security Bureau remains awkward.
Over the years, Gu Tu wasn't the first person to ask this question. Shi Liuyi couldn't figure out what this young lady was thinking, so he joked, "It's just because I'm from the Lower City that I have to support Director Fisher. The director is cracking down on the Lower City, and we are all 'beneficiaries.' If I were Quark's successor, I might be even more heartless than Bian Shaoyan."
After finishing his sentence, Shi Liuyi shrugged as if to make it sound easy, but clearly, his poor sense of humor failed to impress the young lady from the Upper City. Gu Tu stared at him with an unusual look in her eyes, her expression like that of a child discovering a moth fluttering its wings in the air for the first time.
"...You should run away."
Gu Tu's lips moved, but Shi Liuyi didn't hear her clearly at first. When the girl repeated herself, a look of surprise flashed in his eyes, and he chuckled, "What are you saying? I would never leave you here alone."
What benefits can you gain now?
Shi Liuyi paused for a moment before remembering the nonsense about vested interests he had just spouted. He smirked and said, "How can there be no benefit? If we rescue you, Quark and Lange won't let me suffer any losses. They'll just give me some bonuses or something. Maybe I won't have to put up with idiots for the rest of my life. That's enough reason to risk my life."
"not enough."
Gu Tu gave him a deep look: "I also come from the lower city. This isn't enough to buy my life."
"Young Miss, you're so greedy."
Shi Liuyi chuckled. The girl opposite him turned her head away without saying a word, as if her little bit of goodwill had been exhausted by his ungratefulness, and she stopped trying to persuade him in vain.
"Over here!"
Danger warnings blared in his ears. Shi Liuyi's face tightened. He quickly looked around, hastily identified the only relatively safe small building, and pulled Gu Tu over there.
"laugh--"
This time, it wasn't a deafening explosion. Instead, black rain began to fall without warning above the open space, and filthy liquid flowed onto the ground, leaving corrosive marks amidst the hazy purple-blue smoke. At first, they were dots, but they quickly turned into lines and then rapidly developed into large craters.
The seemingly light rain, which fell gently for a few minutes, actually lowered the ground by three inches.
Before the feeling of relief could even rise, Shi Liuyi's heart tightened again.
The strange black rain didn't fall here, but water flows downhill, and in just a few blinks, after corroding everything it could reach, the murky liquid surged towards the building in droves, almost like a filthy river.
"Go now!"
Shi Liuyi's facial muscles twitched violently, as if the stench of decay was already filling his nostrils. He pushed open the security gate, which was practically useless, and pulled Gu Tu upstairs, to the second floor... the third floor, the fourth floor...
Despite having the robust physique of an A-level ability user, this distance would have been nothing before. However, Shi Liuyi didn't know if it was because his injuries were too severe or because the sour and rotten smell emanating from the black water was strange. Even though he hadn't directly come into contact with the black rain, his limbs still felt weak, and he felt a dull pain in the back of his head.
So much so that it took Shi Liuyi quite a bit of effort to drag Gu Tu up the six-story building.
"Huff, huff..."
Seeing that the black rain wouldn't spread anytime soon, Shi Liuyi's fingers trembled slightly as he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and looked around at the strange building layout that resembled cubicles.
The black rain hasn't spread yet, but we can't let our guard down. We need to find a safe base—the buildings here are so illogical. They look sturdy from the outside, but the doors inside are all broken and dilapidated. Would anyone really want to live in a room like this?
Shi Liuyi's brow twitched violently. He looked left and right, and all the old wooden doors were so easy to open that they were almost indistinguishable. After picking and choosing, he found only one door that was somewhat intact. He glanced at the "606" on the doorplate and prepared to enter.
"In a crisis-ridden environment, the only safe zone is often the most dangerous place."
"……I know."
Shi Liuyi paused, her hand resting on the door. Without turning around, she said, "But you need a safe place."
Gu Tu blinked, the silver light in her eyes easily overpowering her struggle, and raised her hand to brace against Shi Liuyi's back, "...I won't say sorry."
"It's okay, the greater the reward, the greater the risk..."
Shi Liuyi suddenly stopped, opened his mouth, but could no longer make a sound. The ordinary wooden door creaked open, and thousands of golden rays poured out, filling every gap in the space. For a moment, what he saw before him was pure, rich, and dazzling gold that could not even squeeze in a groan.
His body lost all sensation when the golden light shone, but strangely enough, Shi Liuyi could still feel everything about him melting into the golden light, first his arms, then his legs, hands, and eyes. Everything that existed in the world vanished into nothingness.
Before shock, resentment, and anger could even fully surface, a sense of relief and emptiness swept over his mind. The realization that had been so overwhelming for so long had never been so clear: it was over.
All joys and sorrows are condensed in an instant; death, or rather, the freezing and deepening of time, is like a mosquito curled up in amber, waiting for paleontologists to pick it up again with great joy millions of years later.
The next instant, the remaining primitive human instincts twitched unwillingly, and the last sound Shi Liuyi left in the world was a wild, mournful howl:
"Ouch—!!!"
Gu Tu remained unmoved.
Although the silver light rolling in her eyes was only a tiny speck, its brightness was strangely comparable to the golden light filling the room. With Shi Liuyi's body blocking the way, that speck of silver light could unabashedly peer into the depths of the golden light.
The golden light trembled several times as if enraged, but as Shi Liuyi's body completely disappeared, the golden light also dimmed, like a candle that had burned to its end, only able to express its dissatisfaction with increasingly trembling light.
"Clatter".
The human body vanished completely, the golden light reluctantly receded, and a light rain suddenly began to fall where a human had stood.
Golden raindrops rolled and gathered on the ground, eventually coalescing into a palm-sized blank piece of amber after the rain stopped.
Gu Tu then made a move, taking a few steps forward and picking up the piece of amber that emitted a faint glow. The amber was orange-bright, and its smooth surface reflected the interior of the strange building, but Gu Tu's face was nowhere to be seen.
The silver light in Gu Tu's eyes flickered, as if she were laughing. She lifted the amber with one hand and pressed the other hand on it, then exerted force inward with both hands. "Pfft!" The seemingly hard solid was compressed into a thin cuboid about the width of a finger.
A pale, white finger touched the center of the cuboid, and with a flash of silver light, the object in the palm transformed into a book of poems with yellowed pages, which turned rustlingly without any wind.
"He said: In the beginning of time, who passed on the Dao?"
Before the top and bottom were formed, how could we investigate them?
...
Where do the sun and moon belong? Where are the stars arranged?
It originated from Tanggu, and was second only to Mengsi.
From dawn to dusk, how many miles did they travel?
What virtue does the moonlight possess, that it dies and is reborn?
What benefit does it bring, that the rabbit is in its belly?
I ask the heavens, in the most ancient times, who preached the way to the world? Before heaven and earth were formed, what evidence was used to distinguish between them?
Sun and moon, where do they belong, and how are they placed? And how are the stars arranged?
Sun, you set out from Tanggu every day and rest by the Mengshui River; from dawn till dusk, how far have you truly traveled?
Moon, what virtue do you possess that allows you to be resurrected? What benefit does it bring you, with a toad living inside your belly?
What are those dark spots on the moon? Could it be that there's a rabbit hiding inside?
After reciting the beginning of the long poem, Gu Tu had just reached the doorway of the room. She looked down at the amber scroll in her hand, a strange smile appearing on her face, and then, drawing out the last two lines, recited them again:
"What virtue does the moonlight possess, that it dies and is reborn?"
What benefit does it bring, that the rabbit is in its belly?
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Author's Note: ——————
The poem at the end of the chapter is from Qu Yuan's "Heavenly Questions." The translation references ancient Chinese poetry websites and Coco Poetry, and is entirely subjective and for entertainment purposes only.
I originally wanted to post the entire beginning, but it's a bit too long with the translation. I highly recommend you all read it yourselves; it's an incredibly dreamy poem!
The event was originally called "Four-Person Dormitory," but that was too straightforward. Changing it to "Gu Tu in the Belly" would be a spoiler, so after much thought, I decided on "Who Will Pass on the Dao," which seems quite fitting. [rainbow fart]
Speaking of which, I'd like to mention that some people in the comments section have mentioned the name Gu Tu. It does indeed have the connotation of dodder, but the inspiration comes more from the phrase "Gu Tu in the belly," which is related to the moon. Also, the poem "Heavenly Questions" perfectly matches the atmosphere this piece aims to convey.
This story has already reached 500,000 words, longer than I imagined, and there have been many situations that exceeded my writing ability and expectations. But I'm still very happy to be able to bring out the little foreshadowings I planted before the beginning [three-colored cat emoji][three-colored cat emoji][three-colored cat emoji]. Thank you so much to everyone who has read this far (although there aren't many left haha). Without you all, I wouldn't have been able to persevere this far [hugs][hugs][hugs]. There are a few chapters left to wrap up this volume, and the final volume shouldn't be too long. I will try my best to update, and I hope to finish it soon ww
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