Chapter 105 Yin Peach Blossom (35) "But you deserve better."...
When Xie Tan woke up again, it was already...it was still dark.
The windows were closed, yet the room was completely odorless. He lay in bed, covered with a blanket, his temperature normal, in good condition… almost too good to be true, one could say he felt refreshed and invigorated.
As a typical representative of low-energy individuals, even in daily life where pheromone interference is minimal, he maintains a "tired" life tone. Now, however, it's as if his decade-long chronic diarrhea has been swept away, leaving him feeling light and somewhat lightheaded.
He touched the ends of his hair; they were dry. He felt clean and refreshed, and then he fell into a daze.
Last night... well, first of all, was it last night? Anyway, when he woke up last time, did his body temperature rise again?
Then what?
Judging from his current state, he probably took the opportunity to give himself another injection of inhibitors when he woke up.
Xie Tan took out the remaining inhibitors, just in case. He carried four vials with him... how come there were still two left?
Is he useless? Was the fever returning in the middle of the night just a hallucination in his hazy state? Or a dream?
His memory was as if it were shrouded in a fog... fog?
It does seem to be foggy.
He vaguely sensed that something was wrong, recalling some fragmented words. The man in the mist seemed to have said something like "track" or "abandon this place," and before leaving, he said, "Come find me, you know where I am."
Is it a smoke screen?
What is he saying? I can't understand him, and how does he know where He is...?
Xie Tan thought of something, but his attention was drawn to something more important: Xiao Liu.
He felt yesterday that he could move around in a wider range of motion.
Because his connection with Xiao Liu was weakening.
Xiao Liu is his time anchor point in the past; if their connection is severed, it will probably be the end.
Regardless of what nonsense Smoke Mirror is spouting, one thing is true: he is already on the countdown to his departure.
So he felt even more eager to see her.
The door was open, and in the long night, a faint candlelight shone in the dormitory. The sounds of chanting and conversation lingered in the air, creating a solemn atmosphere.
The closer one gets to the front hall, the farther the sound seems to fade away. Gradually, it seems to return to complete silence, even the sounds of meditation disappear.
Under normal moonlight, the white-robed Guanyin should appear as translucent as white jade, gentle and solemn. However, in complete darkness, the white takes on a withered color, as if quietly burning itself to death in a place unseen by anyone.
Those who worship it know nothing of it.
Since night fell, all the temples, Taoist temples, and shrines have been extremely busy, but perhaps because this is a Guanyin temple that grants children, it doesn't concern itself with matters of the sun, moon, and stars. Apart from the initial desperate attempts to find a cure, there are no worshippers now.
Only Xiao Liu, who didn't know what kind of temple this was, stood in front of the Guanyin statue, his hands clasped together, and whispered something.
She didn't say she hoped the night would end, because she had never seen the daytime. She was praying for all the unfortunate people she had met along the way, including the little mongrel.
Finally, she mentioned him, but only said "and Xiao Qi..." and then stopped. She didn't know if the list of those to be prayed for ended with him, or if there was something left unsaid, she thought to herself.
After she finished speaking and stared blankly at the statue, Xie Tan came out and stood beside her.
As soon as Xiao Liu saw him, her attention was completely drawn to him. She touched his hand and looked at his expression: "Are you still feeling unwell?"
Xie Tan crouched down so she could touch his forehead and check on him personally: "He's all better now."
Xiao Liu touched it several times before finally feeling relieved, but her worry still lingered: "Is it because you're too tired? Is that why you're sick?"
Xie Tan noticed her self-blame and shook his head: "It's an old ailment I've had since birth, nothing serious."
Xiao Liu probably didn't believe it; she seemed even more guilty.
Xie Tan paused, then gently turned her little head back.
Instead of taking on inexplicable responsibilities from him, it's better to stare blankly at the idol.
He stood up and looked up at Guanyin.
“It’s not as good outside as it seems, is it?” he said.
"But being able to get out is the best thing for me."
"I know."
"I saw, heard, and felt so many things I'd never seen before..." Xiao Liu said softly, "Really, it was wonderful."
"But you deserve better."
Xiao Liu was taken aback and looked at Xie Tan again. He had already withdrawn his gaze from the Guanyin statue and was now looking down at her. His eyes, like the Guanyin statue, were now in a state of decay, dark and unfathomable, making it impossible to guess his thoughts.
Like a bottomless pool, but Xiao Liu felt that her image was clearly reflected in that calm color.
Xie Tan was serious. It wasn't that clear skies suited her better, but rather that sunshine, rain, snow, and the changing seasons suited her better. She was always growing and shouldn't be trapped in the prison of eternal night.
"It's still a little short..." Xie Tan muttered to himself, recalling what the Smoke Mirror had said.
There is no such thing as perfection in the world; if you want to achieve something, you must give up something in return.
However, Xiao Liu said, "Whatever is missing will be made up for in other places. Isn't that how everything turns? Meeting you makes up for those shortcomings."
Footsteps sounded from behind the hall; the monks were coming this way. Xie Tan remembered Master Yun Song's "hallucination," smoothed Xiao Liu's stray hair, and said softly, "Me too, so, let's go?"
"Um!"
They got back into the car, this time their destination was Art Harbor.
While others were unaware, Xie Tan knew perfectly well that the sky was not dark, but rather a pitch-black sun.
The Smoke Mirror is both creator and destroyer, both beginning and end... Everything began with its birth, and naturally it should end with its fall.
After being shrouded in the fog last night, he had a vague intuition that he should go and check the place where he had fallen.
He comes from the future; perhaps he knows where he is.
By this time, had Pan Ling already become famous in Fushui Town? And what about the place closest to Fushui Town that he had never been to, the still undeveloped "End of the Afterglow"?
On the way, Xie Tan finally finished telling Xiao Liu the rest of Alice's story.
"Ah, then it can't be considered a really good school," the fake turtle said with a sigh of relief. "The last thing on our school's timetable is electives: French, music, and laundry."
“‘Actually, you live at the bottom of the sea, so you don’t really need to learn this,’ Alice said.”
“‘I can’t afford that,’ the fake tortoise sighed. ‘I only take the regular courses.’”
“What are the regular courses?” Alice asked.
"'We'll start with reeling and writhing,' the fake tortoise replied, 'and then we'll learn arithmetic: ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision.'"[1]
The sixth-grade student was still learning to write Chinese characters and couldn't understand English at all. She asked in bewilderment, "Is this a spell?"
“The fake tortoise meant ‘reading and writing,’ but he misspoke, saying the similar-sounding ‘twisting and entanglement,’” Xie Tan explained. “The rest was the same; he meant ‘addition, subtraction, multification and division,’ but he said ‘ambition, amusement, uglification, and mockery’ instead…”
At this point, Xie Tan paused, recalling the image of the cult leader in the Wonderland blind box, which was a fake turtle. The forum speculated that the Sword God was using the riddle of the fake turtle to hint at the cult leader's identity.
Then Xiao Liu said thoughtfully, "These strange words sound like something someone I know would say..."
Xie Tan: "Who?"
He tried to keep his tone casual, as if he were just responding to Xiao Liu's words.
Xiao Liu hesitated, it was just a fleeting feeling: "He used to live next door to me, and he was next to me in the initial order of sacrifices. He was one of the last batch of sacrifices."
There was a pause at this point.
Xie Tan quickly thought of someone—the person he had seen from the fog in the Black Goat Gathering Ground, who was slightly higher than Xiao Liu and had repeatedly tried to escape with Xiao Liu from there.
So... the cult leader was actually also from the Black Goat, and was another sacrifice?
Xie Tan learned through the fog that this last batch of offerings had no names, and even if they had once had names, they had been stripped away and were only referred to by the order of the offerings.
There were eighteen people in total, and Xiao Liu was the sixth in line. When the order was initially arranged, his number was earlier, but his compatibility with the smoke mirror was the lowest, so he was placed last.
"They said... I don't know if it's true or not, that he and I share the same blood, maybe so. I've never met my parents, but he probably has, but... we're the same." He was a "useless" person who was abandoned because of his lack of talent.
Xie Tan thought to himself, "We share the same blood, so he's Xiao Liu's older brother by blood?"
The number next to Xiao Liu is observation five.
"Actually, it's not the same. He was misdiagnosed, not a useless person at all. He's the one among us who's most compatible with the smoke mirror. Among our group, he's the only one who can be considered 'the image of a god,'" Xiao Liu said. "So, he was supposed to be the first to be sacrificed, but I heard that he's too talented in the power of words, and a senior member of our clan who was traveling abroad took a liking to him and took him as his apprentice. That senior seems to be good at..."
Before she could finish speaking, she froze, recalling the last words of the tribesman before she left Black Goat, and the fortune teller who brought the "doomsday" prophecy.
If Xie Tan confirmed it, then it must be true.
In the daily blind box, Qi Shiheng said that among the local residents of the shimmering scenic area, there was no wizard who could make such a pronouncement with just one word, so he borrowed this reputation, but that was in his future storyline.
This person does exist in other "parallel worlds," and he is even born from the Black Goat.
She arrived with an ominous prophecy. Judging from the way the cult leader later revealed his lips, perhaps she did value his ability to use words, but that seemed more like a side effect.
It's more likely that they believed he was the one who awakened the Smoke Mirror, so the wizard who foresaw the disaster took him away.
But it wasn't him; it was the least likely sixth child.
The fake turtle, who escaped the bad school by a twist of fate, is finally free to use everything he has learned to get revenge on his origins.
So Xie Tan first had the monster driver stop near the shimmering water. This area hadn't been developed into a tourist attraction yet; it was mostly towns and villages clustered along the coast.
Although he didn't go with the group to do the divination, he overheard them discussing the address and successfully found the wizard's old house hidden in the woods.
Upon reaching the door, the two exchanged a knowing glance.
The smell of blood.
Pushing open the door, the wizard lay behind the hanging curtains, the divination bone fragments of the solar calendar scattered on the floor, their patterns painted with her blood.
She died.
The area where the lips should have been is hollowed out.
-----------------------
Author's Note: [1] Still from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
