Daomu Biji: Restart

I walked over and squatted in front of the Tudigong-like shrine while holding my chin.

You know, there’s a moment when you’re overwhelmed by absolute despair that you suddenly see a glimmer of hope and light. Although it’s just a glimmer, all the logic and rationality in your heart begins to return based on this tiny base point.

In other words, it was safe here. Although this was a cemetery of the Zhang family and smelled strange, it was probably safe right?

Actually, I didn’t dare say it aloud since I didn’t know what the basis for Poker-Face’s determination was. But the anxiety-like convulsions and contractions in my heart faded a little and my hands had finally stopped shaking.

"In other words, this gives off the feeling of a miniature Zhang family’s ancient building," I said. Did these Zhang family members pile their corpses up and put them in the building in order to have a temporary shelter under the great shadow of the heavenly gift? Could these accumulated corpses even resist the heavenly gift?

I never figured out what was hidden at the core of the Zhang family’s ancient building since there were too many things inside of it.

What was the logic behind it? So far, these ideas were just pure speculation.

Poker-Face didn't continue to explain, but at this time, I suddenly thought of something. The food we had prepared before we came in wasn't enough to last that long, so what were we eating for so many days? It wasn’t like there was anything here in this passage.

"Let’s check the supplies," I said to Fatty.

"Didn’t we just check them?"

"My dear friend, did we not just receive a heavenly gift?" I tried to inhale Fatty's second-hand smoke but he wouldn’t let me. He quickly dispersed the smoke, put the cigarette butt in front of the shrine as incense, and then began to count our supplies.

As soon as he was done, he lay there and couldn't get up. There were a few detonators and bullets, but all of the food was gone. Not only did I not see any substitutes like game or wild vegetables, but there wasn’t even enough toilet paper. But the most important thing was that there wasn’t any water. Fatty was like a nouveau riche who suddenly discovered that his home had been emptied by a nanny. He clutched his chest and said, "We’re screwed."

Other than that, everything else was still relatively complete. Even the hand-cranked chargers had developed a patina.⁽¹⁾ It seemed that my heavenly gift persona also had a cautious personality.

I felt my muscles and found that I had lost a lot of weight, but I wasn’t on the brink of collapse. Confused, I couldn’t help but ask myself, our supplies were enough to last for twenty days, so does that mean we just finished them off? Did we wake up from the heavenly gift because we were hungry?

Amazing! How much do I love to eat that I can resist a god’s power?

Fatty and I suddenly looked behind us at the same time to where the bag of mummified hands was.

Fuck, what did this mean? When we came out here last night to chop those hands off, was it because we weren’t respecting the Zhang family ancestors but looking for food?!

"Can those things also be eaten like bear paws? Sure enough, northerners probably lick their hands while they sleep." Fatty looked at Poker-Face, "Are hands with long fingers nutritious?"

After he said that, he walked to the corner and tried to make himself vomit. When I asked him what he was doing, he said that he wanted to see if he had gone crazy under the influence of the heavenly gift and already ate some.

With Fatty, not only had the atmosphere improved a lot, but our judgment of the situation was starting to become clearer. I turned to Poker-Face and said, "Then we can't leave this place for the time being. After leaving here, is it right to assume that we’ll be given the heavenly gift again?"

When Poker-Face nodded, I looked deep into the darkness. To be honest, I was a little confused about where we had come from. Xiao Hua and Black Glasses were probably in a deeper place, but were they awake or being controlled? There were too many things to think about carefully.

Grandpa said that any and all attributes should be attributed to people's motives, but how could we determine the motives of this unknown force?

What exactly did it want?

"The Zhang family finds unexplained areas and explores them. There are so many Zhang family members here, which means that they should have worked hard here for a long time," Poker-Face said faintly. "But they all failed and couldn't leave, so they did this here."

So that's why this area is forbidden. If the Zhang family doesn’t understand it, they’ll just mark it out. And this isn’t the only place. Without a doubt, there are so many secrets hidden beneath the earth.

I took a deep breath, feeling completely free from anxiety at this time. It wasn’t because I was feeling energetic, but because I felt ready to collapse.

I looked at the darkness on both sides, spread the equipment out on the floor, and told myself that the dire straits we were in now were as bad as it got. The only thing that made me feel like I needed to put some serious thought into it was the question of why the three of us didn’t lose our memories. Was it because the heavenly gift was forcibly interrupted, or was it because the force that gave us the heavenly gift had other plans for us?

Just as I was thinking this, Poker-Face turned on his flashlight and started searching through the cracks in the stones. I knew he was looking for that thing that was supposed to be in the shrine, so I also turned on my flashlight and joined him.

"Stop looking," Fatty called out to us.

When we looked back, we saw that the bag we had dumped out before was now standing on the stone behind us. There appeared to be something in it, and this thing seemed to be alive.

"What brand is this bag? If it’s transformed, I want to return it," Fatty said.

****

TN Notes:

(1) Per Tiffany: It means that Wu Xie used the chargers a lot during those 30 days