Daomu Biji: Restart

Without any hesitation, Poker-Face suddenly dropped his hand and instructed us to shoot. Fatty and I fired at the same time, quickly emptying two magazines.

A tongue of flame spewed out of each muzzle as we shot into the gap. If there was something in there, it definitely would've been hit.

When we were in the middle of reloading, Poker-Face raised his hand again. As a result, we didn't continue shooting after we reloaded but just stayed on the alert. He looked into the gap and stood at a stalemate for a long time before he suddenly heard something else and jumped onto a tall rock.

Fatty and I also climbed up and saw a small figure crawling out of a stone crevice in the distance. It had obviously been shot but was moving very quickly to the place where the young man looked like he was meditating.

Fatty lifted his head and shot at it again. He definitely hit it, but that thing stood up and went behind a big rock until it was out of sight.

"As long as it’s a living thing, it definitely won’t live for long," Fatty said.

That thing definitely wasn’t a living thing considering how it didn’t slow down even though it had obviously been hit, but I didn’t know what it was.

One thing I did know, however, was that it was very vengeful. If we hit it, it would definitely cause trouble for us, just like how it was so persistent in killing Jin Wantang.

When I was in Hainan before, I clashed with a monkey on Monkey Island. I still remember the look in that monkey's eyes. After that, it followed me the whole time and suddenly attacked me when I wasn't looking. Later, I got angry and chased it for four hours with a stick, but I ended up getting lectured by the security guards.

I turned to Fatty and Poker-Face and said, "I’ve noticed a little problem here. To be honest, I originally couldn’t remember Qi Yu at all since it was so long ago, but I suddenly remembered just now and then this Qi Yu suddenly appeared. I think the stones here are warning me of something."

"What do you mean?"

"The stones know that Qi Yu is here, hiding somewhere close by, so they warned me. If I had realized it earlier, Jin Wantang wouldn’t have died," I explained to them. "It can't give us the heavenly gift so it’s giving me inspiration."

Fatty looked at the surrounding rocks and squinted at me. "You mean to say that these stones are warning you? But wait, aren’t these stones supposed to be the villain here?"

I was puzzled. Indeed, this was all very confusing.

I had always thought that the heavenly gift was very evil, but if the stones here were warning me of the impending disaster, was my understanding of the heavenly gift too one-sided? Maybe there was actually a good side to this heavenly gift?

I looked at the sky and thought to myself, if there’s anything else you want to warn me about, now is the time to tell me. Any other insights? How about what the hell is going on here? Just give me a hint!

After thinking about it, I said to Fatty, "We’re trapped here and Jin Wantang wasn’t saved. There’s still some food, but we can't wait around here and only take action once the food runs out. If we want to take action, we have to do it now."

I picked up the rope from where it was laying off to one side. When Fatty asked me what I was doing, I said to him, "Little Brother can't receive any more heavenly gifts, so I have no choice but to take some risks. If these stones are really trying to warn me of something, then I want to go to the edge of this area where the signal is strong. I want to see if there can be more exchanges or maybe we can negotiate."

Since the light barely reached the edge of the area, it looked very hazy over there. I would have to walk forward very slowly so that the two of them could pull me back quickly if I carelessly went too far.

Poker-Face looked at me, "The heavenly gift did not warn you."

"But the inspiration just now was so sudden."

I had suddenly remembered Qi Yu and then that thing appeared. Moreover, the whole process was very jumpy as my mind leaped from one thought to another. If it weren’t for something guiding me, I would’ve never connected the doll from that time to Qi Yu.

"Mr. Naïve, don't mistakenly place your bets on the enemy," Fatty said. "If Little Brother said no, then that’s that. If you want to talk about inspiration, then I had a flash of inspiration just now. Maybe the thing inspiring you was this stone here?"

"Which stone?"

"It's this stone here." He pointed to the shrine and continued, "Maybe this thing was warning you. After all, it’s protecting us, so it should be decent."

I looked at the shrine and walked over to it.

When Jin Wantang was dying just now, didn’t it seem like he saw something in this direction? I thought about it and realized that it had been a long time since I had used my peripheral vision to look at things. So, I turned my head and looked at the bronze piece out of the corner of my eye.

****

I've gotten some flak lately that I'm preventing skilled translators from working on DMBJ with my "terrible MTL" (downside of a contact form since everyone that comments is so nice lol). Is that true? I haven't seen any other serious attempts besides like one or two random posts or stuff that's years old. I will totally step aside if someone skilled wanted to take over, but nobody has personally come up and been like "I want to take over, I think I can do better". When I started this last year, I just saw that nobody was working on it for ages and thought an edited MTL could at least get the general idea across (and then the lovely Tiffany and Yvette came along to help with things). If you all know of someone who legit wanted to do all of this, feel free to let me know. I'd love to have my free time back lol. If not, I guess I'll keep trucking with my "terrible MTL" (yes, I'm salty about that phrasing since my shit is at least readable compared to some translated stuff hahaha)