Daomu Biji: Restart

With all this noise, it was really difficult for me to call Xiao Hua.

The radio finally fell into a brief silence after the woman’s last words fell, so I called Xiao Hua’s name again.

There was no response, but Urmei's voice rang out again, "Jin Xingsan, why aren’t you responding? What are you doing?"

"Did you not reply at that time?" I asked Jin Xingsan.

"I did," Jin Xingsan said. "But she couldn’t hear me over there. It seemed as if my transmitter signal was being blocked."

Fatty exhaled a smoke ring and began shouting into the darkness, "Saipan! Where are you?"⁽¹⁾

I held him down. At this time, the radio in my hand came on and the other party said another sentence, "Jin Xingsan, stop being so petty and answer me." After a pause, I heard a strange noise coming from the background on the other person’s end.

That noise was similar to the sound bugs made when they opened and closed their mouths.

"Papapapapapapapa."

Urmei must not have loosened her grip on the transmit button, so we could all hear the sounds. Then, she said a sentence which was obviously addressed to someone in her team, "Slow down. It's not that I don't believe you, it’s just obvious that you’ve snuck into the team. We didn’t receive any notification of this, so I definitely want to verify that this is Jin Xingsan’s doing. But either way, I definitely don't agree with it."

Then, there came that “papapapapapa” sound again.

"I drew a sketch that day and you weren’t in it,” Urmei’s voice said again. “You definitely weren’t there that day and didn't join the team at that time. Don't try to pull one over on me."

Then, there was another series of those “papapapapa” sounds.

Fatty and I looked at each other, and Fatty asked, "Is this papapapa noise a taunt or something?"

I shook my head. I couldn't hear anyone talking to Urmei in the background, but the papapapapa sound was very clear.

But whatever was making the papapapa sound didn’t seem like it was close to Urmei, so it was probably a little distance away.

If the radio could pick up the papapapa sound at a distance, then we should also be able to hear the voice of the person talking to Urmei.

But Urmei was the only one talking on the radio, which was very strange.

Plus, what was that papapapa sound we kept hearing?

Jin Xingsan suddenly spoke up at this time, "We’ve listened to it many times, so you should know that the next bit of dialogue is very unpleasant. You should mentally prepare yourself. But it's useless to listen to it, so if you’re not all that curious, you'd better not listen."

I ignored him and continued listening, only to hear Urmei continue talking, "It's really dark here. If you jump from here, you’ll keep falling forever without reaching the bottom. It’s a bit like floating. I don't know what’s going on, but I really want to float in this blackness."

Then came a series of slower papapapa sounds.

"Suspend myself?” Urmei continued, “Others will treat me like an idiot."

There was another series of papapapa sounds.

"Stop messing with me,” Urmei said. “When Jin Xingsan gets in touch and verifies your identity, you'd better explain when you snuck in and what your purpose is."

The frequency of her words and the papapapa sounds corresponded to each other, as if they were talking.

When I heard this, I turned to Fatty and said, "This papapa sound seems to be answering Urmei's words? Is this the bee man…talking?"

"So this is a conversation?"

I nodded. Based on the frequency of this back-and-forth between both sides, it was definitely a conversation. But the bee man definitely wasn’t human and was making weird sounds. Plus, to make matters even more strange, Urmei could understand it and could even maintain this back-and-forth exchange.

It kind of reminded me of someone with a mental illness.

When you said one thing, they’d hear another. It was a problem where their brain couldn’t translate the sound waves they heard into the correct meanings. But the brain had the ability to forcibly make the information seem logical, so it would compile these pieces of information and make itself think that it was reasonable.

So, no matter what you said, the things the mental patient heard would be something completely different but somehow reasonable to them.

That was why schizophrenia seemed like completely abnormal behavior in the eyes of normal people. But in the eyes of the patients themselves, they were completely normal.

Urmei's performance on the walkie-talkie was exactly like a schizophrenic patient.

I didn't expect this kind of logic and felt my back go cold.

Then, I broke out in a cold sweat as I heard what happened next over the radio.

This strange conversation lasted for four or five more sentences, during which time Urmei's words were suddenly mixed in with the sound of teeth clicking together.

"We won't climb tonight. Jin Xingsan, if you don't reply, we’ll— gegegegegege—test the humidity. I don't think the humidity is—gegegege."

Urmei was obviously in the middle of talking when this sound of teeth clicking together suddenly appeared, but she didn’t seem to notice it.

Pale and tense as I continued to listen, I began to anticipate that things were going in an extremely bizarre direction.

It must have been half an hour later when Urmei called Jin Xingsan again, but this time, it was a regular call.

But when I listened carefully, I found that there were more and more of those teeth clicking sounds interspersed with Urmei's words, while there were fewer and fewer normal words.

And the papapapapa sound was still there. It appeared to have been by her side and occasionally spoke.

This regular call lasted at least a dozen more cycles. Fatty and I listened attentively, but the others had probably already heard it, so they all started to rest. All of their faces were pale, making it obvious that the subsequent development had an impact on them.

The regular call said almost the exact same thing, but the more I listened to it, the more creeped out I felt.

This was because Urmei's normal voice appeared less and less and the sound of teeth clicking together appeared more and more.

By the thirteenth regular call, the sound of teeth clicking together was almost the only thing I could hear when the radio sounded.

Gegegegegege.

Urmei never uttered a complete sentence again. If I were at the scene, I’d probably see her turning on the walkie-talkie and clicking her teeth together, thinking that she was talking.

There were only a few gaps between these “gegege” sounds where other sporadic words could be heard. They sounded similar to the pronunciation of the word “float”, but I didn’t know what she was saying.

In the darkness, the noises sounded extremely strange.

Fatty's cigarette burned his fingers and fell directly into the darkness below.

"Assimilated." Fatty looked at me.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and fell into an indescribable mood.

First of all, after hearing what happened to Urmei, it seemed as if she had been slowly eaten away by something in the darkness here, but she was obviously completely unaware of it.

Secondly, I realized another very serious problem.

****

TN Notes:

(1) It's a TikTok thing. Per Tiffany, the women in these super short videos here and here are frantically yelling and looking for someone named “Saipan”. It just blew up.