Daomu Biji: Restart

Jin Xingsan was confused by my act of holding the cigarette in front of his mouth, so I quickly flipped it between my fingers and held it up, turning it into a friendly gesture of passing a cigarette over.

Thinking I was softening up, he took the cigarette and said to me, "Let's think of another way."

The bee man had never appeared in their team before. It wasn’t that Xiao Hua's measures were effective, but that the bee man had already mixed in among them long ago.

Didn't Xiao Hua consider this possibility? It was impossible that he didn't. Not even Wang Meng would make such a mistake, so what was Xiao Hua thinking?

Jin Xingsan looked at me attentively, but in my eyes, “it” was no longer a person. I didn’t know what this thing was, but it definitely wasn’t a person.

"Let’s think of another way."

It didn't actually say this sentence at all since it was really just making those “papapa” sounds, but why did it sound like a completely logical conversation? There could only be one possibility—I was bewitched by this thing and my own brain was making up this dialogue between the two of us. It was my brain that was listening to his papapa sounds and rationalizing them as a human voice.

I was actually talking to myself.

So what did this thing look like? Was it really different from what it looked like now?

Whatever the case, the truth was that there was actually a strange monster in front of me, which was completely different from a human being. It could only make those papapapapa sounds with its mouth, but I had called it a comrade and couldn’t detect anything at all.

I looked at the people behind Jin Xingsan and broke out in a cold sweat once more. Based on their terrified expressions, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they were seeing something different than what I was seeing. Maybe they could actually see the monster and that was why they were so scared?

So, had they seen a monster talking to me this whole time?

There was indeed a certain expectation in their eyes, but I didn’t know what they were expecting. Were they hoping that I would see through it all? But why didn't they warn me about what was going on?

My thoughts were racing and all kinds of ideas flashed through my head like a revolving lantern, but my mind couldn’t sort them out at all.

It was understandable for ordinary people to be intimidated for whatever reason, but Xiao Hua wouldn’t. So why didn't he give me a hint regarding this matter when we first met up? Was he being manipulated? He had designed the perfect plan, so didn't he check it before it was carried out?

If he did check it but deliberately failed to reveal the flaw, did that mean that he had to accompany the bee man and continue the act? But why?

Could it be—Black Glasses was in Jin Xingsan’s hands?

I sighed again as I realized that it was absolutely possible. Just now, Xiao Hua didn't even talk to me about Black Glasses in order to avoid suspicion.

This is really troublesome. I can't even act rashly.

At this time, various scenarios started popping into my head. Was there something around my neck that I couldn’t see, which would kill me as soon as I was warned? Or was there something in all of them that was connected to this bee man, and once they warned me, they’d all die?

I needed to see the truth; otherwise, I couldn’t do anything. I also needed to know the whole story or I wouldn’t be able to help Xiao Hua.

Fatty and I looked at each other. Fatty didn't know what to do next, but when I looked at his expression, I knew that he must have felt that the atmosphere was wrong even though he couldn't quite figure it out.

This was something that only I could handle.

I subtly made a few small gestures, telling Fatty that Jin Xingsan wasn’t human. Unfortunately, this was the extent of the information that could be relayed using these gestures.

Then I stared at Jin Xingsan and asked myself, what should I do to find out how you’re affecting my brain? Is it visual or auditory?

At this time, I suddenly remembered something.

After I came here, I started to forget that I had been able to see things out of the corner of my eye before. And it was only in this moment that I suddenly remembered that I could use my peripheral vision to see things.

Although there was no logic to it, I suddenly felt that I should try it here.

I looked at Fatty's backpack, which had the bronze piece in it, and wondered if this flash of inspiration was another kind of heavenly gift.

Then I took a deep breath and glanced at Jin Xingsan slowly out of the corner of my eye.

In those few seconds, even people like me had a faster heartbeat. Slowly, Jin Xingsan’s fuzzy outline began to appear, and when I looked at it, my brain buzzed.

First of all, compared to what I was seeing just now, the light here was particularly dim when using my peripheral vision. I need to emphasize that it was very dim.

It was already very dark on the cliff to begin with, but the light in the peripheral vision world was much weaker. The oppressive feeling of blackness was extremely strong, but it was basically in an invisible state.

In my hazy peripheral vision, I saw Jin Xingsan sitting in a strange position. He had a very long face that had definitely grown out of the range a normal person’s face would. In fact, it looked exactly like Jin Wantang’s corpse had when I examined it earlier. With his skull grown to such an extreme length, Jin Xingsan’s face was distorted into a monster-like appearance and his eyes ended up very close to his forehead, which was extremely strange.

This was a corpse that had undergone a transformation, just like Jin Wantang. Even the eyes had become very slender because of the way the skull had elongated.

"Little Master Three, what's wrong with you? Why aren’t you saying anything?" He probably asked me this because my expression was very strange.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the skin on his chin was pulled too tight to open his mouth properly, so he could only make that “papapapapa” sound. It appeared to be some kind of vibration, but all I was hearing was human words.

I shifted my peripheral vision to the people behind him and saw that they were all huddled in the misty darkness. I didn’t know what they were doing, but I saw one of them make three simple gestures with his hands.

It was a bit like someone’s fingers twitching involuntarily when they were nervous, but I immediately recognized that it was a Shigou Diao gesture. That meant that there were Shigou Diao members in the team.

I used my hands to carefully mimic that gesture and saw the other party make a very subtle movement telling me to look above.

I faced Jin Xingsan head-on and said to him, "Let’s take a break first. After a while, we’ll divide into two teams. Those who are willing to catch the bee man will go with me and Fatty."

"Little Master Three, it's not appropriate to act separately. Being unreasonable like this is going to drive a wedge between the team."

Pretending that my neck hurt, I impatiently turned my head and used my peripheral vision to look at the area above our heads.

With my peripheral vision, I actually discovered that I could see the top of the cliff. As it turned out, our campsite was actually more than ten meters below the top of the mountain.

In fact, we were very close to the top instead of halfway up like I had originally thought. But when I looked at it straight on, there was a hopeless void above my head, which seemed endless.

At the same time, I saw a bronze censer⁽¹⁾ hanging at the top of the cliff in the extremely dim light. There were several rusty bronze chains hanging on the censer, which looked extremely old. Based on the thousands of layers of rust on it, I figured it was made before the Zhanhan period.⁽²⁾

This thing was hung here three thousand years ago.

At the top of the cave above the bronze censer were many depressions, which were filled with strange corpses that looked just like Jin Xingsan. There was layer upon layer of them, which really made them look like bees in a beehive. But these bodies were all shriveled up like mummies, indicating that they were just as old as the censer. I didn’t know why they hadn’t fallen down, but I assumed there were many hooks on the rocks above that kept them suspended up there.

It suddenly dawned on me that this was a corpse barrier. Not only could the bee man make us feel that it was human, but it also made us feel that this place was dark.

These corpses above had affected our minds and made us think that the area above us was empty whenever we looked up.

I looked down at the Shigou Diao guy again and saw him secretly make another gesture. I didn't quite understand it, but I knew that there was something strange in that censer, which was why they couldn't make a move.

****

TN Notes:

(1) Pinyin is luding (炉鼎). It’s a tripod stove/furnace ancient Chinese alchemists used so I thought censer was a better fit since the author later refers to it as such. Pics can be found here.

(2) I kept the pinyin since it’s apparently an abbreviation for the time period from the Warring States Period to Emperor Wu’s reign during the Han Dynasty. The characters are “战汉” and can mean something like “War of the Han” I think.