BXBX NOVEL Chapter 39: Wake up for Lao Tzu!
Chapter 39: Wake up for Lao Tzu!
Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-PerpetualMreow, Proofreader-Ghostie
Bei Quan was now in an isolated state, and could only get information through the girl’s memories and five senses.
It was a pity that the girl’s first encounter with such a strange experience couldn’t even be rationalized away with common sense. She’d been terrified out of her mind, sobbing and in tears, and her eyesight was getting increasingly blurry.
Bei Quan could only try to see the situation as clearly as possible with such bad vision.
The villagers around her were laughing, yelling and cheering. Judging by their expressions, Bei Quan could infer that they were doing something very festive.
Bei Quan remembered that on the hotline, “Ayun” once mentioned that he saw the villagers in Xuanmen village holding a ceremony.
——Could ‘this’ be what he was talking about?
Sure enough, soon, deafening cheers rang out in his ears.
The crowd then parted automatically, and several strong-looking young people came out— really reminiscent of Mosesparting the seas.
They were carrying a huge bamboo raft on which many things were stacked.
Bei Quan shared five senses with the girl, who was only around 160 cm tall and had tears in her eyes. As a result, no matter how hard Bei Quan tried, it was impossible for him to see what was placed on the bamboo raft for a while.
The young people stopped by the river and began to throw things on the bamboo raft into the river, one by one, amid the cheers of the villagers.
It took some time before Bei Quan got the opportunity to look around.
When he could finally see, he noticed that there were paper men and horses, made of thin bamboo strips and oil paper, and old cattle, among other offerings.
In the modern days, the burning of paper has been banned in most parts of the city. Younger children hadn’t ever even seen these things used for worship in the past.
These paper men and horses thrown into the river by the villagers were also made with exquisite workmanship and were life-like in appearance. At first glance, they could be mistaken for their living counterparts.
Seeing the paper men in all kinds of burial garments, floating in the water waves—not unlike— floating corpses, almost entirely covering up the river in some parts, the girl couldn’t stand it.
Her feet were soft and shaky, and she had to hold them to stabilize herself, so that she wouldn’t fall to the ground.
The girl’s misfortune continued as an even more shocking event happened before she had time to get over the previous one.
When one of the villagers played a tune, the villagers would begin singing a strange, local folk song.
As everyone sang, they began bringing out big buckets, one by one, and poured all their contents into the river water.
The bucket was full of red and black liquid, which immediately dyed the river water filled with paper people in an ominous and gloomy blood red.
——No, it didn’t just look like blood—that was blood!
Using the girl’s sense of smell, Bei Quan quickly confirmed this.
The blood from an unknown source was dumped into the river smelling exceedingly putrid and disgusting, causing one to feel sick to their stomach.
The poor girl couldn’t help but turn white then green upon smelling the astringent scent of blood until she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She covered her mouth with her hand and tried to resist the desire to vomit. She didn’t know where her strength came from, but she pushed away the villagers who were blocking her one by one and squeezed her way out with difficulty.
When the girl had crossed the human wall, Bei Quan was able to observe, from the corner of her eye, that the villagers were beginning to pass knives to each other.
Men, women, and children alike, all cut their fingers with the blade and let their blood drip into the stenchy river water that had been dyed red and black.
The girl continued running away from the crowd.
She ran like a little frightened animal.
The girl was crying while running in the empty village. She called out for her classmates and teachers intermittently and then began to call for her father and mother. She blindly called for help, but everyone was gathered by the river. She yelled herself hoarse but never got a reply.
Because he was in a state of overwhelming empathy, Bei Quan could feel what the girl was feeling.
He also knew that the girl only wanted to leave this strange and terrible village.
Even if she ran into a barren mountain, it was better than staying in this ghostly place.
However, the girl couldn’t run out of the village even if she ran until her feet were hurting from all the running and her heart was pounding laboriously.
——Of course, she can’t get out.
Bei Quan thought as he endured the burning pain in his chest after running for so long.
——Silly girl, you are in a fragmented space.
At least, the girl’s endless and crazy dash all over the village helped Bei Quan determine that the fragmented space had indeed engulfed the eight teachers and students. The scope basically included the entire village of Xuanmen, and perhaps even the riverbanks along the village side.
Soon, the girl could no longer run any further.
She stumbled forward.
Bei Quan wasn’t sure if it was because she had been crying for too long, but her eyes were swollen from crying, or something else. When he looked at things through the girl’s eyes, no matter how far or close, everything he saw appeared to be covered in an uneven layer of gauze that made his view vague and unclear.
The girl went around the village and ran back to the river.
The villagers surrounding the river had all dispersed, and the blood-red river water that had just been filled with paper sacrifices was all cleared up.
Previously, the girl only wanted to escape from the strange sacrifice, but now that she couldn’t see anyone, she was even more afraid.
She stumbled along the shallows covered with fine pebbles, trying to find someone.
It didn’t matter whether she found students or teachers or those villagers who just made her feel very afraid.
Finally, after an unknown amount of time, she finally saw “others”.
There were five or six children on a shallow river ahead.
The children were about six or seven years old, with pigtails and double ponies tied on top of their heads, wearing brightly colored underwear or shorts, bending over and playing with the water, laughing and playing very hard.
Up until now, the girl’s psychology had nearly collapsed, and there was no “rationality” remaining.
“It’s good to have someone… It’s good to have someone…”
Bei Quan heard the whimpering whisper of “himself” as he walked towards the children, with one foot deep and one foot shallow.
Where the children were playing, the river was very shallow and only reached up to their calves.
Even children could stand safely in place, not to mention an adult.
So she went down the river without hesitation.
“Hey—”
The girl grabbed a child’s shoulder from behind and wheezed out in a crying voice, “You… where are your parents?”
The child turned back at the sound.
The girl saw a pale face.
The face was round and flat, with a pair of eyes, a nose, two bright blushes, and a red grinning mouth— all painted with strokes!
It was the face of a paper man!!!
“Ah ah ah!!!”
The girl screamed.
The next second, many hands grabbed her.
The girl fell uncontrollably and plunged into the water.
She struggled with all her strength, but the water that was hardly deep enough to reach her ankles was suddenly deep enough for her to drown in!
——Help!
A pair of small hands made of bamboo strips pressed on the back of her head.
Water flooded into her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose and filled her throat in an instant.
——Help! Help!
Her hands instinctively stretched forward, scratched, waved and patted desperately, trying to stand up again.
However, such efforts were all in vain.
The little paper people shrieked and laughed loudly, pressing hard on her body and she sank as if several kilograms of weight were placed on her.
The pain of suffocation swallowed up the girl’s consciousness…..
……
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“What’s going on?”
In the abandoned Xuanmen village and dilapidated houses, Wei Fuyuan, who had been staring at Bei Quan, found the abnormality of his boss.
“Why does he look so uncomfortable!?”
Under the light of oil lamps and candles, Wei Fuyuan saw that Bei Quan, who had been lying quietly on the ground and sleeping peacefully and steadily, suddenly frowned, his facial features wrinkled, and his expression reflected pain.
Hearing this, Tian Jia Xin immediately turned his head to look at the incense stick in the incense burner.
When Bei Quan used the soul separation techniques, he used a special type of Chinese eaglewood that helps the soul to find its way back to the body to fix the time duration. Oneself up could burn for about 45 minutes.
Now, more than 30 minutes had passed since he lit the thread incense. There were about two knuckles worth of length left in the three incense sticks, but it shouldn’t have been a problem to support it for more than ten minutes.
From the moment Wei Fuyuan found that Bei Quan’s face was different, the thin green smoke around the top of the incense suddenly doubled in thickness, and a little dark red flame lit up in the incense head, swallowing the remaining incense body at an alarming rate. At the same time, ashes fell, and they heaped up in the incense burner.
“This is very bad!”
Tian Jia Xin’s complexion suddenly changed. Like a carp fish, he jumped up and shouted to Wei Fuyuan, “Quick! Wake him up!”
Without saying anything, Wei Fuyuan rushed to Bei Quan, grabbed his shoulder, and began to shake him hard:
“Bei Quan! Bei Quan!”
He leaned near Bei Quan’s ear and shouted, “Wake up! Get up! Get up!”
And yet, even with Wei Fuyuan’s rough shaking, Bei Quan did not wake.
His eyebrows tightened, his expression twisted, his feet kicked, and his hands clawed aimlessly. He was like a man drowning in the water. He instinctively wanted to grab onto something to push himself out.
But even so, Bei Quan’s eyes were still tightly closed, as if he was living in a nightmare, and he didn’t mean to wake up at all.
The next second, Tian Jia Xin gave a scream, “The incense is broken! The incense is broken!”
Wei Fuyuan looked back at the incense burner, and sure enough, saw that the incense stick on the right was suddenly at the root without warning. Folded in half, the unfinished section plunged into the incense ash with billowing black smoke and went out.
“Fuck!”
Young Master Wei burst into a cold sweat.
Even if he didn’t know what would happen if the incense went out, he knew it couldn’t be anything good by looking at Tian Jia Xin’s horrified expression, and Bei Quan’s extremely uncomfortable look now!
“Bei Quan!!”
Wei Fuyuan grabbed Bei Quan’s shoulder, lifted him, patted him on the face, and shouted angrily, “Wake up forLao Tzu, you hear me?”