Chapter 200: Farewell

I slept soundly for a solid four or five hours. When I woke up, the beds around me were empty. He Yu had brought my bag inside and placed it at the head of the bed. Only a single lamp was lit on the table in the tent. I hadn’t been awake long when someone swept aside the tent flap, letting in a gust of cold wind.

“Now that you’re awake, come wash your face. We have roast meat tonight.” Bai Shenxian set a basin of water on an iron rack with one hand while holding a bright gas lamp in his left. The lamp’s light was so brilliant it felt as though the temperature in the tent had instantly jumped by over ten degrees.

I climbed out of bed, dressed, and shivered involuntarily. I washed my face with the water Bai Shenxian had brought, clearing my head a little, then followed him out of the tent.

Outside, three bonfires had already been built in the clearing, each surrounded by a ring of people. The aroma of roasting meat instantly flooded my nose. Watching He Yu deftly turn the branch skewers over the flames made my mouth water. Bai Shenxian led me to the nearest bonfire, and we sat down on the ground.

Even though the island had plenty of thickets and the wind was fairly light, it was still cold enough to make a person shiver all over. He Yu was expertly turning the makeshift grill of tree branches, occasionally pulling seasonings from the basket behind him and sprinkling them on. Juices sizzled from the heat. A pigeon was tied to the grill, along with some other meat I didn’t recognize, probably brought over on my mother’s ship.

Lu Ayao wasn’t at our bonfire. From a distance, I saw him sitting next to my Fourth Brother. Fourth Brother, my mom, Yujingzi, and the others were chatting while Lu Ayao sat off to the side, nibbling on a slice of roasted potato. Looking at his expression, he didn’t have much of an appetite and didn’t seem to care for it.

When he raised his head and saw me looking at him, he immediately stopped gnawing on the potato slice. I quickly smiled and waved at him enthusiastically, calling out, “He Yu’s almost done grilling! Do you want to come eat over here?”

Lu Ayao quickly turned and said something to Fourth Brother and the others, then patted the dust off his clothes, stood up, and walked over to our bonfire. I backed up a bit to make room beside me, but just then, a dark shadow suddenly “flew” over from behind me, instantly taking the spot I had just freed up.

Right after that, a fragrant skewer of grilled meat appeared right in front of my eyes. The aroma instantly hit my taste buds. Tian Xiaoqi popped her head out from behind the skewer with a grin and thrust the meat into my hand. “Brought this for you!”

I took the skewer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lu Ayao sit down next to Bai Shenxian. I turned back to Tian Xiaoqi, bit off a piece of meat, and asked, “You ran over so fast, weren’t you afraid of tripping? How are things going with your family?”

Tian Xiaoqi sat cross-legged and turned her gaze toward the bonfire. The smile that had just lifted her lips faded. “Once things here are wrapped up, your Fourth Brother is leaving for Inner Mongolia right away. He said he’ll do his best to help find my big brother. There’s a huge mess at home, so I can’t go with him. I’ll leave with your ship tomorrow morning. I have to go home.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “You’re the only one left at home now, right? Why not come with us? We can look out for each other.”

Tian Xiaoqi shook her head and turned to face me. “Gan Ji, I can’t keep running away. All the problems I used to ignore have come to light since my big brother disappeared. I’m the only one who can sort out those pankou. My big brother probably had his reasons. After all, when he was keeping those people in line, I could be carefree and daydream about whatever I wanted. But now I can’t anymore.”

“Aren’t you going to look for your great-grandfather anymore?” I asked her.

She frowned, then shook her head. “Right now, I can’t search for him.”

We fell silent together for a moment. Then, without warning, Tian Xiaoqi lifted her head and threw her arms around me. Still holding the skewer in my hand, I froze completely. She rested her head on my shoulder and said with a smile, “So I came specifically to say goodbye to you. We’re leaving in a rush tomorrow, so we probably won’t get another chance to meet.”

For a moment, I didn’t know where to put my hands, my mind a complete mess. Tian Xiaoqi had already released me. In the glow of the bonfire, I could see that her smile was clearly tinged with bitterness, her eyes brimmed with tears.

I knew this path would be incredibly hard to walk.

The Tian Family had twice as many pankou as ours. According to my Fourth Brother, during the most chaotic years, the pankou forces had even charged to the gates of the Tian estate wielding knives to pressure Tian Yuqing. Barely in his twenties, Tian Yuqing was protecting his younger siblings when he personally chopped off the pinky of the ringleader, an Old Chief. Rain mixed with blood flowed across the ground; only then did he secure the standing he has today.

And Tian Xiaoqi had grown up doted on and cherished, always well protected by Tian Yuqing. But now, she was forced to face all of this alone.

Right then, a tear spilled from Tian Xiaoqi’s eye. I instinctively reached out to wipe it for her, but with my hand hovering in mid-air, I felt that would be going too far. Hesitating, I pulled my hand back and frantically searched my pockets for some tissues.

Tian Xiaoqi looked at me, patted my shoulder, and wiped the tears from her face with her hand. “It’s fine. Until we meet again.”

With that, she stood up, walked around our bonfire, and headed off alone toward a lit tent across from us.

I couldn’t snap out of it for a long while. As soon as she was gone, He Yu let out a couple of catcalls at me. I shot him a fierce glare and finished eating the now-cold skewer in my hand. Bai Shenxian, who had been warming himself by the fire, shifted closer to me, took a drink from his canteen, and clicked his tongue twice.

“Didn’t expect you to be so popular with young girls. So what’s your stance?”

I glanced at him and said, “Her experience is a lot like mine. We’re both chasing some faint, elusive answer, blindly following people around, only to be forced to accept these arrangements in the end. Even now, I’m still lost. I can empathize with how she feels.”

“Just empathy?” Bai Shenxian asked with a smile. “With such a beauty throwing herself into your arms, did your heart really not flutter even a little?”

I gave him a strange look, shifted a bit farther away to distance myself, and said, “I’m not as vulgar as you. Beauty is meant to be appreciated, not ruined.”

Bai Shenxian chuckled, leaned back into a half-reclined position, crossed his legs, and chewed on a blade of grass he had plucked from somewhere. “Very good. I didn’t expect you to have such decent character.”

At some point, we all stopped talking, listening to the wind mingling with the distant sound of waves as we gazed up at the star-filled sky. Bai Shenxian loved looking at the stars. He was a strange man; the more time you spent with him, the more you realized he seemed to care about nothing around him. He had no purpose at all.

Everyone here had a purpose, except for him. Wealth was both important and unimportant to him, and picking sides was the same; he didn’t lean toward any family. He had come here solely because Fourth Brother asked for his help.

To put it another way, I couldn’t sense a single trace of human emotion in him.

The meat was about ready. He Yu handed each of us a few skewers. I got two meat and two vegetable skewers, very nutritionally balanced. Lu Ayao’s were all meat, which suited his diet better. As for Bai Shenxian, his were entirely vegetarian. Rumor had it he couldn’t eat meat, not for any religious reason, but simply because he couldn’t stomach it.

We sat around the bonfire, shooting the breeze.

He Yu spoke up first, asking Bai Shenxian, “Hey, hey, I’ve got a question. Why did you give yourself a nickname like that? Just because you cured a dead sheep?”

Bai Shenxian chuckled. “The rumors are wrong. What they brought me was a newborn lamb. That family was raising sheep for the first time that year and didn’t know newborn lambs could appear dead at first.”

He opened the canteen at his side and took a heavy swig. I immediately caught the scent of liquor wafting out of it, only then realizing he hadn’t been drinking water all along. Who knows how much Bai Shenxian had downed by now. Grinning, he hoisted his liquor-filled canteen and stood up while still drinking, then paused to tilt his head back and roar with laughter at the sky. After that, he started staggering toward the tent.

“Is he okay?” I scrambled to my feet, wanting to follow him inside and check.

“Don’t mind him. He’s just tired. Let him be by himself for a while and he’ll be fine.” Lu Ayao darted forward in a single bound, blocking my path.

Watching Lu Ayao’s reaction, I thought to myself, You people are all pretty strange. If he acted like this out in the real world, he’d definitely get dragged off to a mental hospital.

Volume 4: Shedding-Shell Water Shadow Tower (End)

# Tianjing Corpse Cage City