Wu Xin: The Monster Killer

Chapter 72 Three Kinds of Thought

Wuxin sat on a high branch of an old tree, with the fiery red sunset stretching across the horizon. It was so red, like a raging fire, sweeping across the entire horizon. A crow left a dark silhouette in the air, then cawed joyfully, probably because the day was over and it was time to go home and rest.

Wuxin clutched half a dry steamed bun in his hand, thinking that if Yueya were still alive, dinner would be on the table by now. The time before dinner was the liveliest, with Yueya carrying food and dishes into the room in trip after trip, all the while calling out to him and Lord Gu. Both he and Lord Gu were hungry, but they both had things to do before dinner, requiring Yueya to urge them repeatedly. Yueya, annoyed, started nagging, first scolding Wuxin: "Put down that lousy book! I haven't seen you open it in broad daylight, but now you're working on it at night!" Then she yelled at Lord Gu: "You've been complaining about being hungry since the afternoon, and now the food's ready, why are you hiding in the outhouse and refusing to come out?"

He chimed in, "They're probably starving; they're already eating inside!"

Crescent Moon laughed out loud, and at the same time, Lord Gu stepped out of the outhouse, his voice booming with arrogance as he demanded, "Who the hell is making fun of me again?"

While I was thinking about it without really thinking, I couldn't help but laugh.

Without Crescent Moon, a home is no longer a home. The past few days were spent busy with funeral arrangements, and in the chaos, they managed to get through the days; but once the funeral was over and life quieted down, he and Lord Gu realized that they no longer had a home.

The orderly brought the food from the restaurant to the main room, where he and Lord Gu sat facing each other, eating listlessly. It was too desolate, too bleak; it made one sigh and shed tears while eating.

Neither Wuxin nor Lord Gu spoke; they both knew that the year-long period of good times was over.

He climbed Pig Head Mountain without a second thought; what was meant to go would go sooner or later, what was meant to come would come sooner or later. A year had passed like a fleeting dream. He sat alone on the branch of an old tree, stuffing the remaining half of a dry bun into his mouth. The air of the past gradually enveloped him; the death of Crescent Moon had brought him back to reality.

His true form is eternity and solitude.

Eternity is terrifying, and loneliness is eternal. Even immortal beings have their own cycle of reincarnation.

He swallowed the steamed bun, dusted the crumbs off his hands, and leaned back against a branch, seemingly without a care in the world. The warm house and cozy bed were gone. He pulled a small photograph from his pocket. In the photo, he and Yueya were beaming, shoulder to shoulder, head to head. Yueya said he looked better in the photo than she did; if he styled his hair in a side parting, he'd look like a movie star. Yueya also said they'd take a photo together every year, collecting them one by one, to see how she turned into an old lady.

But they only had one year together, and they only have one photo together. In the photo, Crescent Moon's smile turned into a perfectly round apple face, so much so that after seeing the photo, she felt a little regretful and couldn't help but ask, "Did I smile too much?"

Uninterested in looking into Crescent Moon's eyes, he recalled his own inhuman state, when he had bitten Crescent Moon's finger until it bled because he was hungry. Crescent Moon was quite happy, however, because he had grown teeth and knew how to eat.

I didn't feel like putting the photo back in my pocket. My heart was empty, devoid of any feeling, like a vast, boundless void. There was nothing left.

Lord Gu, acting on Wu Xin's orders, sent his trusted adjutant to the train station to find Chu Chenzi in Tianjin. Chu Chenzi might not be in Tianjin, but that didn't matter; he was a famous figure, and if someone wanted to find him, they could certainly find a way.

Then he moved to a brothel. With Crescent Moon gone and Heartless gone, his home had become a no-go zone. He couldn't go back to sleep; everything he saw was an eyesore. After a year of life-and-death struggles together, he realized for the first time that Crescent Moon and Heartless were everywhere in his life.

Lying on the soft bed with his arms as a pillow, he didn't joke with the prostitute beside him, but instead fell into deep thought.

He was thinking about Wuxin and Pig Head Mountain. Wuxin said he was waiting for Yue Qiluo to come find him, so he was going to Pig Head Mountain to wait. At first, Lord Gu thought that Wuxin was deliberately trying to stay away from him to avoid trouble, but after a few more questions, he felt that Wuxin seemed to have other ideas, but he just didn't say them.

This annoyed him a bit, making him think that Wuxin was no longer close to him, but he still grumbled and voiced his opinion: "Don't you know there are ghosts on Pig Head Mountain? What difference does it make where you wait? There's plenty of mountains around here! Qingyun Mountain, Xiaohei Mountain, Feizi Ridge... Why do you have to go to Pig Head Mountain? Let me tell you, just mentioning Pig Head Mountain makes my legs tremble. We three saw it with our own eyes, and I don't believe you're not afraid at all!"

However, Wuxin disobeyed and did not explain.

So Lord Gu changed his strategy and asked again, "How long do you plan to stay on the mountain? There's nothing there, the wild vegetables are all too old now, and you can't hunt any real animals. Are you just going to live on the mountain, drinking the wind and farting?"

She smiled at him without thinking, but still decided to go.

Lord Gu, enraged, waved his hand and shouted, "Get lost!"

After Wuxin finally left, Master Gu recounted the entire incident from beginning to end, and no matter how he pondered it, it left a lingering unease. Apart from the ghost cave, Pig Head Mountain was otherwise unremarkable, just like all the other mountains around it. Wuxin's insistence on going to Pig Head Mountain was perhaps solely for that ghost cave. He himself had taken Wuxin into the ghost cave once before, and they had almost been dragged into the cave wall by ghostly hands; it was still a source of nightmares. After escaping to the surface, Wuxin threw a tantrum because the cave was too dangerous, and he was afraid of being entangled by the ghostly hands. From Wuxin's words, it seemed that for mortals caught by ghostly hands, death was the only outcome; but he could neither die nor escape, so wasn't he trapped in a living hell?

Lord Gu, overcome with suspicion, wondered, "Could he be planning something in the Ghost Cave?"

Since Yueya's death, Wuxin had been listless, not particularly sad, but rather lost in thought. Lord Gu, seeing his eerie and gloomy appearance, was almost afraid. He wouldn't be too surprised if Wuxin suddenly turned into a demon or ate people overnight.

The only thing that could be done in the Ghost Cave was to lure Yue Qiluo in to feed the ghosts. But then again, Yue Qiluo could be reincarnated the moment she died. After living for ten years or so, she would be a new Yue Qiluo. Wuxin had long said that Yue Qiluo couldn't be killed, as it would only cause more trouble; it was clear he had ulterior motives. But what exactly his intentions were, Lord Gu pondered and pondered, but he truly couldn't figure it out.

Lord Gu wanted to personally go to Pig Head Mountain, drag Wuxin back for interrogation, and beat him until he confessed. However, Wuxin had instructed him before going up the mountain that he was absolutely forbidden to enter and look for him. Having witnessed Yueya's tragic death, Lord Gu couldn't risk his life for curiosity. Therefore, he hesitated, sighing deeply, unable to make up his mind.

Lord Gu tossed and turned in the brothel, unable to sleep. Meanwhile, Wuxin slept soundly in a tree.

Besides Lord Gu, Yue Qiluo was also suffering from insomnia, and the person keeping her company was Zhang Xianzong.

Yue Qiluo sat in the dense forest of Pig Head Mountain, looking up to see a sky full of stars. Zhang Xianzong lay far away in a clump of weeds, feeling ashamed of his appearance.

No one knows how they escaped from the Thousand Buddha Cave; even they themselves cannot describe it in detail. Half of their bodies had been torn away by the monster's sharp claws and teeth, and green grass blades pierced through their ribs, which were not clean and still had strands of flesh and blood on them.

His left arm was gone too. It turned out the physical body was incredibly fragile, capable of decaying beyond repair. Just a few days ago, he could still use his left hand to tear off the purse from Yueya's neck—the purse contained a yellow talisman that would harm Yue Qiluo, but he wasn't afraid.

In the following days, he didn't know what was happening, but the bones in his left arm fell apart and eventually detached one by one.

He didn't feel any pain at losing his left arm, because he had lived long enough.

Suddenly, Yue Qiluo spoke up: "Why don't you listen to me?"

Her voice was a little hoarse, tinged with anger: "Why did you dodge it back then?"

This afternoon, before they entered Pig Head Mountain, Yue Qiluo found him a new body—a sixteen or seventeen-year-old boy, standing on the mountain path carrying a shoulder pole, his soul already drawn away by Yue Qiluo. Yue Qiluo had already conducted a similar experiment once before, but it failed, because Zhang Xianzong's strength seemed to be weakening, and he could no longer control the completely unfamiliar body.

She was unwilling to give up and wanted to try again, but Zhang Xianzong avoided her.

She abruptly turned her head to look in Zhang Xianzong's direction, raised her voice, and said fiercely, "Come here in front of me!"

Zhang Xianzong slowly sat up. Bright moonlight bathed his head and face, gilding his exposed skull with a silvery-white hue. His face was almost skeletal, with only a little flesh remaining on his cheeks. A walking corpse cannot bear the light of day, yet he dared to walk in the blazing sun, partly because Yue Qiluo's magic was powerful enough to protect him, and partly because he was risking his life.

He was already dead, but he was still fighting. His soul was very weak, and he knew in his heart that he could even foresee that one day he would be irrevocably annihilated.

He quietly got up and crawled to Yue Qiluo's side. He wanted her to see it, hoping she would be disgusted, vomit, and never want to see it again. That way, he could leave in peace, without lingering or having any more delusions.

However, Yue Qiluo stared at him with a cold gaze, her expression unwavering.

She was also nearing her limit; the blood spots on her right eye had spread into a deep red rash. What would happen if she couldn't hold on any longer? She didn't know, but at worst, she would die, and she wasn't afraid of death.

Reaching out to Zhang Xianzong's face, she pinched a wriggling maggot from his empty left eye socket. His left eyeball had fallen off the night before; with just a slight tilt of his head, it fell to the ground, collapsing and spewing out a puddle of pus.

"Can't you be strong?" Yue Qiluo flicked away the maggots, her dirty little face expressionless. "They've ruined us like this, are we just going to let it go? Yueya is dead, next is Wuxin! Nothing is impossible for a willing heart. Wuxin's body is immortal, I'll find a way to snatch it for you!"

Zhang Xianzong gently moved his right hand, and a section of finger bone dislocated from the joint, lying quietly on the grass. He could no longer smile; his heart was filled with endless weariness and sorrow, and a small, unexpected happiness: "Qiluo, thank you. But..."

Before he could finish speaking, a white figure drifted in—a paper doll possessed by a spirit—approaching, its hands clutching a small gray rabbit. Yue Qiluo caught the half-dead rabbit, lowered her head, and bit down on its throat. The little gray rabbit twitched weakly in her hands, and she held the rabbit, tilting her head back as if holding a kettle, closing her eyes and sucking its blood.

She was so hungry. Hunger made it impossible to suppress the poison in her right eye. She wasn't afraid of death, but life and death were serious matters; if she could live, she would prefer to.

(End of this chapter)