“Xin Hexue?”
“Xin Hexue.”
“Xin Hexue!”
A cool, slightly rough towel was being rubbed against his face.
When Xin Hexue opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Zhou Liao’s tense face. He shifted his gaze slightly; Matsukawa Masato was standing nearby, it was him who had been trying to wake him just now.
Before he could speak, Zhou Liao, who saw he was finally awake, immediately hugged him tightly.
Xin Hexue half-sat up from the sofa. The sofa was solid wood with a thin cushion, which was extremely hard. He felt uncomfortable all over just from lying on it.
Once he moved to sit up, the vague ache became more pronounced.
Xiao Hei was circling nearby worriedly, barking furiously at the void: “Woof, woof! Woof woof woof!”
Like this, like this.
Xiao Hei kicked its legs.
Like that, like that.
Xiao Hei shadowboxed on the spot.
Then Xiao Hei stiffly fell to the ground, got up again and started crying.
Xin Hexue frowned, unable to understand what Xiao Hei was miming. He stuffed the restless child into his pocket, lowered his head and rubbed his temples, then looked at the clock on the wall in the main hall. It was already 4 a.m.
“What happened to me?”
Matsukawa Masato said: “I heard a noise and found you had fainted in the corridor.”
So the source of the bodily pain was probably from falling off the stool at that time.
Zhou Liao: [Are you feeling unwell?]
“It’s fine.” Xin Hexue rubbed his forehead, and that face finally flashed through his mind. “Kong Yuan…!”
Zhu Jiyue and Teacher Zhang had also woken up. They were here to take over the shift from Xin Hexue and Matsukawa Masato.
Teacher Zhang asked urgently: “Did you see Kong Yuan?”
His expression was anxious. “I heard him calling me in my room at night. When I woke up, I didn’t know if it was a dream or reality. Did you see Kong Yuan?”
As the only teacher in the group, Teacher Zhang was already on the verge of collapsing from guilt over the students these past two days.
Everyone tried to comfort him, trying to prevent a mental breakdown.
Xin Hexue looked towards Xing Ming, who was tied up in the corner. Matsukawa Masato said that because Xing Ming was struggling violently earlier, he knocked him out directly.
“Are there any books?” Xin Hexue asked. His thoughts were chaotic and he needed a distraction to reorganize. “Preferably something more specialized.”
Matsukawa Masato found the “Introduction to Calculus and Mathematical Analysis” and handed it to Xin Hexue.
When he opened it, Xin Hexue discovered that there was a draft paper belonging to Xiao Hei tucked inside, covered in incomprehensible, messy handwriting.
He quickly skimmed through, then sat quietly for a moment.
The sky outside was still dark, but from the sound, the rain had stopped. Xin Hexue stood up. “Once it’s light, we’ll go find the village chief.”
“Even if he doesn’t know how to control the mutation, we must force him to tell us the origin of the sea monkeys.”
………
The sky began to lighten with the fish-belly white of dawn. Without telling anyone, Xin Hexue went alone to the seaside.
There had been strong wind and heavy rain last night. The tide must have come in after midnight and hadn’t receded yet. He couldn’t find the place where he discovered the markings yesterday, nor the small sand pit.
Xin Hexue thought about it. The markings used international ground distress signals, they could only have been left by someone from outside. But besides them, who else could it be?
The moment he closed the book, a possibility occurred to him…
Yu Xingzhou.
Initially, he found Yu Xingzhou’s ID card on the path leading to the well in the temple on Nanshan Mountain of the Walled City.
If nothing unexpected happened, Yu Xingzhou should have jumped into the well.
As for the person who later appeared in Tang Amei’s funeral procession and spoke to him, that was not Yu Xingzhou. In other words, it was the Red Prince using Yu Xingzhou’s body.
Although there is currently no scientific evidence proving the existence of a soul, and the hypothesis about the soul weighing 21 grams is rejected by mainstream science due to violations of experimental reproducibility and control of variables principles, Xin Hexue actually leaned towards the theory of the existence of the soul.
So, when the Red Prince occupied Yu Xingzhou’s body, where did Yu Xingzhou’s consciousness, or soul, go?
Xin Hexue walked along the seaside until he noticed something and he quickened his pace into a small run.
The fiery red sun rose from the ocean’s surface, full and round. Staring at it for a while made it feel somewhat unreal, causing one to lose focus unconsciously.
Xin Hexue lowered his head. His eyes felt slightly sore from looking directly at the sun, and black spots danced in his vision.
Huge marks were left on the beach, which the tide hadn’t had time to erase yet.
He followed these marks, finally reached the middle, and took a few steps back to take in the whole view…
[Wake Up]
………
On his way from the seaside to the village chief’s house, Xin Hexue noticed that no one had gone out to sea today and the fishing boats were all properly docked in the harbor.
“The typhoon is coming!”
“The typhoon is coming!”
The children on the street were running and shouting.
To them, the typhoon wasn’t a big deal. The adults worried about their livelihoods were the ones who had to worry about the typhoon. If the adults couldn’t go out to sea, it meant they could play with their fathers today.
Xin Hexue slowed down his pace. He suddenly realized that he had seen too few girls in this village so far, all the children running around were boys.
The village chief’s old house was in the central area. After becoming familiar with the village paths, Xin Hexue discovered this family lived very close to the ancestral hall almost just across the street, around a corner, and a few more steps away.
When he arrived outside the old house, the village chief’s eldest daughter-in-law was at the entrance, holding a brazier in which she was burning paper, and black smoke and miasma were drifting out.
She cried as she burned. When her reddened eyes saw someone, she quickly wiped her tears with the back of her hand, then wiped her hands on her apron.
“You’re with them, right? Your teacher and classmates are all inside.”
The eldest daughter-in-law lowered her head and made way.
“Thank you.”
After speaking, Xin Hexue stepped inside.
After a moment’s thought, he stepped back out. “Can I ask you a question?”
The eldest daughter-in-law looked up, forcing a smile. “What is it?”
“Do you know her?”
Xin Hexue pointed towards the alley across, where a small head that had peeked out ducked back again.
It was the white porcelain doll they had bumped into on the dirt road when they first arrived. Its cracks had healed, and the mud was wiped clean.
The eldest daughter-in-law stared blankly in that direction, and tears gushed out like a broken dam. She covered her mouth and broke down: “I don’t know, I don’t know…”
Having tested out the correct answer, the ID card in his pocket began to feel hot.
Xin Hexue stared into her eyes, his heart heavy.
How could there be “wild children” in the world?
Without parents, a child cannot be born into this world.
………
“In Nanwan Village, only male descendants can be entered into the family register. People here don’t welcome female fetuses.”
“My first child was a girl. Father-in-law said that having a girl first brings heavy Yin energy, so we should discard her. I refused. No matter what, she was a piece of my own flesh. The day after I gave birth, I crawled out of bed, knelt and cried, begging him to let me keep my child.”
“So Father-in-law thought of a method.”
“We had to enshrine a paper doll at the home altar, cut into the shape of a boy, dot the eyes on the paper figure, and then he would come into the womb in the next pregnancy. If the paper doll was damaged during the nurturing period, it meant he was dissatisfied with the family’s fortune, and the eldest daughter had to be sunk in the pond to dispel the Yin energy.”
“This has always been the custom in the village.”
“Before I married, I was the eldest daughter in my family, and I went through this myself.”
The fact that the eldest daughter-in-law could stand here safely meant her mother naturally conceived a brother in the second pregnancy.
“Not long after, during the Qingming Festival while arranging the altar, the paper doll accidentally caught fire.”
“Father-in-law waited until I was asleep, took the baby and…”
She squatted down, sobbing uncontrollably.
The village sealed unwanted baby girls into white porcelain and threw them into the large well behind the ancestral hall. They wouldn’t even leave the child by a busy roadside, because everyone knew that if their own family didn’t want it, no other family would pick it up either.
This practice served two purposes: first, to remove the Yin energy from the household, and second, to make a living sacrifice to the Red King, showing their family’s sincerity towards the Red King, a devotion more great than offering chickens, cows, or sheep.
But was the “Red Prince”, who was originally portrayed as the protector of the peace of the sea, the one who instructed them to do this?
That wasn’t important.
What the god actually thought wasn’t important, what mattered was human interpretation.
As more and more porcelain dolls accumulated in the well, strands of black hair tangled like waterweed at the bottom, and the well behind the ancestral hall became completely unusable.
Until one day, a mother jumped into the well holding her child. After that, strange things began happening in the village.
The men of Nanwan Village all loved to drink, and almost all of them had beer bellies, so initially no one noticed anything unusual. Then, the first “child” delivered from a man’s belly was born.
It looked like a hairless monkey, with smooth baby skin covered in a mucus layer, almost no normal folds on its body, fingers and toes connected by frog-like webbing, and limbs covered in fish scales.
It bit a chunk of flesh from its birth father, giggled, ran out like a monkey and jumped into the sea.
This father soon grew scales as well.
Coincidentally, these men who gradually became pregnant had all discarded baby girls.
Even more seriously, people who had discarded baby girls discovered that their ancestors, who had been buried at sea in coffins, had also returned.
The white porcelain dolls from the bottom of the well reappeared under the sun, and the villagers panicked. Though delayed, the revenge of the white porcelain dolls had arrived.
At night, the outside of the houses in Nanwan Village were densely packed with “people.”
“It feels like it happened so long ago… I often dream of her… yet it also feels like it happened just yesterday…”
The eldest daughter-in-law was in a daze, and the whole person was like a wisp of a soul.
Xin Hexue couldn’t summon any particular sorrow or joy in his heart, he couldn’t empathize with this situation. If he had to say, perhaps he felt a bit of pity for the woman before him. As for the others, he simply thought they deserved it.
He glanced past the large tree outside the courtyard. Many such old banyan trees could be seen throughout the village, from one end to the other.
The people here not only had altars at home but also hid their faith in the Red Prince within the trees. Small shrines were nailed into the tangled roots and trunks, with incense burners placed there. Vermilion plaques carved with “The Sea Kingdom, Everlasting Spring.” hung above.
“The typhoon is coming!”
A child shouted, running past the alley.
………
The typhoon arrived as announced, tearing at all the trees along the coast. The world was filled with chaotic sounds, and green and yellow fruits were shaken from the mango trees, smashing into pulp.
The red tiles on the saddle-shaped roofs made crackling sounds, and ants, termites, flies, and carpet beetles all emerged from the courtyard.
The old house was aged, and rain leaked profusely inside.
When Xin Hexue entered the house, the village chief and his family were in a heated argument with their group of outsiders.
“We can’t cure your classmate either!” The village chief waved his hand, scowling. “I warned you long ago not to open the door at night! Yes, yes, you had an incident on our land, but does that mean you push the blame onto us now?!”
The eldest daughter-in-law, with her head lowered, entered behind Xin Hexue. As soon as she entered, she was immediately scolded harshly by the village chief’s eldest son. “Wretched woman, I told you to make lunch, where have you been wandering off to!”
Only then did Xin Hexue realize that although it was only nearing noon, the sky had already darkened as if it were night.
The eldest son puffed out his chest and picked up a rolling pin. Perhaps the movement agitated something, his whole body tilted and fell to the ground.
He wept profusely, “Ahh! Dad, I think, I think I’m dying!”
The village chief panicked immediately. “Oh, my dear son, what’s wrong with you?”
The eldest son’s belly, big enough to prop up the table while eating, burst open like an overripe melon dropped on the ground.
His belly split open, and the first thing to flow out was a foul-smelling yellow fluid.
Immediately after, water moths densely swarmed out like a black whirlwind from his belly.
So many that they wove a black curtain and blocked out all the light sources inside the house.
Xin Hexue felt slightly nauseous.
The newborn let out its first piercing cry, its transparent webbed feet kicking constantly within the flesh and blood.
The scene was absurd, like a dream without logic.
…A dream?
Amidst the chaos, Xin Hexue was jostled aside by the village chief’s family, then pulled into the arms of a young man.
[Wake Up]
He thought of the words on the beach.
Yes, it was a dream.
Dreams don’t need logic. That’s why this isolated village had electricity and running water, and why the small shop had freshly stocked wholesale goods. In dreams, people don’t die either, even if they just change into a different species form.
If this was a dream, then whose dream was it?
Roosters crowed, dogs barked, and rats came out of their holes.
Hearing the commotion, villagers gathered. More and more people crowded in, and Xin Hexue and the others were pushed from inside the house out into the skywell.
The nearby well water bubbled and churned, emitting a sulfur smell.
A tsunami was coming.
