Chapter 25: The True Nature Of Humanity Is..
After Wu Xie’s panic subsided, he took a closer look at the thing in Lin Yan’s hand and felt like hitting him: “What watermelon are you eating in the middle of the night! And gnawing it directly without a spoon! Isn’t that scary!”
Lin Yan had an innocent expression: “I woke up in the middle of the night, so it’s not like I could wake you up to make me food, right? I could only come find something to eat myself.”
But he looked at his own outfit, then at Wu Xie’s face that had turned pale from fright, and belatedly felt a bit guilty: “Did I scare you? Sorry, I only have these clothes left on me, nothing to change into. But there’s one issue—” He took another bite of watermelon, looking truly very hungry: “You brought me all the way home, so why didn’t you take me out of the coffin? As soon as I woke up, the coffin board was pressing on me and my whole body hurt.”
Wu Xie thought about it—right, the person was still alive, so why hadn’t he thought to just carry the person back directly? Why had he brought the coffin home with him? What had he been thinking at the time!
“I… this isn’t…” His face was almost flushed red, and he finally managed to say: “I was worried that this coffin had some special effect on you, so bringing the coffin along was safer.”
Lin Yan was helpless: “Safer my ass! Zhang Qiling just couldn’t come himself, and he was afraid I’d run off halfway, so he stuffed me in the coffin and shipped me over! He himself still doesn’t even know which tomb he’s in right now! You have no idea what kind of days I’ve been having these past few days! Hiss!”
He suddenly sucked in a breath of cold air. Wu Xie saw him clutching his head as if it hurt a lot, so he frowned and went over: “What’s wrong? Are you injured? I didn’t see any wound before.”
Lin Yan glanced at him and drew in a cold breath: “It’s nothing, I accidentally said something I shouldn’t have… something I shouldn’t say in front of you. Sigh.”
Wu Xie had an ominous premonition. Something he shouldn’t say? If Lin Yan was referring to his experiences from the past few days, then his doubts about Zhang Qiling and others, as well as the Lu King’s Palace and the bronze fish, wouldn’t and couldn’t get answered, right? No way! Wu Sansheng had already run off long ago, and now there was finally an opportunity to know… No way!
He carefully asked Lin Yan: “The thing you said you shouldn’t say, it isn’t—”
Before he could finish, Lin Yan started refusing threefold: “Don’t ask me, I don’t know, I can’t say!”
“Huh?”
Seeing Wu Xie’s bewildered expression, he sighed and continued gnawing on the watermelon: “I can’t talk about Zhang Qiling’s matters, it’s not something you should know right now; I don’t know about the bronze fish, so asking me is useless; as for me…” He looked at Wu Xie, who was already starting to frown, and sighed again: “Sigh, I myself don’t really understand my own matters either, but if you knew now, you might not last a few days.”
“What do you mean? I’ll be in danger to my life?” Wu Xie’s brows furrowed even tighter. He simply pulled out a chair and sat down, then pulled another chair over for Lin Yan and dragged him to sit.
“It’s not that you are in danger to your life, it’s that if you knew, you’d be in danger to your life.” Lin Yan had almost finished half a watermelon, his whole body nearly buried in the rind—it looked pretty startling from the side. But Wu Xie’s mind was no longer on that at all.
“That’s not right, you just said you know about the bronze fish—how do you know about the bronze fish? This bronze fish was clearly only opened after I came back, only Third Uncle and I know about it!”
Lin Yan pulled his head out amid his busy eating and swallowed the watermelon in his mouth: “I can only tell you, this bronze fish wasn’t in the Lu King’s Palace from the beginning—someone put it there! Though I don’t know exactly who did it, I can tell you it was someone from the Nine Gates! And this bronze fish, people have been looking for it since dozens of years ago! And the people looking for the bronze fish are also from the Nine Gates! That’s everything I know.”
Wu Xie was dizzy from his roundabout explanation—what did he mean the people who put it there were from the Nine Gates, and the ones looking for it were also from the Nine Gates? His Wu Family was also part of the Nine Gates, so if people had been looking since dozens of years ago, why wasn’t it mentioned in Grandfather’s notebook? Was it unrelated to the Wu Family, or was the one who put it there his grandfather?
He tried to sort out the relationships: “You mean, within the Nine Gates there are two factions, one hiding the bronze fish and the other collecting it? Then does this bronze fish have anything to do with my Wu Family?” He held his breath tensely, hoping to hear from Lin Yan’s mouth that this had nothing to do with his family.
But Lin Yan spread his hands: “I don’t know about that, but not knowing now doesn’t mean you won’t know later! If I’m not wrong, the clues to the bronze fish will appear in front of you on their own. As for who in the Nine Gates hid it, that might be harder to know, but who is looking for it isn’t hard to inquire about, right? Even if they’re not searching openly, there will always be rumors leaking out secretly. Your family is one of the Nine Gates too, so why not just go ask?”
“That makes sense!” Wu Xie realized he had been overly concerned and confused. He didn’t know who hid it, but wasn’t it easy to find out who was looking? When it got light, he’d call Third Uncle—no, not Third Uncle, calling Second Uncle would be the same. Though he didn’t interact with Second Uncle as much as with Third Uncle usually, Second Uncle probably wouldn’t refuse this small favor.
With one worry resolved, Wu Xie came back to his senses and looked at Lin Yan, who had finished the watermelon, washed his hands, and come back to sit down—he really looked like an ancient young master, except his hair was too short. “These clothes of yours are pretty good, did Mute Bottle find them for you too?” He was still used to calling Zhang Qiling Mute Bottle, since he’d called him that in his mind the whole way; suddenly calling him by name felt weird.
At the mention of this, Lin Yan got angry: “Bull! Where was that him finding them for me—it was clearly him robbing them!”
“Robbed? What happened?”
“That guy is too violent, he dragged the tomb owner right out of the coffin, twisted his head off, stripped his clothes, and forced me to change into them!”
“Ah?” Wu Xie was dumbfounded.
Lin Yan looked furious: “Do you know what he said to me at the time? ‘Put them on, or I’ll knock you out and put them on for you.’ Listen to that—is that even human language?”
For some reason, Wu Xie suddenly felt like laughing. He dry-coughed twice to cover it: “You seem… pretty miserable.”
He suddenly remembered the two beads and asked Lin Yan: “Did Mute Bottle tell you to take one bead every week?”
Lin Yan chuckled: “Of course he did, for the first two weeks he pinched my mouth and forced me to swallow them!” He had a disdainful expression, feeling like the watermelon he’d just eaten didn’t taste good anymore: “You have no idea, he took that thing out, didn’t even rinse it with water, and just stuffed it in my mouth! So disgusting! Not hygienic at all!”
Wu Xie, who had already seen that scene, could imagine how unwilling Lin Yan had been but had no choice except to submit to the violence. Thinking about it made him want to laugh even more: “Did he tell you why you had to eat it?”
Lin Yan glared at him indignantly: “He said, afraid I’d get malnourished!”
Malnourished again? He remembered that at the Lu King’s Palace, Mute Bottle had said the same. What exactly was special about Lin Yan? He could eat something full of yin energy and resentful energy without issue, but not eating it would lead to malnutrition?
He carefully organized his words, afraid of asking something he shouldn’t that would make Lin Yan’s head hurt again: “Did he say why? And your blood…” He looked at Lin Yan’s not-so-good complexion and added: “If it’s inconvenient to say, it’s fine, no problem.”
Lin Yan sighed: “It’s okay, I don’t really understand this myself, but I should be able to say it. My blood is special because there’s something in me—whether it’s my soul or whatever, I don’t know what it is. You know the Daoist theory of yin-yang and the five elements, right?”
Wu Xie nodded in confusion, though he wasn’t expert in this stuff, he had some basic understanding.
Lin Yan continued explaining: “Because of that thing, my body’s yin and yang are imbalanced, with yang too strong and yin too weak, so I need to supplement yin energy. If I don’t get it for a long time, it manifests just like malnutrition and I’ll eventually ‘starve to death.’ If I could, I wouldn’t want to eat that thing either, but Zhang Qiling said that thing works well…”
Wu Xie nodded: “Then what you said earlier about me possibly being in danger to my life, is that also because of this?”
Lin Yan pointed to his head: “Can’t say, but yes. What I can’t say is related to that thing. Sometimes now I can sense that thing, and when I was talking to you earlier, it happened to act up, so my head hurt. It’s fine if I don’t deliberately bring it up. Oh right, and also—”
He suddenly remembered something and slumped listlessly in the chair: “Don’t move that coffin, I need to sleep in the coffin at least three days a week.”
“And—” Wu Xie carefully pointed to his head: “This is related?”
Lin Yan nodded, slumped against the chair back.
Seeing Lin Yan’s reluctant and bitter expression, Wu Xie almost burst out laughing this time. Sure enough, human nature is schadenfreude!
