It was already afternoon.
Back on shore, everyone was exhausted. Some sat, some lay down, the room silent. Mu Dai had been lying on the bed when she suddenly noticed Luo Ren wrapping gauze bandages around his shoulder with one hand. She quickly got up to help him.
From her previous martial arts training, she had often dealt with scrapes and bruises, making her quite skilled at bandaging wounds. She carefully wrapped his injury, gently cut the bandage with scissors, and secured it with tape before asking, “Does it hurt?”
Luo Ren replied, “Of course it hurts. What about it?”
Mu Dai was taken aback. She had expected Luo Ren to answer “It doesn’t hurt,” and then they would share a smile or something—that’s how it always happened on TV.
Luo Ren’s response was somewhat deliberate: Yes, it hurts. What can you do about it? Can you make it stop hurting?
Her answer left him both amused and exasperated.
“Oh, then just bear with it.”
With five people gathered together, even eating and sleeping posed challenges. Luo Ren’s car was parked in the previous village, some distance from Wu Zhu Village. They could have traveled back and forth by water, but no one wanted to go back on the water, at least not today.
The dry rations on the boat weren’t enough, and there weren’t enough compressed biscuits to nibble on. Someone needed to go to the village to get food.
Luo Ren decided to go and bring his car back. Yan Hongsha couldn’t walk, and Cao Yanhua was still dazed and listless from his time in the water. Yi Wansan had originally planned to go with Luo Ren, but just as they were about to leave, Cao Yanhua desperately winked at him, nearly squinting his small eyes shut.
So Yi Wansan said they needed someone capable to stay with the boat.
That meant she would be going with Luo Ren alone? Mu Dai lowered her head, the toe of her shoe digging into the ground, unsure whether she felt secret joy or embarrassment.
After a while, Luo Ren came over and said, “Let’s go.”
It was a long stretch of road. The sun gradually set, its glow turning the waterway into a golden coast. Everything around was quiet, with just the two of them walking on the beach. Occasionally, looking back, they could see the trail of footprints behind them—his and hers.
Mu Dai tried to make conversation with Luo Ren.
“Are you good with knives?”
Luo Ren said, “Yes, Little Knife Luo, right? I have to live up to the name.”
“Did you learn that in the Philippines, too?”
Luo Ren shook his head. “I started practicing with knives very early. Back then, Pin Ting called me ‘Little Knife Brother,’ and to show off in front of her, I practiced throwing knives in the courtyard.”
Remembering the past, he couldn’t help but smile. “Whenever I practiced, everyone in the courtyard would run away. When my uncle occasionally came out on business, he would hold up a pot lid as a shield. He even complained that when Little Knife Luo threw his knives, even he couldn’t find where they landed.”
Mu Dai also smiled. Back in those days, who didn’t have their awkward, embarrassing younger days?
She asked again, “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Luo Ren said, “Let’s talk tonight, after we’ve eaten.”
Mu Dai’s heart sank for no apparent reason.
He wanted to wait until after they’d eaten—was he afraid she wouldn’t want to eat anymore after hearing what he had to say?
Luo Ren bought plenty of fish and shrimp in the village, along with skewers for barbecuing. He also told Mu Dai to buy drinks and snacks from the general store. With all their packages, it almost looked like they were setting up for a camping meal.
Mu Dai couldn’t help but mutter, “After everything that happened today, we were scared half to death, yet you seem to be in quite good spirits.”
Luo Ren responded, “I’m used to it. In the past, whenever I encountered danger and survived, it felt like I’d gained something, so we’d always celebrate wildly. We’d go crazy with our celebrations. We can’t do much here given the conditions, but if it were like before…”
He didn’t continue, but a smile unconsciously appeared on his face. Mu Dai thought he might be remembering those friends who used to grill fish on rocks and drink German beer, and Qingmu, who liked to play the ukulele.
The last time they’d talked about this, Luo Ren had remained silent, and Mu Dai had guessed it might be a past he didn’t want to mention. She quickly changed the subject: “So what do we do next?”
Luo Ren asked her, “Do you find that old clam frightening?”
Mu Dai thought for a while, hesitantly about to nod, then shook her head.
At first, she had found it scary because she hadn’t seen it face-to-face, and her mind was full of speculative imaginations and unknowns. Now that she had experienced it, although the situation had been dangerous, knowing what it was capable of actually made it less frightening.
Moreover, they had managed to escape unharmed from this sudden, perilous encounter. Next time, if they could make thorough preparations, who knew who would have the upper hand?
In such a remote and dangerous place, having a sumptuous feast was beyond Cao Yanhua’s expectations.
He volunteered to fetch well water from the village to clean the fish and shrimp, and gathered firewood to keep the bonfire burning brightly.
It was completely dark now. Yan Hongsha was turning skewers of shrimp over the fire. Though the flavor might not be great, the aroma was certainly enticing. But even this couldn’t ease her anxiety.
She kept turning to look at the sea.
“What if the old clam attacks us?”
“Could it fly over here, like a flying saucer, whoosh…”
As she said this, she worriedly covered her neck with her hand, shrinking her head as much as possible.
Mu Dai found it amusing: Fly? Like some kind of flying guillotine?
Luo Ren said, “We all know a clam absolutely cannot do this. Looking at the root cause, it’s still the evil bamboo slip at work.”
Yan Hongsha was completely confused: “What’s an evil bamboo slip?”
Cao Yanhua was also unsatisfied: “That old clam, what exactly is it? Tell me about it.”
Perfect—both were missing information, but could complement each other. Thus, they were almost simultaneously kicked out of the discussion, to “catch up” before returning.
Meanwhile, Yi Wansan was extremely worried.
If it was still possession, was the evil bamboo slip attached to the urn or the old clam?
Luo Ren said, “Something Shen Gun said left a deep impression on me. He said the evil bamboo slips might be alive and possibly able to communicate with each other.”
“We always thought evil bamboo slips feared the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—and would instinctively avoid them. But from another perspective, they could also take an indirect approach. I even suspect…”
He suddenly lowered his voice: “Was the first evil bamboo slip directly transferred from Zhang Guanghua to Liu Shuhai? Is it possible that when it was underwater, it left Zhang Guanghua, attached to fish or shrimp, and then, when Liu Shuhai fell into the water, it transferred to him through these creatures?”
Indeed, the evil bamboo slip would leave after a person died—this had been verified with Pin Ting. But it also feared water, so at that time, it would need a medium that could move freely in water.
Such as fish and shrimp.
Yi Wansan thought for a moment and said, “Maybe my previous thinking was limited. I always thought the evil bamboo slip could only attach to humans. Now it seems it just instinctively wants to leave ‘dead’ things, and as long as something is ‘alive,’ it can use it.”
Mu Dai laughed, “Well, trees are alive, flowers and plants are alive—so it could attach to these too?”
Luo Ren nodded, “Possibly.”
Mu Dai had meant to tease Yi Wansan, but was surprised by Luo Ren’s serious response. She was momentarily stunned, then suddenly smelled something burning. Looking down, she saw that the shrimp on her skewer was charred in the fire. She quickly lifted it and examined it with disappointment.
It was inedible. Her previous attempt had been too raw—she’d taken one bite and spat it all out. Now this one was too burnt, turned to charcoal.
Luo Ren took the skewer from her hand and gave her his own.
While everyone else was grilling whole shrimp, head to tail, she hadn’t noticed when he had removed the heads, cut the shells, deveined them, and made cross-cuts in the flesh, then applied oil and salt, constantly turning them to cook evenly. When he handed it to her, the white shrimp meat with a hint of golden yellow was slightly lifted, and just the smell made her mouth water.
Mu Dai took it, savoring it in small bites, following his instruction to roll the shrimp meat under her tongue. The savory flavor was like a little person tiptoeing on the keys of her taste buds, awakening her normally insensitive palate from its slumber.
That feeling of blossoming flowers and sprouting buds, the happiness and pleasure, made her wish for a bottle of German beer to down with magnificent abandon.
Luo Ren was continuing his earlier conversation with Yi Wansan.
“However, fish can only swim in water. A clam would be more advanced, as it can also come ashore. If evil bamboo slips could think like humans, they might also be subtly afraid of being resealed by the Phoenix-Luan Clasp, so they scatter and hide separately. In water, it’s more concealed.”
Yi Wansan pondered: “So that means this evil bamboo slip might have taken a different path from the beginning, not intending to attach to a human body? Then why would it harm people?”
Yi Wansan had previously speculated that the old clam dragging his father underwater could have easily kept him alive, using the opportunity to transfer from the clam to the human, but his father had drowned regardless, as had his mother and the old clan chief later. This evil bamboo slip had so many chances to attach to human bodies, yet it hadn’t. So what was the purpose of harming people? Was it just because it was inauspicious, with a nature inclined to kill?
He had some vague flashes of insight in his mind, but couldn’t grasp them.
Luo Ren smiled and said, “Actually, it’s clever. By attaching to the old clam, it becomes amphibious. Whenever it gets tired of being a clam, it can attach to a drowning person and come ashore, able to advance or retreat as needed. It could also be attached to the urn because the evil bamboo slip is formless, just a force. As long as it’s in the clam’s core, it can influence the old clam.”
Mu Dai casually remarked, “Since it’s formless, what if it’s attached to the ashes? Being attached to the clam body has risks too—you could burn it with fire. If it’s in the ashes, protected by the urn, then wrapped in pearls, and finally enclosed by the old clam—that’s layers of protection. And being in the clam’s core means it’s effectively possessing the old clam at the same time…”
Yi Wansan’s eyes reddened as he jumped up and shouted at her, “If it’s attached to the ashes, how am I supposed to get it out, huh? How do I remove it from my father’s ashes?”
Mu Dai was startled. Nearby, Cao Yanhua and Yan Hongsha had also heard and were looking over questioningly.
Luo Ren said, “Yi Wansan, sit down.”
Yi Wansan’s chest heaved violently. After a pause, he suddenly kicked the sandy ground hard and walked away.
Mu Dai felt uneasy and quietly asked Luo Ren, “Did I say something wrong?”
Luo Ren slowly shook his head.
He suddenly thought of something.
When Shen Gun had told that story from years ago, he had used the word “draw.”
—The master was determined to rid the world of a great evil, drawing the seven inauspicious forces from tortoise shells and animal bones into seven wooden slips, sealed with the Phoenix-Luan Clasp.
“Perhaps we are far from being virtuous individuals like the master, but we are doing something similar to what he did.”
He explained to Mu Dai, “We are now searching for evil bamboo slips. Pin Ting, the ashes—they’re all like the ‘tortoise shells and animal bones’ that contain evil bamboo slips. We’re trying to find these slips to trap them, or at least prevent them from causing more harm. Once we find all of them, along with the Phoenix-Luan Clasp, this process of ‘drawing’ and ‘sealing’ might happen naturally.”
He picked up a skewer and drew a diagram in the sand to show Mu Dai.
“Now, we’ve temporarily trapped one with Pin Ting—Shen Gun is helping us find a more secure method.”
“We’ve found another one in the sea, though we haven’t figured out how to deal with it yet. But I suspect that when the time comes, we might be bringing an urn back with us.”
Throughout this process, the Phoenix-Luan Clasp has been giving us subtle hints. By extension, could it be that the more evil bamboo slips we find, the more obvious these hints will become? Eventually leading us to obtain the Phoenix-Luan Clasp.”
It sounded reasonable, but Mu Dai found it somewhat absurd. “So… we need to find all seven?”
This second evil bamboo slip was much more troublesome than the first. If the evil bamboo slips were truly alive and could communicate with each other, wouldn’t the remaining ones be even harder to deal with?
And what if the other evil bamboo slips, knowing their “companions” had been trapped, came to rescue them? Like the Calabash Brothers—when one was captured by the Snake Spirit, the others would swarm to the rescue…
No, no, Mu Dai felt her perspective was wrong. How could she compare her side to the Snake Spirit?
Luo Ren corrected her: “Not ‘we’—me.”
“For Pin Ting, for my uncle, I can’t stay out of this.”
He looked up at Yi Wansan in the distance. “If the second evil bamboo slip is truly in the ashes, Yi Wansan probably won’t let it go either.”
“But you, Mu Dai, Cao Yanhua, and the others—you don’t have to be involved.”
At this point, he turned to Mu Dai: “Next, let’s play a game.”
“What game?”
Luo Ren turned to look at the bonfire, its bright flames dancing in his eyes: “Truth. We’re all adults. I promise that in this game, every word I say will be the truth. I won’t hide my selfishness, cowardice, vanity, or greed.”
Saying this, he smiled slightly: “Do you dare?”