“I didn’t peek at her taking a bath! I didn’t steal the clothes. I didn’t touch the fairy… I didn’t…”
My father came back from the research in Changbai Mountain and went mad, constantly repeating these words.
A few days later, I found his body in the bathtub.
His abdomen was cut open, a large chunk of his intestines were pulled out and cut off.
And I became the suspect.
01
They took me to a room for questioning because I was the only one present when my father died.
“Did you hear any sound when the case happened?”
“No.” I replied truthfully.
Although my father’s death was tragic, I didn’t hear any sound.
The policeman glanced at me, not quite believing my words.
“Has your father been acting abnormally recently?”
“Since he came back from Changbai Mountain, he’s been repeating one sentence.”
“What sentence?”
I was a bit hesitant to say it.
“I didn’t peek at her taking a bath, I didn’t steal the clothes, and I didn’t touch the fairy.”
“Fairy?” The policeman raised his eyebrows and asked.
I nodded.
“Does your father have a history of mental illness?”
“I don’t know.”
The policeman wrote something down in his notebook and then asked me,
“What did he go to Changbai Mountain for?”
“To conduct research at Tianchi in Changbai Mountain.”
“What kind of research?”
“To take students to do geological surveys and write reports.”
The light in the room was dim, and his hand making the record tapped rhythmically twice.
“You’re lying.”
02
The policeman stared at me fixedly, with an expression that brooked no refutation.
I also raised my head and looked back at him.
“What lie did I tell?” I asked back, looking a bit perfunctory.
“Your father didn’t go to Tianchi at all.”
“I don’t know. He told me it was Tianchi.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a bit irritable.
When I found my father, the bathroom was flooded with water. I slipped and hit my head.
“Then where did he go?” I asked.
“Round Pool. Did he mention this place to you? His students said that he didn’t tell anyone when he went, but you’re his son.”
“No.”
I paused for a moment, remembering something, “But I know this place.”
“Tell me.”
“Round Pool is the sister lake of Tianchi. It also has another name, Tiannü Yugong Pool.”
I think I just realized now why my father had been constantly talking about fairies.
“You don’t mean to say that your father saw a fairy there, do you?” The policeman said with a bit of sarcasm.
“I didn’t say that. Maybe the water monster in Tianchi moved.”
I made a joke, but neither of us laughed.
I had a headache and was distracted, and I didn’t think before speaking.
“We found your blood at the scene.”
He pushed a photo in front of me.
“I hit my head.”
I lifted the hair on my forehead and showed him.
“How do I know it wasn’t because you bumped it when you were arguing with your father?”
“That’s your speculation, not the fact.”
“There are your fingerprints on the knife.”
“That’s the kitchen knife. I cooked dinner last night.” I said casually.
He was about to continue asking questions. I sensed that he wasn’t friendly, and my headache was getting worse.
So I asked to end the interrogation on the grounds of my head injury and insufficient evidence.
03
The result of the autopsy report couldn’t prove that my father cut his abdomen open by himself.
The police found my father’s mental illness history report at my home.
However, that hospital was very old and had already closed down, so it was hard to verify its authenticity.
I couldn’t get rid of the suspicion.
But there was also no way to prove that I did it.
Since the case couldn’t be closed but the autopsy had results, my mother and I asked for the body to be returned.
The mortician said to me, “It’s so strange. There’s another suture scar on your father’s abdomen, right next to the fatal one, with the same length.”
I knew about that scar, but I didn’t expect that my father’s death had anything to do with it.
Now that I think about it, that means my father had been cut open before.
Could it be that he hurt himself when he had an illness before?
I never knew that my father had a history of mental illness.
In my impression, he was always serious and had the image of a noble and virtuous scholar.
At the funeral, looking at the portrait, I became more and more curious about what had happened to my father.
Especially when the funeral ended, my mother suddenly proposed to part ways with me.
The reason she gave was that she wasn’t my biological mother.
04
I’m already thirty years old, and my mother told me that I’m not her biological child.
Over the years, I just thought that she didn’t care much about me because of her personality.
If she isn’t my biological mother, that would explain it.
We weren’t that close anyway, so when she wanted to leave, I didn’t try to stop her.
I asked her if she knew who my biological mother was, and she said she didn’t know.
Afraid that I would be sad, she even joked that my biological mother might be a fairy.
After she left, I was the only one left at home.
My head still hurt, a pain like it was going to split in two.
I went to the hospital for an examination, but was told that the bump on my head had already healed.
But I was clearly in so much pain, as if something was crawling around inside my skull and sucking my brain marrow.
Whenever I had a headache, I would always think of the fairy and the Round Pool that my father mentioned.
I thought I should go there.
Coincidentally, at the same time, a friend of my father’s came to me and wanted to invite me to go to Changbai Mountain to do field research together.
This friend of my father’s, surnamed Zhou, was a genius-like figure, a master with numerous works and had a lot of say in his research field.
I wasn’t qualified to participate in his project originally.
Agreeing to it would be of great help to my development.
Moreover, my father went crazy after coming back from Changbai Mountain, and I had long wanted to find out the truth.
I had planned to agree, but I was involved in a case and couldn’t leave.
However, just one day after I delayed replying, he sent me a video.
He seemed particularly afraid that I would refuse.
I opened the video. In the picture, first a group of people were walking in the forest.
The trees in the southwest dense forest were tall. Passing by a lake, my father suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Then he suddenly knelt down, kowtowed towards the lake, and muttered,
“It’s her! She’s here!”
Then he suddenly froze, his eyes wide open, staring straight at the lake.
The person holding the camera took the opportunity to step forward, patted him, and asked him what was wrong.
He seemed to be stimulated, grabbed his colleague’s collar, and rambled on,
“The one with the mountain on its back is the fish! The one with a tail is the fairy! Men can give birth!”
He kept rambling, with a strange expression, and let out a strange laugh, “Jie Jie Jie”.
“The fairy… She’s back… She’s come to find me!”
All of a sudden, he let go of his colleague, pulled out the knife from his waist, and stabbed it into his abdomen. The white knife went in and the red knife came out.
His colleague screamed and dodged.
The camera was thrown on the ground, and only my father’s side could be filmed from a distance.
Vaguely, I saw that he cut open his own abdomen and then directly reached in with his hand, as if he was going to take something out from inside.
The sound of pulling out the flesh and the painful groans were particularly clear in the silent forest.
Finally, he pulled out a chunk of something, cut it off, and picked up a mass of red flesh on the ground…
The video ended here and started playing in a loop.
The nauseating scene repeated over and over again. Looking at the cut-open abdomen, I could smell the stench when I found my father’s body lingering around my nose.
05
This was something that could prove my innocence.
My father had a history of self-harm. He had done the exact same thing before.
So his death had nothing to do with me.
I handed the video tape to the police, got rid of the suspicion smoothly, and the case was closed.
And I became more and more curious about why my father had gone crazy, so I couldn’t wait to make an appointment with Professor Zhou and go to the Round Pool with him.
However, after arriving at the agreed hotel, I saw someone I didn’t expect there.
That policeman who interrogated me, Wu Shu.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Do I need to report to you where I go?” He had an unfriendly tone.
I wasn’t that familiar with him, so I didn’t reply and went to see Professor Zhou as soon as possible.
When I saw Professor Zhou, I kept staring at him. He thought I was shy.
His hair was combed neatly, and he was gentle and kind. He kept saying to me,
“Don’t you remember me? I even held you when you were a child.”
But the reason I stared at him wasn’t because he was strange. On the contrary, it was because he looked familiar. I remembered this face.
I clearly should haven’t met him before, just heard of him.
Professor Zhou arrived one day earlier than me and said we would go to the Round Pool tomorrow.
Wu Shu wanted to go with us.
After stating his identity as a policeman, Professor Zhou welcomed his joining, and of course I had no objection.
Although the Round Pool wasn’t a popular scenic spot, it was the holiday season, and there were always many pilgrims in Changbai Mountain. The three of us were still submerged in the crowd.
Even though it was far away, I still widened my eyes in an instant, as if I wanted to pop my eyeballs out.
“That’s…” I muttered to myself.
There was a big thing in the lake, long and black, swimming rapidly.
I thought I was seeing things, so I rubbed my eyes and took a closer look.
I wasn’t mistaken. There was indeed something. Under the lake surface, it was long, black, smooth-skinned, huge in size, and stirring up the lake water!
But the people around me didn’t seem to have any reaction. Some were taking pictures, and some were chatting.
It’s impossible! It’s right there. Can’t everyone see it?
Wu Shu noticed my strangeness and asked me, “What’s wrong with you? Who poked your eyes?”
I swallowed and said in a low voice, “Can’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“There’s something in the lake!” I growled in a low voice.
“Who are you scaring in broad daylight? There’s nothing there.” Wu Shu didn’t care at all.
I looked around again. No one was as surprised as I was. Everything was normal.
“Can’t everyone see it…” I narrowed my eyes, feeling a headache and irritable.
Wu Shu snorted, “Your family has a genetic mental illness…”
“I can see it.” Professor Zhou interrupted him.
Professor Zhou stared at the lake without blinking, but he looked much calmer than I did.
“There’s something in the lake.” He said.
Wu Shu became wary and asked, “What is it? You’re so old. Don’t tell me you still like to joke?”
“It’s black, long, and very big, right?”
Professor Zhou ignored him and turned around to ask me.
I nodded numbly, “Yes, it has a dragon’s head and a fish’s tail.”
Professor Zhou could also see it. It wasn’t that I was seeing things, and I wasn’t crazy.
“It’s a dragon if it’s a dragon, and it’s a fish if it’s a fish. What do you mean by a dragon’s head and a fish’s tail?”
Wu Shu said loudly, attracting a lot of people’s attention.
I looked at the swimming creature in the lake again, staring blankly.
“A dragon’s head and a fish’s tail is an Ao fish.”
Wu Shu sneered, “You researchers must have damaged your brains. What is an Ao fish?”
Professor Zhou said slowly, “According to the legend, before the carp jumps over the Dragon Gate, the gold and silver carps secretly swallow the dragon pearl, and finally can’t transform into a dragon and can only become an Ao fish with a dragon’s head and a fish’s tail.”
After he finished speaking, there was silence all around. Wu Shu stiffly turned his head to look at the lake, and the people around also stared at the lake water in unison. The scene was rather strange.
“Do you believe it?”
Professor Zhou asked Wu Shu with a smile, breaking the eerie silence.
06
Wu Shu raised one eyebrow and slightly curled the corner of his mouth.
“Do I look like I believe it? Are you two teaming up to deceive me? So many people can’t see it. You two must be seeing things.”
Professor Zhou smiled gently twice and patted him on the back.
“I don’t believe it either. How can we believe our eyes? It’s the easiest for eyes to deceive us.”
“What you said makes it seem like eyes are alive and have consciousness.”
“Aren’t they?”
Wu Shu’s expression froze, and I was also stunned.
What the world is like is defined by what our eyes see. If our eyes are deceiving me…
Zhou Yanping smiled amiably as if nothing had happened,
“Let’s go, go back for dinner. I’m old. I can’t walk much.”
The thing in the lake had disappeared. Zhou Yanping’s words made me a bit confused about which of his words were true and which were false.
Did I really see it? Or were my eyes deceiving me, deceiving my brain?
But I saw that when he turned around, he gave me a deep look.
He saw it.
He must have seen it. I had to find a chance to ask him.
We had lunch together. With Wu Shu present during lunch, I couldn’t bring it up.
After eating, Professor Zhou had the habit of taking a nap, and I couldn’t disturb him, so I had to wait until the afternoon to go to him.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, Professor Zhou said he would wake up at this time. I sent him a message asking if I could go to see him.
There was no reply all the time, so I simply opened the door and wanted to go directly to ask.
If I didn’t ask clearly about this matter, I definitely wouldn’t be able to do anything else today.
But as soon as I opened the door, I saw Wu Shu standing at my door.
He was nearly 1.9 meters tall and had a broad figure. Standing at my door,he almost blocked the whole door.
I was startled and shrank back, patting my chest as I asked him,
“Are you crazy? What are you doing standing here?”
“Zhou Yanping is missing.” He replied calmly.
I was stunned and instantly felt a chill run down my spine.
“How could that be?”
He looked me up and down and said,
“You should ask yourself.”
I still looked at him, not understanding what he meant.
He explained to me,
“He had an appointment to meet you at three o’clock this afternoon. The cleaner just went to clean and saw his door open, the room in a mess as if it had been robbed, and the old man was nowhere to be seen.”
I asked anxiously, “Where did he go? Does he have enemies here? Did he tell you?”
Wu Shu glared at me.
“Tell me? The man is missing. What’s there to tell?”
I calmed down a bit, as if waking up from a dream, and my gaze dropped to the ground.
“How do you know he’s missing? Did you go to look for him?”
“Why should I tell you?”
He gave me another sideways glance, leaned against the doorframe, impatient but still explained to me,
“Am I the only one allowed to have something to ask him? The higher-ups said the case should be closed, but I suspect that your father’s case isn’t over. I wanted to ask him about the video. Coincidentally, he had an accident just then.”
The cold wind in the northern autumn was whistling and blowing into the room. After he said that, I shivered.
My head started to hurt again, and I twitched the corner of my mouth.
“You suspect me?”
He said, “I don’t want to, but he just made an appointment with you and then went missing, and it’s related to you again.”
“If it was really me who did it, I wouldn’t be so stupid.”
He shrugged lazily.
“Who knows? What if the video was synthesized by someone you hired? What if you’re trying to play the thief crying ‘stop thief’?”
“You came all this way just to ask Professor Zhou about the video…”
He interrupted me, “I’m going to the Round Pool to take a look now. Someone saw him there. I think you know it quite well. Do me a favor and come with me.”
Before I could agree, he started walking forward as if he was confident that I would follow him.
And I did follow his steps indeed.
Anyway, I was going to go there sooner or later.
He was tall and big, walking in front of me like a wall, blocking a lot of the cold wind.
On the way, he asked me in the car why I came here.
I told him about Professor Zhou’s invitation.
“Invited you?” He had a somewhat contemptuous tone.
He suspected me, so he always had malicious intentions towards me. I was already used to it.
I explained to him the reason for my invitation.
The reason why Professor Zhou invited me was that I had written a paper before about the myth of induced birth and the swan maiden type of myth.
“There is such a legend about the Round Pool.”
“What legend?” He asked.
“The legend says that fairies bathed in the pool, and the divine magpie was jealous of the fairies’ beauty, so it brought a red fruit. The fairy accidentally ate it and got pregnant and couldn’t fly away, and gave birth to the ancestor of the Manchu people.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, it’s quite common. There are such legends all over the world.”
He sneered slightly, “Then what’s the relationship between that and what your father said about stealing clothes?”
He actually still remembered this.
I explained to him, “In some stories, the fairies couldn’t fly away because men stole their clothes, and were forced to marry the men and have children, giving birth to the ancestors of certain ethnic groups.”
“So the theme of your paper is the legend of ethnic origin?”
As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly made a sharp turn, kicking up a cloud of dust and coming to a stop.
My already aching head felt like it was going to explode from his sudden movement.
I muttered in my heart, “You have to put on an act.”
“We have to take a wild path. The front is a forest area. The car can’t get in. We have to walk.”
He said as he casually opened the door and got out of the car.
“Aren’t you a policeman? Why are we sneaking around on a wild path?”
“Do you think I want to? Someone saw him around here.”
I rubbed my temples and forced my eyes open, looking at the sky through the car window.
“If we walk in now, it will be dark when we come out.”
“Are you scared?”
He opened the car door and asked me to get out.
If I were alone, I definitely would be scared, afraid of wild animals coming out at night in the forest area and being in danger.
But there was a big and burly policeman with a gun at his waist beside me.
“Let’s go. The sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be back.” I said.
I walked into the woods one step ahead of him.
I wanted to know the truth more than he did.
He walked to my side in a few steps, holding a map in his hand, but paying more attention to me.
I knew that although he said he wanted me to help, in fact, he just wanted to keep an eye on me, afraid that I would run away.
He suspected me and didn’t want me to leave his sight.
07
The woods were deep and dense. It had rained before, and there was the smell of rotting autumn leaves in the air.
Occasionally, drops of water from the leaves fell on my head, bringing a bone-chilling coolness.
We walked for a full hour.
My feet hurt from walking, but he was full of energy and was still vigilantly taking pictures of the footprints nearby.
The sky was getting darker and darker. He turned on the flashlight, and I turned on my phone for illumination.
Except for the area within our light sources, it was pitch black all around.
The cell phone signal gradually weakened. Before the signal completely disappeared, I received a message:
“The fairy only allows one person to leave here.”
It was from Zhou Yanping.
“What are you in a daze for?”
I was staring at that message in a daze when Wu Shu called me, which startled me and made me almost drop my phone.
As soon as I grasped my phone firmly, he started speaking again:
“We’re almost there.”
As he said, after walking a little further, we walked out of the woods and came to the lakeside, facing a vast expanse of open lake water.
The moonlight was shimmering, reflected on the lake surface.
The lake was calm and silent, and the smell of water filled my nostrils. I sneezed.
Not far from the lakeside, there was a stone tablet. I walked over to check it, and it read “Tiannü Yugong Pool” in big characters.
The tablet was erected in the last century and was a bit mottled.
It was said that the earliest tablet was erected in the late Qing Dynasty and had already been destroyed.
I was carefully distinguishing the handwriting. This should be the Bulhuri Lake in the legend of the Three Fairies.
All of a sudden, Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three gunshots rang out.
I was startled.
I turned around and saw Wu Shu raising his arm straight, pointing his gun at the lake and firing three blank shots.
“What’s going on?” I quickly asked.
His hand was still raised, staring intently at the lake, his eyes reflecting the moonlight on the lake surface, and his Adam’s apple was moving up and down.
Half of his face was hidden in the shadow of the trees, flickering with the wind.
“Is there a wild animal?” I asked again.
He looked abnormal. I hid my body behind the stone tablet and didn’t dare to approach him.
“…There’s someone.”
“Someone?”
On this dark and windy night, the hairs on my whole body stood on end. I looked across the lake.
“Where is the person?”
He forced himself to sound calm and said, “On the lake surface.”
I withdrew my gaze that had been looking far away and looked at the calm lake surface.
“How could there be someone on the lake surface?”
He said on the lake surface, not in the lake. Judging from his reaction, it seemed like he saw someone walking on the lake surface.
“Just now, you didn’t see it.”
I looked at the calm lake surface, listening to the wind blowing through the gaps in the trees, and the grass at my feet brushing against my ankles. The goosebumps on my body wouldn’t go away.
After a while, he slowly put down his gun.
“I might have been mistaken. Let’s go. There’s nothing here. Let’s go back.”
In the blink of an eye, he regained his composed look and turned around to walk into the woods.
Only he didn’t put away the gun in his hand and was still holding it tightly.
After walking into the woods, I followed beside him, and he handed me a piece of paper.
“My flashlight is running out of power. You look at the map.” He said in an ordering tone.
“Where’s your cell phone? Why don’t you use it for illumination?”
“It’s also out of power.” He replied casually.
I didn’t ask further. The important thing now was to leave this place.
Although I didn’t see anything, his reaction just now made me feel scared. I always felt a sense of eeriness.
When I gradually calmed down, the headache came back to me again.
This headache seemed to be reminding me of something, making it impossible for me to ignore it.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and continued walking. After turning a few corners, we still hadn’t walked out, as if we were trapped by ghosts.
Did we take the wrong way?
“Did you take the wrong map?” I asked Wu Shu.
However, no one answered me.
I turned my head to look around, and there was no one beside me, only the howling cold wind at night.
Wu Shu was gone.
I realized that in the pitch-black woods now, I was the only one left.
No, he had been acting strange since he fired the gun just now.
He must have seen something that I didn’t see.
The map wasn’t wrong; it was fake.
He deliberately made me get lost and wanted to lead me away.
On this cold and dark night in the woods, with lurking wild beasts, what he did was equivalent to trying to kill me.
I remembered the message from Zhou Yanping:
“The fairy only allows one person to leave here.”
Only one person, it might not be me, but also might be Wu Shu.
Zhou Yanping didn’t only send it to me, but also to him.
I looked at the inky night.
The fairy?
I threw away the map in my hand, turned around, and walked back, towards the lakeside.
I didn’t want to harm Wu Shu, but just in case, I marked the ground to prevent him from trying to harm me.
I walked hurriedly, couldn’t wait to go back. I knew that there was the truth by the lake.
The truth about why Wu Shu left me behind, the truth about Zhou Yanping’s disappearance, and the truth about my father’s suicide.
08
I followed the marks and returned. The closer I got to the lakeside, the more quietly I walked.
There was light by the lake, an unusual light.
I hid behind the stone tablet and peeked sideways. This was what I saw:
The lake water was circulating rapidly, forming a huge vortex. In the middle was a patch of white light, and it seemed that something was standing in the middle of the lake – a woman.
Wu Shu was standing by the lake, looking at the center of the lake with an infatuated expression, his eyebrows dancing with excitement.
He seemed to be drunk, bewitched, but I couldn’t see clearly.
What was it? The bathing fairy?
Then I saw him tiptoe forward a few steps quietly, reach out his hand, grope around on the shore for something, and then hold it in his arms.
Feather clothes.
This time I saw that what he was holding in his arms were feather clothes that were light, flowing, and shining with golden light.
The moment he got the feather clothes, there was an explosion in the center of the lake, and water splashed everywhere!
Water got into my eyes. I closed them tightly, ignored the pain, rubbed them randomly, and then opened them quickly, not wanting to miss anything.
The white light dissipated, the vortex stopped for a while, the earth trembled, and I saw what was in the center of the lake.
It wasn’t a woman at all, but a monster!
It was taller than the surrounding woods, dozens of times taller than Wu Shu.
It had a dragon’s head and a fish’s tail.
It was the Ao fish that I had seen during the day.
“Woo——”
It raised its head and roared, and the air waves spread out from the center of the lake and rushed towards the woods.
I was stunned by the shocking scene in front of me. It was too late to run, so I could only hold on to the stone tablet tightly to avoid being blown away.
When the wind stopped, I just opened my eyes when suddenly I heard a moan:
“Ah——”
I followed the sound and looked.
The feather clothes in Wu Shu’s arms suddenly seemed to come to life and climbed along Wu Shu’s body.
But he was still looking at the Ao fish infatuatedly.
In his eyes, that was the fairy…
The feather clothes gradually bound and wrapped him tightly, from head to toe, wrapping him into a cocoon.
He struggled and shouted, his vocal cords almost torn, but his voice was muffled and became less and less clear.
But that wasn’t the sound of pain, but of excitement and happiness, as if he was indulging in some illusion.
The cocoon was getting tighter and tighter. If this continued, he would suffocate to death soon.
I didn’t go to help him.
He had left me behind in the woods – for the “fairy”.
Wu Shu was right. I did tell a lie.
When my father died, he also said something else.
He said that he saw her again and that I should bring someone to find her.
“Who?” I asked him.
“The fairy.” He kept repeating it like a madman.
“Remember, she has a tail. The one with a tail is the fairy!
“Go find her, or you’ll die! Bring someone to find her! She’ll help you!”
I didn’t believe it at first, until my head started to ache terribly, until my mother said that I wasn’t her biological child.
I didn’t mean to bring Wu Shu here. He was a policeman. No matter what, I wouldn’t have thought of involving him.
I thought that person would be Zhou Yanping.
But it seemed that someone was secretly helping to push everything to this point.
A sudden shrill cry pulled me out of my memories.
I raised my head, and a big red bird swooped down from the sky!
Another gust of wind blew, and I was so startled that I froze, even forgetting to hide.
The big bird circled continuously above Wu Shu’s cocoon, wailing.
Finally, as if compromising, the big bird spat out a red fruit or bead, which landed in the middle of the cocoon.
A bead? I searched in myths for related things. Was it the red fruit that the fairy accidentally ate? Or the dragon pearl that the Ao fish secretly swallowed?
Then the red bead seemed to be absorbed by the cocoon. The cocoon that wrapped Wu Shu exploded from the middle, revealing the person inside.
There were filaments floating in the air. Wu Shu fell to the ground, rolled a few times, and fell unconscious.
The divine magpie chirped joyfully, broke through the sky, and disappeared in an instant.
In an instant, the water sparkled, and the Ao fish returned to the lake and disappeared.
I stared blankly at everything in front of me, as if in a dream.
In the blink of an eye, everything disappeared, and the wind and waves calmed down.
By the lakeside in the middle of the night, only Wu Shu and I were left, as if nothing had happened.
Were my eyes deceiving me…
No.
I was sure that everything that had just happened had really happened.
It definitely happened.
I stared blankly at the lake surface. Was what had just happened the truth that I had been looking for?
If so, then there was another side to the legend in my paper:
A man peeked at the fairy bathing and tried to steal the fairy’s clothes.
But he was trapped by the fairy’s feather clothes and was on the verge of suffocating to death.
The divine magpie was merciful and saved the man.
Was that all?
I seemed to have overlooked something important…
That red bead.
I heard the sound of dry branches being stepped on behind me.
“Come out, don’t hide anymore.” I shouted.
09
I turned my head, and Zhou Yanping was walking towards me.
He still had a smiling face, and his pupils under the glasses were shining with a shrewd light.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you. Your father told you, right? You should bring someone here.”
I didn’t bother with small talk with him and got straight to the point.
“He said so, but he didn’t say you would help me.”
I originally thought that the person I was supposed to bring was Zhou Yanping.
I walked to Wu Shu’s side and checked his breath.
He was still alive.
“Is the dragon pearl in Wu Shu’s stomach?”
“Yes.”
So, did my father cut open his abdomen to take the dragon pearl?
That is to say, it was my father who was brought to the Ao fish thirty years ago.
“You shouldn’t have involved Wu Shu. He’s a policeman. Things will be very troublesome.” I said.
“Didn’t you come with him? What does it have to do with me?”
“You played missing and lured us here. I came with him, but I didn’t expect him…”
I stopped halfway, and Zhou Yanping continued my sentence:
“Didn’t expect him to be lured by the fairy?”
“But he’s a policeman.” I was a bit reluctant.
“So what? Your father was still a professor.”
After saying that, he suddenly fell silent, as if he had said something he shouldn’t have.
After a while, he walked over and looked down at Wu Shu.
“Human beings are just like that, fragile and insignificant, vulnerable.”
He made it sound like he wasn’t human.
Perhaps, he wasn’t human in the first place, and neither was I.
Seeing that I had been silent, Zhou Yanping said again,
“Don’t blame yourself. You’re only responsible for bringing people here. They were the ones who were lured by the ‘fairy’ themselves.
“He watched your father’s video and heard your father’s last words. He clearly knew there was something strange here, but he still led you away and returned to the lakeside, didn’t he?”
He was trying too hard to absolve himself.
“It was you who sent messages to disrupt him and disrupt me.”
He snorted, looked at the moon, with a tone of disgust and sarcasm:
“Human beings have to pay a price if they want to explore secrets.
“They could have believed in science. Wouldn’t it be okay if they just believed in science?
“Even their ancestors said to respect ghosts and gods and keep a distance from them. Some people just don’t believe in evil. They brought it upon themselves.”
He was half muttering to himself with feelings and half consoling me.
After sighing, he handed me a knife.
“Take the dragon pearl out of his stomach and give it to it, and your headache will go away.”
He even knew that I had a headache.
I paused for a moment, took the knife from him, squatted beside Wu Shu, and began to unbutton his clothes.
While using the knife to cut Wu Shu’s stomach, I asked Zhou Yanping,
“One last thing, what’s the use of the dragon pearl?”
He didn’t enthusiastically answer me this time.
“You’re asking too many questions.”
“Really?”
I stopped what I was doing, stood up, and said,
“But this is the only question that I should ask the most, isn’t it?”
I grabbed his collar and put the knife to his neck.
He didn’t dare to move, looking warily at the knife on his neck:
“I helped you. Is this how you repay me?”
“You came all the way to Changbai Mountain and went to so much trouble. You surely didn’t do it just to help me with my headache.”
“Put the knife down first, and I’ll tell you.”
“What if I don’t?”
I tightened the knife against his neck.
He lifted his eyelids to look at me, with a look of being forced.
“Then we’ll have to see which is faster, the knife or the gun.”
I froze. I felt something hard pressing against my waist.
He looked at my widened pupils and smiled slightly.
Bang!
A gunshot rang out. I pushed him and immediately crouched on the ground, backing away.
The shot missed.
Zhou Yanping chased after me quickly, but he was old and had trouble with his legs and feet, so he wasn’t very agile.
“I originally wanted you to help me get the dragon pearl, and we could both be fine. You just had to make it difficult for me like this.”
“Fine? It’s not you who’s going to stab the policeman’s stomach. You can just walk away, and I’ll take the blame for you. Of course you’ll be fine!” I shouted.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He fired several more shots at me. His aim wasn’t very good, but one shot hit my shoulder, and I fell down accidentally.
If this continued, he would eventually hit a vital part with one of his shots.
“Wu Shu!” I roared.
When Zhou Yanping heard me shouting Wu Shu, he froze for a moment and turned around.
Behind him, Wu Shu half sat up, holding a gun in his hand and pointing it at Zhou Yanping.
Bang!
Just as Zhou Yanping was about to shoot Wu Shu, Wu Shu’s bullet had already hit his right hand.
It was very accurate.
Even more accurate than all of Zhou Yanping’s shots combined that he had fired at me.
“Damn it——” Zhou Yanping yelled, and the gun in his hand fell to the ground.
I took the opportunity to pick up his gun and shot him in the leg.
Zhou Yanping was shot in the leg and fell to the ground, wailing in pain.
I felt like I was abusing an old man a bit.
Seeing Zhou Yanping fall, Wu Shu raised the corner of his mouth mischievously.
“This old guy, I was just unconscious, not dead. Trying to play with guns with me…”
Before he could finish speaking, his eyelids drooped weakly, he swayed, and passed out again.
When I was unbuttoning his clothes earlier, I found that he showed signs of waking up. He would wake up with just a little push, so I didn’t dare to touch him too hard.
He was really lucky. He didn’t die even after falling from such a height.
10
I held Zhou Yanping’s gun and pointed it at his forehead.
“Now can you talk?”
“Talk about what?”
Zhou Yanping covered his injured arm and dragged his injured leg, leaning against a stone.
“Talk about what the dragon pearl is used for.”
“How are you so sure that the dragon pearl is useful?”
I was so angry that I laughed instead and gave him a disdainful look.
“Are you kidding? Did I write my paper for nothing? All the children of fairies either become clan chiefs or kings. Are you telling me the dragon pearl is useless? Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Then I’ll tell you. You let me go.”
I shook the gun. “Do you think you have a choice?”
He swallowed hard and said through gritted teeth,
“As you saw earlier, the Ao fish… appears once every thirty years. If you get the dragon pearl, you can exchange it for a blessing from it.”
“What kind of blessing?”
“You can think of it as having one of your wishes fulfilled.”
No wonder he went to so much trouble. At his age, he was still doing all this.
“What do you want? Eternal life? So all your achievements today are what you asked for from it?”
He nodded.
I thought my father had always regarded him as a real academic genius. Turns out he had a cheat.
I bent down, got close to him, and asked in a low voice, “Are you human?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, then suddenly thought of something, opened his eyes and glared at me.
I sneered.
“I’m not either?”
“Yes.”
“What are we…?”
“I don’t know.”
He was silent for a moment.
“But if you give the dragon pearl to it, it will give you one of its scales. Put it back in Wu Shu’s stomach, and it will heal quickly. Then…”
“Then there will be something like us in his stomach.”
We are just tools for bringing humans here, cutting open their bellies, and taking the pearls.
I stood up. “I understand.”
With a bang!
I fired a shot at his stomach.
He was caught off guard and let out an “Ah”, collapsing on the ground, with nowhere to hide.
“You! What are you doing! You promised to let me go!”
“You killed my father. Do you think I’ll save you?”
Zhou Yanping was stunned, his mouth half open, silent.
Putting Zhou Yanping’s words together.
Thirty years ago, it was him who needed to bring someone to find the Ao fish.
He brought my father to the southwest dense forest and exchanged the dragon pearl for a blessing.
Thirty years later, he drove my father crazy and made him commit suicide. I was targeted by the police, and then he jumped out to help me, wanting to get another blessing.
And Wu Shu might have found out that he had come to the Round Pool to meet my father. On the surface, he suspected me, but in fact, he was investigating him.
After a while, Zhou Yanping laughed sarcastically.
“You’ve been with humans for too long and even learned that set of filial piety? Do you really think you’re human?”
I grabbed my coat to wipe the gun handle.
“Then Professor Zhou, have you been with humans for too long and been infected with greed? One blessing wasn’t enough, and you wanted two. Don’t you have any shame?”
After saying that, I threw the gun into the lake and walked towards Wu Shu.
Seeing me walking away, Zhou Yanping panicked.
“Help me! Luo Yunchuan, you promised me! Are you going to leave me here? We’re the same kind!”
I didn’t look back and waved at him.
“Keeping promises is something humans do. I’m not human.”
I walked to Wu Shu’s side, took the gun out of his hand, wiped it, and threw it into the lake too.
Then I picked up the knife that I had dropped when I was dodging bullets and stabbed it into Wu Shu’s stomach.
The process of cutting open his abdomen wasn’t pleasant. Fortunately, Wu Shu seemed to be in a coma and didn’t react.
As soon as I got the dragon pearl in my hand, I felt the ground tremble, and I could hardly stand still.
A huge creature burst out of the lake, stood in the water, and howled at me.
Suddenly, the Ao fish stared at me and let out a cry.
That sound was ethereal and distant, as if the whole world was talking to me, and I couldn’t help walking towards it…
11
When Wu Shu woke up, there was no trace on his stomach.
But it was slightly bulging.
My headache was gone. I was sitting on the lakeshore, skipping stones on the water with my good hand, muttering,
“The one with the mountain on its back is the fish, the one with a tail is the fairy, and men can give birth…”
“What are you mumbling about?”
Wu Shu sat up halfway and asked me.
“You’re awake?”
I looked at him. He was reaching for his stomach, and when he touched the protruding part, his body froze and his eyes widened.
“What did you do to me?”
I didn’t answer. I picked up a plastic bottle I found, filled it with some lake water, and handed it to him.
“Have some water.”
He looked at me with a serious expression.
“Are you crazy? Can this water be drunk?”
“Was the fairy pretty?”
He was slightly stunned, and his ears turned red. “How do you know?”
I took advantage of his daze, lifted his chin, and brought the bottle to his mouth.
His leg seemed to be broken. Just as he was about to resist, he winced in pain and didn’t have the energy to resist me.
“Drink it. I drank it, and Zhou Yanping also drank it. We’ll be fine if we all drink it.”
I muttered like a madman and managed to make him drink half a small bottle of water until he pushed it away with one hand.
“Luo Yunchuan, are you crazy! Don’t force me to handcuff you!”
I ignored him, picked up the bottle, squatted down, and drank half of the remaining water myself.
Then I dragged my tired body and walked to Zhou Yanping, who was lying in the distance.
“You old thing, still hanging on. Have some water.”
I poured the water into his mouth regardless of his will.
“Cough cough cough…”
He choked, but he didn’t even have the strength to cough. His voice was weak.
Zhou Yanping stared straight at me.
“What did you ask it for?”
He couldn’t swallow much at a time. I chatted with him while feeding him.
“Still thinking about that? I’m a bit curious. My father was a professor, Wu Shu is a policeman, and they both stole the fairy’s clothes. What was your father’s occupation?”
He closed his eyes tightly, looking as if he couldn’t bear to recall.
“A monk.”
I chuckled, which made my wound hurt.
“Answer me, what did you ask for?” Zhou Yanping persisted in asking.
I still didn’t answer.
“How did you know that it would appear at the Round Pool thirty years later?”
“The Ao fish moves when there’s an earthquake.”
So that’s why my father had always been muttering, “The fish with the mountain on its back”.
My father was a bit better than Wu Shu. He didn’t pass out and even saw that the fairy had a tail.
The water was all fed to him. I threw away the water bottle and looked at him lazily.
“Why does it want the dragon pearl? Is it a divine punishment? What exactly is it? A god? A monster?”
Fear flashed across his old and haggard eyes.
“It’s… unknown.”
I sighed. If you don’t know, just say you don’t know. What’s with the “unknown”.
Zhou Yanping covered his abdomen, his lips pale.
“Can you tell me now? What exactly did you ask for? Money? Power? Fame?”
He asked me eagerly.
Since he had drunk the water and I didn’t have anything else to ask, I stopped beating around the bush.
“Eyes.”
I asked for a pair of eyes that wouldn’t deceive me.
With these eyes, I saw that Zhou Yanping had only ten seconds left to live.
In Zhou Yanping’s incredulous eyes, I stood up, turned around, and walked back to Wu Shu.
“Do you really like being a policeman?” I asked Wu Shu.
“What do you mean?”
Ten seconds passed.
“You can’t be a policeman anymore. Be my bodyguard.”
12
When the police found us, I had been shot in the shoulder and had already passed out from the pain.
All three of us were injured.
Zhou Yanping had three gunshot wounds, I had one gunshot wound, and Wu Shu seemed to have been thrown down from a height, with both legs and his thoracic vertebra fractured.
There were no bullets left in Zhou Yanping’s gun, and three bullets in Wu Shu’s gun were missing.
There were no traces on the guns. It was impossible to tell who had shot whom.
Everything was very strange.
The guns were salvaged from the bottom of the lake.
Besides the guns, there was nothing in the lake. They didn’t see the things that I had mentioned.
And they thought I was crazy.
This case was so chaotic that it was impossible to investigate. There was no clue at all.
Since we were all injured and Zhou Yanping was dead, it could only mean that he was unlucky and didn’t survive until the police came.
Later, the doctors also found something strange in Wu Shu’s stomach, which was already in the realm of the supernatural.
The final conclusion was that the three of us were poisoned by drinking the lake water, and the toxic substances had hallucinogenic effects.
Thanks to my thoughtfulness in making all three of us drink the lake water, it gave them a reasonable explanation.
I was fine, but they wanted to examine the thing in Wu Shu’s stomach and took him to the laboratory.
I arranged for someone to rescue Wu Shu and get him out.
“You sent those people? You’re just a poor scholar. Where did you get so much money?”
“I found a mine.”
“A mine? Where did you get the money to open a mine?”
“I bought a few stones and found something valuable in them.”
“You had money to gamble on stones?”
“I didn’t originally. I picked up a bargain at the ghost market.”
“You? Picked up a bargain?”
“Yeah, I earned money by fortune-telling.”
“You can even fortune-tell!”
“Yes, stop talking. It’s time to go into the delivery room.”
I called the doctor and watched him enter the operating room.
Wu Shu was held down by the doctor and cursed loudly, “Luo Yunchuan, what the hell did you do to me! I’m a pure man. How could I be made pregnant!”
…
Thirty years later, there was an earthquake near Fairy Lake in Jiangxi. Wu Shu took the child and went there.
I watched that child grow up, from a mass of red flesh to a person.
Wu Shu named him Wu Di.
True to his style, really lacking in taste.
Since Wu Di was a child, I told him that when he turned thirty, he would have a chance to make a wish and asked him to think about it carefully.
He thought about it for thirty years and finally decided that he wanted eternal life.
“Why do you want eternal life?”
“Eternal life! Who wouldn’t want it since ancient times? Godfather, you’re so rich. Don’t you want eternal life too?”
He looked at me eagerly, waiting for my answer.
Looking at him, I remembered Zhou Yanping, who had the same wish as him.
I was old, as old as Zhou Yanping was back then.
I thought of that night again and the “fairy”.
I pondered, “What if time doesn’t exist? What if time is just your eyes deceiving you? What if something wants to trap us with our senses?”
Wu Di looked at me silently, thought for a moment, and then said,
“Godfather, you’re being all mysterious again. Do you want me to call my dad over to keep you company? Did you see something again?”
“I saw…”
I saw pitch darkness. Nothing existed. Everything didn’t exist.
Death didn’t exist, time didn’t exist, and space didn’t exist.
I had always been standing at the origin and never moved.
