CH 145

The dream in Qu Yan’s mind was hell on earth.

Entire highrises falling one after another, dust blowing into a storm, numerous citizens fleeing as they cried, yelled, and struggled, and yet nothing could be done. 

The ground began to shake violently, tearing into numerous cracks. Lava began to bubble and crackle from underneath while an immeasurable amount of demons with terrifying otherworldly faces slowly crawled out from the cracks and began to swallow up the humans.

Blood, blood was everywhere……

The ground was covered with pieces of limbs and organs as the burning red hot lava continued to spill out, boiling up all the souls until they turned straight into ash, and the grey, grey sky was slowly darkening with black clouds rolling past until you couldn’t even see your fingers.

Qu Yan was in the middle of the crowd but he did not hide nor evade, letting the lava swallow him up, swallow his blood and his bones. Covering his face with both of his hands, his dark and twisted eyes looked through the cracks towards the world that was slowly falling apart, piece by piece, and he let out a quiet laugh, a laugh that only illuminated how sick to the bone he was.

Before the demon wakes up, no one knew he was a demon.

Before this point, he had never drank fresh blood because he didn’t know the taste of it.

A self deprecating victim with low self esteem who had suffered too much has died and another even more terrifying demon was about to awaken.

He was swallowing the world and also himself.

In a split second, this entire city, this world suddenly lost its colors. The air slowly filled with the smell of smoke and corroded metal as a wave of heat blew past. Yet just as the last light in the sky dispersed, rain suddenly fell down.

They were small droplets but heavy and dense, gentle and weak. If it had color, it would be pale blue, just like the corner of the sky as it was being washed anew. In that moment, the burning heat faded away and the lava flowed back, leaving only peace and quiet.

The lighting in the storage room was very dim as Qu Yan’s breathing deepened for a moment before he was suddenly awake. Opening his leaden eyes, there was nothing in his sight. After a while of focusing his gaze, he finally realized that he was sleeping against a very warm leg and his nose was filled with the faint scent of mint, interspersed with the smell of cigarette smoke which smelled very good.

He was so comfortable that it made him incapable of remembering……

Qu Yan closed his eyes and then reopened them. This time, he could clearly see a book dangling above his head, one that had an inky black cover with two small words in white —-

<< To Live >>1

Recognizing his book, his fingers twitched. He silently grabbed the book with the hand with fallen out nails, marring the white sheet of paper with dirty trails of blood.

Pei Ran had gotten quite into reading it so he did get quite a jump scare from this. But when he realized that Qu Yan could be awake, he moved the book out of the way out of habit and then was frightened again by the wounded half of Qu Yan’s face.

That wound was so deep that even with the anti-inflammation medicine, it looked quite terrifying. Compared to the other half of the face, it was like heaven and hell.

Qu Yan suddenly seemed a bit pitiful, like a perfect jade piece without even a single piece of dust, suddenly broken with a crack; it made others look upon him with regret and pity.

“Awake?”

Pei Ran packed up the contents back in the bag and placed it aside. The exhaust fan was spinning nonstop, splitting up the blood red sky outside into pieces, so he could only tell that it was the morning of the second day by looking at the watch on his wrist.

Qu Yan moved his cracked lips soundlessly, as if to say something, but because of the high fever yesterday, he was unable to spit a single word out. He looked up towards the exhaust fan, his eyes reflecting the blood red sky above which illuminated his pupils with a strange light. Yet in a split moment it was back to that heavy darkness, withdrawing any kind of human emotion.

Pei Ran thought that he was hungry, so with one hand around the back of Qu Yan’s neck, he partially lifted him up to lean against his shoulder, grabbed a water bottle out of the bag and used the lid to slowly feed him water one lid-full at a time.

Watching from the side, Zhou Cang Ming, probably thinking that Pei Ran was quite hypocritical, knocked the metal tube in his hand on the floor rhythmically, a sign that could only hint at whatever he was scheming up. 

There was still more than half a bag of chocolate cookies left inside the bag, whatever cheap brand it was – so overwhelming sweet with a sugary aftertaste, a taste that made you immediately need to close your throat and your eyes. 

When Pei Ran just arrived, he had taken a small bite and then hadn’t touched it again. So when he saw the bag of cookies, he could feel his stomach rolling over. So without hesitation, he fed it to Qu Yan.

The face of this young man was like a perfect drawing, like an ink painting, timeless in its delicacy, yet there was a feeling that couldn’t be shaken off from him, a feeling of this depressive gloom. 

Qu Yan did not eat the food held up to his lips. Slowly opening his eyes, he measured Pei Ran up with a dark and heavy stare. After a while, he moved his lips, spitting out a word that was split into multiple syllables, 

“Why……”

So hoarse it was incomprehensible.

Pei Ran paused for a slight moment but didn’t reply. Taking this chance, Zhou Cang Ming slid into the conversation in a tone filled with malicious intentions, 

“Why? Huh, to feed you well to make it easier to x?”

A smile filled with venomous thoughts came upon Zhou Cang Ming’s face.

Pei Ran smiled fakely at that and then lowered his head to look at Qu Yan resting in his arms. He stared at him as if he were looking at a beloved and continued to feed him cookies. 

Elongating his syllables, he said, 

A blood red ray shone on the pages, illuminating a sentence in black and white well but also covering it with a faint layer of blood lust: humans live for the sake of living and not for anything else.2

In the midst of the dust dancing in the air, someone’s stomach grumbled. Zhou Cang Ming looked left and right but couldn’t figure out who it was. He stood up from the ground, the long metal tube still in his hand, and paced back and forth like a leader before his troops.

“We have used up all of our supplies and we cannot just sit here waiting for our death. It has been so long that the skies outside are still red and it probably won’t change. I am familiar with this area, and not far away from here is a gas station and a supermarket. To avoid any other people emptying it all out, we should do it ourselves first.”

There was some truth to his words, so after his speech, bodyguard Feng Tang stood up as well, evidently planning to head out and find provisions. Including the two delinquents, it felt as if there was an acknowledgement and shift in the acceptance of power.

Seeing this, Zhou Cang Ming nodded his head in satisfaction,

“There is a van outside. I found the key upstairs yesterday and there is still fuel, enough that we can go. So how about this, the women stay behind, the men head out.”

The girl named Zhi Zhi nervously grabbed onto the arm of her boyfriend, shaking her head with furrowed eyebrows, 

“Sang Yan, don’t go. It’s very dangerous outside.”

Sang Yan comfortingly patted her arm but then stood up, evidently agreeing with this proposal.

The only one with no reaction was probably Pei Ran. He sat on the floor comfortably, using the book to block his face, trying to escape the “catastrophe” that Zhou Cang Ming was trying to bring down onto him. 

Who knew that before Zhou Cang Ming could even make a complaint, Feng Tang was the first to furrow his eyebrows and say,

“Young Master Peng, are you not planning to go out and find provisions?”

Find provisions?

Find provisions or go let him be fodder?

When experiencing extreme fear, Pei Ran, this useless body in battle, did not have that explosive survival instinct like others had; instead his hands shook and his legs weakened and wobbled, as if all air had suddenly been pulled out of him, like quickened sand that could not hold its shape to walk a single step, where the final result was to lie there and wait for death.

Besides, he did not recognize any of these people so who would be willing to save him in the face of death.

Seeing how Pei Ran was not speaking, Feng Tang lifted up the book away from his face. This slight action immediately showed how feeble their master-servant relationship was.

“Not going.”

Pei Ran lifted his head, his eyes clearly displaying one thing–

Ya me te. (no, stop it)3

Feng Tang: “……”

The lone woman kept talking, 

“Me, I’m actually just 35 this year. You can just call me Wang-jie4. My man died from those monsters outside, leaving me so lonely, alone and helpless, with no one to look after me, unlike you. Your boyfriend treats you so well, even willing to go out and find food……”

Zhi Zhi could just about get her meaning, and she turned her body away in response. She looked outside through the window and switched the topic, 

“Why are they still not back? They left so long ago.”

They had indeed left a long while ago, about six hours now.

In that time, Pei Ran had already finished the entire book. He glanced at his watch and then flipped back all the way to the first page, continuing to re-read as if he wasn’t in a rush.

Every second, every minute that ticked, Zhi Zhi’s heart felt like it was being fanned with fire. She carefully walked over to stand in front of Pei Ran and hesitatingly asked, 

“What time is it now?”

Pei Ran glanced over at his wrist, 

“5 in the afternoon.”

The worry on Zhi Zhi’s face deepened, 

“When did they head out?”

Pei Ran: “9 in the morning.”

Zhi Zhi’s face paled dramatically, as if the air was sucked out of her and she fell onto the floor with a loud noise.

Pei Ran comforted her with no sincerity in his voice, 

“There won’t be any issues as there’s Feng Tang. He retired from the military.”

As if to prove his words, they could suddenly hear the faint sound of a car engine revving up in the distance outside. Before long, there was a smattering of footsteps coming closer and right after, there was the loud sound of the storage door being opened, evidently signalling the return of Zhou Cang Ming and the rest of the group.

Zhi Zhi ignored the heavy expressions on their faces, pouting her lips and falling into Sang Yan’s arms. Tears were almost falling out of her eyes as she said, 

“Why are you only back now! Scared me to death wu wu wu ……”

Sang Yan tightly hugged onto Zhi Zhi but he didn’t speak. Each of them were holding a bag, a bag that was filled with provisions that had already been split between them. Pei Ran lifted his eyes and seeing Qu Yan looking alright, he eased up slightly. But then he found that something was not quite right—–

Notes:

Well… hello! Nice to see all of you Galactic Judges again haha. It has been a while, hasn’t it? I truly, honestly did not expect to be taking so long to release the next chapter, but here we are… Some good news on that front, my “situation” is as much as settled as it can be (at least from my side), which unfortunately with the pandemic and just bureaucracy in general, even funeral arrangements and things afterwards took a lot of waiting and that, combined with the emotions, it took a lot of energy to… restart. Still, life continues, the time keeps ticking away and sometimes you just have to keep going. Anyway, the good news is that we will be settling back into a normal schedule!!! The only caveat about this is that it will probably come November (as Plum is going on an adventure haha so have fun Plum ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎♡), but hopefully by then we will have a few chapters ready in the bag (doubtful but one can dream…).

That’s about it from me! My plan is to hopefully release another chapter before Plum heads off on their wild adventure; however there are currently a few logistic problems with that, so… we will have to see. In any case, we will see you all either in October or November! Stay safe and be well ♡(.◜ω◝.)♡ See you soon!

Footnotes:

*1 << To Live >> is a novel by Yu Hua; for more info, please see the next footnote.

*2 This is a quote from the author’s preface of “To Live” (Chinese version). The author had written different prefaces for different languages, so this gave me quite a bit of extra leg work lol (and a little bit of the reason why the release of this chapter got pushed back a bit). The quote itself is really much more poignant and kind of like an overall encompassing ending sentence of the author’s feelings after finishing the novel, so how I translated it might be lacking a bit of that feeling (…like all my attempts at literary poetry here haha).

On a very brief note on what the novel is about, I’ll just stick the summary from the back of the English version haha:

“After squandering his family’s fortune in gambling dens and brothels, the young, deeply penitent Fugui settles down to do the honest work of a farm. Forced by the Nationalist Army to leave behind his family, he witnesses the horrors and privations of the Civil War, only to return years later to face a string of hardships brought on by the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. Left with an ox as the companion of his final years, Fugui stands as a model of flinty authenticity, buoyed by his appreciation for life–sheer life– in this unforgettable narrative of humbling power.”

I’ll quote a bit from Michael Barry, the one who translated Yu Hua’s novel, afterword in the English version which I think really puts into perspective what this line that this footnote is referring to meant (combined with the phrase of survival afterwards):

“Having grown up near hospitals and operating rooms during modern China’s most vicious and chaotic period, Yu Hua has created a fictional reflection of this reality, a world imbued with violence, death and unspeakable cruelty. At the same time, his world is touched by moments of poetic brilliance, a passion for life and sublime beauty – a world where moonlight on a dirt path creates the “illusion that a layer of salt had been sprinkled along it.””

There’s also a really neat phrase that Michael Barry wrote, which I totally forgot to quote (＠´＿｀＠), but it was something like survival is an end for itself, that it can be a conclusion, and I think that gets to the heart of this line that the author (of this volume) highlights to put here.

This novel is not a light read, highlighting a lot of violence, cruelty and death and honestly, just flip to any page, you would definitely read anything of the three. But… maybe similar to the genre of tragedy (relating to history or otherwise), there is a feeling of catharsis, and also this feeling that survival is a reward, an end to itself, especially given all the impossibility to think you could even survive whatever happened, that you could still keep living with a heart in humanity. 

I definitely would recommend taking a chance to read this novel by Yu Hua (I think there’s a small sample on google books) if you can withstand the immense amount of violence and cruelty (or even just how heavy of a read this could be). Honestly just thinking back to this book just drenches me with this mood of… heaviness? but I think it’s definitely worthwhile to take a look if you are interested. But also definitely be prepared for the emotional onslaught.

I’ll leave two final quotes here, one from the English translation of the preface (but called the postscript in the English version) that sort of captures a little bit of that feeling that I think relates to how Qu Yan sees Pei Ran (might just be me though lol), and one that I think captures the tone of the novel by Yu Hua. I think both of them kind of add a bit to maybe the reasoning of why the author added this line/mention of the book (or even kind of setting that tone): 

“I once heard an American folk song entitled ‘Old Black Joe.’ The song was about an elderly black slave who experienced a life’s worth of hardships, including the passing of his entire family – yet he still looked upon the world with eyes of kindness, offering not the slightest complaint. After being so deeply moved by this song I decided to write my next novel – that novel was To Live.” 

“Using laughter to cry, living beside the company of death” – Yu Hua.

*3 Technically it’s something like “elegant-small-butterfly”, but it really represents the sound of the Japanese phrase “yamete”/stop it(?). 

*4 Please refer back to this footnote for -jie