Chapter 4
Chapter 4
We followed the villagers to the very center of the village, where a sunken circular pit lay in the ground. At the exact middle of the pit stood a dry well about half a person tall. How that deep pit had been formed, I had no idea.
The moment we reached the edge of the pit, the ground suddenly began to shake beneath our feet. A rumbling boom rolled up from below, and then, with a sharp whoosh, a column of water shot out of the dry well.
The water was murky, filled with sand and gravel. Some of it splashed onto us. I raised an arm to block it, and my skin immediately prickled as if I had been bitten by mosquitoes, a large patch of my arm aching faintly.
The old men and women burst into ecstatic cheers, dropping to their knees before the dry well and kowtowing.
“Heaven has opened its eyes! We finally have water again!”
“After all these years, the Spring Spirit has finally found an offering it likes!”
Water kept pouring endlessly from the dry well. Before long, it had filled the entire bottom of the pit. The sunken hollow vanished, replaced by a small lake.
The rest of us stood at the edge, staring in shock at the scene before us.
I crouched down and swirled my hand through the water a few times.
It was cool to the touch, and thicker than ordinary water. When I lifted my hand out, it felt like I had not rinsed off shower gel properly. Something sticky clung to my skin.
I stood up, and my vision suddenly went black.
I rubbed my eyes. For some reason, exhaustion washed over my whole body, drowsiness surging up until I could not stop yawning.
Several of the old men and women stared at me with smiles all over their faces.
“You got up too early. Why don’t you go back and sleep a little longer?”
Hua Yuling nodded repeatedly too.
“Qiao Moyu, I’m so sleepy I could die. Let’s go take a nap?”
Sleep? Sleep, my ass. Weren’t we supposed to be looking for Ji Kang?
I wanted to refuse, but my eyelids were fighting each other, and no matter what I did, I could not keep them open.
I had no idea how I even made it back to Wu Genshui’s house. I kicked off my shoes, collapsed onto the bed, and instantly sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When I woke again, I felt like I was hungover. My head throbbed like it was splitting open, and my mind was a muddled haze. I sat on the bed for a long while before I finally came back to myself.
“Huahua-”
I called out twice. The room was deathly quiet. No one answered. I turned and saw that neither Hua Yuling nor Jiang Haoyan was in the room.
Bracing one hand against the doorframe, I staggered out into the courtyard.
Outside, night had fallen completely. The sky was packed with stars, and a crescent moon hung at an angle overhead, its cold, lonely light spilling over the empty village.
“Jiang Haoyan-Uncle Wu-where is everyone?”
Every light in the village was out. My shout traveled down the empty yellow-dirt road, carried by the cold wind until it struck the walls. Low echoes drifted back from every direction.
“Where is everyone?”
“Where is everyone?”
“Hee hee-”
A woman’s laugh was mixed in among the echoes. My nerves snapped taut.
“Who’s there?”
A white shadow flashed at the end of the alley. I chased after the sound, running all the way to the center of the village. But when I stopped in front of a cone-shaped mound of sand, I hesitated.
If I remembered right, this place had been a pool of water during the day. How had it turned into a pile of sand and gravel now?
The only thing that had not changed was the dry well at the very center, rising high from the top of the sandy mound.
I was already on guard. Out of habit, I reached behind me. Good. My backpack was still there, and the Thunderstruck Wood Talisman was still in my pocket.
I lifted my foot and stepped onto the sand mound.
The instant my foot came down, a bone-chilling cold seeped up through the sole of my shoe. I looked down and saw that both my shoes were soaked through. The sand sank under my feet, and beneath the thin surface layer, the sand below was practically like water.
I hesitated, unsure whether I should keep climbing.