Chapter 242
Chapter 242
I didn’t send the five hundred yuan Xiao Xuan had given me to the Blind Old Man right away.
The main reason was that the urban village was too far away. Even by car, it would take more than an hour.
On top of that, work had been a little busy, and I had a lot of things to take care of, so I planned to wait until I got through the next couple of days before bringing the money to the Blind Old Man. I would also take him some food and drinks while I was at it.
But I truly never expected that life and death could sometimes come so suddenly, catching people completely off guard.
Two days later, when Song Xiaotian, Meng Yifan, and I went to visit the Blind Old Man together, he had already passed away.
He had died at home, lying peacefully on his bed with both hands resting flat over his lower abdomen.
But because the weather was too hot, his body had already begun to smell.
We called the funeral home, handled his final affairs in a simple manner, and placed his ashes in a columbarium. We bought him an urn that was neither especially good nor especially poor.
After taking care of his funeral arrangements, we returned to his home and helped tidy up his belongings.
At the head of his bed, we found a suicide note.
The note was not long, but its contents shocked us.
It turned out that during the New Year this year, on the very night he met Rat and Xiao Xuan, the Blind Old Man had not gone out to collect trash at all. He had been planning to throw himself into the river.
Looking back on the Blind Old Man’s life, perhaps two-thirds of it had been a tragedy. And during that first third, he had actually been someone with limitless prospects.
In those days, a university student was worth his weight in gold. He had been the only university student in his village, and he had even gotten into a good school.
The old man’s life should have held boundless promise, but it had been destroyed by a fire. And the person who destroyed him was his own father.
From then on, he had already lost the desire to keep living. It was his mother who kept encouraging him. His mother wanted him to live, and in order not to make her sad, he forced himself to survive.
He never married and never had children. He and his mother depended on each other for survival. After his mother passed away, perhaps he simply grew used to living that way.
But human beings are social creatures, after all. The old man’s face had been ruined, and his appearance frightened people. As a result, no one was willing to befriend him. Even his neighbors avoided him whenever they could.
On top of that, he was blind and could not see anything. His life was dull and empty. To put it cruelly, his life was almost meaningless.
After his mother passed away, every day he remained alive, he faced disgust, loneliness, indifference, and the torment within his own heart.
On New Year’s Eve this year, while every family was gathered together, that torment finally became more than he could bear. So he chose to go throw himself into the river, preparing to end his life.
But unexpectedly, on his way to kill himself, he met Rat and Xiao Xuan.
It was just that coincidental. He saved Xiao Xuan and took in the two brothers. And in turn, the two brothers stopped him from committing suicide.
Three unfortunate people had their fates tied together from that moment on. Perhaps this was fortune within misfortune. Perhaps even Heavenly God knew it had been too unfair and allowed three unfortunate people to feel warmth once again.
But good fortune is always brief. Rat was tragically killed by Wang Guofu.
Xiao Xuan also went to the welfare home.
The old man returned to the life he had once lived. If he had never seen the sunlight, perhaps he could have endured the darkness. But he had already seen the sun, and he simply could not bear the darkness anymore. Once that sunlight faded, the darkness inside him had already crushed him.
When we saw the suicide note, we thought the old man had killed himself. But the strange thing was, we found no signs that his body had been poisoned, and there were no external wounds. Since there was no autopsy, we had no way of knowing how he had died.
Later, I asked Seventh Master about it. Seventh Master said the old man’s original allotted lifespan had always been meant to end on the day he died.
He hadn’t reached that day yet, so when he tried to kill himself, he ran into Rat and Xiao Xuan. Fate wouldn’t let him die.
But Rat’s death, coupled with Xiao Xuan leaving, crushed the old man’s will. He had completely lost any desire to go on living. When the day his lifespan ran out finally arrived, he passed away naturally. In other words, he died of old age.
But whether fate had influenced the old man’s will to die, or the old man’s will to die had influenced fate, even Seventh Master couldn’t explain.
It was like how some elderly people, before they passed, could clearly know the exact day they would die, so they would make arrangements for everything afterward in advance.
Some things simply couldn’t be explained clearly. Not even Seventh Master could make sense of them.
In any case, the old man had passed away.
In his final letter, he left my phone number. Maybe he hoped that after his body began to decompose and someone discovered him, they would call me and ask me to come collect his remains.
In the note, he apologized to us, saying he had caused us trouble.
He had left twenty thousand yuan in a drawer. It was all the savings he had. He told us to take five thousand, since he had troubled us, and asked us to pass the remaining fifteen thousand on to Xiao Xuan. He also specifically asked us to hide his death from Xiao Xuan for as long as we could, and not tell him now.
We took the twenty thousand yuan, along with the five hundred Xiao Xuan had given me, and I deposited it all into a separate bank card.
We couldn’t touch any of that money. It all had to go to Xiao Xuan. But Xiao Xuan was still a child and didn’t have his own bank card, so I planned to give him the card when he was twelve or thirteen.
As for the news of the old man’s death, of course we couldn’t tell him now.
He had only just left the old man and gone to an unfamiliar environment. If I told him the old man had died now, it would be too cruel.
This incident shook me deeply.
I used to see the phrase “the suffering of the mortal world” all the time. Now, I had seen what the suffering of the mortal world truly was.
In truth, in that urban village, suffering could be found everywhere: the child who led the way for us, the homeless men who snatched Xiao Xuan’s things, and even the homeless man Rat had drowned in the river.
It felt as if everyone was a part of that suffering.
The night after we finished taking care of the old man’s funeral affairs, I had a dream.
In the dream, I saw that young fortune-teller again.
I didn’t know who he was, nor did I understand why he kept appearing in my dreams.
But this time, he actually turned around and met my eyes.
I stared blankly at that face, running through everyone I had ever met in my mind, but I still couldn’t remember where I had seen this young man before.
Judging by the way he was dressed, his clothes were very plain, but also very old-fashioned. He didn’t seem like someone from our era.
I found it strange that he kept appearing in my dreams. I even wondered if he was some wronged ghost from somewhere, coming to ask me to handle something for him.
After hesitating for a long time, I opened my mouth and asked who he was.
He looked at me and smiled faintly. “My surname is Tang. My name is Tang Zhui.”
Tang Zhui…
That name sounded so familiar.
A chill ran through me. All at once, I remembered that the author of Mysteries of the Six Yao had mentioned his honored teacher’s name in the book.
That name was Tang Zhui!
So this young man was… the founder of Mysteries of the Six Yao!
My Ancestral Master!