Chapter 69

Chapter 69

“A picnic?”

I stared blankly.

Wasn’t that simply cooking your own food outdoors? What was so entertaining about it?

I could not understand why he was so excited.

But Wang Dachun was not alone. The rest of his lackeys were happily discussing what ingredients and cookware they should bring.

After listening for a while, I finally understood.

Every year at the end of September, Lianghe District Middle School took its new students to an open stretch of riverbank beside the Chuan River for a picnic.

The outing gave them a chance to experience nature and develop practical skills while also teaching classmates to cooperate.

By that era, children in prosperous large towns and county seats knew little about the countryside. They rarely encountered even the most basic knowledge of fields and crops in daily life.

Wang Dachun, for example, could not even tell wheat from rice.

So a school-organized picnic was considered one form of well-rounded education at the time.

Many well-to-do urban families supported the practice.

But I had grown up far from any town in a rural mountain village, roaming the wilderness all day. My friends and I often cooked whatever we found outdoors.

First, everyone dug an earthen stove and lit a fire with dry branches.

Then we pinched tender vegetables from the fields, caught eels and loaches in the paddies, or gathered fish and shrimp from the river. We boiled everything in an earthenware pot or fried it on a thin stone slab.

A little salt stolen from home, perhaps a smear of sesame oil, went on top.

It tasted wonderful.

But after doing that throughout my childhood, I no longer considered a picnic some tremendous source of excitement.

I never expected town children to find it thrilling enough to discuss an entire day in advance.

It was not only Wang Dachun’s group. All around us, students walking to school gathered in twos and threes, talking about nothing but the picnic.

Fine. City people certainly knew how to amuse themselves.

I shrugged helplessly.

To me at that age, Lianghe Town already counted as a city.

As for the county seat or a true city, I had never visited either.

The approaching picnic left most of our class visibly distracted.

Even the usually conscientious Yao Nan let her attention wander during lessons. I caught her writing a list of things to prepare for tomorrow’s picnic in her exercise book.

Only I continued listening carefully and taking notes.

It was not that I loved studying so much. I simply had no choice. Why did I have to have a master who regarded schoolwork as so important?

…

The following day was Friday, and we had no classes.

Students from all five first-year classes brought various ingredients, cooking utensils, and seasonings to the main athletic field and lined up.

Under the envious gazes of the second- and third-year students, our homeroom teachers and other faculty led us out of the school in orderly ranks toward the countryside north of town.

Lianghe Town took its name from the two rivers that wound through it.

One flowed along the northern side of town, while the other passed along the west. They converged at Lianghe Bridge.

Several centuries ago, Lianghe Town’s first residents had settled beside these two waterways. Gradually, the settlement became an important transport hub between Sichuan and Chongqing.

Both rivers originated in the Chuan River, about two kilometers north of town.

Our picnic site was a vast pebble-covered bank behind the abandoned Chuan River docks.

Everyone else laughed and chatted along the road, but I became lost in memory.

I thought of a night several years earlier, when I was still in elementary school.

The round moon like a jade platter. Master with long hair veiling her face. A battered vermilion boat. The raging river. Monsters roaming beneath the water. Eerie floating corpses. The Hundred-Bone Pagoda rising from the mountainside.

Several years had passed, yet I could not forget those images. Instead, they had grown increasingly vivid in my memory.

At the time, I had known only fear and obeyed Master’s instructions without understanding the true danger around me.

Now I had entered the esoteric world myself. Not only had I cultivated qi, I had learned some feng shui, geomancy, and talisman arts.

Looking back carefully, I finally understood how perilous that night had been. Many of the evil beings we encountered were probably far stronger than Miss Duan after she became a vicious corpse.

Especially the Corpse King inside the Hundred-Bone Pagoda.

Even Master had been unwilling to clash with it and could only negotiate. Fortunately, it was benevolent by nature.
The mountain where the Hundred-Bone Pagoda stood was called Skywatch Peak, the highest mountain along the Chuan River near Lianghe Town.

We would be able to see it in the distance from our picnic site, but it actually lay more than ten li farther upstream.

“Hey! What are you thinking about? You’re completely lost in a daze.”

A clear voice beside me interrupted my memories.

I turned and met Yao Nan’s bright, sparkling eyes.

She wore a small floral-print dress today. Her glossy black hair fell halfway to her shoulders, and she tilted her head as she smiled at me.

The school had arranged our marching order according to our classroom seats. Yao Nan was my deskmate, so naturally she walked beside me.

I had to admit that she was quite pretty.

She was not only considered the prettiest girl in our class. Even students in other classes and in the second and third years had heard of her.

According to Wang Dachun, many people envied me.

For this picnic in particular, Yao Nan and I would undoubtedly be assigned to work together and spend the entire day in each other’s company.

Yet, probably to everyone’s surprise–including Yao Nan’s–we had walked for ages since leaving school, and I had not said a word. I seemed completely uninterested in talking to her.

Maybe the little girl is unhappy because I’ve ignored her all this time. Fine. Since she started the conversation herself, I shouldn’t keep her at arm’s length.

With that thought, I replied, “Oh, nothing. I was just…”

Just what?

I could not think of a suitable excuse.

“Hmph. What a perfunctory answer.”

Yao Nan pouted, her delicate nose twitching.

After a pause, she asked, “Wu Zhong, can you cook? I heard the picnic groups are based on every five desks. Ten people will build the stove and cook together. Everyone has to contribute.”

I was a little speechless.

Was the girl merely searching for something to discuss with me?

Under normal circumstances, what rural child did not know how to cook? How spoiled would the parents have to make such a thing possible?

But…

I had to admit that she was right this time.

I was precisely that rural child doted on by his parents, so I answered honestly, “I love good food, but I really don’t know how to cook. I can cut the ingredients, though. I’m quite good with a knife.”

Of course I was.

I had spent so long learning martial arts, especially assassination techniques. How could the other middle-school brats compare with my knife skills?

Once the conversation started, however, we found more and more to say.

Wang Dachun and Zeng Jin joined in from behind, and the two students in front occasionally looked back to chat. We laughed and talked throughout the rest of the journey.

Before long, we reached the Chuan River.

The broad, swift river flowed across a plain between the mountains, with wide stretches of beach on either bank. Such terrain was rare in the hill-covered southwest.

“Oh, yeah! Having a picnic by the river makes me feel alive!”

Wang Dachun placed an iron wok on his head and cheered loudly.

I looked back at him in disgust. “Your hair is so greasy. Don’t dirty the wok. You’re the only person in our group who brought one, and we need it to cook.”

“We can wash it later.”

“No. Take it off your head.”

“All right, Brother Wu.”

He looked rather aggrieved.

…

Our five classes, three or four hundred students altogether, arrived under the teachers’ supervision at the pebble-covered riverbank.

We spread out in a long line, with each class occupying its own section.

Within each class, the students divided into five or six small groups, then began building stoves and cooking with the ingredients, seasonings, and utensils they had brought.

As soon as our groups were assigned, Wang Dachun began shouting.

“Brother Wu will obviously be in charge of our group and assign all the jobs. Nobody objects, right?”

He was a notorious spoiled bully throughout our grade. Naturally, no one dared object. Everyone shook their heads like rattled drums.

I had no interest in leading them and shook my own head. “You make the arrangements. I don’t care about this.”

“Fine. I won’t fail you! We’ll make food so delicious that the teachers can’t stop praising it and win first place.”

Wang Dachun thumped his chest.

Apparently, the picnic included a minor tradition. Once the groups finished cooking, the homeroom teachers and other faculty sampled everyone’s dishes and chose the best group.

The winners received only verbal praise, not a tangible prize. But we were twelve- and thirteen-year-olds at the height of our competitiveness. Naturally, we wanted even that small honor.

I did not know whether Wang Dachun did it deliberately, but he assigned Yao Nan and me to wash the vegetables by the river together.
The economy had already begun to take off in those days, though its growth was not yet as dramatic as it would become a few years later.

There were not many factories in town, so pollution remained limited and the river was still crystal clear. Washing vegetables along its bank posed no problem.

Yao Nan and I put enough ingredients for ten people into a large plastic basket and carried it toward the water.

“Wu Zhong, there are too many people over there. I know another place with a very clear little pool. It’s quiet, and no one else is there. The two of us can wash the vegetables in peace.”

She pointed to a spot some distance away.

Frequent summer rains caused the Chuan River to rise.

The river overflowed onto the broad banks and flooded large tracts of land. When the water receded, it remained in low-lying places, leaving pools of different sizes scattered across the beach.

The pool Yao Nan meant was about three hundred meters to our left.

Emerald water plants as tall as a person’s waist grew in the clear water, which reflected a sky swathed in clouds and mist. It was quite beautiful.

“All right. Let’s wash the vegetables there.”

We carried the plastic basket over.

Once we arrived, we prepared to wash everything, vegetables first and meat afterward.

Yao Nan was lively rather than the sort of bookworm who did nothing but study.

The picnic had made her especially cheerful, and she chatted with me without pause.

“See? I told you this place was nice. I came here with a few girlfriends last week. I secretly brought my father’s camera and a roll of Kodak film, and we took lots of pictures. I’ll show them to you once they’re developed.”

“Oh. All right.”

“By the way, math has become a little difficult lately. I’m having some trouble with it. How does it seem to you?”

“It’s fine.”

“…Could you use a few more words?”

“Sure.”

“You make me furious!”

Yao Nan glared fiercely at me, turned her head away, and concentrated on washing the vegetables, refusing to speak to me.

Uh…

I scratched my head in bewilderment. Why had she suddenly become so angry?

Many years later, once the internet became widespread, I looked back and realized there was probably a term that perfectly described my younger self: hopelessly oblivious.

But I was not completely hopeless. Once I noticed that Yao Nan wanted me to talk more, I immediately changed my behavior.

I began telling her amusing stories about growing up in the countryside. Soon she was laughing again, and the pleasant atmosphere returned.

“The water here is getting dirty. Let’s move a little farther over.”

Yao Nan and I lifted the basket, now half full, and walked deeper among the waist-high water plants. We found a clear spot and prepared to continue.

“Huh? Why is there black water grass over there? It looks so strange.”

The moment Yao Nan set down the basket, she pointed to a spot three or four meters away.

I followed her finger. Sure enough, a mass of something black lay spread across the surface beside a clump of water plants, swaying with the ripples.

What was it?

I looked more closely, then suddenly understood. My scalp went numb and my pupils contracted.

“That’s odd. Let’s go take a look.”

Yao Nan had already risen and started toward it.

“Don’t! Don’t go over there!”

I reached for her hand, but it was too late.

The thing lay only three or four meters away. After Yao Nan took two steps forward, a ripple carried the black, grass-like mass a little closer to us.

Then we both saw it.

Amid the black “water grass” spread across the surface was a ghastly white face bloated by the river.

There was no mistake.

It was a corpse.

A woman’s floating corpse.

The strange black grass was actually her long hair, fanned out around her as she floated on her back.

She must originally have been among the water plants near the outer edge of the river. The current had slowly carried her through the shallows and into the pool.

I was relatively calm. A floating corpse still made my skin crawl, but outwardly, I could maintain my composure.

Yao Nan was different.

What young girl had ever seen anything so horrifying?

She opened her mouth and screamed with all her strength.

“Aaaah!”

Her eyes rolled back, and she fell stiffly backward.

She had fainted from fright on the spot.

To be honest, Yao Nan’s reaction startled me far more than the female corpse that had suddenly floated toward us. I lunged forward and caught her as she fell.