Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I groped along the edge of the bed until my hand found the Soul-Whip, then raised my arm and lashed out.

The curtain snapped loudly under the strike, then instantly fell back into its original position.

I strode over in a few quick steps and yanked the curtain open. There was nothing behind it, and the window was shut tight.

The neighborhood I lived in was old, but the environment wasn’t bad.

At that moment, the streetlights downstairs were still on. The shadows of roadside trees fell between the buildings, wavering and indistinct. I couldn’t tell whether there was anyone out there or not.

I didn’t know if what I’d just seen had been a hallucination.

But Tang Dong’s words-“Bro, I can’t find the door…”

For some reason, they felt strangely familiar. Just like the village in my dream, it was as if I had heard them before, seen this before.

But when had that been?

I vaguely remembered that when Tang Dong was ten, he really had gone missing once.

That day, I had gone with my parents to the market in town. It was only after we got back that we learned Tang Dong had gone into the mountains to play with Jiang Kai and a few other kids.

All the other children had come home when it was time to eat. Only Tang Dong hadn’t returned.

That night, a lot of people from the village went into the mountains to search for him.

The mountains near our village weren’t tall. They were just a few small hills surrounding a hollow.

Normally, when the children played on the hills, the adults in the village didn’t interfere.

But the adults had warned us again and again not to go too far, especially not into that hollow.

To scare the children, the adults in the village described that hollow like it was hell itself.

They said there were ghosts inside, wolves, man-eating monsters.

Whatever sounded frightening, they said it.

Tang Dong had gone missing in the mountains, and all the children whispered that he must have been taken by the monsters in the hollow.

When I found out Tang Dong was missing, I was frantic too.

That morning, Tang Dong had been clamoring to go to the market with me.

But my dad’s little three-wheeled truck didn’t have room for him, so he had stood at the door crying and yelling for a long time.

After we came back, both my parents followed the others into the mountains to look for Tang Dong, while I was left at home.

I was filled with regret. I kept thinking that if I had stayed in the village that morning instead of going to the market, things would have been fine.

As long as I had been there, Tang Dong definitely wouldn’t have gotten lost.

Maybe I was too anxious, but I couldn’t sit still at home. I kept feeling like I could hear Tang Dong calling me.

“Bro, bro, bro, save me…”

His voice seemed to come from far away one moment and close by the next. But whenever I tried to listen carefully, I couldn’t hear it anymore.

In the end, I couldn’t take it. I snuck out of the house and went into the mountains too.

How I found Tang Dong, I can no longer remember.

But I was indeed the one who brought him out.

By the time we left the mountains, the sky had already grown light.

As it happened, on the very day I rescued Tang Dong, I found an old man who had fallen into a drainage ditch at the foot of one of the hills.

The old man was dressed like a Daoist, but he looked half-crazed.

I pulled him out of the ditch.

He sat on the ground and stared fixedly at my face. Then he suddenly gave a strange smile. “The face of an asura, the heart of a bodhisattva. In this life, you are destined to eat the food of yin and yang.”

I was young then and didn’t understand what that meant at all.

But the old man gave me a strange peachwood whip that had been wrapped around his waist.

He told me it was called the Soul-Whip, and that I had to keep it safe. At a critical moment, it could save my life.

That Soul-Whip was the very one I was holding in my hand right now.