Chapter Forty-Five: The Most Philosophical Conversation

I felt as though I could see Peanut curled up inside the coffin in the photograph, his face peeking out, offering me a faint smile.

A shiver racked my body, and I immediately tore my gaze away from the picture. In that moment, I felt that everything happening here had transcended the limits of what I could comprehend. Could it be that Peanut had already been lying in that coffin back when my grandfather was in his prime?

How many years ago was this photo taken? Forty? Thirty? No, even if it were only ten or twenty years, it would still be chilling. And why on earth would my grandfather and the others have taken such a photo? Was there some necessary reason for them to do so?

No, I suddenly realized. Although the coffin in the photo appeared to be the same one Peanut had jumped out of, I couldn't be certain that there weren't two identical coffins. And even if it were the same one from the cellar of the old house, it didn't necessarily mean Peanut was inside it at the time.

I told myself not to get caught in such a vicious cycle of circular thinking, and I cut the thought short. But no sooner had I let that go than I remembered the person Wei Lin had mentioned.

"Liu Jinsun, Liu Jinsun." I muttered the name, straining to distinguish if the person in the photo resembled Erlengzi’s grandfather.

Unfortunately, my childhood memories were too blurred. Even though I tried my hardest to recall, I couldn't quite remember what Grandpa Liu looked like. In truth, I hoped he wasn't in the picture; otherwise, everything Wei Lin said might very well be true.

Though I had restrained myself from overthinking, a cold sweat broke out on my back for my father’s sake. Erlengzi from the Liu family—my best childhood friend and my father’s most trusted hand—if he intended to harm my father, the old man might not have any defenses at all.

Even though I felt it was unlikely, the incident where someone had leaked my father’s movements now seemed to have an answer.

Just as I was struggling to shake off these thoughts, Fatty spoke up at the right moment. He asked me what I was troubled by, and, as if clutching at a straw, I blurted out everything I knew in one breath. By the time I finished, my mouth was dry, and I had repeated many of the questions several times before finally stopping.

We both lit cigarettes, gasping for air while keeping an eye out for any more blood dripping from above. Fatty’s wounds were not light, and smoking must have been agonizing for him, yet he couldn't bear to put it out. I wanted to urge him to stop, but the words died in my throat.

This time, I had told Fatty everything, including things I should and shouldn't have shared. After listening to my account, he seemed to be deep in thought.

After a long time, I asked him, "Your brain is sharp—have you thought of anything?"

Fatty curled his lip. "What is there to think about? What you’ve told me is like a few fragments from a movie. Trying to understand a ninety-minute film from ten seconds of footage is impossible."

"Then what were you pondering just now?"

Fatty took a drag of his cigarette and turned his head to the side. "I was just wondering what purpose your father, Peanut, and Professor Chen’s group could possibly have to be risking their lives like this."

"Purpose?" I frowned.

"Duh. They must have some very important goal to achieve, which is why they’re doing all this," Fatty said. "The things you’ve encountered are indeed complicated; even I get a headache just hearing about them. But no matter how complex a thing is, it always has an ultimate goal. Take humans building rockets or spacecraft—that’s complicated, right? But we don’t need to worry about how the rocket is built; we just need to know the goal is to explore space, make life better, and ensure that if the Earth goes belly-up, humanity has somewhere else to live. So, there must be an ultimate goal behind everything you’ve encountered."

Fatty’s words didn't solve any of my doubts, but the way he put it made my mind suddenly clear. I was filled with admiration for him. It was true—I had been pondering so many questions, yet I had never considered the goal my father and Peanut were trying to reach.

"Then what do you think their goal is?" I suddenly thought of Wei Lin. "Could it just be to see the other side dead?"

"It can't be that simple. If they just wanted someone dead, they wouldn't need to go through all this trouble," Fatty said as he thought. "Since this involves the Great Luo Feng Shui, I suspect your father’s goal might have to do with destiny or something not physically tangible."

Fatty had said earlier that those who fully mastered the Great Luo Feng Shui could almost manipulate everything. Could it be that what my father and the others were doing was aimed at gaining power beyond everything else to rule the world? That sounded too ridiculous. If it were that easy to dominate the world, what would that make the United States?

"It’s not impossible." I hadn't expected someone as practical as Fatty to disagree with my assessment.

He continued, "I keep feeling that the question Old Man Yuan Six asked you had more to it."

"Which question?" After telling him everything, I couldn't quite remember.

"Didn't he ask if you believed that the rise and fall of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties were manipulated?"

I hadn't expected Fatty to be talking about that. But this wasn't a question of belief; I simply couldn't accept the premise of my father’s question at the time.

Fatty shook his head. "You have to understand your father’s situation. I think the question he asked wasn't just about the surface meaning, but was actually asking you: 'Do you believe in destiny and fate?'"

A thought flashed through my mind, as if I had grasped something, but it remained elusive. I urged Fatty to continue.

Fatty went on: "That’s your father, after all. Since he told you about things like ancestral blood, there was no need for Yuan Six to hide too much from you. But the goal he wanted to achieve might be something related to Feng Shui and destiny. If he had told you that directly, it would have been as vague as someone telling you they wanted to reverse time.

"Feng Shui is a profound science. People in ancient times were willing to explore it, but nowadays, if you counted the true Feng Shui masters on your fingers, you’d have fingers to spare. Even those few masters today, at the end of the day, just know a bit more than the rest. The true essence of Feng Shui was lost long ago. People today struggle just to decipher the *I Ching*, let alone something legendary like the Great Luo Feng Shui.

"During the Tang and Song eras, people studied these things, but after the Qing government was invaded by the Eight-Nation Alliance, people stopped caring. The current decline of Feng Shui is the result of the misery from that era; our ancestors suffered at the hands of foreign guns and cannons. Now that the country is developing, we certainly can't repeat the same mistakes.

"Consequently, the old ways were rejected by the era. Whether that’s good or bad isn't for us to say. Either way, when it comes to things like Feng Shui, you can no longer talk about 'knowing or not knowing'—it’s about 'believing or not believing.' If I’m not mistaken, your father must have been in a very difficult position when he told you these things. He wanted to tell you that everything might be related to your Yuan family’s future destiny, but because of the prerequisite of the Great Luo Feng Shui, even he was confused, so he naturally couldn't explain it clearly to you."

After Fatty’s monologue, I suddenly realized that the whole thing wasn't as complicated as I had imagined. Feng Shui, destiny—though I still didn't have a conceptual grasp of these things, the outline of the whole situation seemed to be emerging.

A stretch of Feng Shui nurtures a land; a dragon vein defines a landscape. Perhaps everyone and everything is struggling within some grand Feng Shui pattern, and my seemingly unintentional yet inevitable involvement might just be the arrangement of fate.

When Fatty told me this, he was thirty-one and I was twenty-five. When we finally dared to say we understood the situation, we realized in hindsight how naive we were back then, daring to boastfully discuss and imagine... Feng Shui in an ancient tomb.

"So you mean I have to truly believe in this Feng Shui and destiny stuff before my father will tell me the truth?"

Fatty nodded. "Mainly because it’s only when you reach that point that his telling you would have any meaning. But this is just your Fatty’s guess. As for the specific goal, you’ll have to figure that out yourself."

I thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Do you believe in these things?"

Fatty grinned. "Believe in what? Your Fatty doesn't believe in anything."

"Damn it, if you don't believe in it, why are you telling me all this?" I felt frustrated.

"Tsk, that’s why my intuition is fundamentally different from you mortals," Fatty said, looking at me with disdain. I didn't need to guess—he was about to start bragging again.

"When people look at others, they always like to ask who is good and who is bad. When they hear about things they haven't experienced, they first consider whether to believe them or not. If you do things with that kind of perspective, you’ve already tied yourself up from the start. I don't believe in anything, and I don't disbelieve in anything. I only know one thing: facts. As long as a thing is proven by facts, then it is true. If it’s true, I believe it. And you don't need to care what others believe; the key is what you think yourself."

Fatty’s words left me stunned. I never expected such philosophical words to come out of his mouth. However, thinking about it carefully, I had experienced too many inconceivable things in just one month. Many of my past fixed notions had been shattered, and my entire mind was likely in a state of reconstruction.

Anyone who has studied psychology knows that in such times, as long as something is happening right in front of you, no matter how outrageous it is, you will inevitably accept it. But after searching my heart, I felt that I still didn't believe in these things.

"My father told me to learn more about these things after I got back to Beijing—maybe he really did mean what you said," I whispered. "But this knowledge isn't systematic. Even if I wanted to learn, what could I do?"

Fatty smiled easily and said, "I’ll tell you the simplest way."

"What way?"

"Hang out with me," Fatty said as if it were obvious. "Follow me for two years, and I guarantee you'll be indifferent to all these things."

"I thought you had some real idea. Follow you for two years? Hmph, I think you’d better consider how we’re going to get out of here."

As soon as we mentioned getting out, both of us fell silent. After weighing it up, we both felt we should continue along the corridor. Although the situation with Wei Lin and the other two was desperate, it was better than sitting here waiting to die. Furthermore, the bandages on Fatty’s body proved that someone else had been here. If they could come and go like a ghost, then this place wouldn't be a dead end.

Thinking this way, I saw a glimmer of hope. However, we were both exhausted, especially Fatty, who needed to sleep for a while.

I snatched the cigarette from Fatty’s hand, snuffed it out, and urged him to rest. Fatty didn't say anything and slowly lay down. I grabbed his gear bag from the other side to see if there was any emergency equipment.

I found a smokeless stove, turned off my flashlight, and lit the stove against the brick wall. As the light flared, the corpse of the giant rat appeared in the shadows behind us. I turned to look and saw that maggots were crawling out from inside, almost covering the rat’s belly. I hadn't noticed it before, but now the air around us was foul and reeking.

I had never smoked as much as I was now, one cigarette after another. Physical exhaustion was secondary; it was the gloomy, deathly stillness surrounding the pit of bones that was truly unsettling.

Two hours later, Fatty was fast asleep. He wasn't snoring this time, but I could tell he was in a weakened state and would need plenty of food once he woke up. Based on my previous experience, I estimated that, excluding Fatty’s share, what was left would last us four or five days at most. If we didn't find a way out before the food ran out, I didn't know what would happen.

Suddenly, I began to feel a sense of dread. If we ended up like those three and couldn't find a way out, would Fatty or I... would we end up doing what Wei Lin and A-Wei did?

I remembered something with horror: deep in that passage, inside that large wooden crate, A-Wei might still be curled up, gnawing on his own hand. I had pushed the lid of that crate open—would A-Wei follow the sound we made and slowly crawl out of the passage...

At that thought, my back turned cold. I slowly turned my head to look into the darkness and couldn't help but inch closer to Fatty.

Suddenly, I saw a shadow appear on the ground before me. It was long, stretching all the way to the space above our heads. I shivered and looked toward the smokeless stove. I immediately saw a long, rope-like object hanging down from the darkness above us, not far from the stove.

It hung there, swaying, and I instinctively thought it was a snake, so I jumped to my feet. But looking closer, it didn't seem to be. The object was raw and covered in something red.

I frowned, staring closely, and began to edge toward it, step by step.