Chapter 1.26 Purpose (Extra)

Uncle Three denied it and swore that he had nothing to do with it, saying that all he had done this trip was deal with the snails.

Uncle Two was quite skeptical, so Uncle Three asked angrily, “Do I need to lie? I’m your younger brother. Even if I have done something, what can you do about it?”

Uncle Two nodded, and I also thought that this made sense. With Uncle Three’s temperament, he didn’t need to hide anything from anyone at all. And besides, he was still in Changsha, his own territory.

“I thought you and Cao Er Daozi secretly took something out of the coffin and that’s why the snails keep looking for trouble. Why else would you come back so early?”

“If your head was bleeding, would you not go to the hospital and just let it keep bleeding?” Uncle Three wasn’t in a good mood.

“If it’s not because of you, what else could it be? What exactly is attracting it to our yard?” Uncle Two asked himself.

As he was thinking about it, the rain stopped. “Don’t think about it anymore,” Uncle Three said. “Elder brother can’t handle it alone. Let’s go and help him first.”

Uncle Two was still thinking it over but also stood up. When we returned to the ancestral hall, we saw that everybody was in an uproar, so Uncle Three went to help. I didn’t want to talk about these disgusting things so I went home alone.

The yard had been cleaned up and the sewer had been opened to see if there were any more snails, which allowed the accumulated water to drain out. The snails that had been attached to Biao Gong were collected and placed in a water tank on one side, with stones pressed on top of it. It was said that there were as many as half a tank of snails, which would be taken care of after the rain stopped. I felt very uncomfortable when looking at the water tank since I kept thinking that the contents looked like a large snail. I couldn’t help bypassing it from a safe distance.

Back in my room, I was bored and didn’t know what to do. I kept feeling uncomfortable as I imagined that the water tank was a ticking time bomb, but that just made me uneasy and very nervous. It was a little too cold to sit alone in my room during the middle of winter so I went out for a walk.

While wandering around the village, I was so busy thinking about everything that had happened that I came to the stream before I knew it.

The stream was surging after the heavy rain, and the water level was much higher than before. I stepped on the gravel by the stream and watched the debris washed down from upstream get stuck on the bank. It was all branches and dead leaves and the water was very muddy. I picked up a few rocks from the bank and threw them into the water, thinking about Uncle Two’s problem.

In fact, when Uncle Two mentioned it, I already had an answer in my heart but I kept silent. I remembered that when the coffin was opened at that time, it was Biao Gong, two other old guys, me, and my father present. That thing’s target might be me. Of course, I didn’t know the reason, but I figured that maybe “it” was going after the five of us who opened its coffin and disturbed its peace.

Not to mention, I was also its descendant. Although there was no blood relationship between us and the process was kept secret, it had been registered and buried in the main grave from the start. Why was it still so aggressive? What exactly did it experience when it died to make it so bitter? Or was Uncle Two wrong, and it was as Uncle Three said: the coffin wasn’t for the woman, but the snails?

I wanted to laugh when I thought about these questions, but Biao Gong’s death frightened me. This matter involved life and death, so it wasn’t funny. I reminded myself that if possible, it was better to go back early. Hangzhou was so far away from here that it would take ten years for that thing to follow. But it didn’t seem right to run away now, and I was unwilling to do so.

The ground was wet, and I didn’t think the rain would stop, but there was always a day or two where it would rain intermittently. I really wouldn’t be able to sleep that night, so I had to get a weapon and be ready at any moment. Thinking this, I suddenly had an idea—why not borrow a dog?

Before Grandpa died, there was an old dog he had trained. Now it was raised in Hangzhou by Uncle Two, but he didn’t bring it with him. If he had, the dog could look after the house and protect the courtyard or something. But there was no use in thinking about it. Snails crawled so slowly that there was almost no sound, and a dog may not be able to find it.

With this thought, I suddenly realized that something didn’t add up: there seemed to be something weird with what I said just now.

I thought for a moment and knew why I felt uncomfortable just now. That’s right, snails crawl very slowly!

How far was it from where I was staying to the nearest stream? With a snail’s speed, would they be able to climb here in half a night? The more I thought about it, the greater this feeling of wrongness grew. I stood up and started walking. I found that there was a distance of more than eight hundred meters from the stream to the place where I was staying. I did some calculations and knew that a snail’s full speed could reach about eight meters per hour, and river snails moved slower than land snails. I estimated that it would take at least ten minutes to climb a meter and more than eight thousand minutes just to move eight hundred fucking meters, which was more than a hundred and thirty hours. If it wanted to appear in my yard this morning, it should have come out of the stream five days ago. Damn it, this whole thing hadn’t even happened five days ago.

Fuck, what’s going on? Are these snails taking steroids?

I immediately called to share my thoughts with Uncle Two, but he wasn’t excited at all. He just grunted and said, “I know.” Then he quickly hung up, as if something difficult was going on over there.

<Extra 1.25> <Table of Contents><Extra 1.27>

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Updated 12/4/2021