Chapter 68 Qilin Blood

When I woke up, the wound on my hand had been bandaged. This time, however, I didn’t see anyone looking at me eagerly and saying: you finally woke up (just like Pan Zi did to me before). All I saw was a very dim light in the distance, which turned out to be Fatty looking at the notebook in the halo of the flashlight. I sat up, not feeling much discomfort except for a bout of dizziness. I was surprised that the first thing that came to mind was how Pan Zi would always stay with me up until the moment I woke up.

He must have been keeping an eye on me the whole time if he found me awake the very moment I regained consciousness. No one but Pan Zi could possibly do such a thing.

Indeed, some people couldn’t be replaced.

When I coughed, Fatty looked up at me. His face was dark and gloomy as he asked, “Are you ok?”

“Not bad, my head’s a little fuzzy,” I replied.

“You were too tired after climbing all the way down here and then you lost a lot of blood,” Fatty said. “You actually didn’t lose too much but your body couldn’t handle it. Just rest.”

“How long have I been out?” I asked him.

He lifted two fingers up, “It wasn’t that long. Your fat man just smoked half a pack of cigarettes, ate some hardtack, and had a casual fight with the old woman.”

I looked at my hand and saw that my palm actually had stitches. I didn’t know whether Fatty or Zhang Haixing had done it, but the stitches were done rather poorly and I couldn’t help but think of how ugly the scar would be. I looked up as Fatty came over and found that there was a wound on his hand that had also been wrapped up.

I gave it a curious look and thought to myself, was Zhang Haixing unable to stand Fatty anymore and finally decided to take him out?

Fatty raised his hand and said, “I’m sorry I let you bleed and shed tears alone after you fainted. I found a spot in another place and used my fat oil to continue your brilliant career. But I think your anemia enabled such a big area to be painted from such a small starting point. My blood can certainly paint an area as big as the motherland, but it unexpectedly congealed together and was useless.”

He pointed to the place where he had bled with his flashlight, and though I couldn’t see clearly from this distance, I could tell that his blood hadn’t spread along the veins and had simply formed a dark pool on the ground.

“Is it because your blood lipid is too high?” I asked him.

“Even if it’s high, it would still flow,” Fatty said. “The old woman tried too. Her body should be healthy but her blood wasn’t any good either. It seems that only your blood is good.”

Speaking of Zhang Haixing, I didn’t see her. “Hey, where’s the old woman?”

“She went out to send a telegram,” Fatty said. “She moves quickly. After sending details of the situation here to Motuo, she told Zhang Haike to bring more people in. What else could we do?”

I nodded while thinking that the old woman was brave to climb up such a long, dark path alone. But she was used to being alone and my small size would only be a burden even if I wanted to take care of her.

Fatty went on to say, “From this point of view, Little Brother’s blood was also a factor that enabled him to enter the bronze door. After all, there are some similarities between your blood and his, although yours isn’t as good.”

“Yeah, why is that?” I looked at my wound and wondered if it was related to my mood or what I ate.

“I think it’s probably because he was a Qilin in the womb,” Fatty said. “I’ve thought it over and think it’s the only explanation.”

“What, a Qilin poodle?” I didn’t hear what Fatty said clearly. Did Qilin poodle refer to a little curly-haired Qilin?(1)

“No, have you ever heard of a fetal vegetarian?(2) If a pregnant woman is vegetarian because she practices Buddhism, then after pregnancy, the baby hasn’t eaten any meat. Xuanzang (3) is a good example of a fetal vegetarian. What I meant by Qilin in the womb is that his blood may be a hereditary trait and may have even been inherited for several generations. Your blood is a staple product that you made yourself. Of course, your blood is weaker since you didn’t have the ability right from the start.”

I looked at the wound on my hand, wondering if this Qilin blood ability was like wine—the longer it aged, the stronger it became. If so, mine was merely a new brew of two or three years.

Fine, at least it was better than Fatty’s blood full of gutter oil.

After I ate something and finally felt completely recovered, I went to see the fruits of my labor—the pattern formed by my blood on the ground.

Like Fatty said, square boxes of varying sizes really appeared in all of the places where blood could spread. They weren’t very uniform, and although some could be said to be squares, some of them could actually be considered triangles since they were changeable and tended to be more round.

“I’ve looked through all my notebooks but can’t find any clues as to what these OO×× mean.”

Even if there are clues, you can’t understand foreign languages, I thought to myself as I crouched down and closed my eyes to think. In this state, I could almost imagine what it would be like if all the walls were coated in my blood.

In my mind, the blood that had stopped flowing continued to branch out according to the inherent lines. It spread to the walls and the top of the cave until every corner had been reached, slowly forming a complete picture.

I took a deep breath and imagined myself floating up and spinning around the cave, slowly expanding it into a plane.

I opened my eyes.

“Do you remember another meteorite we saw below the Queen of the West’s city?” I asked him.

When Fatty nodded, I tapped the “blood-framed” areas. “These are all holes, and like that meteorite, this meteorite should also be full of holes. The area framed by these lines is the location of all the holes.”

“If it’s so simple, then why? Why mark the location of the holes? I don’t want to go into those holes.”

I scratched my head. I was only able to really guess this far but he was right. Why would you spend so much effort marking the holes here? Was it really like I thought? When I contemplated it some more, I felt a little guilty again. If Fatty ended up using a grenade to blow it up later and found that the bottom was solid, where could I hide my embarrassment?

I went to one of the boxes and stomped on it with my foot but nothing felt different. A sense of powerlessness suddenly came over me. It was all a wild guess—although I had said it with conviction, it was just a wild fucking guess. Was there any evidence to prove that it was hollow? Fatty was right, if you were only pointing out the location of the holes, why bother spending so much effort to make such a delicate mechanism?

I suddenly realized that there was something wrong with my current way of thinking, and if I continued like this, there wouldn’t be any results in my future.

<Chapter 67><Table of Contents><Chapter 69>

****

TN Notes:

(1) Hooray for wordplay. The pinyin for womb or fetus is tāilǐ. The pinyin for poodle is tāidí

(2) Pinyin is tāilǐsù

(3) Lived from 602-664 and was a Tang dynasty Buddhist monk and translator, who traveled to India 629-645

****

First off, uwahhhhhh PAN ZI!! WE MISS YOU!!! You were such a good bro, gone too soon *sniff*. I’ll just be over here crying in the corner 😦

Second, sorry about the Qilin womb thing (the sections with my 3 TN notes). I tried researching it to make it more comprehensible for you guys, but I don’t really understand the concept. I think it’s just one of those Asian culture things. Hopefully Tiffany’s fixes made the Qilin womb thing clearer for you guys.

Updated 1/16/2022