Chapter 4 Schemer

I was above Fatty, so I had a clear view as that thing stretched towards us and then its head suddenly lit up.

I froze for a moment, thinking that the zombie was like a fucking anglerfish that was sticking its lantern out. But then I realized that it was actually a lamp that was shining.

It appeared to be an electric lantern that was tied to something like a bamboo pole. There were a lot of ribbons tied around the pole, which made it look like a corpse’s neck in the dim light.

The lantern slowly moved towards Fatty as if to illuminate his face. At this time, I suddenly realized that this was a scene I had witnessed at Crescent Hotel so many years ago when the servant had hung up the sky lantern. But the lantern pole back then wasn’t like this one. This pole had countless colored strips of cloth on it like flags.

Then, the pole was lifted up and the electric lantern slid back down it, rolled over the colored cloth strips, and fell back to the base of the pole. Even though the light wasn’t very strong, it was still enough to illuminate the top of the stone temple.

I saw that a very young man was standing on the big coffin. He appeared to be alone and was carrying an electric lantern in one hand and a bamboo pole in the other. The long bamboo pole was slung over his shoulder like a fishing rod, which caused the colored ribbons on it to gradually spread out until they looked like the kind of flags shepherds used. There was also a huqin⁽¹⁾ slung over his other shoulder.

He was wearing a white T-shirt and Mongolian breeches, and I could even see that he had earrings in his ears. He had painted something like a totem on his face and was looking at us with a smile.

He clearly hadn’t cut his hair for a long time since it seemed a little long, but overall, he didn’t look wild at all. He was also extremely white, which made me think that he had lived underground for a long time.

“I’ll be damned,” Fatty said. “Brother, who are you?”

The other party just looked at me, so I stared back at him as well. Then, he pulled something out from behind him and put it on the coffin—it was Xiao Hua’s satellite phone.

After that was done, he made three gestures at me. They seemed to be a kind of religious gesture, but I didn’t know what they meant.

Then, the lantern was turned off and he completely disappeared into the darkness. Fatty’s flashlight swept over that area again, but there was no one there.

“Mr. Naïve, do you know each other?” Fatty shouted to me. “Is this white face in your gigolo circle or something?”

“He’s much younger than me,” I said. This man was twenty years old at most, so I couldn’t help but feel utterly shocked. Who is this man? I asked myself. He doesn’t seem afraid of this situation at all.

I didn’t know why, but at this time, a thought suddenly popped into my head.

It wasn’t a completely intuitive thought, but his smile had seemed almost mocking, which gave me some inspiration.

I had always felt that Jin Wantang didn’t have the energy and courage to organize this whole affair, so there had to be someone behind him pulling the strings.

Could it be that this person—

<Chapter 3><Table of Contents><Chapter 5>

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TN Notes:

(1) A family of Chinese two-stringed fiddles, with snakeskin covered wooden soundbox and bamboo bow with horsehair bowstring.

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Good news for all you guys that have been waiting. Tiffany is done going through Restart Part 3, and wonderful reader Laireshi has done the arduous task of putting it all into a pdf for you. Yay and many thanks! It’s on the Restart 3 & 4 tab if you want to download it. Hope you all enjoy the frankenstein cover I concocted. The thumbnail pictures from WeChat were too blurry when I tried to pull them up and I couldn’t find a full blown version so you get that. If you guys are absolutely horrified looking at it, just let me know and I’ll delete it and re-upload the files.