Unknown Story: Queen of the West’s Ghost Banquet

I met this writer before I went to Changbai Mountain (as Guan Gen, I met many intellectuals). This writer was a friend of a publishing house editor that I knew. I decided to talk to him because I knew very clearly that my trip was very high-risk. If I died in Changbai Mountain, then some things might never be known.

After being active for so long, Little Brother’s memory wasn’t very reliable, so if I ended up dying, all those years of hard work would’ve all been for nothing. I spent a long time trying to convince myself that everything would be fine, but I still couldn’t accept this possibility. In the end, I still hoped that some things could be passed down.

At that time, I had a lot of things to do, such as checking the inventory of the shops in Xiling. If the things in the warehouse were left there for a long time, they would pile up, which wasn’t good. So, I found a friend in Beijing to keep them for me for the time being. But it was difficult to take care of all the various things.

The warehouse for funerary objects was different from the general warehouse. Not to mention the basic conditions such as keeping the temperature and humidity constant, your things couldn’t be left haphazardly everywhere. I rented the warehouse using the name of a gallery. In addition to all kinds of fake oil paintings that concealed hidden compartments, there were also many old Western-style clocks and watches that were piled up in the warehouse. The small funerary objects were carefully wrapped in foam and then hidden in the interlayers of these clocks and watches. There were also a few utensil cabinets hidden here and there. These antique clocks were all about the same length, so I couldn’t make a catalog; I could only rely on memory, which was very annoying.

I actually liked this place a lot and would often wind up all the clocks. There were probably about a thousand of them here, so listening to the ticking sounds of those second hands moving at the same time sounded just like raindrops hitting a canopy. It was like the world was full of sound, but also like there wasn’t any sound at all. Most of the time, I could only fall asleep with this sound.

I met this writer in the warehouse. He must have heard about what I did, for when he saw those Western clocks, he looked like he couldn’t quite believe it.

I looked at him. He seemed very awkward and uncomfortable. I knew that the person who really asked him to come was the editor backing him. After all, the editor knew that I had many stories to tell.

“What do you want to know?” I asked him as I sat down. I knew what I wanted to say, but it wasn’t like I could really tell him everything.

He looked at me nervously, but I could tell that his curiosity was winning out. “I heard that you know someone who’s lived in Nepal for a long time and you’ve experienced many things with him. Now you want someone to write those experiences down.”

When I nodded, he said, “I hope you’ll choose me to write this story.”

<The First Meeting 2><Table of Contents><Unknown Story: Queen of the West’s Ghost Banquet 2>

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So like after Sand Sea (because he’s going by Guan Gen), but kinda giving me Time Raider vibes…