Chapter 42

At that time, they were in a KTV⁽¹⁾ and there were many people around so the Chinese man took Beliak out to the balcony.

While the two people smoked together, the Chinese man said to Beliak, “There are many interesting things in Bonism. It’s the most primitive religion, there are many spells that have been handed down, and there are some very mysterious aspects to it. As far as I know, many of the religions in the world that still use so-called spells actually developed from Bonism’s occult arts.”

“You mean to say that if these things were useless, they wouldn’t have been passed down?”

“It’s easy to expose systematic deception. Even a simple fool must see the benefits before persisting with something. People are too utilitarian and not so easy to deceive,” the Chinese man said. “Most spells do a little magic before they are cast, mainly to convince people that whatever happens next is due to supernatural forces at work. Small magic tricks can easily be debunked, especially in this day and age. In fact, many spells in various religious rituals have already been debunked. That’s why many people think that this small bit of magic before the spell is cast is really a magical spell.”

The Chinese man looked at Beliak, “But there’s a misunderstanding here. We might as well think about how spells and magic came into being. If you think about it rationally, when the earliest humans suffered disasters, the only thing they could do with nature was to deify it and pray to it. But spells are much more active now compared to then. It seems that humans can use a kind of power through specific methods. If you think about it carefully, you’ll find that this is not a tangible thing, but some kind of change that takes place in the middle of the process.”

Beliak thought it was very interesting and looked at the Chinese man. It had been a long time since he had talked so freely with another person.

“If you only pray at the beginning but can use this power later, then there must be an intermediate stage during the whole process. In fact, as I mentioned just now, people are very utilitarian. At the beginning of this intermediate stage, an ancient person must have started realizing that there were two different results for each prayer: effective and ineffective.” The Chinese man exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “After they started keeping track of them, they must have begun sorting out all the factors that were relatively effective when it came to praying—geographical location, shamans, weather, etc.—and began to summarize them. Through thousands of sacrifices, they eventually summed up the first batch of procedures to follow and put them into practice, hoping to improve the success rate of the sacrifices. At this time, some of the special procedures in these ceremonies began to look like spells.”

“So, the original Bon religion has survived for tens of thousands of years, and those spells that have been handed down are actually the final procedures that have been summed up? And they’re also the most effective ones?” Beliak asked.

“Not necessarily,” the Chinese man said. “Some spells were very effective but they were only useful during that time period. Later, when the production situation changed, no one used them and they were gradually abandoned. That’s why these kinds of spells will seem a little strange if you see them in ancient books now.”

“Have you tried them?”

The Chinese man didn’t give a positive answer but continued talking, “For example, to make your friend reappear after they’ve disappeared, there’s a spell in Bonism that’s called ‘Imaginary Person’. But don’t underestimate this kind of spell. You’ll see in various forums that many people are practicing this kind of spell right now. The purpose of this spell is to project an imaginary person into reality. In the Tibetan language, it’s called ‘Tupla’, the art of incarnation.”

Beliak had rarely encountered a huckster who was better than himself. He looked at the Chinese man and said, “It’s all just an illusion. It’s easy for excessive meditation to damage the brain.”

“There is a foreigner who practices Tupla in Tibet. He once successfully projected his incarnation into a dancing crowd, and many people touched and danced with it,” the Chinese said. “But after the event, everyone said that their impression of this incarnation was that it had the temperament of a monster. And what’s even more interesting is that this spell can only be done in Tibet. If you’re not on that land, then the imaginary person can’t be incarnated.”

“Maybe there are some special viruses there or the oxygen is thinner, which causes people’s brains to be more prone to problems. Do you really believe that all of what you’ve said is true?”

“Of course I do, more than anyone else.”

The Chinese man smiled. It was a smile that made Beliak’s hair stand on end and also convinced him that the other man’s words were true.

He had never seen such an expression before. It was so strange, in fact, that a thought suddenly popped into Beliak’s mind: this person wasn’t a human but a monster, just like the one he had mentioned just now.

This kind of feeling was extremely difficult to imitate and definitely wasn’t something that could be created by suggestive hints. It was only by seeing that expression and that face together that one could understand what Beliak was feeling at that moment.

The person talking to him wasn’t a human being. Beliak suddenly realized that this Chinese man seemed to be what he had mentioned before, a Tupla.

“What should I do?” When Beliak thought about it later, it seemed like he had been possessed or something. At that time, he was in such a trance that he started to ask questions without having any textual research to back them up.

“Do you agree to my terms?”

“Of course.”

The Chinese man was very satisfied and said, “I’ll give you a trial run first and then contact you again.”

After that, the Chinese man walked into the KTV room but Beliak didn’t see where he went. He was just starting to calm down and beginning to regret his decision when he suddenly heard someone calling him from behind.

He turned around and saw Yuri standing on the road beneath the balcony. It was snowing in Japan at that time so Yuri was wearing the windbreaker he often wore when they were in Russia. The younger man was covered in snow and looking up at him from the road.

“Beliak,” Yuri waved to him. “Where have you been all this time?”

Beliak looked at him, feeling like he had been struck by lightning. How long had it been since he had heard such a normal greeting? He trembled all over, unable to restrain his tears.

“Yuri? You can see me?”

“What, are you joking?” Yuri spoke in Russian.

Beliak went crazy and climbed over the balcony railing. It was about three stories high so he ended up falling heavily onto the strip of green lawn below. He got up and found that his hand was broken but he still rushed towards the road anyways.

There was no one on the road but he felt his blood run cold when he saw Yuri’s footprints in the snow.

It was a pair of footprints that seemed to have appeared out of thin air, with no traces that they had come or gone from any direction.

Beliak, knowing that this was a trial run, rushed back into the KTV but couldn’t find the man anywhere. “I believe, I believe!” He shouted to his surroundings. “Right away, let’s start right away!”

He didn’t know how the man had done it, but at that time, he completely believed from the bottom of his heart that the man could do anything.

But he never found the man after that, and the other party didn’t reach out to him either.

Beliak drew the man’s face from memory but found that no matter how he drew it, he could only draw a monster. The face was so strange and mysterious that just looking at it made people feel disgusted. He fell into even greater madness and began researching and searching through occult clubs in various places. In the midst of all that, he only managed to find a small bit of information—the man seemed to have gone to other friends to confirm whether the house really belonged to Beliak. After he found out that it wasn’t, the man became fed up and left.

Beliak realized that he had to own this house in order to return to that snowy night.

“There is only one possibility,” Beliak said to Black Glasses. “Yuri’s sister had long since given up her right to claim any property and Yuri’s mother was excluded from his will since he hated her so the only thing left to do was kill all the remaining males in their family. I was last in line to inherit Yuri’s property, but if they all died, then this house would be mine.”

“Then how did you think of using Qi Qiu to do this?” Black Glasses asked, unable to resist holding it in any longer.

The one thing he was dying to know was who led Beliak to Qi Qiu and forced such an innocent person to kill so many people before throwing him into the cold river.

Beliak obviously wouldn’t have come out and said it if he had been directly asked before since Qi Qiu wasn’t important to him at all and he was already so wrapped up in his own twisted world.

It appeared to be hard for him to get to the point, but Black Glasses didn’t want to alert him and so had been listening very patiently thus far.

“That kid,” Beliak said, “I came across him when I was looking up information on the Chinese man. I found out that he had been to Russia once and visited the kid so I followed him. At first, I hoped that Qi Qiu would give the Chinese man a message for me, saying that I would soon own the house and our business could continue. But when I found Qi Qiu, I realized that he seemed to have a special ability.”

<Chapter 41><Table of Contents><Chapter 43>

****

TN Notes:

(1) KTV is karaoke. China has KTV clubs, which have private rooms that you can book with your friends or colleagues for a few hours of fun.