Chapter 45

On the flight back to Beijing, both men were silent. The two were dressed casually but both were obviously a little tired.

After a long time had passed, Xie Yuchen suddenly thought of something and asked Black Glasses, “What did you see in that old house?”

“A copper box from a long time ago.”

“So you also have something that you really want to find.”

“Well, that box involved an unsolved mystery.” Black Glasses smiled and took a sip of beer, “It’s been so long that I thought I didn’t want to know, but unfortunately, it’s all just an illusion.”

“Is Bonism just a religious system based on hallucinogens?” Xie Yuchen muttered to himself as he looked at the clouds outside the window.

“Maybe not. Maybe that era was different from the present, but those differences have been submerged in the earth’s crust.” As Black Glasses spoke, he was reading through Yuri’s notes that were in a notebook he’d taken from the old house.

“Did you see that box after you left the old house?”

Black Glasses looked straight ahead as if he were looking at something in the empty seat in front of him but didn’t answer.

The two men were silent for a moment before Black Glasses asked, “Don’t you have your own opinion on the Bon religion?”

Xie Yuchen didn’t answer him either and just closed his eyes to rest.

Black Glasses didn’t repeat the question. He knew that Xie Yuchen might suddenly answer this question at another time so all he needed to do was ask it once. The other man wouldn’t forget his question but he would choose the time when he wanted to answer it.

What exactly was Bonism?

As Xie Yuchen sat there with his eyes closed, many thoughts flashed through his mind.

To be honest, the Bon religion’s existence dated back to China’s Mythical Period.⁽¹⁾

If the stories from the Mythical Period were regarded as romanticized depictions, then the Bon religion was the reality of that time. Human civilization had a long history going back to 3000 B.C.E, but that history actually started around 10,000 B.C.E.

No one knew what happened during those times. As Black Glasses had said, the evidence of these things’ existence was now buried deep under the mountains or in an underground abyss. With the movement of tectonic plates over millennia, many things had fallen deep into the earth’s crust, never to be seen again.

During these long years, the primitive gods and magic rituals created by human beings gradually developed into various religions and produced various gods. The first depictions of these gods were completely different from what they were now.

Humans had romanticized these ancient gods over the years and personified them, but in fact, the first humans who saw them only saw some incomprehensible images in underground caves and tornadoes. The descriptions given by these disaster survivors were probably the real appearance of some of those gods.

Bonism was a rare gateway to studying these truths because the primitive Bon religion was almost like a living fossil of ancient civilizations.

Thinking this, Xie Yuchen soon fell asleep.

Black Glasses looked at him and closed his eyes as well.

He returned to the tropical rainforest from that time when the locals told him that there were ancient ruins in the jungle and strange things often happened after people entered them.

In recent years, about a dozen people had disappeared from these ruins so the local people started to worship the ruins.

One particular rainy summer day, those missing people’s bodies were found one right after another in the woods around the ruins.

The corpses were completely intact and hadn’t rotted at all, but judging from the traces left on their bodies, they had obviously lived for a long time after they disappeared.

But where did they go after they disappeared? No one knew. It almost seemed like they had gone to another place and survived, but they were trapped there and only reappeared after they died.

They dissected the bodies and found many suspicious and unexplained details.

For example, their stomachs had become very small and there were many mosquito bites on their bodies, but some of these bites had formed under the skin.

At that time, someone told Black Glasses that it seemed like the mosquitoes in the area where these missing people had been staying were four-dimensional.

Later, they found the brass box.

In addition to the many reliefs on the box that could no longer be seen clearly, there was also some text that, when interpreted, seemed to say that there was another world inside the box.

Then the people on their team began to disappear.

It was a long story.

Maybe they also went into that box.

But unfortunately, he didn’t bring the box out in the end.

When was it lost?

Black Glasses soon fell asleep as well. He didn’t have time to think about the box anymore. He needed to get some rest right now because he knew what was going to happen after they landed.

After living for so long, it was finally here.

Outside, the sea of clouds drifted by, the sun set, and a magnificent dusk appeared. After that, it should be a long, dark night.

[End Part 1]

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At this time, the event Ba Ye predicted back then finally started to happen. Fate started spreading once more, unexpected guests started to appear, and the final plan and preparations made at that time were put into play. After they returned home, all of these things happened one right after another.

For the next story, please see “Looking for the Dead in the Sea of Lights”.

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Further reading:

To answer a few questions:

1. What is “Flowery Night”?

I wrote “Flowery Night” because I wanted to write a strange story with beautiful scenery to improve the style. In fact, going abroad isn’t a particularly unpopular thing, but most of the stories in the “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles” take place in a traditional atmosphere. It was originally difficult to have the characters go abroad but I was hoping for there to be a story in various places all over the world. “Flowery Night’s” writing doesn’t have a formal structure so I will continue to revise some places that were unclear when I originally wrote them. Even though it doesn’t conform to a classic story structure, it’s still very vivid.

After the revision, “Flowery Night” should be a little easier to read and understand.

2. What to write next.

There are a lot of things to write, but of course, the “Queen of the West’s Ghost Banquet” is next on the list. I obviously have to take some time to rest and reorganize some things so there will be some random stories written in between.

3. Will I continue to write “Flowery Night”?

When I get some inspiration, I will write some independent short stories but the events will be relatively independent and won’t necessarily occur in the same time frame as this story. Zheng Jingyin will probably be an important character and appear often.

There will be a bonus chapter tomorrow.

<Chapter 44><Table of Contents><Chapter 46>

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TN Notes:

(1) After googling around, China’s Mythical Period probably started around 2000 BCE. Here’s some info and here’s the wiki page on Chinese mythology in general.