Chapter 9 Fearless

Fatty obviously didn’t want to keep messing around with me, because he pulled out two cigarettes and stuck one in my mouth and the other behind my ear. Then he hung the lighter on my other ear and made a “don’t make any mistakes” gesture at me.

Before I could even finish my joke, he was already climbing up the rope. It was too difficult to catch him and explain that I could dance flamenco because I helped the villagers keep an eye on the ears of rice and scare sparrows away during the harvest season. Since sparrows were very courageous and ordinary movements wouldn’t scare them away, I started dancing. But some of the naughty brats in the village took a picture and posted it on the internet, saying that I was a Fujian farmer with dreams of becoming a flamenco dancer.

After Fatty went up, a flashlight was lowered down from above to provide some overhead lighting for me. At the same time, a cell phone was also lowered down. Wen Binghui spoke into the headset at this time, “It has the chant saved on it. Remember to play it when you dance.”

I looked at the watch and saw that there were only ten minutes left, so I turned on the music player, started playing the chant, and then lit my first cigarette.

The chant sounded a lot more normal coming from the cell phone’s music player, which meant that it must have been recorded in advance. It had a very primitive feeling to it, as if there was the rhythmic sound of someone tapping on a rock.

The costume was very heavy, and it was only when I put it on that I realized that it might not be easy to take off quickly. Moreover, it made it even more difficult to dance.

It stood to reason that sacrificial dances would have special movements and gestures. Black Glasses may have learned the dance by watching Xiao Hua practice at that time, but I had a hunch that the dance movements weren’t the key. This was because if there were special gestures, then Xiuxiu may have learned them as well. Xiao Hua had factored her into his plan after all, so he may have taught her. But if that were true, then Xiuxiu would have brought it up when we were arguing just now and I wouldn’t have been able to refute her at all.

But she didn’t bring it up, which showed that she knew in her heart that the dance itself wasn’t very important.

This costume and the chant may be the most important things, so doing the Radish Pulling dance should solve the problem.

“Attention, all units!” I shouted before immediately making the first radish pulling move.⁽¹⁾

I hadn’t been very flexible since I was a child, so the skills I had now were all obtained through hard training. Many of them were due to my developed brain, which made up for some of my lack of skills. So, if I wanted to dance like I did as a child, I needed to hum the song in order to determine my own rhythm.

Anyone who did this dance when they were a child would know that it wasn’t the type of dance that was performed by one person. At the very least, you needed two people: one to play the role of the twisting delicate radish and the other to play the role of the person pulling it out.

Without an ounce of hesitation, I chose to act as the radish because that was the role I had played when I was a kid. The first dance move was a ridiculous twist, but I had no sense of shame and no fear at this time.

Pull the radish, pull the radish, aiya, aiya.

I held the cigarette in my mouth as I hummed the song, and found that I could still remember the dance moves from my childhood, almost like a conditioned reflex.

While this would look extremely absurd to any outsiders, only I knew that I was merely one step away from death. It seemed that after all this time, I was completely used to such absurd but extremely dangerous situations because my heart was very calm.

After dancing for about three minutes, I finished the first part, followed by the chorus. I also finished my cigarette. I looked at the watch and then glanced around before starting to dance again without hesitation. As I danced, I said in my heart, come on, brother. I’ve put everything out there. Don’t leave me hanging. At this time, I suddenly saw Xiuxiu in the crevice send several signals with her flashlight.

She must have seen something from that angle.

I spit out my cigarette butt, slowly turned my head, looked out of the corner of my eye, and immediately saw a slender, black, soft-bodied, leech-like thing. It had stretched out from a crack in the underground rock at some point and was standing quietly about an arm’s length away from me.

<Chapter 8><Table of Contents><Chapter 10>

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TN Note:

(1) Please watch this video and join me in envisioning Wu Xie doing this dance lmao.