Chapter 54 The Story of Back Then

Trapped in brambles and in a precarious position.

Without any basic knowledge of the “Book of Changes”, one wouldn’t really be able to understand this. My own knowledge regarding this subject matter was weak, but the phrase probably meant that they were in a very dangerous place that was relatively high up and straight, and there was something like brambles trapping them.

This wasn’t one of the hexagrams from the Qimen Eight Calculations method—those were very precise and could guide one’s actions—but I now understood that the hexagram behind “trapped in brambles and in a precocious position” was mainly meant to tell people to act directly without putting too much thought into it.

In the Qimen Eight Calculations method, the part explained using the hexagrams of the “Book of Changes” was mainly meant to make it easier for people to understand. This showed that the hexagrams in the Qimen Eight Calculations method were more obscure. But when Black Glasses said that phrase, its meaning was also very simple: we needed to pay attention to precarious places and things resembling brambles, while also acting rashly without putting too much thought into it.

I didn’t believe in this kind of thing, but right now, the situation was so desperate that I had no other choice but to try anything. And if Black Glasses believed in it, then that meant that he had tried many times and got good results.

Ba Ye and I might have lived in different times, but I could still believe in Black Glasses.

“Is there anything else besides this?” When I asked him this, he laughed. It was obvious that he knew a lot more than I did, but even if it was because he had done the calculations, it still made me feel uncomfortable.

“You might as well tell me and let me learn the Qimen Eight Calculations method, too.”

“You have to have a disability.”

“Bullshit, what disability did Ba Ye have?”

“His fertility was weak,” Black Glasses said. “Keep going, that’s right.”

“I’ll adopt your family name if we find them,” I said, but Black Glasses only responded with, “Don’t blindly make wishes. What if they come true?”

We continued crawling, only stopping to rest when we were tired before we continued moving forward. The whole process was very long— almost as long as what I experienced in my hallucination—but whenever we got to a place where we could sit up a little bit, we tried our best to stretch our joints out. Since the muscles used for crawling were seldom used in everyday life, I felt like I was going to be completely disabled now.

During one of our breaks, I continued asking him what he had experienced after they came in. His brief explanation was similar to what I had guessed, but I could sense that he was still hiding something.

His expression was very similar to Fatty’s at that time, so I asked him, “They said that at night, strange things will appear here and try to tempt you. Have you ever encountered them?”

Black Glasses just looked at me. He was wearing sunglasses so I couldn’t see his expression clearly, but his current state revealed a lot of information.

“Since you want to chat so much, I’ll tell you a story,” he said.

When I looked at him, he continued, “This story can be finished right before we reach the key area, that is, the place with brambles. While you listen to this story, just keep crawling and stop thinking. Not only will our progress be faster, but you’ll learn a lot of things you didn’t know before.”

“Is the story good?”

“It pertains to all the things your Uncle Three should have told you back then,” he said. “I only know part of it, but it should be enough to keep you mesmerized.”

“Alright,” I said.

He looked at me and remained silent for a moment, as if trying to find a suitable beginning for the story.

After that, he told me a story from back then, which really did turn out to be crucial and filled many of the mysteries that had remained in my heart. But after the story was finished, my anxiety about this journey reached its peak.

Black Glasses’ story started from the time of the Mystic Nine. It began in the jungles of Southeast Asia, which explained why Black Glasses had been active in that region for a long time, and what he was looking for there.

<Chapter 53><Table of Contents><Chapter 55>

****

Pretty sure this starts the like 10+ chapter Chen Pi story (le sigh). Hopefully it’s at least interesting.

Advertisement