Chapter 26: The boat that welcomes the bride

What is too late? I don’t know, but the sound of the drums and gongs made my heart tremble with inexplicable fear. It was as if a terrifying secret had officially begun to unfold before my eyes the moment the sound began.

“The child will be fine for the time being, at least not for a short time. If you really want to rescue everyone, not just come here out of curiosity, then come with me now. If not, come with me anyway. If you become a sacrifice, it will only make the evil more powerful.” Grandpa Liu’s hasty words made me, who had been stunned by the sound of the drums in the river, suddenly come to my senses.

I inexplicably believed this old man, although I was not here to explore the mystery, let alone to save people, but only to find clues about my master. However, it has never been the style of our Li family to leave people in distress without help. The foundation of our Taoist heart is righteousness and a bottom line. If it is destroyed, then there is no talk of Tao.

Inexplicably, when I came to this village, I once again had a heavy responsibility to bear…

At the urging of Master Liu, I glanced at the four crying children, apologized silently in my heart, and finally moved my feet. Small forbearance leads to chaos and great plans… The gains and losses, and years of growth, have finally taught me to hold back.

We left… In Wei Donglai’s sneer, his words still lingered in my ears: “You can’t get away from it, you’ll always see it.”

Grandpa Liu didn’t argue with Wei Donglai at all, but just took me and walked quickly down the hill. Unfortunately, all the dozen or so people in the group were old people… their pace was destined to be slow, and even if I could leave with Grandpa Liu on my back, what about the others? I could only leave with them.

The sound of the drums and gongs grew louder and louder, with the drums beating and the suona playing in high spirits, with the unique melodious flavor of the Northwest, forming a cheerful “wedding song.” This should be the wedding song, right? I’m not sure… I don’t know if the suona has played too many sad tunes, like “Lan Hua Hua,” I always feel a hint of sadness in it.

What’s even more frightening is the mysterious sadness, because although these tunes are clear, they are not as clear and transparent as the music of the world. Instead, they seem to come from an unknown space in the sky, with a hint of ethereality! I can’t imagine what kind of people are playing in the Yellow River. Do they come by water or by boat?

Even if I really have seen a lot and know a lot, this is beyond my understanding, and I have no way of imagining it.

My face was getting uglier and uglier. I didn’t know why just hearing this music would make me feel so heavy. Liu, the old man who had been walking next to me, turned his head and looked at me. He probably saw my ugly face and asked incredulously, “Did you hear it?”

“What?” I didn’t react for a moment, not understanding what Mr. Liu meant.

“I mean, did you hear anything?” Mr. Liu said with some difficulty.

“I heard a loud drum beat. Shouldn’t I hear it so loudly? Old man, are you talking about something else?” I was a little unsure. Was this what the old man was asking about?

“You really heard it…” Mr. Liu’s face also became ugly, as ugly as mine, but he didn’t explain anything. He just muttered a few words in a dialect that I didn’t understand. The other dozen old men looked at me with sympathy in their eyes. I didn’t understand what this meant. Suddenly, I felt a little panicky myself. Shouldn’t I have heard it?

In the meantime, halfway down the hill, I heard deafening cheers behind me. At that moment, I felt that the will of the ghost I had summoned had returned… It shouldn’t have been that fast, right? Who had broken my summoning technique so easily? Wei Donglai?

“The auspicious time has come. The sacred boat, the great messenger, has also arrived. We are sending the bride off.” A loud voice also sounded at the same time as the people’s cheers, even louder than the people’s cheers. It was Wei Donglai’s voice.

The exorcism was broken, and the people who had come to their senses did not think about holding me accountable. At this moment, it seemed like they were in a carnival… Wei Donglai’s words made the people’s cheers even louder, and gradually they became rhythmic shouts. Wei Donglai laughed… I couldn’t help but look back. Wei Donglai and a few other black-clad people had already jumped off the stage with the child in their arms and were also going down the hill.

My heart grew more and more confused. The person who reminded me to be careful during the dance, the person who anxiously pulled my pants when I didn’t kneel down, the crumpled money the old man took out of his arms in the rented house… Compared with the crazy cheers at this time, the crying face of the child, the clear sound of the drums… Which one is the true face of the people in the town? Are they kind or evil? Are they sober or numb?

“Hey…” Grandpa Liu’s long sigh echoed in my ears, and there was a glimmer of tears in his eyes, but no one explained anything to me, and my doubts almost made my heart explode.

What was killing me was that the drumming was getting louder and louder… Accompanying the drumming was the sound of people from the Yellow River, as if a lively wedding procession was really waking up and heading this way. The sound of laughter and joy was both real and illusory… I could hear it, but it was as if I was watching a movie, and it was just the sound of the movie.

Among the sounds of joy and peace, there were also sounds of weeping… The sounds were so desperate, but the more they cried, the louder the people laughed, just like teasing a child, making him cry, and the more the child’s cute appearance made the adults happy.

I could almost read the emotions in it, laughing at the crying person for not being grateful, but… my thoughts in my head were getting more and more chaotic, and at this time we had already reached the bottom of the hill. On the half-way point, there were the so-called people from the town who were sending off the bride… they were cheering so sincerely and from the bottom of their hearts, but there were also discordant sounds – a few muffled cries of sorrow.

“Go.” Looking back, I saw that Mr. Liu’s face was also full of pain. He didn’t even seem to have the courage to look back, and he led me towards the exit of the timber yard.

I don’t know if it was because of his agitation or something else, but under the light of the flashlight, he was clearly filled with the familiar wood transfer office. He was also tripped by a piece of rotten wood and let out a painful groan, holding his foot and unable to stand up for a long time.

The people around him gathered around him, and the tears in Mr. Liu’s eyes grew even more. He struggled to stand up several times, shouting, “Go, go quickly!” Unfortunately, he couldn’t stand up at all.

I didn’t understand why such a sad and anxious scene was taking place. I could only walk up to him, help him up, and put him on my back, saying, “Let’s go.”

But at this moment, an unusual cheer sounded from the crowd, accompanied by the familiar sound of the boat breaking the waves… Could it be my illusion, or is there really a wedding procession? My heart was inexplicably frightened, and my curiosity made me turn back…

“Well, you heard it after all,” the old man’s helpless voice came from behind me, and I looked up to see that the originally dark Yellow River suddenly lit up with an inexplicable light, like a fire, but it was so empty.

My feet simply couldn’t move, and I just watched… At this moment, the group of people who were escorting the bride had already walked down the hill and reached the edge of the Yellow River, which was close at hand. Then they fell silent, and then all of them knelt down.

I clearly saw several figures unwilling to kneel, but they were forcibly pulled down and made to kneel. The sound of their suppressed, mournful crying came from their mouths.

Wei Donglai stood at the front of the procession. Several black-clad men next to him held up the boy and girl in their hands, and the children struggled and cried in the hands of the black-clad men… But no one came forward. Their crying was useless, and this scene made my heart inexplicably ache.

But the next moment… a huge red boat inexplicably came out of the bend on the side of the backwater bay… and silently stopped in the backwater bay. Then, another boat… and then another…

The appearance of these boats does not make people feel at ease at all, but rather, it is full of a strange flavor. It seems that there are many people standing on the boats, and the cheerful sound of drums and music comes from the boats!

I widened my eyes… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, because these relatively huge boats made it hard to tell whether they were real or not!