A Dream of Nanke, the Fat Man

Li Sen liked Xu Anmei.

This probably hadn't begun after he grew up. He must have developed feelings for Xu Anmei when he was still a child.

Yet in this illusion, my bride was Xu Anmei. I clearly remembered that Xu Anmei had died when she was nine, or perhaps ten. In any case, she had drowned in the Little Car River.

When her body was recovered, her mother had cried her eyes out. Her father had aged overnight, half his hair turning white.

Suddenly, an image flashed through my mind—the scene when Xu Anmei's body was pulled from the water.

Li Sen had been there, not far from Xu Anmei's parents. He had been around ten at the time. I had forgotten exactly which year it was, but he had been about that age.

Back then, us kids often played together. We all lived at the Little Ancestral Hall Entrance and spent every day running wild through the alleys. We were close in age, so we naturally got along.

Unlike now, with all the high-rises. People living above, below, left, and right in the same building didn't even know each other. Though they lived only a few steps apart, most would never speak to one another for the rest of their lives.

When we were children, neighbors knew each other well. There had been far more human warmth than there was now.

If someone mentioned so-and-so, somebody would say, "I know that person. They're from our street." They could even tell you seven or eight things about that person's family.

Li Sen fell silent, lowering his head as though lost in thought.

The wedding procession continued forward. There were even two musicians in the group, playing drums and wind instruments amid the lively bustle. The suona in particular was distinctive and piercing.

When we reached the Xu family's gate, people had already been waiting there. Several girls whose names I still remembered stood there. They had been close to Xu Anmei before, all of them from the little daycare center at the ancestral hall entrance.

The door-blocking wine naturally couldn't stop Uncle Long. Thirty-six cups of wine, large and small, had been laid out on the Eight Immortals table at the entrance. Uncle Long raised a cup and downed it in one gulp after another, reciting lines as he drank—mostly auspicious words, saying that the groom's family had come to take the bride home and let her live a good life, and so on.

This was an authentic, traditional old-style Qiao City wedding, one that was almost never seen anymore.

I thought the person who had created this illusion knew Qiao City's old customs very well. They also knew the Little Ancestral Hall Entrance very well, and perhaps even knew all of us very well.

So who was this person?

I felt that my earlier guess might have been wrong. This person was probably not the Onmyoji from the Island Nation who had killed Xie Xiaotang and wanted to seize the Twin Fish Jade Pendant, but someone we might know very well.

But there were only a few survivors from the Little Ancestral Hall Entrance. Li Sen was already dead, and Xu Qiuyan and I were naturally impossible. That left only Uncle Long and Aunt Qin, who were lying in the psychiatric hospital!

The thought sent a shiver down my spine.

Duan Hongbin had said that Uncle Long and Aunt Qin had lost their souls and needed the Lu family's Soul Guiding Incantation to wake up. How could they possibly create such an illusion?

Especially at a time like this.

My gaze shifted to Uncle Long. He had reached the final cup. He wasn't just drinking; his hands hadn't stopped moving either. He pulled out a stack of red envelopes and handed them to the girls, coaxing them into helping trick open the Xu family's gate.

Aunt Qin stood in front of me, watching Uncle Long as well.

I stepped forward and moved closer to her.

"Aunt Qin!"

She turned to me with a smile. "What is it? Are you feeling nervous?"

I shook my head and stared into her eyes. "You and Uncle Long deliberately wanted to trap me here, didn't you?"

Aunt Qin's expression changed slightly. "Xiaobai, what are you talking about? Aunt Qin doesn't understand."

I sighed. "I know this is an illusion. You and Uncle Long created it. I don't know how you did it, but I know you wanted to trap me here—or rather, buy time, right? I think you had two purposes. First, you wanted to use this illusion to tell me something. Second, you wanted to stop me from finding the person behind all this."

The moment I finished speaking, Aunt Qin's entire face turned deathly pale. Uncle Long, ahead of us, abruptly stopped what he was doing. The lively scene around us instantly fell silent, everyone frozen in place like a playing video that had been paused.

Then the entire illusion collapsed, like a shattering mirror.

I was still standing in the pitch-black woods, holding Xu Qiuyan's hand. She was looking at me strangely, a phone in her hand with its flashlight on. The beam was shining directly on my face, and I squinted.

"Xiaobai, you're finally awake. You scared me. You could actually fall asleep like that." Xu Qiuyan lightly patted her chest.

"I fell asleep?" I was puzzled. Hadn't I just entered an illusion?

"Yes. You fell asleep standing there. No matter how we called you, we couldn't wake you."

I shook my head hard and asked, "How long was I asleep?"

"Less than three minutes." She looked at her phone and spoke softly.

My eyes widened. The time I had spent in the illusion had been far more than three minutes. Even thirty minutes would have been too short.

Chu Ge, beside us, was also looking at me in confusion.

So even Chu Ge hadn't known about the illusion I had just experienced!

No, it hadn't been an illusion. An illusion affected the senses and caused hallucinations. Xu Qiuyan and Chu Ge both thought I had fallen asleep standing up, and no more than three minutes had passed. What I had experienced couldn't have been an illusion. It had been a Dreamscape!

That was right. I had been hypnotized and brought into a Dreamscape.

Only in a Dreamscape could time differ from reality. People often said that a dream could span a thousand years, that one could experience a thousand years of change within a single dream.

A thousand years could pass in a dream, but the dream itself was brief.

Uncle Long and Aunt Qin had drawn me into the dream. I was almost certain of it.

Because it had been a Dreamscape, it had been so absurd. I had married a girl who had long been dead, and I had seen Li Sen again after he had jumped to his death.

But I had seen Uncle Long and Aunt Qin's current condition with my own eyes. They were practically vegetative. How could they possibly have done this?

It seemed I really needed to make another trip to Second Provincial Hospital and see them.

"Let's go!" I didn't have time to explain, because at that moment, I sensed that Duan Hongbin seemed to be in danger.

They were less than a hundred meters away now.

Xu Qiuyan didn't ask any more questions. Instead, she said worriedly, "It sounds like they're in danger."

I nodded and quickened my pace with Xu Qiuyan.

"Sister Hong has never been this nervous before."

Xu Qiuyan could sense Sister Hong's emotions. She said Sister Hong wasn't just nervous—she was frightened and uneasy.

The same was true for Duan Hongbin. I had no idea what kind of enemy they were facing.

When Xu Qiuyan, Chu Ge, and I arrived, we saw Sister Hong and Duan Hongbin confronting a fat man.

The fat man looked about our age, but he was exceptionally fat—at least two and a half times my size.

He was around one meter sixty-five tall. No, that wasn't accurate. He was one meter sixty-five from every angle, because he looked like a ball—a round ball.

His body was round, and so was his head.

His eyes were tiny and slightly narrowed. He had a stubby nose, a large mouth, and a pair of protruding ears.

For some reason, I wanted to laugh when I saw his face.

He was smiling too. When he smiled, his eyes were nearly invisible.

Xie Xiaotang stood behind him—more precisely, Xie Xiaotang's soul.

She was hiding behind the fat man.

Who was this fat man? His smile seemed harmless enough, so why were Sister Hong and Duan Hongbin so afraid of him?

The fat man wore a white crew-neck T-shirt, black shorts, and blue flip-flops.

It was already late autumn, yet he was dressed like that.

Maybe his thick layer of fat made him resistant to the cold.

"Well, the real players are here," the fat man said.

I couldn't help frowning. His words carried a deeper meaning. He was saying that neither Duan Hongbin nor Sister Hong was the real target; Xu Qiuyan and I were the people he had been waiting for.

"Who are you?" Xu Qiuyan asked.

The fat man pointed at Xie Xiaotang behind him. "She's an acquaintance of mine. If she has some grudge against you, do me a favor and let it go."

He knew Xie Xiaotang? Or was Xie Xiaotang's soul under his control, and had he been the one who sent her to take the Twin Fish Jade Pendant? Was he working with the Onmyoji from the Island Nation?