A faint scent of air freshener lingered inside the bus. Deep-blue night lights glowed above every seat, making the whole interior shimmer, looking fresh and new.
Once they settled back into their seats, though, they all felt a little tired.
The Greyhound's seat backs reclined so far they were practically lounge chairs, and lying down was reasonably comfortable. Old Tang and Fingel started snoring almost as soon as they reclined. A new driver boarded, started the bus, and pulled out of the parking lot onto the nighttime highway.
The bus vibrated gently. Outside the windows, the uninhabited wilderness was pitch-black.
Soon, everyone aboard except the driver was asleep.
The night passed uneventfully.
The next morning, Lu Mingfei was the first to wake.
The sky outside was filled with rosy clouds. The sun had not yet risen and was only illuminating the cloud layer, a phase that usually lasted a dozen minutes or so before light gradually reached the earth. The morning was quiet, with hardly any cars on the highway. The distant land merged into a single expanse of darkness, and the Greyhound seemed to be traveling along the edge of the world.
His phone screen lit up. Angers had sent another message.
"The Alchemical Matrix is in position."
Lu Mingfei glanced at it and pressed the power button. The darkened screen reflected an expressionless face tinted by the red clouds.
The silence inside the bus was soon broken by Fingel's groaning.
"Morning, brothers." He raised his seat back and stretched, curled in his seat like a tightly bent shrimp.
Old Tang woke and wiped away his drool. Constantine rubbed his eyes and sat up as well.
Just then, golden sunlight rose over the horizon, instantly bathing the earth in a dazzling golden glow. The remnants of night lingered only behind the hills and in the shadows of bushes and rocks.
"Come on, let's have breakfast." Old Tang took out his backpack and handed everyone snacks.
Lu Mingfei accepted a bag of corn chips. They crunched between his teeth, salty and fragrant with cheese.
After a night's sleep, everyone was full of energy. They leaned eagerly toward the windows to admire the scenery on either side of the highway. The Greyhound traveled through endless wilderness, grass covering everything, occasionally broken by a solitary tree, clumps of bushes, or little hills.
That was one advantage of traveling by Greyhound: enjoying the scenery along the way.
Around noon, the Greyhound stopped again, with another hour-long break.
They bought hot dogs at a fast-food restaurant and squatted in the shade beneath its eaves, drinking iced Coke and munching on their food.
"The next stop's Amarillo, isn't it?" Fingel asked casually.
"Yeah. Have you been there?" Old Tang asked.
"No, I've just heard a song called 'Amarillo Morning.'" Fingel shrugged. "It's about the life of a Texas cowboy."
"Come to think of it, I've never been to Texas either." Old Tang took a sip of Coke. "All I really know about it is that it's Sandy's hometown."
Fingel perked up. "Sandy? Sounds like a girl."
"She's not human. She's a Texas squirrel from the cartoon SpongeBob." Old Tang looked a little embarrassed. "We had an old color TV at the orphanage. Every afternoon, they put on SpongeBob to coax us into taking a nap. Back then, I thought Texas must be a really interesting place. Even the squirrels were hardcore-they knew karate and could build rockets."
"Then it's settled." Fingel suddenly stood. "Let's get off in Amarillo! What do you guys think?"
"Sure." Lu Mingfei nodded.
Constantine nodded along with Lu Mingfei.
"Isn't that a little hasty?" Old Tang scratched his head.
"Four grown men riding a Greyhound across the United States was a ridiculous idea to begin with. Who cares if this little decision is hasty?" Fingel declared grandly.
"All right." Old Tang could only agree.
When they boarded this time, the driver had changed again, but the bus had not been cleaned. The Greyhound set off once more. The driver had no idea that the next stop would be the end of the journey for this strange group of passengers.
The scenery outside began to change. The grass grew sparse, giving way to more exposed earth and rock. The distant mountains were covered in jagged stone. The plants were different too: there were more low shrubs with bushy branches and tiny leaves, along with plenty of cacti.
These changes meant their destination was drawing near.
Amarillo lay in the heart of the arid, flat Panhandle Plateau in northwestern Texas, an industrial and commercial city with a population of roughly 180,000.
Its industry centered on extracting and supplying oil and natural gas, with several pipelines leading to other states. Most importantly, it was also the United States' only final assembly center for nuclear bombs.
In a city like this, Cassell College-or rather, the Secret Party-had stationed numerous Executive Department personnel, effectively giving the city a branch of its own.
The sun was setting again when the Greyhound arrived.
The sky was clear, with only a few wispy bands of low clouds along its edges. It evenly reflected the low-angled sunlight, resembling a tranquil sea of sunset colors overhead.
Lu Mingfei and the others got off and collected their luggage.
They walked to the roadside. The Greyhound station was close to the city, and taxis were available here too. Soon, a yellow Crown Victoria pulled up slowly in front of them.
While Old Tang loaded the luggage, Lu Mingfei and Fingel quickly checked with the driver and confirmed that he belonged to the Executive Department.
"Old Tang, the driver recommended a nice, cheap inn. Shall we check in there first?" Fingel asked after they got into the car.
Old Tang thought nothing of it. He had seen Fingel's social skills in action. If that old man with a farm had had a daughter instead of a son, he probably would have tried to set them up on the spot.
"Does the inn have somewhere to eat?" Old Tang asked.
"Yes," the driver replied.
"No objections here. As long as there's food, let's go," Old Tang said.
"Take us there, then, buddy." Fingel laced his hands behind his head, looking perfectly at ease.
The driver silently grumbled that, based on their enrollment years, he should have been Fingel's junior. Then he stepped on the accelerator and drove onto a dirt track through the desert.
A long time passed, and the sky grew completely dark.
At first, Old Tang felt uneasy staring at the pitch-black wilderness on either side, without a single light. Only when a lit three-story building finally appeared ahead did he put aside his fear that they had been kidnapped.
Chapter 58: Awakening
After getting out of the car, Old Tang felt a faint unease.
He glanced around. Lu Mingfei still wore that calm expression, Wang Wei followed silently behind him, and Fingel was unloading the luggage from the taxi's trunk. The driver rested his arm on the open window and watched them through the rearview mirror, perhaps waiting for them to collect their bags and shut the doors before driving away.
The three-story building stood against a small hill, with only this dirt road running past its entrance. Its exterior walls appeared freshly painted.
Old Tang turned to look at the desert facing the inn. Boundless barren earth stretched to the horizon, and above the indistinct black skyline lay a deep-blue night sky dotted with stars. This really was the middle of nowhere. It felt like the sort of place drug dealers would choose to cook meth, where even if someone died, the police would take days to find the scene.
"Bro, why do I feel like we've walked into the opening of some horror movie?" Old Tang whispered to Lu Mingfei. "I've got goose bumps."
"If it's ghosts, that's fine," Lu Mingfei said flatly.
Old Tang thought his friend was having another episode; there was simply no way to have a normal conversation with him. He looked over at Fingel, who was waving goodbye to the driver, and finally relaxed. Horror movies relied on atmosphere. What ghost movie would cast a lecherous, shameless bastard like Fingel as its lead?
He took a deep breath and told himself not to overthink things. Yet after that deep breath, his heart beat even faster.
Suddenly, he felt both happy and unhappy, and thought himself rather pathetic. In his twenty-odd years in New York, he had never really had a single friend. He had never traveled with friends, stayed at an inn recommended by a driver, or tried the food in an unfamiliar city. Those things had existed only in movies and stories for him.
As he grew older, he had begun to scorn such things instead. Traveling so far to somewhere unknown, wearing yourself out, and eating things the locals might be sick to death of hardly seemed better than staying home and playing games.
But now he really had a few friends. One had a mental illness, one barely spoke and treated every word like gold, and the last was even more of a loser than he was. Still, if he averaged Fingel and Wang Wei out, they could count as two normal people. Then, once Lu Mingfei's illness was cured, he would have three normal friends.
They had ridden a Greyhound together, eaten hot dogs amid vehicle exhaust together, and watched the sun rise and set over unfamiliar places through bus windows together.
Now a breeze carrying dust, the raw scent of plants, and taxi exhaust blew into their faces, while dim yellow light illuminated them all. For a moment, there really seemed to be a hint of that freedom he had imagined as a child. All that was missing was beer.
"I wonder if an inn this remote sells beer," he murmured.
"What?" Fingel asked, walking over with the luggage in his arms.
"Nothing."
The taxi's taillights receded down the road. Each of them picked up his own luggage and prepared to enter the inn recommended by a local.
The entrance hall opened directly onto a wall, with doorways on its left and right. No one was there to greet them.
"Anyone here?" Old Tang shouted. There was no reply, but he faintly heard an echo.
How could such a cramped space produce an echo? The reflected sound should have returned too quickly for the human ear to detect any delay.
Fingel quietly fell behind. While collecting the luggage, he had already taken out the revolver and tucked it into the back of his waistband like a gangster.
Lu Mingfei said nothing. He grabbed Old Tang's hand and practically forced him into the inn.
Old Tang felt an immense force pulling his arm as he followed Lu Mingfei past the wall.
He froze in shock.
There was no inn behind the wall, only a vast, stadium-like space, with the floors between every story removed. A powerful lamp hung from the vaulted ceiling, making Old Tang squint, but he still saw it clearly: an enormous, intricate "magic circle" on the floor, its lines formed by recessed grooves through which eerie blue mercury flowed.
At the same time, Lu Mingfei, Fingel, and Constantine all put on masks.
Old Tang looked around in bewilderment. Where the load-bearing columns should have stood, pillars engraved with hideous designs had been erected. Mercury flowed down from above, turning into clouds of white vapor.
"Lu Mingfei? Fingel? Wang Wei?" he shouted.
But Lu Mingfei merely stared coldly at him through his mask. Beside him, Fingel reached behind his back and drew a handgun as long as his forearm. He also tossed a long object wrapped in black cloth to Lu Mingfei, who unwrapped it unhurriedly, revealing an antique-looking Han sword.
"Ronald Tang!" Lu Mingfei's eyes blazed like golden suns. "Today is the day you die!"
Even Fingel looked vicious as he aimed the revolver's dark muzzle at him. "Playing along with your little game of make-believe made me sick!"
In a daze, an unfamiliar memory surfaced before his eyes. When he had returned to the Greyhound transfer hall with his fries, the fellow named Wang Wei had grabbed his hand, his eyes full of terror, as though something horrifying was hunting him. "Brother, run! They're going to kill you."
How strange. I don't remember him saying that.
Yet it was so clear, nothing like a dream. Old Tang could even remember seeing his reflection in Wang Wei's eyes: wearing an ill-fitting shirt, holding piping-hot fries.
For some reason, the person in that reflection seemed a little ridiculous.
Deep in his heart, a voice seemed to sneer, sending a chill through his whole body.
Through his haze, he heard more voices, like murmurs in a dream. They were dreamlike and illusory, yet inexplicably real, as though he truly had heard them somewhere before. But where...
"Brother, there are lots of people outside."
"We're going to die, Constantine. But don't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid when I'm with you... But why... won't you eat me? If you eat me, you'll be able to break out of any prison."
"You would make very good food, but that would be far too lonely. For thousands of years, you've been the only one by my side."
"But dying really makes me sad. Forever and ever, dark and dark... Like feeling my way through the night, but my outstretched hands can never touch anything..."
"The fate of the forsaken is to cross the wilderness, raise the battle standard once more, and return to our homeland. Death is nothing to fear. It is only a long sleep. Until I can devour this world, I would rather sleep peacefully than journey alone. We will wake again."
"Brother... If one day you raise the battle standard and can devour the world, will you eat me?"
"Yes. Then you and I will rule the world together!"