When the Madman saw Qingmu, he started yelling and rushed forward, making a gesture that seemed to be either to hug or to hit him, baring his teeth and brandishing his claws. But he only went seven or eight steps away from Qingmu before stopping, standing there motionless, panting heavily.
"Who are you?" Qingmu wasn't in a hurry at all. He leaned against the van, enjoying the surrounding scenery while smoking.
"Who I am?"
The Madman repeated the sentence, then started scratching his head and looking pained.
"Who I am?"
"Who I am?"
"Who I am?"
He kept repeating the same phrase, sometimes looking up at the sky, sometimes looking down at the ground, and sometimes rolling around on the ground.
Human memory is a strange thing. Sometimes, even when you don't think about it, things will surface on their own and flit around in front of you. But when you try hard to remember, it hides away like a master of hide-and-seek.
It's one thing to not remember anything at all, but the worst part is that you feel like you're about to remember, but then you just can't. It's like fishing—the fish keeps biting your hook, but you can never catch it.
You run into an old classmate you haven't seen in years on the street. Oh dear, what's his name again?
You can even remember pulling his chair away when you were in elementary school, and he plopped down on the ground, and you even fought over it, but you just can't remember his name.
What was it again? It's right there on my lips!
You painfully recall the memories, but can only manage a perfunctory response. "Ah, oh dear, it's you, old classmate! Long time no see! Where have you been lately? What have you been up to?"
After you've exchanged pleasantries for a while, said goodbye, and gone your separate ways, you suddenly slap your forehead and exclaim, "Hey! Zhang San!"
Everyone encounters this situation at some point, but only those with Alzheimer's disease or mental illness can forget who they are.
Now this Madman can't even remember who he is.
Watching the Madman writhe on the ground, Qingmu knew perfectly well what that agonizing, worm-like pain felt like. So he preferred to be lazy rather than think about things he couldn't remember. (And-books)
His name is Qingmu, he has a studio, and he keeps a Crow.
That's all, but it's enough.
Of course, if there's even the slightest chance or clue that might help him easily recall something, he'd be happy to investigate it, such as the triangle symbol with its two connected vertices, and the woman who exuded a strange fragrance.
Now, he could faintly smell that irresistible fragrance again.
"No need to ask, you won't get the answer." The old woman who worked as Medicine Granny came out of the small building.
Qingmu exhaled a puff of smoke, brushed the smoke away with his hand, and then sniffed hard to make sure the fragrance wasn't coming from the Medicine Granny.
He glanced up at the small wooden house; the fragrance was coming from the second-floor window—very faint, but very sweet.
"Achoo!" Qingmu sneezed, rubbed his nose, and said, "How do you know I can't get an answer from you?"
When the Medicine Granny saw Qingmu sneeze, her tense face relaxed, but she immediately looked around warily to make sure she wasn't dreaming before saying, "I admit you're very capable, but there will always be people more capable than you."
"Oh? Is it your master?" Qingmu a little curious, having heard that her master was a woman who never aged.
"Hmph! I don't even need my master to deal with you." The Medicine Granny's eyes were filled with resentment. "Although you broke my spell and weakened my magic, don't be too smug. The suffering I've endured will soon be repaid to you, and you will suffer a hundred times more than I have."
"Magic power?" Qingmu burst into laughter. "You've always thought you were practicing some kind of magic? Oh, right, what Buddha are you, the reincarnation of the Medicine Master? Magic power! Haha, that's hilarious!"
The Medicine Granny's face was ashen, like pig liver that had been sitting out for two days. Her hands trembled as she reluctantly loosened her delicate, clenched fingers.
Qingmu sneezed twice more.
The Medicine Granny smiled disdainfully.
She slowly walked to the Madman's side and said, "He's a Madman, a real Madman. Unless you can cure his madness and break my junior sister's spell, you won't get anything out of him."
"So you have a junior sister! Is she the one hiding upstairs? Why don't you come down and meet her?"
The Medicine Granny knew she had let something slip, but she wasn't worried. She said, "If you want to see my junior sister, then show me your true skills!"
"Sigh, women are so troublesome, always so hesitant and indecisive!"
Qingmu sighed, threw the cigarette butt on the ground, stomped it out with his flip-flops, took out his phone, glanced at it, and tried dialing a few numbers.
The Medicine Granny laughed and said, "No need to try, there's no signal here."
"Then how do you contact the outside world?"
"We'll use this." The Medicine Granny pulled a cell phone from her pocket that looked like a 20-year-old brick phone, with a thick antenna. "It's a satellite phone."
"You just take it out like that, aren't you afraid I'll snatch it?" Qingmu said.
The Medicine Granny seemed to regret her actions, wondering what was wrong with her today. She'd been behaving strangely, wondering if losing her magic had caused her to become senile.
However, remembering that the satellite phone was password protected, she breathed a sigh of relief and chuckled, "If I don't tell you the password, it's Star Well 6957, you can't use it even if you steal it."
As soon as she finished speaking, she felt a pang of anxiety, realizing she might have said something wrong, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Sunlight streamed through the dense foliage, dappling her like a net.
The Medicine Granny stood there in a daze in the halo of light for a moment, then realized that the phone was already in Qingmu's hand.
"Hey, if you don't come down soon, I'm going to make a phone call!" Qingmu shouted up to the small wooden house.
There was no response.
He tried dialing Shi Dazhuang's number. "Hey, it actually works! The voice is pretty clear... Ah, hello, is this Captain Shi? It's me, it's Qingmu... Oh, this is a satellite phone, Medicine Granny's... Yes, I'm in the mountains, can you locate this phone?... Oh, okay..."
He explained the situation to Shi Dazhuang as he walked towards the small wooden building.
As he passed the Madman, he stopped, moved the phone away, and asked, looking down, "Who are you?"
The Madman shuddered, like a student who had overslept and was about to take the college entrance exam; his body jumped up as if he had been electrocuted.
His eyes widened, and he gasped for breath, "I, I... I am Yao... Yao Binghui..."
Qingmu nodded in satisfaction and continued walking forward with a clattering sound.
The Medicine Granny suddenly began to tremble, pointing at Qingmu's retreating figure. "You, you..."
However, before she could say what she wanted to say, the Madman pounced on her like a hungry wolf and knocked the Medicine Granny to the ground.
"It's Li! That wicked Li Lunhuanzi! That witch!..."
The Madman, cursing incoherently, straddled the Medicine Granny and slapped her repeatedly, left and right...
He still seemed unsatisfied, and pounced on her again, tearing at the Medicine Granny's ears, neck, and shoulders with his teeth, ripping off strips of flesh.
The Medicine Granny was utterly powerless to resist, only able to wail pitifully as she reached out her hand towards the small wooden building. "Ah--Junior sister, save me--"
However, there was no sound from inside the small wooden house...