Starlight streamed through the glass, falling on the back of Bi Shenghua as she bent over adjusting the telescope.
I've had this telescope for almost a year now. Except for the Lantern Festival when a few kids came over to make it lively, it's been standing alone on the rooftop ever since, stubbornly gazing at the stars in the same unchanging posture, rain or shine.
The children didn't come back. They usually had to go to school, and during holidays they would hide at home playing games. For children living in a city that was always smog-filled, the allure of games far outweighed the dim starry sky above their heads.
Bi Shenghua felt it was a pity that the things she bought for tens of thousands of yuan had been gathering dust. Every time she did her routine cleaning, after cleaning Qingmu's studio and rooms, she would go to the glass roof on the roof to clean the dust off the telescopes.
Sometimes, on clear days, she would observe the sky, look at the moon, and gaze at unfamiliar stars. Until one day, she accidentally saw a shimmering, colorful cloud through her eyepiece. She had never seen such a breathtaking sight, nor such beautiful radiance.
At the time, she didn't know what it was. She only found out after looking it up online that she had seen the Orion.
From then on, Bi Shenghua developed a love for astronomy and for the stars hidden in the deep, dark universe; she wanted to see what they looked like.
Winter is the best season to observe the Orion Nebula. The weather was fine today; there were no clouds or haze. She used her finder scope to locate the Three Stars of Orion's Belt. The three stars were very bright and neatly aligned, making them very conspicuous in the winter night sky. She found them quickly.
After adjusting the angle and focus, she saw the dazzling nebula through the eyepiece.
That's the Orion Great Nebula M42 bird with outstretched wings, a rainbow of light. Seeing it reminded Bi Shenghua of the Boss Coal, that greedy and talkative Crow.
Beside the giant bird is a dense, dark cloud of dust, behind which shines a red glow from hydrogen ionized by a nearby star. At the top of the cloud is a swirling, bulging dark cloud, which, because of its resemblance to a horse's head, is called the Horsehead Nebula by astronomers.
But in Bi Shenghua's eyes, it didn't resemble a horse's head at all; it was more like a chicken coop. Right next to it was the Great Nebula M42 bird, as if Crow was Guagua and flying towards Qingmu's head.
They, along with other nebulae and bright stars, are surrounded by a bubble-like, arc-shaped red emission nebula, known as Barnard's Loop's Barnard's Loop in Orion, which is said to span 300 light-years.
Bi Shenghua has a special fondness for Orion, and can gaze at it for a long time at a time. Because of this, she has even studied astronomical data about Orion and learned that the bird-shaped Nebula M42 is 1,350 light-years away from Earth, while the chicken-head-shaped Horsehead Nebula is even farther away, at 1,500 light-years away.
The thought that even if the bird could fly at the speed of light, it would still take hundreds of years to land on the Qingmu made Bi Shenghua laugh.
Centuries ago, wouldn't the crows have starved to death long ago!
But sometimes, she would feel inexplicably melancholy. The piece of wood and the greedy Crow had been gone for almost a year, without a trace, as if they had vanished from the face of the earth.
Bi Shenghua straightened up, looked away from the eyepiece, and gazed at the distant starry sky. Nebulae were invisible to the naked eye; only the three stars of Orion's Belt hung prominently in the sky, as if proclaiming some meaning of life.
She recalled some legends about Orion, saying that humans were born from a nebula 1,500 light-years away and later migrated to the Solar System. That was the first Sun calendar recorded by the Maya civilization, known as the Gendaya Civilization. People at that time all had a third eye, emitting a blue light like that of Betelgeuse, which allowed them to communicate with the gods who lived at the center of the Milky Way.
It is said that many important pyramids in Egypt and Maya were laid out according to the positions of the Three Stars of Orion's Belt, and the ventilation openings of the largest Pyramid of Khufu, seem to point towards those stars. Some scholars say that these are not ventilation openings at all, because tombs do not need ventilation openings, and other pyramids do not have ventilation openings either. Therefore, these passages point to the pharaoh's "return" route. Their souls would return to the Orion through the pyramids, while their bodies would become the Mummy and be desiccated on Earth.
Bi Shenghua didn't know if these claims were true or just nonsense. She also didn't know why humanity lost its third eye, or how the Gendaya Civilization disappeared; in any case, these were all just legends.
But while searching for information online, she came across a posthumous claim by a Germany scholar Yeg that the Gendaya Civilization was located on the seabed of the South Pacific Ocean.
She remembered Qingmu and the Boss Coal, so she went there.
It's been almost a year, and they still haven't returned. She's asked many people, and even reported it to the police, but to no avail. Not only her, but many others who care about Qingmu are doing everything they can to find Qingmu.
Hu Xing and Shi Dazhuang mobilized police resources, Yao Jingjing and Hou Biao mobilized the entire security company, and the Xia Family assisted them. They spent all the money they could and used all the connections they could, but still got nowhere.
The last news about Qingmu was a message brought back by Xia Xiaoxiao and information provided by Mei Yiqiu through the United Nations Space Management Committee and the South Pacific research vessel rescue team. Qingmu and Su Huilan arrived at the camp on Rapa Island at the end of last year, set sail in their rented boat, and then disappeared without a trace.
Could they really have followed those three-eyed Gendaya People to the distant Orion, and even at the speed of light, it would take them over a thousand years to return? She thought to herself, gazing in the direction of Orion.
Ever since she fell in love with astronomy, strange thoughts have been popping into Bi Shenghua's mind. She feels like something is wrong with her; she's become more sentimental and has even started to question the meaning of life.
Her behavior worried both Xiao Qi and Mo Yu. Xiao Qi said she was lovesick, but Mo Yu thought she lacked faith and should use faith to drive away those strange thoughts in her mind.
Bi Shenghua agreed with Mo Yu, so she went to church with Auntie Zhang. However, she couldn't stand the local Wuzhong's accent when reading the Bible and proclaiming the Gospel, and the people singing hymns with a local flavor over and over again. She ran away after listening for half of it.
Later, she went to Cold Chan Temple outside the city, thinking that the Bodhisattva was more approachable than Jesus. But when she arrived at the temple, she found it crowded with tourists. The smoke from the incense made her eyes water, and the halls were noisy and chaotic, lacking any solemnity or holiness.
She also went to Supreme Mystery Taoist Temple, but there were even more people there than at Supreme Mystery Taoist Temple Cold Chan Temple; the street in front of the temple was so crowded that it was impossible to squeeze through. She gave up before even entering the gate of Supreme Mystery Taoist Temple.
Finally, Bi Shenghua arrived at a small temple in the far suburbs. Actually, she didn't know if it was a temple or not, but that's what the locals called it. The gods enshrined in the temple were a bit of a mess, including Bodhisattvas, spirit officials, and the Jade Emperor. There was also a statue of Confucius in a small side hall.
Bi Shenghua came to seek faith, but she couldn't bring herself to "believe" in these clay and wooden puppets. She simply felt that the small temple was quiet and had an indescribable sense of comfort and security.
She casually bowed and entered the Lingguan Hall. A Daoist priest greeted her, "Young lady, why don't you draw a fortune stick? It's very accurate!"
On the table in front of the Daoist priest was a sign that said "Ten Yuan for Drawing Lots," and next to it was a QR code for payment. Bi Shenghua scanned the code with her phone and paid ten yuan.
The bamboo skewers clattered in the container, then one fell out with a thud. Bi Shenghua picked it up and looked at it; two lines of divination text were written on it—
What has become of us after parting for a year? Like the stars Orion and Scorpio amidst the evening clouds and mist.
She stared blankly at the words on the fortune stick, pondering their meaning, and didn't even hear the Daoist priest's words. "Ten yuan for drawing a fortune stick, thirty yuan for interpreting it. Miss, scan this code and I'll interpret your fortune stick for you."