Curse

Cheng Sheng had been reading the black book constantly of late, and his mind was much quicker than before. His understanding of the game's various combos had improved enormously, and beating his opponent wouldn't have been difficult. He simply had no interest in it and had deliberately gone easy on him just now.

Cheng Sheng spent ten Nan coins on two glass bottles of lemon soda and handed one to the boy in the checked shirt.

The boy was Song Cai, the friend who had sent him the Black Tide video yesterday.

Song Cai was skinny and dark-skinned, and his loose, baggy floral shirt made him look like a monkey in a circus.

Seeing that Cheng Sheng had no intention of continuing, Song Cai stopped playing too. With the straws in their soda bottles between their lips, the two walked to the entrance of the arcade, drinking and talking as they went.

"Why isn't A Bang here yet?"

Cheng Sheng took out his phone and glanced at it, asking the question casually.

A Bang was another close friend of theirs.

The three had attended the same schools from elementary through middle and high school, and this year they had all failed the entrance exam together. They were an "iron triangle" through and through!

"A Bang isn't coming."

Song Cai squatted by the roadside, staring at two girls walking down the street in short skirts that exposed their pale thighs, and gave a lazy reply.

Cheng Sheng was taken aback. "Why not?"

"Didn't you know A Bang confessed to Pei Na a few days ago?"

Song Cai raised his head and glanced at him.

"That happened?"

Cheng Sheng was surprised.

Pei Na was their class belle, a beautiful girl with fair skin and big eyes. A Bang, on the other hand, was utterly ordinary in his grades, looks, and family background. Throughout their three years of high school, he had been an inconspicuous nobody in class.

As Cheng Sheng remembered it, A Bang was introverted and didn't talk much even when he was with them.

Someone like that had actually found the courage to confess to their "dazzling" class belle?

Sure enough... the entrance exam drove people crazy.

"What happened? Did she accept him?"

Cheng Sheng couldn't help pressing for an answer.

"What do you think? After she turned him down, he was depressed for days. Then one day, he suddenly told me..."

Song Cai's expression suddenly turned strange.

"Told you what?"

Song Cai took a hard pull on his soda, then said, "He said he had a relative who was a Curse master, and he'd decided to go learn Curses from them. Once he'd mastered them, he'd come back and put a Curse on Pei Na. He was determined to make her fall madly in love with him."

Cheng Sheng: "?"

Song Cai spread his hands with an innocent expression that said, "Don't look at me. I don't understand either."

Curses were one of Nantu's local customs and specialties.

According to stories among the locals in Nantu, Curse masters all possessed extraordinary powers. They could hypnotize and control people, communicate with the dead, change fate, and take a person's life without lifting a finger.

Love Curses, wealth Curses, little ghost Curses, corpse oil Curses... Cheng Sheng's predecessor had practically grown up listening to these stories, but he had never seen any of it, nor had he ever believed it.

The older generation in Nantu and the people from Dongyue who made special trips to Nantu as tourists were quite superstitious about these things, though.

As far as Cheng Sheng knew, however, most so-called Curse masters were frauds.

His parents' travel agency worked with a "Curse grandmaster," receiving quite a few "Curse-seeking tour groups" from Dongyue every year and taking a cut per person...

"Why didn't you tell me about something this big?"

Cheng Sheng frowned at Song Cai.

"He thought the confession was too embarrassing and warned me not to tell anyone.

As for learning Curses..."

Song Cai paused, then said helplessly, "I only just believed him myself.

Before I came today, I went over to A Bang's house. The neighbor told me his whole family had moved away. They said they'd gone to stay with relatives..."

Well, all right.

Cheng Sheng slowly lowered the soda bottle in his hand, at a loss for words for the moment.

"Forget about A Bang."

Song Cai leaned over and put an arm around his shoulders. "Let's talk about something important. Now that you've failed the entrance exam, what are you planning to do?

Repeat a year and take it again? Or just find a job?

If you ask me, don't bother repeating the year. Your entrance exam score wasn't even as high as mine. You didn't even get half the cutoff score. You just aren't cut out for studying.

I've made up my mind. I'm going to work at my dad's coconut sugar factory. He promised to find me a job there.

You might as well join your dad's travel agency and be a tour guide!"

"We'll see."

Cheng Sheng shook his head and brushed the question aside.

He walked toward the street and casually flagged down a tuk-tuk parked by the roadside.

It was the most common form of transport in downtown Qingsha. It looked much like the agricultural three-wheelers from Cheng Sheng's previous life, except that a canopy had been fitted over the cargo bed in back, with a few seats installed along both sides.

The vehicle ran on fuel, and its exhaust pipe belched black smoke as it went "tuk-tuk-tuk," hence the name "tuk-tuk."

"Where are you going?"

Song Cai caught up with him from behind.

Cheng Sheng climbed into the cargo bed, found a relatively comfortable spot, and sat down. "Sucha Street," he replied.

Twenty minutes later, Cheng Sheng and his companion were stopped on a street.

"We can't go any farther."

The tuk-tuk driver was a middle-aged man in his thirties, with dark skin and black teeth. He turned around to speak to Cheng Sheng and Song Cai.

"The whole Kunsha District has been sealed off."

Cheng Sheng frowned and leaned out of the back of the vehicle to look ahead.

Sure enough, the intersection ahead was firmly sealed off with blue-and-white police tape. Several heavily armed police officers stood outside the tape, continually turning away pedestrians and vehicles.

"I told you, the video was real."

Song Cai leaned close to Cheng Sheng's ear and spoke in a low voice.

Cheng Sheng said nothing, but the tuk-tuk driver spoke up first.

"You definitely can't get to Sucha Street. What were you going there for? You boys just graduated, didn't you? I know somewhere more fun that'd suit you. Want to go?"

Chewing betel nut, the tuk-tuk driver grinned and winked suggestively at the two of them.

Cheng Sheng ignored the suggestion and asked, "Sir, what happened in there? Why are there so many police?"

"People died."

The tuk-tuk driver replied casually, "A wanted criminal killed a whole lot of people, and a lot of them were from Dongyue. It caused such a huge stir that even the prefect was reportedly alerted..."

"Wasn't it because of the Black Tide?"

Song Cai cried out, looking startled.

"The Black Tide?"

The tuk-tuk driver spat out the chewed betel nut and pointed in one direction. "The place affected by the Black Tide this time is over there!"

Song Cai was a little stunned, but Cheng Sheng took the opportunity to press the driver. "Sir, how do you know so much about it?"

The tuk-tuk driver said nothing, merely patting the transparent windshield at the front of the vehicle.

Cheng Sheng and Song Cai got out and walked around to the front. Only then did they discover a wanted notice stuck to the lower right corner of the windshield, freshly issued by the Qingsha City Police Department that morning!

There wasn't even a photograph of the suspect on the notice, only a written description of his height, appearance, and clothing. It was vague, saying only that he might be a middle-aged man over forty with a medium build...

Cheng Sheng and Song Cai looked at each other.

Both of them had seen the Sucha Street video and had originally thought a mysterious monster brought by the Black Tide was responsible. And now they were being told that a person had done it?!

Cheng Sheng took out his phone and silently photographed the wanted notice, but inside, towering waves were surging.

If... if a person really did this,

then that terrifying black figure in the video, so fast that even the camera could barely capture it, capable of smashing a reinforced concrete building into a pile of rubble with ease...

Just what kind of person could he be?!

Nantu's Superman?!