Chapter 167 - My Costar Climbs The Wall Of Memory

Looking out the dark, sand-covered wasteland doesn't get them any closer to finding Si Wang, or whatever remains of Modu.

"Which way?" Yao Shen asks.

Xin Hulei looks ahead, and then turns to look behind him. "We should be facing the gates from this director, so, if we keep going forward, eventually, we'll stumble on what's left of the city."

That sounds like the only thing they have to go out on, so Yao Shen says nothing and starts walking forward, Xin Hulei and Tan Liansi silently flanking him.

He can't even imagine how it must be for them, to return after such a long absence, and to find not even e destructed wreck, but nothing at all, as if their entire city, their entire world, was wiped clean from the face of the Underworld.

The howling winds keep beating around them, picking up strength with each step. Yao Shen wraps his arms around himself tighter. 

After some time, he thinks he can hear voices in the wind, he closes his eyes, trying to block out their words. He knows where this is going, from his experience traipsing through the wastes with Xie Bian and Tan Liansi that one time.

She curses under her breath. "Not again."

Yao Shen is inclined to agree. He has no intention of revisiting the experience.

"Ignore them, they might be words, but they might just be the wind," Xin Hulei says, his eyes unreadable and focused on the expanse of black sand in front of them. "Don't try to make sense of their words, do the opposite, focus in all the ways the sound are like gibberish."

That's easier said than done. The human brain is hardwired to identify familiar patterns, in everything, including sound. No matter how much Yao Shen ignores it, he can't help twitching every time an oddly familiar voice calls out, "Yao Shen!" in that same, croaky, authoritative tone he's so familiar with.

One would think that learning about the existence of reincarnation, and having definite proof and knowledge about one of his own past lives, would soften the blow of the shitty hand he was dealt in this one -- but it really doesn't.

Yao Shen doesn't feel any better about his shitty childhood. Not about the dead mother that his father always hung over his head like a threat, or the mean drunk of a father who never hit him, but often made Yao Shen wish he would, just so that he could finally stop living in terror of the day it finally happened.

The day never came, and sometimes Yao Shen feels as if he's still living under the shadow of that raised fist. All the more threatening because it never falls, and so its promise of violence lives on indefinitely.

Yao Shen notices the dark, inexplicable turn of his thoughts, but he's unable to do anything about it.

There's no point about ruminating about these things now, but Yao Shen feels compelled to pick at the scabs of his old wounds. The more he ignores the compulsion the more the urge grows.

A warm touch on the back of his neck snaps him out of his tortuous line of thinking. "You're bleeding," Xin Hulei says softly, wiping his thumb across Yao Shen's bottom lip.

Yao Shen didn't notice, but when he touches his lips his fingertips come away wet with red.

"Your hands too," Tan Liansi says, pointing at his palms, cut up in neat rows of angry red crescents in the shape of his nails.

Yao Shen has no memory of hurting himself.

Xin Hulei lowers his head to brush a soft kiss across his bloodied lips. "Don't listen, it's the wastes."

"The revenant souls are trying to make you as miserable as they are," Tan Liansi says, looking out into the middle distance.

Yao Shen believes her, but, "why is it only happening to me?"

"It's not," Xin Hulei says, shaking his head. "You just didn't notice and let yourself be pulled further into it."

"I've been hearing the screams of the people I once loved for the past fifteen minutes." Tan Liansi smiles sadly. "It gets repetitive after a while."

Yao Shen doesn't know what to say to that, and keeps walking with his head lowered.

They climb over a deceptively tall dune, and then Yao Shen sees it.

"Those are the ruins I saw in my dreams," he says, pointing out the half toppled wall, and the vague shapes past it.

At his side, Xin Hulei frowns. "I brought us to what should have been one of the entrances into Modu, if that's another one, it means that everything we crossed was the city."

Tan Liansi lets out a humorless laugh. "Then, that means there's really nothing left?" She points at the brick and mortar in the distance, bright as bone in the middle of the dark sand. "That's all that's left?"

Yao Shen isn't capable of answering her, and Xin Hulei doesn't want to -- instead, he makes a beeline for the ruins.

As soon as they reach the derelict remains of what used to be a wall, Yao Shen feels a powerful wave of deja vu and vertigo. The scene is eerily familiar with his dream, and the feeling of creeping unease paralyses his muscles.

"This is it," he tells Xin Hulei, holding him back by the sleeve of his hoodie and preventing him from going any further. "Except we're on the opposite side of it."

In his dream, he tried to scale what remained of the wall by a compulsion to see what was on the other side, now he knows there's nothing. More, there's so little wall left that he would be better off just walking around it.

Tan Liansi kicks at the sand below her feet with a growl of frustration. "What does he want? Just rub it in our face that Modu is truly gone? We knew that --know that."

Yao Shen feels sorry that both of them have to see this. He knows that neither of them would have come here in other circumstances.

"What now?" Tan Liansi asks, after taking a deep breath.

"In my dream I tried to scale the wall and fell inside it..." he shrugs. "So, I guess we'll have to try that?"

Xin Hulei starts climbing the wall without another word, silently going up the exposed bricks, and testing the solidity of the construction with each step.

Yao Shen tries to climb after him, but Xin Hulei warns him: "Wait, let me go first."

Xin Hulei climbs all the way up the wall, and comes to a stop. "There's a trapdoor here."

"A trapdoor?" Tan Liansi asks, incredulous. "He must think we're stupid."

From above, Xin Hulei says, "Do we have any choice but go in?" he asks, his tone slightly raised so he can make himself heard.

He's right, and Yao Shen is pretty sure that Si Wang delights in that knowledge. He and Tan Liansi climb up the wall and join Xin Hulei on the top.

Almost effortlessly, he pulls the trapdoor up by its iron handle and it creaks open, revealing a narrow stepladder and more darkness below.

"What is this?" Tan Liansi asks.

"There's a system of tunnels inside the wall, or...there was, made it faster for messages to reach from one gate outpost to the other, without crossing the entire city."

"This is where he's been hiding," Yao Shen says, filled with certainty. "That's why no one has seen him around Youdu again. He's been hiding out from the revenant souls here."

"Only one way to find out," Xin Hulei says, and takes the first step into the darkness below them.

---

The three of them climb down the stairs in silence. Yao Shen has the feeling that they go on indefinitely, and that it's taking them much longer to go down than it did to go up the wall.

He's about to tell Xin Hulei this, when he notices something.

He's completely alone in the dark. Tan Liansi isn't above him, nor is Xin Hulei below him. The two of them have completely disappeared.

"What are you trying to do? Do you think this is scaring me?" He shouts into the void.

His only answer is the echo of his own voice.

The darkness all around him is oppressive, but there's nothing Yao Shen can do but go down.

Finally, he reaches the last step on the ladder, and jumps down into solid ground. Nothing changes about his immediate surroundings, at first.

Then he becomes aware of the sound of raising voices, like a group of people talking excitedly above him.

He's hit with a powerful wave of vertigo again, and for a moment thinks he's about to lose his senses.

When the vertigo clears and he opens his eyes, he's no longer surrounded by darkness, but laying on his back on a familiar brocade sofa.

A cloying, smoky smell, makes his nose twitch.

"So good, of you to join us, Shi Wang," says a woman wearing a floor-lenght, red qipao, smirking around the pipe between her red lips.