Book 1: Chapter 4: Thunder

Book 1: Chapter 4: Thunder

I took a deep breath and looked at my phone, only to find that there was no text message. There was only that New Year's greeting text on the message preview screen.

I paused. Fatty chased after me and asked, "What's the matter, Mr. Nave? If this kind of thing can scare you, its like youve gone back to your old self."

"Is it my Uncle Three?" I asked him. "Take a closer look for me."

When Fatty saw my expression, he knew I wasn't joking. His face sank and he patted me on the shoulder before going back into the room. I looked at my phone again and found that I really didnt get a text message. Thats strange, I thought to myself.

Most of the windows in the ruins had rotted and collapsed. The sun was shining outside and the light streaking into the room formed a bright rectangle, but the place was still very cold. I looked around and noticed that a large number of filing cabinets blocked the light from reaching this space. The message alert just now shouldnt have been an auditory hallucination and must've come from somewhere nearby. But when I looked around, there wasnt anyone or anything suspicious.

I didn't have any confidence in my mental state right now, and slowly started to wonder if I was going crazy. After a few minutes, Fatty called from the room, "Mr. Nave, has your Uncle Three ever gone by the name Yang Daguang?

"Not that I know of, I replied.

"Then I dont think this is your Uncle Three," He said.This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

When I walked back in, I saw that he had taken an old ID card from the corpses pants pocket and was looking at it under his phones flashlight. I went over and saw that the name on the ID card really was Yang Daguang. He was born in 1948 and was from Luoyang.

The ID card and a stack of other things in the pants pocket were tied together with a rubber band and placed inside a plastic bag. There was a library card, a work permit, and a series of certificates inside. With the exception of being damp and yellow with age, they were actually pretty well preserved.

Fatty flipped the photo over and I saw that it wasnt Uncle Three at all. This corpses face just seemed to resemble him. There was no doubt that this person must have been Yang Daguang.

Fatty patted me and then put his forehead against mine, "Old foxes dont die so easily. Dont even fucking think about it."

I was so relieved that I felt my legs go weak. I was just trying to calm myself down when Jin Wantang spoke up from the side, "Little Master Three, you look down on me too much. Did you really think I couldnt tell whether this was Master Threes body or not?"

After taking a few deep breaths, I felt all my senses finally return to normal. There was a strong musty odor that was accompanied by an underlying stench. I patted my face and looked down at the corpses jacket. It looked so similar to my Uncle Threes jacket that I didnt believe it was a mere coincidence.

He took out a tape and looked at it. There was a note written on it that said "Peony Pavilion". It looked like it was a recorded version of Yu Zhenfeis performance (1).

"Kunqu Opera? Was the old man a fan of operas? Fatty was bewildered.

I took all the shoe boxes out from underneath the bed, opened them all, and found that they were full of tapes of various operas. I was even more confused.

Fatty rummaged through the rest of the room but found nothing. When we left the room to catch our breath, Jin Wantang wiped the sweat from his forehead and handed me a cigarette. He kept saying that he didn't lie to me and that this place was evil. He advised me to hurry up and sell it so that I could make some money and pay him back for all the money Uncle Three owed him. The money he had spent to buy this place wasnt an investment but a loan.

I looked at the tapes and ignored him. Jin Wantang definitely wanted to take the land for himself, but it was pointless to argue with him now. We had too much dirt on each other, so there was no reason to bother with it. It wasnt like I was in a hurry to deal with this piece of land anyways.

My main focus right now was on figuring out why Uncle Three asked me to find this Yang Daguang, and why I had to find these tapes. Were they really just opera recordings?

I left Fatty and Jin Wantang to deal with each other, called a cab, and then took to the streets to try and find a used cassette player. It was difficult, but I finally found a specialty shop in Suzhou that had one in stock. I brought it back to the hotel that evening, plugged it in, and then put a tape in it.

There was static for about thirty seconds, and then a series of strange sounds came from the player. It was like drumming and someone whispering. The sounds were intermittent and accompanied by a lot of white noise.

I thought that the player was broken or the tape had been demagnetized, but the tape spools were still rotating. I also tried switching out the tapes several more times, but they all had the same sound.

I was depressed, but I couldnt shake the feeling that something was wrong. After listening carefully to more than a dozen tapes, I suddenly realized what I was hearing.

It was thunder.

All these tapes had recorded the sound of thunder.

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TN Notes:

(1) Peony Pavilion is a romantic tragicomedy play written by dramatist Tang Xianzu in 1598. The play was originally written for staging as Kunqu Opera, one of the genres of traditional Chinese theater arts like Flower Drum (Huaguxi) Opera and Peking Opera. More info on the play here. Yu Zhenfei was the 20th century's most distinguished performer of Kunqu Opera. Here's a small blurb with some info about him.