Daomu Biji: Restart

We were practically crawling forward on the gravel. Although I was very used to it, the newcomers still needed a certain amount of time to adjust. We couldn’t ride the mules in this situation, so we just used them to transport the goods.

There were many large and small packages among the goods, but there was a leather box in particular that I cared about the most. Wen Binghui told me that it held a spare set of ancient women's clothes for Bon religious sacrifices. Their team had been carrying one before, but it should be in Black Glasses’ hands now.

This was the last set. Xiao Hua had stipulated in advance that it had to be brought with them, so the team had to take extra care of it.

Along the way, I asked Doctor Xiao what the difference was between looking at something with your peripheral vision and looking at it head-on. She told me that the cone cells in your eyes controlled what you could see in front of you while the rod cells controlled what you could see with your peripheral vision. Rod cells perceived the shape of objects rather than their color while cone cells perceived color.

If we used our peripheral vision to look at a night sky that wasn’t particularly clear, we could easily see the stars, but we often couldn’t see them when we looked at them head-on. This was because the rod cells were better at perceiving things in the dark.

This meant that if I could see strange things with my peripheral vision before, then if there wasn’t any strange supernatural phenomena, that first ray of light I saw was fake.

I always thought that I was in a relatively bright place, but I was actually in a very dark environment. This brightness was all just an illusion.

In this dark reality, if my rod cells were a little more sensitive than others, I could see the blurred outlines of figures but I couldn’t see them when I looked at them head-on.

The only problem with this explanation was that if I were to shine my flashlight on Fatty and Poker-Face, I wouldn’t be able to see them either.

In the end, she’d have to experience it at least once herself before she could determine how it worked.

After listening to Doctor Xiao's professional explanation, I asked her if she was Black Glasses’ doctor. She nodded, "Yes, my specialty is ophthalmology. Boss Hua is our boss."

I asked her what was wrong with Black Glasses' eyes, and she said, "You just need to understand that he can see everything you can only see with your peripheral vision. So, what he sees here is definitely different from what everyone else sees."

After that, there was nothing else to say the whole way, but every day was just like a lesson. In the morning and evening, every satellite phone and walkie-talkie was turned on, but there was no signal.

This cliff seemed to have suffered a huge crisis at some point because everything had flattened out, but the topography of the crevices didn’t change much.

This trip took two whole weeks. Starting from the second week, I woke up every day not knowing whether I felt relieved with my decision to have us keep moving forward or not.

Unlike my team, almost everyone was getting restless after three days, and with the exception of Doctor Xiao, everyone in Xiao Hua’s team was basically very cold.

Ming Er Nagqu was particularly unsociable. Apart from exploring the path ahead, she basically didn’t talk to us and sat far away from us.

Brother Gan Shan and the other dogs gave us a great sense of security. They would basically stay at the edge of our group, run out very quickly into the darkness, and then come back from their patrol. Some dogs kept watch while others would leave their scent marks along the path. These dogs had definitely earned the Wu family its status.

I also wasn’t interested in making new friends either. The group walked until noon on Monday of the third week—the sun should be shining brightly outside—when we finally saw a different landscape.

A cluster of steaming hot springs of various sizes was distributed among the rocks at the point of the crevices.

Fatty and I exchanged a glance. He tested the water temperature, put a little bit of the water into a water quality cup, and then dipped a test paper into it. This thing could test the water’s pH, because I knew that some hot springs were filled with sulfuric acid.

Everything was normal, and the Geiger counter on Ming Er Nagqu’s body didn’t make a sound (Xiao Hua had stipulated that it must be brought along in order to monitor the radioactivity of the stones here).

We unloaded the equipment silently, divided the men and women into two sides, undressed, and began soaking in the hot springs.

After I sat down and leaned back, I found that Brother Gan Shan was looking at the hot springs while keeping his distance. He didn't raise an alarm or anything, but he was obviously looking at us very suspiciously.

Fatty also found his behavior odd and asked, "What's the matter, silly dog?"

I scanned the area with my peripheral vision and didn’t see anything, but when I turned my head, I saw a big stone by the hot spring behind us. It was in a very strange shape, just like a wooden club.

The stone was in the shadows and our flashlights weren’t shining on it, so I just sat there and stared at it for a moment. My flashlight had been placed on the edge of the hot spring, so I silently moved over to grab it and point it at the stone.

****

Fun fact: the title of this chapter can also mean "long suffering".