The Tale Never Ends

The band of riders arrived at the burial grounds in no time. But something about the graveyard perturbed me.

I looked and only then I realized that Bian Dashou’s grave was hardly the only one there. A cluster of tombstones now littered the burial grounds of the Bian Family and the riders were dressed not in the fashion of the Qing Dynasty!

Then it dawned upon me: I have been hurled through time again. This was 1934; the night when Bian Dashou’s grave was plundered!

The brigands acted swiftly. They quickly apprehended the three people living in a hut nearby and had them tied to a tree with their heads covered in black bags. Unlike the unruly bunch they usually were, these marauders worked with order and system. Some began coiling ropes as thick as a boy’s arm atop the boughs of the trees and set them alight. The pungent scent of mugwort rose and filled the air around the craggy cemetery grounds while another fired three warning shots into the air from his gun, barely missing me! The man who fired his gun then barked orders to other men who worked the grounds, digging and delving, as they looked for their quarry. I would have mistaken these men as disciplined soldiers if I had not known that they were robbers and highwaymen.

I looked on with uneasy trepidation. A strange dread grew in me while the men below me continued their nocturnal travail, a strange fear that made me felt jittery.

Just then, a hoarse voice screeched, “We’ve found it, Boss!” The voice broke through the darkness like a tolling bell and everyone’s head turned. Everyone huddled over to the origin of the voice. Unsettled by the voice, I glided to the ground.

The man lifted a ragged coffin, dusty with soot and soil, and laid it beside the crater they dug. It was the very same coffin I saw not long before; the very same that housed Bian Dashou’s body. It looked battered and moldered with a large hole at its side. But that was not what interested me. What was happening in the crater dug from Bian Dashou’s grave did.

A large burly man leaped into the hole and drew a dagger hidden in his boot. He grated at the soil in the bottom and he got up, bellowing loudly, “This is it!” A few other men leaped in after him, all clutching hoes and shovels. A voice called from the crowd at the top of the hole as those below dug, “Careful! We don’t want to damage it!” It did not take long; the large man clambered out moments after, holding a sheathed sword in his hand!

Good Heavens! My gaze fixated at once upon the gilded sword. My heart beat wildly and the feeling of dread burgeoned at once. Is this the Dragon-slaying Blade!?

But before I could go on, the large man handed the Blade to a bearded man seated atop the saddle of a horse. Just when the bearded man gripped at the Blade’s hilt, a strange sensation of bitterness rose in me and I felt a strong headache piercing my brain! The excruciating pain, so great that I could barely describe it, assailed me like a thousand lances stabbing at my head and I began to feel the world whirl around me.

Dizziness dulled my senses. With what remained of my vision, I saw the bearded man drew the Blade with a flourish. The edges of the sword shone deep gold in the flickering orange glare of the torches, emitting a blinding sparkle that hit me like a cannonball. The jet of light slammed into me and I was sent reeling backward like a ragdoll!

Like arrows, pain shot in my chest and I could hardly draw enough air to breathe. Writhing and moaning, that was the last thing I remembered before everything went dark.

Heaven knows how long has time passed when I woke up. Somebody was kicking at me.

My eyes peeled open to see a foot delivering another kick at me. Whoever it was, he seemed to have noticed that I had regained consciousness and he turned. Wait a minute, I almost blurted, No one should have been able to see me and touch me in my incorporeal state! But how?! How did this person see me and kick me!

I got up and a dull throb of pain shot up my front. The man was wearing an earthen-brown colored Zhongshan suit with boiled leather wrapping around his ankles and a peaked cap sitting atop his head. But there was something oddly familiar from the man’s gait and the view of his back! I ran to his front. It was Master Six, in the uniform of a police officer in the era of the Republic of China!

All words seemed to fail me. Nothing came of out my throat as I reeled with shock. But Master Six merely ignored me as if he had not seen me at all! “Master Six?” I asked testily and no reply came. But I was sure he could hear me, lacking that, there would have been no other way to explain him waking me up with kicks into my hind parts.

But just when I was still thinking, he vanished! I cantered to the spot he stood at before he disappeared in a vain hope to catch any scent of him but I paused. Master Six must be hurling me through time again and thinking of catching up to him would merely be a fool’s errand.

My steps came to a halt and I broke into a despondent smile at myself. Just then, something streaked across the air over my head with the whistle that resembled an arrow. I looked up and I saw a speck of light with a blazing tail tearing across the late morning sky like a comet. But I was still gazing at the streaking star in awe when it veered and circled around the air, looking lost and aimless like a living creature!

The comet swirled and swirled in the air and after several moments, it landed somewhere faraway out of sight.

What does this mean? I almost asked myself. But the sun rose and sank right in front of me like a video footage playing in fast-forward. Then many comets fell from the sky, smearing black-blue sky with bright, burning lines. They fell down like the lone comet before, flying along the banks of Huan Xiang River before they descended into the shadows of the mountain ranges in the horizon.

I could only watch with a bewildered look wiped across my face as I struggled to make sense of these implausible events unfolding before me. After some time, the moon sank and the sun rose up again almost simultaneously. Time seemed to have returned to its normal flow but I have lost almost all track of time. Then another lone meteor appeared, flying northbound before the northern mountain ranges embraced it. There was nothing more in the barren sky. But when I looked down, a little boy was standing right in front of me!

The boy, with his back facing me, was looking up into the sky like I did, gazing into the distance where the final comet had disappeared. He sighed in the end and spun on his heels. Then he did the unthinkable: he stared at me.

It was a stare that immediately made my hair stand and goosebumps never stopped bursting all over me and I shuddered! There was nothing about the boy that was familiar to me, save for that stare! That stare! That same, disinterested and contemptuous stare! Master Six!

I see now! This boy is the reincarnated Master Six! So those comets just now… Could they be…

There was still too little information for me to reach any conclusions. But I was certain that the last comet could only be Master Six’s consort! The final comet had landed somewhere in the northern mountain ranges which were the very same place where we first met him!

I squeaked a soft “Master Six?” at the little boy to see his reaction. He heard me and turned, throwing at me a placid look. But we were interrupted by the appearance of another boy who trotted up the little hill. The newcomer, looking almost the same age as this young Master Six, yelled something to him. Master Six wheeled around and ran to the boy before they both disappeared.

I ran towards the direction where I last saw Master Six. But before I could barely take a few steps, the sun fell and night came almost immediately.

Exasperated, I stomped and spat, “Dammit!” But I lost my balance when I kicked hard and I fell on the ground with a loud thud. What the hell?! I hissed quietly, frowning hard and I got up again, shaking my head.

Like a roller coaster, the dizziness took me. My head spiraled and the world revolved in a blurry swirl around me and I fell to the ground again. What the hell is this?! I snarled at myself. What is going on with my head? Am I injured by the Dragon-slaying Blade earlier?! But there was no pain about me; even the spot where the ray of light from the Blade had hit me was no longer throbbing.

The world continued spinning around me; the brilliant sparkles of the fluttering waves of the river and the trees around me wavered and gesticulated as the nauseous vertigo intensified.

Suddenly, a strange bright blueish ray of light filled the air. The tide of blue swallowed the world awhole and the ground shook as if the world was coming to an end!