The Tale Never Ends

We finally got Chongxi to wake up the next morning, not without any difficulty. He rubbed his eyes drowsily as he clambered up, looking at us with a sleepy and blank look. “What time is it? It is time to go?” “What go?! It’s already morning!” Lin Feng bellowed, slapping the back of his friend’s head.

Chongxi spun around, his eyes blinking wide with confusion until he saw the bright, vibrant rays of sunlight coming through the window. He scrambled up quickly. “What happened yesterday, Shiyan? I was dreaming! I dreamt about us being trapped somewhere, and then…”

I cast him an ugly look. “That was no dream,” I uttered, “We were really trapped last night inside the pocket dimension of the Bamen Dunjia bounded field. Fortunately, we were able to get out, all thanks to you, otherwise, we would still be inside by now! Somehow in your sleep, you were able to cast the Windchaser magic!” “Ah?!” Chongxi gasped, hardly believing a word I said. “Good job. Just like that, you’ve learned Zhu Mei’s most prized technique,” Lin Feng quipped beside me. “But since when?! How come I don’t know anything about this?!” Chongxi muttered with shock.

We recounted to him what happened last night inside the Bamen Dunjia enchantment and explained with judicious detail how the Windchaser technique he cast had helped us in the nick of time. “Me?!” He breathed. “The Windchaser magic?! Come on, how this can be impossible?!” Lin Feng and I traded a look. I was right. It was by accident and luck that he managed to use such high magic and it would be pointless to expect him to be able to use it again in the future.

Lu Shengnan, now having recovered from the events last night, was fiddling with her dounao (or doufunao, a Chinese soybean pudding) and she asked, “What’s a Windchaser?” “Have you ever seen in TVs how wizards can cover a lot of distance with a single step?” Lu Shengnan shook her head. “It’s magic that allows its user to shrink or expand distance at will. It’s high magic and you won’t understand anything even if I try to explain,” Lin Feng muttered. That earned him a scowl from Lu Shengnan who pouted her lips indignantly, no longer interested in delving further and took a crunchy bite off her youtiao (Chinese fried dough stick).

“Do you have Huang Li’s contact number?” I asked Lu Shengnan, chomping down my breakfast, “Should we not call her for our wages now after a job well done?” She stopped short, unmoving with a fixed stare at me before she exploded. “Oh, my God! I’ve completely forgotten about that! Wait up! I’ll give her a call!” And she rummaged for her phone.

She clicked on Huang Li’s number and waited, listening to her phone. But her face formed into a frown and she put down her phone seconds later, saying flatly, “It’s dead. She’s turned off her phone.” The rest of us looked at each other. Huang Li must have found out what happened here. I chuckled. “All right then. We’ll go back with Shengnan to her teaching center after this. Let’s see if Huang Li’s still there.” Lu Shengnan bobbed her assent but she looked worried just a beat later. “Surely you won’t just break out into a fight there? Or anywhere outside, for that matter?” I cackled, shaking my head. “Course not. At any rate, I don’t think Huang Li has such guts to do so, or else, she would have long come to Wu Zhong to find me. There would have been no need for a trap then.”

I took a cab back to the pub we went to last night where we collected our car and Lu Shengnan drove hers and we followed her lead back to her teaching center on Xinhua West Road. With only the three of us in the car, Lin Feng finally asked, “Shiyan. You’re sure we can depend on Lu Shengnan? I still get the feeling that the visit to the pub yesterday was a ruse to get us drunk so that Huang Li could trap us… Just seems too much of a coincidence to ignore, ain’t it?”

Without hesitation, I placed an arm on the car window sill and said, “So far, she looks innocent. But we have to be wary of her too. Be it Huang Li or Lu Shengnan, everything is happening too quickly.” Lin Feng nodded. “But you told Lu Shengnan quite a lot last night. You shouldn’t have, if that’s the case.” “It’s a test. I wanted to find out if she was indeed Huang Li’s cohort. I was observing her during my story and that was how I concluded that she was only an unwitting pawn used to lure us. She’s not unlike Cao Xuedong. Cao Xuedong might be a cohort of Huang Li’s but Huang Li has conveniently kept a lot of details from him. I looked at Lu Shengnan closely last night when I told her Huang Li’s true purpose to abduct me and she should have been looking more collected if she was really part of Huang Li’s team. But she was shocked. Positively shocked.”

Chongxi’s head peeked from the center, between our seats and said, “But what if she’s hiding it well?” “Tell me. What do you think accomplice, or accomplices, the one who is or are oblivious of what’s going on, would do?” I chuckled. Chongxi pondered for seconds and replied, “What would they do… Cower or retreat to the sidelines to get a better read of the situation, I guess?” Rubbing my chin, I said, “Yep. If it were me, this would be good timing to remain on the sidelines for now.”

We found a parking slot to stop our car and we followed Lu Shengnan back to her teaching center. We waited for a little more than an hour there until it was almost nine when Huang Li finally arrived.

Just as how Lu Shengnan had described, Huang Li did indeed like slightly skinnier compared to the woman in black. Lu Shengnan asked Huang Li at once, “Why did you switch off your phone this morning, Huang Li?” She smiled at Lu Shengnan. “You might have called too early. I stayed up with Xuedong till it was very late last night.”

The lie made Lin Feng and I traded quick looks. I stepped forward immediately, offering a hand to her. “We meet again, former classmate.” With the ever-so insipid expression she reserved for me, she ignored my hand and immediately sank into a sofa. With another look at Lin Feng, who eyed her cautiously, I beckoned to my friends to sit as well. “You said just now that you were with Cao Xuedong last night?” I asked, wearing a grin bordering on being smug. Huang Li gave me a frosty look and nodded.

I chuckled. “I’m afraid Cao Xuedong was nowhere near you last night, former classmate. He was with us for an entire night.” “Oh?” Huang Li muttered with feigned curiosity, and her brows began twitching. I pulled out a glass bottle from my pocket and tossed it over to Huang Li, who displayed her good reflexes by snatching it from the air with a loud slap. “Bamen Dunjia. I must say that was a neat display of magic. But that would cost you dearly! We present to you the conjurer and catalyst of the trap last night. But whether he’s able to come back to life, I leave that to you. But be quick. Time is of the essence for his chances.”

Huang Li’s eyes betrayed a hint of astonishment. She hastily looked down at the glass bottle in her hand and saw Cao Xuedong’s ghost still trying to scream inside, although no one outside could hear him. Huang Li shot me a scathing glare that wiped away all her former placidity and aloofness but I merely chuckled again. “He’s not a smart one, that boyfriend or husband of yours. Let’s be frank, Cao Xuedong is the conjurer of the Bamen Dunjia and everything else last night. He himself has made that clear enough.” Huang Li’s glare only grew more vicious as the sounds of her teeth gnashing with intense fury came from the opposite of us. She must be very, very angry now despite her best efforts to keep herself composed.

“That was really an impeccable demonstration of the Bamen Dunjia, honestly,” I went on saying as a-matter-of-factly, “But you guys just seemed to have underestimated me. What do you take me for? I’m the heir to Yan Di of the South. A simple Bamen Dunjia is nothing to me. Not even the descendant of Tribe Nine Li, armed or not armed, can do anything to me. Heh heh heh heh…” I ended my story with pride and hubris permeating my smile but the look I received from Huang Li was one of confusion and bewilderment as if she did not understand anything I said. What the hell? Does she not know that I am the Spirit of the Shiyan Blade? Is she not a descendant of Tribe Nine Li? Or she is unaware of her lineage?

There was a brief, awkward moment of silence until she finally spoke. “So, that means you have solved the problem in my house?” I nodded. “Wow, the Bamen Dunjia enchantment! What amount we should charge, I wonder…” Chongxi sniggered and remarked, “A hundred thousand yuan, no less!” Still looking aloof and disinterested, Huang Li remained quiet. “A hundred thousand it is then, for the problem we solved for your home. But there is something else that I was wondering if you might be interested in.”

Lin Feng was already on his feet, moving over to her. He handed her a black plastic bag which she accepted quietly with a frown. But when she looked inside, her eyes went as wide as eggs! In the black plastic bag was the severed arm I cut off from the woman in black last night! But it was only the gory arm; we had removed the short blade attached to it.

“How much do you think this is worth?” I cackled. Despite her coolness, I could see that Huang Li was already burning inside. The veins on her forehead that were threatening to pop were proof enough. Lin Feng and I looked at each other. Perhaps this was finally the time we draw up the veils of enigma surrounding the identity of our mysterious hitwoman.

But to our amazement, Huang Li threw the broken arm to the ground like a sack of rubbish. She glowered hostilely at me, her voice steely as the hitwoman’s knife last night, “What is this?! A threat?!”

Lin Feng and I looked at each other again. In his eyes, I could read the unmistakable note of disappointment.