The Tale Never Ends Chapter 188 Back to the Pas

The white brilliance that engulfed me gave way to a view of a busy street, filled with people walking around me. But what was more unbelievable was that everything and everyone was ancient; the people were dressed in clothing articles that only belonged in medieval China and so were the architecture and buildings around me!

"This is impossible?! Have I been hurled back to the past?!" I shook my head, as if vainly trying to reawake myself from a long and unbelievable dream, then I remembered Master Six's words before he sent me here. "Go see for yourself if you will. Only then, you'll know." "Has he really?!"As I reeled with trepidation the full comprehension of traveling through time, I broke into a stroll, ambling absentmindedly through the mob of passersby shuffling by me. Hardly anyone looked good; life must be difficult in those days. Then I saw a young man and I walked up to him. "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me where I am and what year is this..." But I could not finish; as if I was invisible, the young man merely walked on without a pause to look at me.

"What the?!" I stood rooted to the spot as I stared at the leaving person of that rude young man. "What am I? An invisible wisp of air?!" But I remained mum; the young man could have avoided me because of the way I was dressed in. Moreover, he might not be able to understand at all. If this were really ancient China, they could be speaking in archaic languages that we no longer speak nowadays.

With a weak smile to myself, I spun and looked around to see a little stall peddling vegetables. A middle-aged man was busy arranging more of his ware and so I went to him. "Hi there, sir. Excuse me, I'd like to..." But before I could finish, the elder man, who had threw not so much as a look at me, spun and went about his business, ignoring me.

"Wait a minute..." I felt something was wrong. I went over to the man and waved a hand in front of his face. But there was no reaction from him! "Am I really invisible?!" The man could not see me nor even hear my voice!

Like a ghost, I flitted through the crowds aimlessly as I wandered the ancient town for a day. It was only in the evening when fear came to me: what am I ought to do for the night? But at the very exact moment, it dawned upon me: I had hardly felt tired or hungry despite walking for a day! Dread began to build up in my gut: Could I be dead? Has my soul been transported back through time?! Am I a poor and miserable spirit now, condemned to wander the ancient world for eternity?!

Yet despite the fear brimming so greatly that it could have churned out of me, there was nothing I could do. Master Six must have his reasons to have me sent here. With no other options yet opened to me, I could only continue gliding around.

As my desultory wanderings continued, I took a sudden notice at the city gates. A huge horde of carts and wagon pushers, plus several peasants with carrying poles rushing in and out of the gates like the quick and frequent flow of rapids in the rivers. Curious, I strolled towards their direction. When I got near, I saw some of the people with carrying poles with wicker baskets on both ends of the pole. Some of them looked happy, with a child or two in their baskets while a few were sobbing uncontrollably, looking absolutely wretched and broken. The latter few's baskets were empty, I observed.

I waded through the crowd and made my way out of the town. The line of cart-pushers and pole-carriers never seemed to stop and never looked to be dwindling even as I journeyed further and further down the road. But there were always people who looked relieved and delighted on the line that was heading back into the city, and they were always seemed to be carrying children in their wagons or baskets! Just when I was still trying to make sense of all this, a shrill voice cried from the top of the gates. "TIME'S UP! SHUT THE GATES!" With a loud bang, the gates slammed shut, leaving me still outside!

The people still outside laid down their poles and stopped pushing their carts. They sat down by the road and rested. Some even spread some sheets and laid on them to sleep. A few people sat by the road, choking with tears quietly and some, I noticed, went to the walls of the city and rested nearby. Before long, the quiet evening air outside in the wilderness began to fill with the sounds of stifled weeps and whimpers. This only served to make the people who were traveling from the city anxious; they began to quicken their pace as if wanting to gain more headway in spite of the night.

The sad bawling almost made me want to speak some words of consolation to the crying people. But I was only a ghost there! They could not even see me! But what is going on with this place! What is wrong with these people and what is causing them so much pain! I looked around, still wondering, both puzzled and confused when I began to feel that something looked weird with the city walls. The walls were varnished in myriads of colorful hues, unlike most city walls which should have just the dull colors of mortar and bricks.

Inquisitive, I walked closer to the walls, hoping to examine them. Then I finally saw why. The city walls were pasted full with notices, notices of missing people! They came in different manners and designs, but they were all of the same content: children! The people missing here were all children! Then I remembered that it was the same for the other side of the city walls; even on the inside, notices on missing children filled every inch of the walls inside even though I failed to notice it earlier due to the crowds rushing in and out!

I looked upwards suddenly and what I saw made me froze. The huge plaque hanging at the top of the gates of the city said two large words: Wu Zhong!

A shiver ran down my shoulders and my hair immediately stood even though there was hardly any night time breeze today. I even felt momentarily dizzy that I almost collapsed! I rubbed my shoulders, feeling the goosebumps oozing on me from my skin and my heart thumped rapidly. The overwhelming vertigo did not subside; it instead grew. So much that I was almost beginning to see stars.

The suffocating and nauseating sensation made my head whirled; I could no longer stand and I had to crouch to feel better. With deep, heavy breaths, I asked myself, "What the hell is going on here?! Is this really Wu Zhong?! What year is this?!" A flurry of question burst forth like a dam, followed by a sense of sadness and melancholy that filled me as I struggled to keep myself still.

More people came from afar, heading towards the city gates. They put down their loads and rest by the side of the road at the sight of the city gates being closed. Just then, a strange but familiar sensation swept through me! Before I knew it, a queer, inexplicable, but yet no less staggering force crashed down on me, before it clenched swiftly over me and condensed into point high overhead.

I threw my head up and looked. But there was nothing above me. I looked again, this time with my Spirit Sight. And I saw plumes of iridescent clouds lumping together into one, gleaming brilliantly until the bright glow concentrated into the pillowy folds of the clouds as it descended. The strange asphyxiating and staggering force disappeared just as the clump of iridescent clouds landed somewhere in the woods nearby. Seconds later, a Taoist priest, clad in long flowing robes of jade-green and a Taoist head cap, appeared from the undergrowth, waving his horse-tail hossu lazily.

The same surrealistic but chummy sensation churned again in my gut. "Do I know him?" Yet nothing about him resembled anyone I knew. He looked absolute like a stranger to me. But oddly, there was something about him that summoned suddenly what Father told me about my origins: it was an old Taoist priest, tall and proud despite his age, carrying a baby—me, that Father encountered many, many years ago...

"Wait! No! The time doesn't match! It is clear that wherever I am or whichever time I am in, it is definitely nowhere near the Qing Dynasty! It is much earlier than that, in fact. Father was entrusted with me by the dying Taoist priest somewhere in the 1990s, so the years would hardly match." But I could barely shake off the familiar sensation that I perceived from the elderly Taoist priest emerging from the forest like he was someone I used to know. Yet I could not seem to recognize him.

The priest stopped a man who was carrying a child in a basket hanging from his pole. With a flail of the tail of his hossu over his shoulder, the priest bowed, muttering gently, "Greetings." "Wait a minute," I thought, "I know that voice! There is no doubt, I must know him! As if etched into the rock of my mind, it was a voice that I would never forget! I might not recognize the face, but I definitely knew that voice! A voice that I could have sworn I know since the day I was born!"

I walked closer to them and the man bowed in return to the priest. "From whence did you come from, priest?" Despite his shabby clothing, the man spoke with the tone and the manner of an educated person. I would have thought that he must be somebody with prestige or standing if not for his beggar-like appearance.

"I come from the East; Fengrun District, to be exact. But I have been seeing people carrying baskets on poles and some are pushing carts and wagons. But most are empty but some of them are carrying children. What is happening around here?" The man listened and laid down his basket and lifted his child, a toddler who could barely walk, and said, "It's a long story. Look, priest..." He raised an arm and a finger pointed towards the multitudes of missing children notices pasted around the city walls.

The priest looked up and studied the innumerable notices that festooned the city walls like wallpaper. "What on earth is going on here?" The man exhaled long and heavily. "You do not know, it seems. People around here, like me, are traveling to Fengrun District to redeem our children!"

Chapter end