I started to tremble, suddenly thinking of many, many things—countless experiences I had gone through before. It felt like I had been in this kind of situation several times. Every time something like this happened, it meant something significant was about to occur. I patted my head and prayed as I walked toward the fat guy. I hoped he was still there; he had to be there.
When I finally saw him waiting in the woodshed, I was nearly moved to tears. I felt like heaven was watching over me. After so many misfortunes and years of bad luck, finally, there was a moment when I wasn’t completely foolish. God had finally given me a break.
If even the fat guy had disappeared, I would have been left alone again. While I might not go completely insane, the feeling of despair would definitely lead me to do many irrational things.
When the fat guy saw me rush in, panting, he looked a bit surprised. “Did you get into trouble again? Your face doesn’t look like someone who just successfully completed a mission.”
I thought to myself, what should my face look like when I succeed? Should I burst in singing “The Internationale”? I told him it wasn’t that I got into trouble, but it wasn’t good news either. He needed to let me calm down first and let me touch him to see if he was really there.
The fat guy looked puzzled and said, “What are you rambling about?”
I closed the door behind me and took a moment to catch my breath. I saw the lama still lying quietly on the ground and thought, why does the fat guy always seem to be safe and sound? Do these criminals only target certain people? Or am I just born with a face that suggests I might escape from him?
I didn’t know where to start and stammered for a while before saying, “They all left, even the lama is gone. Could it be they went out for a midnight snack?” I planned to adopt his previous playful tone.
The fat guy frowned and hissed, “What do you mean you’ve improved? Where exactly have you improved? You used to be able to scream a few times, but now you can’t even speak. Let me tell you, humor in dangerous situations is a particularly high-level humor. There are human-skin masks everywhere; we can’t joke around recklessly, especially since you didn’t used to act like this. If it weren’t for the fact that we’ve been through life and death together for so many years and I know your tone too well, I might think you’ve been swapped out by someone else.”
Seeing the fat guy’s serious demeanor, I thought he had a point, so I nodded. He continued, “What do you mean by ‘gone out for a midnight snack’? What’s really going on? Don’t beat around the bush; tell me clearly.”
I took a deep breath and recounted everything I had just seen. The fat guy scratched his head and said, “I don’t find anything strange about it. After all, it’s not the first time such things have happened while following you. But the premise is, you really didn’t see it wrong, did you? It’s pitch black, or maybe you just looked out the door and thought it was completely dark, didn’t dare to go out, and came back after having a smoke? Come on, tell the truth; I’ll forgive you.”
I didn’t have time to argue with him. I told him that if he didn’t believe me, he could go check for himself. Moreover, I wasn’t scared; I just felt that it was too abnormal for things to always turn out this way. Every time, events didn’t develop in the direction I expected, which was particularly frustrating for me.
The fat guy said, “Alright, I believe you, but hearing you say this really stresses me out. Here’s the deal: you stay here and keep an eye on this lama while I go take another look to see if I can find what you missed.”
I quickly replied, “You absolutely must not! If you go take another look, who knows if that bastard will come back? Where am I supposed to find you then? It’s just the two of us here, me and this lama, and it’s damn miserable. I’m not going to mess around with this idiot. After thinking for a moment, I added, ‘Let’s just head out of the temple now and take a look around. We’ll bring this guy with us and make plans based on what we find. If there really is no one left in the temple, we can head down the mountain for a late-night snack, and when morning comes, we can gather more people to come back up.’”
The fat guy nodded. I placed the lama back on his back, and after walking around for a bit, the fat guy’s expression slowly began to change. He muttered, “Damn, this is actually real.” Finally, we arrived at the temple door. The fat guy pushed the door open, glanced at the snow piled up at the entrance, then turned around and shook his head at me, saying, “Tian Zhen, did you do a lot of wicked things in your past life?”
I wondered what was going on. The fat guy said, “You see for yourself.” With that, he stepped aside to let me look at the entrance.
3. Increasingly Strange
I thought that after the fat guy stepped aside, I would see some horrifying scene, but to my surprise, there was nothing—just the steep steps we often took to go up the mountain. These steps had previously been described as extremely dangerous, but later I found that with good climbing boots and using my limbs together, there was nothing particularly difficult about them.
There was nothing at the entrance; I only saw a large area of snow that had been cleared away. I asked the fat guy, “What are we looking at? What did I do in my past life to deserve this?”
He replied, “Look, even though the snow at the entrance has been cleared, it only goes up to the sixth or seventh step. The snow on the steps below is still there. We’ve been messing around for quite a while, and the footprints from when we came up are still visible. If everyone else in the temple had gone down, this snow would definitely have been trampled, but clearly, not many people have walked this path in a short time.”
“Are you saying those people are still in the temple and haven’t gone out?”
The fat guy asked, “Are there any other exits in the temple?” I shook my head. To my knowledge, there shouldn’t be any; otherwise, when the Muffled Oil Bottle appeared, it wouldn’t have caused such a level of surprise. If there were any other exits, it could only be in the direction of the snow mountain.
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