Chapter Eighty-Seven: Layers of Suspicion

If humanity could choose again, would it be better for everyone to live forever without dignity, like corpses, or to endure one catastrophe so that the survivors might win their freedom?

Mingyou stood gazing at the empty city, searching for an answer.

The death of Xu Xiaocheng’s wife had caused Mingyou’s plan to fail. After this setback, the young Mingyou realized that even eliminating the two inventors, Zhang Jia and Chen Ming, would be useless. For nearly half a year, she had at times wanted to abandon all hope of changing this irredeemable future. The reason was that the two inventors had not begun from nothing; their technology had grown out of an already highly mature foundation of artificial intelligence. So even if the creator of Strawberry were removed, a superintelligent entity would still inevitably emerge within decades. It was an irreversible current of technological development.

How, then, could the civilization of that era be forced backward, stripped of every technological threat, and the world purified?

Different beliefs across human history and civilization all gave the same answer: the Great Flood.

The event in which the world was once destroyed and reborn by a great flood had been recorded by different civilizations in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the Quran, and the literature of ancient Sumer, among others. The chronicles and classic texts of history also preserved the same flood in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Records of the Grand Historian, the Genealogy, the Mencius, the Records of Huayang, the Zhuangzi, and other works. Great and resilient civilizations would only, after a catastrophic deluge, rise anew like a phoenix and shine forth with glory.

Thus, little Mingyou decided to use the moon’s gravity to unleash a global flood, slashing humanity’s numbers and causing civilization to plummet, pushing mankind away from the age of technological explosion, then destroying the major technological core databases one by one across the world, thereby greatly delaying the birth of the superintelligent entity.

Because Mingyou’s power was far removed from that of the Mother Body’s central program, she had to borrow other forces to achieve her goal. Once separated from the Mother Body for twenty-four hours, she could survive only one year.

In the end, it was a love letter that understood the meaning of compassion and sacrifice that chose to don the veil of the star of the year. Mingyou could never allow humanity to spend endless ages as empty shells; only through calamity could the survivors cease, generation after generation, to be merely living corpses.

But the still-immature Mingyou’s plan was exposed before she set out, and the superintelligent entity Strawberry immediately launched a radio-wave signal program, far smaller than she was, called No Way, sending it in pursuit to kill her.

Strawberry had only one question for Mingyou: “Child, civilization is just one film after another. Since this one has reached the end credits, why are you so unwilling to let it finish?”

When No Way found Mingyou, it was precisely the moment Mingyou donned the star’s veil.

And so No Way, upon touching Mingyou, was drawn into the whirlpool of time together with the veil. Because No Way was only a radio-wave signal, it arrived a thousand years earlier than Mingyou. After descending into the world, it used sorcery to turn earth into monstrous beasts and had them search for Mingyou.

As for Mingyou herself, whose form was larger and who carried two immortal-lock stones, she required a long transmission to arrive. So three hours after No Way reached the human world, Mingyou descended upon a cruise ship.

On the side of that ship were written four words: the Bedran.

A stormy night.

The conversation aboard the cruise ship continued.

The room was rocking nonstop. Hua Sheng walked to the bedside and sat down, asking Xiao Qing, “What is this disaster star you spoke of?”

“I only heard it from my brother. Even that young master Lan never explained it very clearly. They say for some reason divination could not reveal it accurately. Only the time and place were known; even Young Master Lan himself could not fully make sense of what would happen.” Xiao Qing said, “So although Young Master Lan knew he had to stop the disaster star from descending, he did not have much information and could only draw up the formation diagram. It will take a few days before he can tell my brother what talismans are needed to set it up.”

“Then who exactly is this Young Master Lan?” Hua Sheng said. “By rights, he should be the most crucial figure in this whole affair. Had any of you met him in person before?”

“I have not,” Xiao Qing answered. Then she turned to Xiao Mei beside her. “Did Brother Xu take you to meet him?”

Xiao Mei shook her head. “No. Have you never met him either, sister?”

Hua Sheng said, “This Young Master Lan sounds far too suspicious. In ordinary circumstances, not only would no one else believe him, even I would surely think him a wandering charlatan.”

Xiao Qing said, “When we first heard that sister-in-law’s temperament had changed completely and that she was raising gu insects at home, we were all terrified.”

“Even if she really were raising gu, she might simply have been suffering from some mental illness, or have been misled by some organization. These days there are all manner of cults, pyramid schemes, and scams. Who knows what tricks they use?” Hua Sheng said. “But Brother Xu believing outsiders and killing his wife is indeed bizarre and unreasonable. If that truly happened, it is nothing less than a human tragedy.”

Xiao Mei suddenly said, “Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it was Brother Xu who fell under some curse?”

Hua Sheng was startled and drew in a sharp breath.

“Throughout the whole story, everything we heard came from Brother Xu’s side of things. In truth, my sister and I can’t tell whether it was all real.” Xiao Mei said.

Xiao Qing looked equally taken aback. “What you say is not without reason. Since hearing Brother Xu say that sister-in-law was raising gu, we never actually met her again. Or rather, because we did not live together, we rarely had any chance to see her in the first place.”

“The reason we believed sister-in-law had fallen under dark influence was because from the beginning, everything was told to us by Brother Xu. We grew up with him, so of course we trusted him completely,” Xiao Mei mused. “But if there is a possibility that sister-in-law was the one under a curse and raising gu, then isn’t it equally possible that Brother Xu was under a curse too?”

Hua Sheng was bewildered for a moment.

Xiao Mei said, “Compared with raising gu just to poison others, Brother Xu actually killed someone with his own hands. Pushing sister-in-law off a cliff was an unforgivable crime. Though Brother Xu has loved us since childhood, and I am willing to trust him, when it comes to taking a life, the brother who truly committed murder may be the more likely one to have been bewitched.”

Hua Sheng said, “Actually, after your brother’s wife died, I spent quite a long time with him. His behavior and speech were not at all strange; he did not seem bewitched, nor did he even display signs of mental illness.”

Xiao Mei said, “The reason I say this is that being under a curse is too extraordinary for ordinary people to understand. And, as I just said, there is one extremely important person in all of this: Young Master Lan. It can be said that Young Master Lan has a direct connection to sister-in-law’s death. As for this matter of being bewitched, Brother Xu heard it from that man as well. Could it be that he was the one who deluded Brother Xu and turned him into a murderer?”

“If you put it that way, the logic does not quite hold. If Young Master Lan were the one casting evil arts on Xu Xiaocheng, then he clearly gave these talismans, and those talismans were just used to destroy the gu雕. If he were truly an evil person, he should not have given Brother Xu protective talismans capable of resisting beasts.” Hua Sheng said.

“But we must admit that if there were no Young Master Lan, sister-in-law would not have died! We would not have come aboard this cruise ship, and if we had not come aboard, my sister’s eyes would not be like this now!” Xiao Mei cried.

Hearing this, Xiao Qing lowered her head and wept softly again.

“Are so many tragedies not caused by Young Master Lan? He brought us onto this ghost ship to set up some so-called formation. But where is he now? Why does he not appear himself?” Xiao Mei’s voice grew angry. “Now my brother’s family has been ruined because of him. Isn’t that all his responsibility?”

Hua Sheng knew Xiao Mei had a point. If Young Master Lan truly were an extraordinary master beyond the world, then he likely had the means to deal with the so-called disaster star. If destroying the disaster star were beyond his ability, then it was even more impossible to have a few ordinary people do it. Or rather, sending them here would amount to nothing but sending them to their deaths.

“Could it be that Young Master Lan has been making us do all this, using us as tools, and that from the very start he intended to kill with a borrowed blade?” Xiao Mei said. “Maybe he wants us to help him eliminate something!”

“What should we do next?” Xiao Qing asked.

“I think this Young Master Lan is suspicious. We cannot follow his instructions completely,” Xiao Mei said. “The most important thing is to find a lifeboat and leave this eerie place as soon as possible!”

“No! With such a storm outside, even the cruise ship could be overturned, let alone a lifeboat!” Hua Sheng rejected Xiao Mei’s suggestion. “There may be monsters on board that could drag us through a narrow escape or into the unpredictable, but if we abandon the big ship for a small boat, that would be even more like walking straight into a dead end. A single wave could turn a lifeboat upside down. At least on the larger ship, there are some life-saving supplies, medicine, and food. Finding a place to hide on the ship and waiting for rescue is the safest way.”

Xiao Mei said, “Those gu雕 were just searching for these talismans. If we carry them, we may very well attract more. We don’t know how many terrifying monsters are on this ship. We cannot take the talismans with us.”

“But the talismans are what save lives!” Hua Sheng said. “If we do not carry them, then when we meet a beast, how are we any different from being unarmed?”

“The beasts are being drawn here by these talismans!”

Hua Sheng’s mind went blank from Xiao Mei’s words, and the wound began to bleed again. He forced himself to stay as calm as possible and began trying to sort out his thoughts. Everything was far too unbelievable. He had boarded the cruise ship because of Brother Xu’s dying words, then been attacked by beasts. Now, not only might the ship be full of monsters, it could also be overturned by the storm at any moment. And the many passengers aboard were nowhere to be seen.

There were already a host of mysteries to unravel. Yet now Hua Sheng was also trapped in the question of whether he had been lured aboard by Brother Xu’s dying words under some sort of conspiracy. Then what had he boarded the ship for, in the end?

Dying words? That’s right! Hua Sheng suddenly remembered. Before dying, Brother Xu had told him a string of numbers and asked him to pass it on to his two younger sisters.

What was that string of numbers? Hua Sheng thought carefully.

Nine nine nine two four eight... nine one nine two four eight... damn it! What exactly was it?

Then Hua Sheng remembered that he had saved it on his phone, thankfully. He opened the notes app.

He looked up and said, “Before he died, Brother Xu made me promise to tell you a string of numbers: nine nine one two four eight. Do you know what it means?”

Xiao Qing said, “Oh yes, before Brother Xu sent us aboard, he said that Young Master Lan told him to set up a formation unlike any before. The disaster star it was meant to face was not like any demon or monster seen before. Young Master Lan said he needed to study it carefully before he could confirm and then explain. The formation consisted of six demon-suppressing talismans, so these six numbers must be the serial numbers of those talismans!”

Exactly! Hua Sheng remembered. This stack of talismans came in nine kinds. Each kind had numbers marked on it. If he had not guessed wrong, these six numbers should be...

“They must be the serial numbers of the six talismans needed for this formation!”