—Regarding this “unprecedented situation.”
Four days ago, on the China-Nepal border, at a remote railway station.
A lean, handsome young man squeezed through the crowd to the counter and said, “Two hard-seat tickets to Rilang.”
The ticket seller lazily extended a hand. “ID—”
The young man took out his documents from a cloth bag. The person glanced at them and asked, “What about the other one?”
The young man silently took out a few bills and stuffed them into his hand.
The surroundings were bustling. Tibetan people, reeking of earth and with dark complexions, shouted loudly. Their dirt- and dust-covered bundles jostled against each other. Outside, poultry squawked in unison.
The ticket seller tacitly took the money and, a moment later, handed him two hard-seat tickets.
The young man squeezed out of the crowd, stepped over the large and small luggage scattered on the floor, and arrived at the small, dilapidated waiting area. He walked straight to a row of seats at the back, casually tossed the package occupying a seat to the ground, and sat down.
A person next to him wearing a large hooded sweatshirt turned his head, revealing half of a beautiful, fair face. A mocking smile hung on his lips. “You’ve worked hard, my dear brother.”
The young man said coldly, “Put your sunglasses back on, Maha.”
Maha’s gray hoodie covered most of his face. Below the sunglasses, a small part of his face and neck were visible, as white as carved ice and snow. His long hair was tied in a ponytail, hanging down his side from under the hood, very smooth, black, and shiny. He looked like a beautiful woman.
His long, elegant fingers tapped on the armrest as he seemingly casually scanned his surroundings, his gaze shifting over the passersby, focusing on their body types and fat thickness.
Jia Louluo, on the other hand, wore a knock-off sports T-shirt, a black jacket and pants, and black fingerless leather gloves. His short hair stood on end, revealing the firm, silent profile of a young man and a lean physique honed by long-term activity on the snow line.
He lifted his package onto his lap and checked his luggage once more.
Two days ago, at the only “bank” in this great mountain, he had retrieved the things his parents had deposited for him back then. It was a mechanism they had agreed upon the last time his parents came to see him in the Himalayas. If one day Jia Louluo decided to leave Tibet, he would go to the designated location to retrieve the safe his parents had deposited for him. The valuables and information inside would help him integrate into human society more quickly and conveniently.
Of course, human society was constantly changing, so his parents would re-deposit things every few years. The location was not limited to that small local bank but covered more than a dozen different banks and credit unions on the surrounding railway network.
Jia Louluo rummaged through his bag.
The things Zhou Hui had left for him must have been replaced just a year or two ago. They included a key to an off-road vehicle, which was useless as he didn’t know how to drive; a dozen peace talismans, which were said to be selling for astronomical prices now but couldn’t be sold for a single cent in the Tibetan region; and a mobile phone, with no power and no SIM card, its malice practically overflowing from the screen.
The safe Phoenix had left for his second son, however, hadn’t been touched in several years. Inside were eighty thousand yuan in cash stacked neatly, a set of identification documents, and the most complete version of the Tibetan railway map that could be found at the time.
The long-suppressed question resurfaced in Jia Louluo’s mind: how on earth did his mother fall for his father back then? Was it really just because he was good-looking?
“So fat,” Maha sighed, looking at a little chubby kid being led by his parents not far away.
Jia Louluo immediately shot him a warning look. “Don’t cause trouble.”
Maha’s crossed long legs shifted restlessly. Sitting among a crowd of food was probably a great test of his endurance. He said coldly, “You didn’t have so much to say when I was eating people on the snowy mountain the other day.”
“That was different. Those were snow leopard poachers.”
“What’s the difference?”
“They poach snow leopards. Snow leopards are a rare species. Even if you didn’t eat them, I would have…”
“Why can’t rare animals be hunted?”
“Because if rare animals go extinct—” Jia Louluo choked, rubbing his forehead. “Why am I even arguing with you about this…”
Maha was born without a sense of right and wrong. His way of thinking was completely different from humans. Jia Louluo, who had become highly humanized, felt that he simply couldn’t communicate with his own brother.
The Peacock wanted to snatch the Great Peng’s divinity. The two brothers fought at the peak of the snowy mountain for seven days and seven nights, with no clear winner. Both sides nearly crippled the other. Finally, Jia Louluo, not wanting to continue, proposed to Maha that he would go down the mountain to find their father and draw Zhou Hui away. Maha would take the opportunity to find their mother and see if Phoenix had a way to save the Peacock Wisdom King’s divinity.
Maha had lost his divinity. In the battle with his younger brother, he had no advantage, relying only on experience. If they continued to fight, the outcome was really uncertain. He could only agree to Jia Louluo’s proposal. For the first time in hundreds of years, the two brothers embarked on the same journey together.
This was almost a milestone in their family relationship. However, along the way, Jia Louluo had to purchase supplies, calculate expenses, plan the journey, distribute provisions, and keep a constant eye on his brother to prevent him from running off to eat people. The hardships were truly beyond words.
The train was still half an hour from boarding. Maha, bored, looked around, watching the Tibetan people in their various clothes and reddened faces shouting in incomprehensible languages and jostling each other. He suddenly asked, “This place is so dilapidated. Why did you choose to cultivate here?”
Jia Louluo said, “I’m used to it.”
“Used to it?”
Jia Louluo was silent for a while, fiddling with the dead, cardless phone. After a long moment, he said, “Back when you swallowed the Buddha, because I knew but didn’t stop you, you suffered heavenly retribution afterward. I was taken to the Tibetan snowfields by Venerable Bhadra and imprisoned for a hundred years. He said it was to temper and punish me, to comprehend the Buddha’s teachings… Thinking back now, it was probably to protect me. After all, who knew if the heavenly retribution would have struck me down as well.”
“A hundred years has long passed,” Maha said.
“I’ve always stayed in the Himalayas, active in the glaciers above the snow line. I got used to it and didn’t want to come down the mountain,” Jia Louluo paused, then said, “Besides, I work as a guide for people. Life is not bad. Although I’m not a true god, I have at least received incense offerings from the human realm. I must have a way to repay the merit. Occasionally saving a climber on the snowy mountain counts as a good deed.”
Maha suddenly remembered that he had received far more incense offerings than Jia Louluo. As a genuine Peacock Wisdom King, the merit he had to repay was probably several times more than Phoenix’s, but he had never lifted a finger. How many years would it take to pay it all back now?
“Mother is very fast at repaying merit. Working for the human realm’s state is the fastest way, and Father is repaying it with him. In about three to five years, the incense debt accumulated over the past few thousand years should be cleared.” Jia Louluo turned to look at his brother. “What do you plan to do?”
Maha was stunned for a moment, then pulled his hood over his face. “—Forget it.”
But forgetting it was definitely not a solution.
Any celestial being who received incense offerings from believers had to repay the merit to the human realm in a corresponding way. As an ancient divine bird, Phoenix didn’t have a dedicated Phoenix temple for people to offer incense, but he had lived for a long time, and the human realm’s incense offerings accumulated over tens of thousands of years were not a small number. Working for a national institution was his way of repaying merit quickly on a large scale. Jia Louluo was younger and not a true god, so he didn’t have much to repay. Working as a guide on the highly Buddhist Mount Everest was also a way to repay merit while cultivating.
As for the Peacock Wisdom King, being one of the genuine Wisdom Kings with a large number of believers, the amount of incense offerings was immeasurable. In addition, he had only been concerned with swallowing the Buddha and eating people before, and had never thought about repaying merit.
If he couldn’t get his divinity back and owed too much debt, who knew what he would be reincarnated as after the six paths of reincarnation—if he became a domestic animal like a pig or a dog, that would be a real joke.
“Do you want me to…” Jia Louluo was about to ask if he wanted him to help repay some of his debt while he was repaying his own, but he stopped mid-sentence.
He turned his head and saw several people walking in from the low, dilapidated entrance of the station.
Those people were clearly a big brother leading a few underlings. The big brother walked in front, a Han Chinese man in his thirties, very tall, in a black trench coat and black leather shoes. His demeanor was very unusual, standing out like a crane among chickens in the noisy Tibetan railway station.
Each of the three underlings carried a large backpack, bulging with who-knows-what. Although they looked heavy, the carriers stood very straight, as if specially trained.
Jia Louluo’s gaze fell on the backpacks. He smelled the scent of gunpowder and explosives.
—Firearms?
What kind of mafia boss puts smuggled firearms in a backpack to take a train?
“—Too lazy to repay it. I’ll find my divinity back first,” Maha said lazily.
Jia Louluo ignored him, his eyes fixed warily on the group of men.
The big brother in the black trench coat came into the waiting room and stopped. His gaze swept over the packed crowd. He didn’t find a seat, but his eyes happened to meet Jia Louluo’s.
After a moment, Jia Louluo calmly averted his gaze and continued to fiddle with the old phone.
The big brother, however, stared at him for a while, then his gaze shifted to Maha beside him.
Maha had been stared at since he was a child and was used to it, not at all sensitive to being looked at. But this big brother in the black trench coat had a strong presence. After a few seconds, Maha finally turned his head, revealing a small part of his face. His gaze, from under his sunglasses, looked back without emotion.
He looked the man up and down, then licked his lips.
—This gesture, from any angle, was quite seductive. A look of amazement flashed in the big brother’s eyes.
However, he didn’t know that after licking his lips, Maha immediately turned to his brother, his eyes full of desire, and softly uttered two words: “Want to eat.”
“…” Jia Louluo rubbed his forehead. After a long moment, he said weakly, “I’ll buy you a boxed meal on the train, okay?”
·
The train finally arrived late. Jia Louluo queued up to have his ticket checked and boarded the train, carrying the luggage himself, followed by the empty-handed Maha. He found their compartment in the crowded aisle, pushed the door open, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
But then, he held his breath.
The compartment door opened again, and the big brother in the black trench coat walked in, ticket in hand, followed by one of his underlings carrying a large bag.
“Yo,” the big brother said, seeming a little surprised to see them, but then he smiled. “—Han Chinese? Tourists? How are you two?!”
His accent was a genuine Northeastern one, very rare in the Tibetan region. But Maha sat with his legs crossed behind the small table, his hands in his pockets, his hood on, and his eyes closed in rest. Jia Louluo, after stowing the luggage, sat down silently, not saying a word from beginning to end. Both of them completely ignored the big brother’s existence.
The big brother wasn’t embarrassed. He smiled and had his underling put down the backpack. He then took out tea eggs, instant noodles, ham sausages, and chocolate, and handed a bottle of mineral water to Maha. “Miss?”
Jia Louluo: “…”
Maha didn’t even realize he was being addressed and didn’t open his eyes.
The big brother persisted. “Miss? Would you like some water, miss?”
Jia Louluo reached out from the side, took the water bottle, and gently tossed it back into the big brother’s arms. “Thank you, we don’t need it.”
The moment the young man’s hand shot out, his knuckles were prominent, his arm muscles firm. His gaze was placid but sharp, like a cold wind sweeping across.
The big brother paused, then placed the mineral water on the table and smiled. “It’s alright, we’re all friends when we’re away from home. I urge you to drink one more cup of wine; west of Yang Pass, there are no old friends—ah, this vast and magnificent frontier! How can it not inspire the urge to drink heartily?” He then twisted open the cap and took a sip.
Jia Louluo: “…”
The train let out a long whistle and, full of passengers, slowly started moving on the tracks of the Tibetan plateau.
The platform receded behind them, and the scenery outside the window soon turned into a vast, rolling plain.
“My humble surname is Wu. You can call me Big Brother Wu or Lao Wu.” The big brother in the black trench coat made a cup of instant noodles. While peeling a tea egg, he asked, “Where are you two from? Backpackers hiking to Everest?”
Jia Louluo played with the old phone without a word, seemingly oblivious to everything around him.
The big brother stared at him for a while. Suddenly, a light bulb went on in his head. He took out a power bank from his bag. “Little brother, do you need this?”
Jia Louluo: “…”
“You put the phone on top of it, yes, like that, connect this cable… It will take about three or four hours to fully charge, but you can turn it on and use it in a bit…”
Big Brother Wu patiently taught Jia Louluo how to charge his phone, step by step. He then looked him up and down, at his worn and outdated clothes, and smiled. “There are many new things in the outside world. You’ll see them slowly, little brother. Where are you two headed? Lhasa?”
“Thank you,” Jia Louluo said simply. “To Rilang.”
“Oh—what are you doing in Rilang? Transferring?”
“Yes.”
“Transferring to where? Lhasa? Xining? Sichuan?”
“…Sichuan.”
“Sichuan is a good place!” The big brother in the black trench coat immediately perked up, his eyes fixed on the front, and said emotionally, “I went to Chengdu when I was a child—the Sichuan Basin! The Land of Abundance! Dujiangyan, the Temple of Marquis Wu! On the bustling Jinli Street in the afternoon, the warm and simple people, the fiery girls!—What are you doing in Sichuan?”
“Transferring.”
“…” The big brother in the black trench coat asked, “Transferring to where?”
Jia Louluo said lazily, “Gansu.”
“Oh—Gansu! The Hexi Corridor, the Silk Road!” The big brother in the black trench coat immediately got excited again, waving his hand in the air. “—The Ming Great Wall, Jiayu Pass! The Dunhuang Grottoes, the flying Apsaras! My lifelong dream is to abandon all money and worldly possessions, to walk in the great desert draped in a long veil, to recite Buddhist scriptures and find peace in the Library Cave, to look up at the majestic and vast history, to follow the waves of the long river of time!”
“In meditation! In dialectics! In repeated introspection and cleansing! To achieve the transcendence and sublimation of self-awareness!” The big brother put his instant noodles on the table and said with emotion, “Little brother, why don’t we travel together and go on a pilgrimage to Dunhuang!”
“No,” Jia Louluo said. “I’m transferring to Gansu.”
“…”
The big brother in the black trench coat decided to ask one last time without shame. “…Where on earth are you going?”
Jia Louluo leaned back, crossing his arms. His fingerless gloves revealed strong, well-defined arms.
He stared at the big brother’s frustrated face and, after a long moment, said with interest, “Beijing.”
He waited for the big brother to passionately introduce the moonlight on the Great Wall, the majesty of the imperial city, and while he was at it, to fill him in on the current prices, traffic, and accommodation in Beijing. But to his surprise, the big brother in the black trench coat just looked at him quietly, his expression particularly hard to describe.
After a long moment, he finally asked, “—You’re going around half of China to a place where the PM2.5 is 90 for three hundred days a year for what?”
·
The brown-skinned train sped across the plains. In the aisle outside the compartment, the train attendant pushed a meal cart back and forth, shouting loudly in Tibetan.
Jia Louluo sized up the big brother in the black trench coat, then his gaze swept over his underling. It then moved to the corner of the compartment, to the bulging large bag they had put down.
“And where are you going?” he asked with interest.
The underling seemed to move uneasily, but then the big brother in the black trench coat sighed and said wistfully, “I’m also going to Beijing—ai, life isn’t easy! As a big brother, I have to support my underlings, run a small business, and travel all the way from the Northeast to Nepal to get goods…”
Jia Louluo said flatly, “A big brother who’s also so artistic?”
“Not at all, not at all! You flatter me, little brother.” The big brother in the black trench coat looked out the window, a look of sadness appearing in his eyes. “Actually, being a big brother was not my intention. My dream is poetry and the distant horizon, a traveler’s journey has no borders…”
He silently picked up a ham sausage from the table, casually tore off the wrapper, squeezed it into his bowl, and cut it into several pieces with a fork.
The next second, Maha suddenly took off his sunglasses, his eyes shining as he stared at the ham sausage.
“…”
The carriage fell silent. The stunningly beautiful face had appeared so unexpectedly before them, leaving everyone speechless.
The big brother in the black trench coat’s mouth was open, unable to make a sound. The underling’s eyes went straight in an instant.
Maha turned to Jia Louluo. “Didn’t you say you were going to buy food?”
Jia Louluo, expressionless, got up and walked out. But he had only taken two steps when he heard the big brother’s unusually excited voice from behind. “Come, come… Miss, it is this ham sausage’s honor to be chosen by you. Please, you must grace it with your presence…”
Maha reached out, picked up the ham sausage, and put several pieces in his mouth at once. He didn’t chew, just swallowed them like jelly, then narrowed his eyes in dissatisfaction as he scanned the man in the black trench coat before him.
This was actually his favorite type to eat—unlike some demons who liked to eat women and children, he appreciated a chewy texture and a small amount of fat. If the object of his meal also had a small amount of magical power, it would have an even more special flavor.
And he could tell that this man did indeed have magical power. If he were to be lightly roasted to medium-rare…
“Hello, miss. May I be so bold as to ask for your esteemed name?” The big brother in the black trench coat was a little overwhelmed by Maha’s fiery gaze, but he still bowed with great style and said smoothly, “Hello, my humble surname is Wu. I’m thirty-three years old, I run a small business in the Northeast, have seventy or eighty underlings, and my family’s assets are a few hundred million, not much…”
Maha wasn’t listening to him.
A steak sizzling in a pan is of little significance to the diner.
Maha reached out. His five slender fingers were snow-white and beautiful. Like a reserved lover looking down from above, he reached for the big brother’s chest.
The next second, with a sharp “smack!”, Jia Louluo caught his hand in mid-air.
The big brother’s voice stopped abruptly. He saw Maha and Jia Louluo looking at each other, the former’s pupils glowing eerily, the latter’s face firm and unshakable as he spat out two words: “No.”
Maha narrowed his eyes dangerously.
But Jia Louluo ignored him. Maintaining his grip on Maha’s hand, he turned to the big brother in the black trench coat and said in a low voice, “I haven’t had the honor of asking Mr. Wu’s full name?”
“Oh,” the big brother said, puzzled. “My name is Wu Bei. Little brother, you…”
“Mr. Wu Bei,” Jia Louluo interrupted him. “Please change compartments immediately, or get off at the next stop and take another train. Don’t ask why. If you don’t leave, you may not get off this train alive. It would be very troublesome for me if something like that happened in a crowded place.”
Wu Bei: “…”
Wu Bei blinked, his expression puzzled. After a long moment, he tentatively opened his mouth. “I say, you two—”
Bang!
The carriage suddenly shook, and then the sound of people in chaos erupted!
The four people in the compartment all looked out the door at the same time. They saw someone screaming and running down the aisle, only to be cut down by a gunshot. Blood splattered on the dusty old glass. The next moment, the sound of heavy, chaotic footsteps came from the other end of the carriage. Someone was roaring something in Tibetan. Screams rose and fell, suppressed by several loud gunshots.
“Over there! There’s more over there!”
The footsteps came closer. Then, a lama in a red kasaya kicked open the compartment door and pointed a homemade gun at Jia Louluo, Maha, and the others inside, shouting loudly in Tibetan and gesturing for them to get out.
Wu Bei’s gaze fell on the cloth tied around the lama’s neck. He took a sharp breath. “The Snow Lion Flag…”
He shot to his feet, his face grim, and turned to the young “couple” next to him. He was about to quickly order them to move back, but was stunned to find that the “girl” had already stood up, staring intently at the lama, her stunningly beautiful face filled with an indescribable excitement and evil.
And the young man was standing firmly in front of him, saying angrily:
“No, Maha! I’ll go buy you a boxed meal right now!”
