The third day, Xie Lian was still lying in that deep human-shaped pit in the middle of the road. His position hadn’t even changed.
The crowd that day wasn’t much different from the crowd from the day before. They all detoured around him at a distance and simply went about their day. Although the incident where a strange man fell from the sky had been reported to the authorities, when they heard that it might be a God of Misfortune, they didn’t want to deal with it—he wasn’t really causing any trouble, after all, just lying there like a dead man. The authorities brushed off the affair with a vague promise to keep an eye on it for a few days. That basically meant they weren’t going to bother. Besides, maybe something would change on its own.
Several curious children came scurrying over and squatted by the edge of the pit to look at the strange man inside. They picked up a tree branch and began to surreptitiously poke at him, but Xie Lian was like a dead fish and didn’t react. They were still fascinated and wanted to try to throw something at him to see if he’d respond to that—but they were discovered by their parents before they could follow through. The children were lectured harshly, then dragged home and grounded.
The water merchant from the day before still kept sneaking glances in his direction. Xie Lian hadn’t had a single drop of water for a day and a night, and a layer of dry, withered dead skin had formed on his lips. Feeling sorry at the sight, the water merchant ladled out a bowl of water to deliver it, but his wife deliberately elbowed him and made him topple the bowl. He was forced to relent.
Perhaps the heavens wanted to join in on the fun, for after midday, drizzling rain began to fall.
The street vendors hurriedly packed up their stalls, and the pedestrians shouted at each other to hurry home. They all quickly left. The rain poured harder and harder, scouring Xie Lian’s face until he looked even paler and soaking his entire body until he was utterly drenched.
A shadow silently appeared next to Xie Lian, its owner dressed in white. No one on the street seemed to have noticed this peculiar figure.
White No-Face looked condescendingly down at him. “The sun is about to set.”
Xie Lian was silent.
“You aren’t the God of Misfortune, but they would rather believe that you are, and they’re unwilling to believe you aren’t. Once upon a time, you defied the heavens and created rain for Yong’an. Yet now, they won’t even give you a cup of water.
“Stabbing you a hundred times might have been done in desperation, but now, they’re not even willing to do something as simple as pulling out a sword. They all consider it too much trouble.
“I’ve told you this time and again. No one will come help you,” White No-Face finished, his voice soft with pity.
There was a voice deep down in Xie Lian screaming hysterically, Admit it. What he said is true. There’s no one, no one, no one! There isn’t a single person who will help me!
As if he had heard the desperate cry in Xie Lian’s heart, White No-Face seemed to smile a bit. He reached out and gripped the hilt of the black sword.
“It’s all right. They won’t help you, but I will.”
He exerted some force and pulled the black sword from Xie Lian’s stomach, then tossed it down beside Xie Lian with a resounding clang.
Soon after, the shadow of white cloth in the rain laughed lightly and backed away, as if he had achieved all he wanted to do. Leaving Xie Lian to his own devices, he vanished.
Once the black sword was pulled out, Xie Lian’s wound was left exposed to the harsh rain. The once-numbed pain had started to spread again. But that was the only thing he could feel in that moment.
Splash sploosh, splash sploosh. The sound of wild footsteps stomping through water drifted over, like some passerby was rushing through the rain nearby. But Xie Lian was no longer secretly hopeful.
He slowly sat up, yet the motion was still unexpected. He was interrupted by a loud yell, and a man fell heavily next to him.
The man had carried a large basket on his back and wore a bamboo hat to shield him against the rain. It was probably due to the downpour that he hadn’t seen that there was someone in a pit on the road; he’d been running fast, and he’d only noticed when he’d gotten closer and Xie Lian suddenly appeared. He’d tried to stop short but had instead fallen quite badly. As he tumbled to the ground next to the human-shaped pit, he began to scream a barrage of curses on the spot.
“What the fuck?!”
His bamboo hat had flown off, and the basket on his back had toppled and spilled its cargo of white rice everywhere. The man sat back and screamed in frustration, slapping at the ground. The wet mud and rice splattered Xie Lian. Outraged, the man leapt to his feet in a flurry and pointed a finger squarely in Xie Lian’s face.
“What the hell?! This ancestor worked his ass off to earn a bit of money to buy this rice, and now it’s all gone just like that! How many lifetimes’ worth of awful luck is this?! Pay me back! Don’t sit there pretending to be dead, pay me back!”
Xie Lian didn’t bother to spare him a single look, planning to simply ignore him. However, the man was unrelenting, and he grabbed Xie Lian by the collar.
“Are you asking for death?! Huh?! I’m talking to you!”
“Yes,” Xie Lian replied coldly.
The man clicked his tongue. “Well, if you wanna fucking die, go scamper off somewhere and die quietly on your own! What are you doing blocking people’s way in the middle of the road?! Can’t even die in peace—what a nuisance!”
Xie Lian let himself be shaken wildly by his collar, stoic and expressionless and utterly numb.
Cuss. Cuss all you want. Nothing matters anymore, so curse me however you want.
Everything will disappear soon.
The sun was about to set.
The man gripped the wooden Xie Lian, pressing him for compensation, and when Xie Lian remained unresponsive, he bawled him out. That wasn’t enough for the man, but after pushing and shoving him for a long time, he picked up his bamboo hat from the ground, put it on his head, and walked away grumbling. Xie Lian was thrown back into the pit with a dull thud.
Gradually, he began to hear a clamor louder than the sound of the rain.
It was the shrieking of millions of souls of the dead sealed within the black sword.
As the sun sank bit by bit in the west, they started hollering and wailing like mad inside Xie Lian’s head—cheering and rejoicing for the arrival of freedom and revenge.
Xie Lian raised a hand and covered his face. As his other hand shakily reached out to grab the black sword on the ground, he noticed something strange.
The rain seemed to have stopped.
No.
The rain hadn’t stopped. Something had been placed over his head to shield him from the downpour!
Xie Lian’s eyes snapped open, and he looked up. He saw someone crouched in front of him, pressing the bamboo hat that had once been on his own head onto Xie Lian’s.
…It was the man who had just been bawling him out!
Xie Lian glared at the man, and the man glared back at him.
“What are you looking at me like that for? What, it was just some cussin’. You really wanna go die over it?” He spat on the ground as he spoke. “Looking so miserable, like you’re in mourning. It’s unlucky, I tell ya!”
Xie Lian was speechless.
The man had been rough and aggressive earlier, but he must have felt a little guilty after thinking about what he’d done. He grumbled a bit more, but then he started to try and explain himself. “All right, all right, I was over the line earlier. But you still deserved that scolding. Who told you to act so nuts? And who’s never been cussed at before?”
