chsdbacks Chapter 11 Sea of Flowers
Chapter 11 Sea of Flowers
Ladies and gentlemen, as the old saying goes: "Humans walk the path of life, ghosts walk the bridge of death." If a living person steps onto a bridge they shouldn't, it's not a path, but a calamity. Today's story is about a bridge buried underground for who knows how many years. On that bridge are carved two words, just two words, which draw a line between life and death for the living and the dead.
As mentioned last time, the group who had "eaten" the Tai Sui (a type of rare fungus) staggered to their feet, looking like they'd lost their souls, and walked one after another into the depths of the city gate. The five of us trailed far behind, the ground still eerily soft beneath our feet, each step producing a sticky "pop." The torchlight shrank into five trembling clusters of stars in the darkness, illuminating only a short distance, barely enough to keep up with the swaying figures ahead.
As I walked, I noticed something.
The footprints of those people are getting fainter and fainter.
At first, a series of deep pits were visible in the mud, then only faint imprints remained, and later, even the imprints disappeared. Their footsteps seemed to grow lighter and lighter, less and less like the walking of living people. I glanced down at my own footprints—deep, firm, each step leaving mud in their wake. At least we were still alive.
After walking for about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, a cluster of lights suddenly appeared in the darkness ahead. Densely packed, they floated in mid-air, flickering eerily at varying heights, like someone lighting a patch of cold fire in the darkness. The light wasn't warm yellow, but an indescribable pale blue, slightly bluish, like moonlight frozen and crushed into powder, scattered on an unseen curtain.
"Master, look!" The little chick tugged at my sleeve.
Those who had eaten the Tai Sui suddenly quickened their pace. Just moments before they had been swaying unsteadily, but now they seemed to be pulled by an invisible hand, their steps hurried and fragmented, their upper bodies leaning forward as if about to fall, yet they stubbornly refused to fall. They rushed towards the light like madmen, throwing down their torches, no one stopping, no one looking back.
Then, one by one, they vanished into thin air.
Like a drop of water falling into a lake, it was silent and without a ripple. The last to disappear was the burly man, twice as wide as the others. The moment he rushed into the point of light, the pale blue light was scattered by his massive body, like splashes of water. Then the point of light closed up, and he was gone.
The five of us stopped in our tracks at the same time.
"Where...where is he?" Liao the Bald asked, his bald head gleaming, his voice weak.
Feng the Cripple didn't speak, but gripped his pipe tightly in his hand. He raised the three-pound torch half a foot high, his burly body slightly hunched over, like a bear that had smelled death.
I stared at that dark blue expanse for a long time, then held the torch forward: "Stay close to me, don't scatter."
We cautiously made our way forward. The soft mud beneath our feet gradually hardened, revealing a thin, brittle layer beneath our feet, like dried seaweed, crunching softly. The further we went, the stronger the stench became—not rotten, not bloody, but a strange, crisp smell tinged with decay, like withered flowers rotting after being soaked by dew, a cold, chilling fragrance. When that fragrance entered your nostrils, you didn't feel nauseous; instead, you couldn't help but take a deep breath. Only after inhaling did you realize something was wrong—that cold fragrance was wrapped in a cloying, fishy sweetness, like honey mixed with corpse fluid.
When I got closer to the light, I could see what it was.
flower.
A vast expanse of flowers, grown by a dead person.
I had never seen that flower before. Its petals were long and curled, resembling those of the spider lily, but it was neither red nor white. Each petal was a very pale, cold blue, like it was carved from thin ice, glowing in the darkness. The light was extremely faint, but when thousands of them gathered together, they formed a sea of ethereal blue light that stretched all the way to the edge of darkness.
The sea of flowers is leafless, with bare stems pointing straight to the ground, topped with cold blue corollas, densely packed together. When the wind blows, the corollas sway in unison, the blue light shimmering, as if the entire sea of flowers is breathing.
I stared at the flower, my brows furrowed.
There shouldn't be flowers underground. Without sunlight and rain, how can such a thing survive?
"The other shore flower..." the little chick murmured, its face reflecting the blue light, its eyes full of confusion.
"That's not right." Feng the Cripple squatted down, picked up a petal with an iron pick, and brought it close to the fire to examine it closely. "This flower doesn't emit light by itself."
"What do you mean?" Baldy Liao leaned closer.
Feng the Cripple drew his iron shovel through the air, and the tiny blue specks of light scattered in the air as if startled, then slowly drifted back onto the petals, like a swarm of bees returning to their hive.
"It's the energy released by Tai Sui." He lowered his voice to a very low level. "Tai Sui eats rotting corpses and absorbs yin energy. The evil and poisonous energy that seeps out after it has rotted through turns into cold fire when it encounters the wind and phosphorescence when it encounters flowers. To put it bluntly—this is not phosphorescence, it is the phlegm that Tai Sui spits out."
As soon as those words were spoken, everyone's face turned pale instantly.
Flowers, Tai Sui, corpse energy, and blue light—beneath Baidi City, they form a cannibalistic cycle. Tai Sui devours the dead, releasing corpse energy, which nourishes the flowers. The flowers emit phosphorescence to attract the living, who then devour Tai Sui—one link after another, without end.
Sanjin asked in a low voice, "Where are those people? Where did they go?"
I looked up and looked across the sea of flowers. In the darkest part of the blue light, I could vaguely see a black line moving.
It's water. A river.
I gestured for everyone to follow, and we walked forward, stepping through the gaps in the flowerbeds. The flower stems were extremely brittle; each step resulted in a "crack" as they broke, like crushing a pile of tiny bones. The blue light shattered around my feet, then slowly gathered back, as if the sea of flowers were making way. The deeper we went, the deeper the color of the flowers became, from pale blue to deep blue, until at the very back it was almost indigo, dark as congealed blood.
Before half a cup of tea had passed, the sea of flowers abruptly ended in front of the riverbank.
The river was narrow, its water pitch black, flowing extremely slowly and stillly, without even a ripple. Between the two banks lay a wooden bridge. Narrow, allowing only two people to walk side-by-side, it was slightly arched, without railings or pillars, just a few bare planks resting on three crossbeams, seemingly on the verge of collapse, yet it had stubbornly held up for countless years. The wood was deep black, and in the firelight, its grain shimmered with a warm, lustrous sheen, like old jade.
At the bridgehead stands a stone tablet, about half a person's height, made of rough stone, as if it were cleaved directly from the mountainside.
The stone tablet was engraved with two characters, the carving rough, yet it made my fingertips tremble.
No matter what.
"What can I do?" the little chick's voice trembled. "Is the fortune teller... the one from the opera... Naihe?"
I didn't answer.
The play says that when a person dies, they pass through the Gates of Hell, walk the Road to the Underworld, and cross the River of Oblivion to the Bridge of Helplessness. After crossing the bridge, one enters the underworld, the realm of the dead, with no turning back.
That's made up.
But now, those two words are etched right before my eyes, standing there coldly. From the moment I entered Baidi City until now, the welcoming road, the Tai Sui, the sea of flowers—each link in turn—were all part of the way.
This bridge is not a bridge at all.
It's a trap.
I crouched down and placed my hand on the bridge plank. It felt cool and smooth to the touch, unlike rotten wood; it felt like ancient jade that had been polished and worn smooth. I brought the torch closer and saw that the wood faintly shone with an oily sheen, as if layers of moisture, yin energy, and stalactite had seeped into it over thousands of years, transforming a rotten piece of wood into stone.
This bridge has been waiting here for far too long.