Chapter 254: That''s All For This Chapter! See You on the Next One!
The Daniel Wu of Peony Street – this is the very nickname jokingly given to Lu Yibei by his neighbours when she was still running about the old streets wearing open-crotched pants as an infant. During her time of boyhood, she was, indeed, adorable – with red lips, radiant teeth, and a chubby face. Compared to normal babies, he would be considered a high-quality, male-infant model.
Pity that her face wouldter be disabled.
She is, by no means, unattractive. In fact, both of her forms are higher than average. However, nobody has jokingly called her that very nickname for the longest time, and she guesses that her once-doting neighbours have forgotten that name too.
Therefore, when she heard Jiangli utter the nickname that even she had almost forgotten, she could hear sirens ring inside her head.
<em>I’m gagged. Did she do a background check on me? If I let her, something bad might happen sooner orter!</em>
<em>M-maybe, after she gets what she wants frompleting the investigation, she will personally deal with me, and…</em>
Her thoughts were uneasy as she shook her head, deciding to muddy the waters by saying, “The Daniel Who of Peony Street? I have never heard of anything like that in my life! It’s just a nickname, and I bet there’s many other nicknames like that in the Super Secret Underground Club – let me think… ah! The Cai Xukun of Changshou Road, or the Chris Evans of Tuanjie Vige, or the Shun Ogori of Frog Town… ”
“Are you interested in meeting them?” she continued to yap on. “Tell them my name and they’ll give you a couple bucks off your drinks!”
“…No,” Jiangli sighed after a moment. “I know what they are like, and I am not interested.”<em>She’s trying to hide it. I know her old house is on Peony Street, and her family also owns a restaurant… wait, could it be…?</em>
<em>No… no. Although she and the man looks somewhat simr, their temperaments are the total opposite. Like father like son, correct? How could such a heroic man have such a cowardly son whose only talent is yapping garbage?</em>
“Enough about that,” Jiangli changed the topic. “I’m curious – do you know why yourba is able to stop the urban legend’s own music? Is there anything special behind your instrument?”
“Well… it’s a long story…”
“Keep it short.”
“You know the saying ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry?’” Yibei said, pointing at the two empty bowls on the table. “You’ve already eaten two bowls of ramen! And I’m still starving! At least let me cook something for myself, and we can talk after we eat, okay?”
“Okay, but…”
“What is it?”
Jiangli paused before muttering, “Don’t you think it’s a little weird for you to be eating all alone while I watch?”
<em>…I know what you are! You want to eat more! I can see right through you! Just say so, damn! What’s the need to beat around the bush?!</em>
<em>What’s gotten into her today?! It feels like I’m dealing with a second Gu Qianqian around here!</em>
…
Half an hourter, they were done with their meals.
Yibei sat on the sofa, holding a warm tea cup in both hands as she took a sip of the Tieguanyin tea that she ‘borrowed’ from her neighbours. Taking a huge gulp, she couldn’t help but let out a satisfied sigh.
“Ah! Food does taste better when it’s free!”
Jiangli eyed the Witch in disgust as she sat opposite of her, and grumbled, “Now, can we finally talk business? Over the past few days, I have investigated various files regarding the Happy Community, including the death reports of the victims, and yet, none of the information I obtained talked about the jew’s harp in detail. Where did you get your information from?”
Yibei took another sip of her tea and replied slowly, “You see, some things can’t be found through files and reports – there is no harm in listening to first-hand experiences of the elderly. I mean, at your age, I’d imagine-”
Jiangli’s face immediately darkened as soon as she said that, and she immediately changed exined how she obtained her information instead.
“Alright – it all started three days ago when I was talking to an old man while drinking tea at the teahouse…”
…
The old man’s name is Tang Yao, who lives on the southern side of Peony Street. When he was younger, he would constantly meet up with another man named Liu Banxian. Together, they set up a stall on the overpass on the northern side of Peony Street, bing Peony Street’s very own [Southern Tang and Northern Liu].
Liu Banxian was known for his fortune telling skills, while Tang Yao acted as his informant.
As a vagrant born and raised in Huacheng, he has been loitering around for more than 40 years. He has never done anything remarkable, but his main interest in life is to watch and join in on the excitement – in short, he’s a busybody.
When he was younger, whenever there were rumours of something strange happening somewhere, he would ride on his bicycle to check it out, even if it meant cycling dozens of miles away.
If he still had that kind of energy now, even having thirty lives won’t be able to save him from urban legends.
There is practically no urban legend that Tang Yao has never heard of. Hence, if you want to obtain information from him, you only need to treat him to a meal.
However, the older a person gets, the weirder their temperament bes. When Yibei first found him, he refused to speak to him…
…
“Pause. If he refuses to speak, how did you get the information from him, then?” Jiangli interrupted.
“Tsk,” the Witch rolled her eyes. “You would know if you just continued to listen. You see, even as an old man, he is what I like to call a ‘penny pincher’. I heard that he paid money to eat at a buffet once, and to get his money’s worth, he ate until he was so full that he had to be sent to the hospital for a stomach pump – and this happened more than once.”
“I… understand. Did you invite him to a buffet?”
“No, I don’t think you understand. If I could defeat him with just a single buffet, I wouldn’t have to spend an entire day with him. I invited him to drink tea, and as long as somebody invites him to drink, he’ll definitelye.”
“Oh? And how did that go?” Jiangli tilted her head in confusion.
“If you take in a lot of liquids, you’ll have to go to the bathroom, correct?” the Witch smiled. “I simply locked all of the toilets surrounding the teahouse from the inside out, and every single time he needed to go to the loo, I would magically pop up there as well.”
As she spoke, she made a gesture to emphasize the phrase ‘magically pop up’.
“I won’t go into the details, but… by the time he drank his seventeenth cup, he finally opened his mouth.”
<em>…Just opening his mouth? I’m afraid she’s leaving out a lot of details!</em>
…
Although Tang Yao pointed out a clear path for the Witch, it wasn’t easy to obtain a clearer image about the history of the Happy Community.
In the next half day, hepletely a series of menial tasks – he helped Mrs. Wang to buy vegetables and ughter chickens; he helped Mr. Zhang pick his grandson up; he helps tutor Mrs. Zhu’s daughter… it was like a series of side quests that he had toplete.
They did not abide to the Three Laws of Robotics when they used him as a tool.
When he was about to be a dead dog from the exhaustion, the side quests had finallye to an end, and what was waiting for him was the [Red Sunset Troupe], which is the senior citizen performance group of Huacheng.
Before he went to the park to meet with them, he thought he needed to spend a lot of time to get close to them in order to scourge information.
After all, there were separated by a generation gap of at least three generations, and their age gap is by dozens of years.
However, as soon as he approached them, an elderly man stopped him.
“Whose child is this?! Mind helping me move the stereo over there?”
<em>Do I know you?! You’re acting as if I’m your very own grandson! What happened to shame?!</em>
After being ordered and passed around for kisses several times, he finally managed to scourge information about the Happy Community…
…
“…thank you for your hard work,” Jiangli praised.
Before this, Bai Kai had prepositioned to the Night Division that he would send people to collect information about urban legends all across Huacheng. However, this process was anything but smooth.
None of the members of the Special Operations Team couldst more than two days helping the senior citizens out with their unreasonable requests and seemingly endless nagging.
<em>However, in Yibei’s case…</em>
As Jiangli thought about it, she turned to look at the yapping Witch, and thought of Tang Yao before frowning.
<em>I hope they were able to handle Yibei…</em>
<em></em>
“Ah! I didn’t really do much!” the Witch waved her hand humbly. “Now that we’re back on topic, I bet that the information you found didn’t mention that the Happy Community used to be a theatre, correct?”
“A theatre?” Jiangli was visibly stunned. “When?”
“More than a hundred years ago – it was operating during the war, so you’ll be hard pressed to find any written information about it, especially considering that it was a small theatre. The olddy who told me about it was over ny years old, and she herself heard it from her elders. The theatre mainly performed Sichuan-styled operas, but theirs was a little different – since they are close to an area popted with ethnic minorities, different forms of their ethnic music were added to the apaniment.”
“The jew’s harp is part of the ethnic instruments added,” the Witch continued. “Combined with the contents of themission, I concluded that the urban legends in the Happy Community are probably rted to that very theatre.”
Jiangli stared silently at Yibei for a few seconds, and asked, “What happened to the theatre? Before the Happy Community was established, it was always and of abandoned, privately-owned houses. The earliest records simply mention that it was a wastnd, and none of them mentioned anything about urban legend activities here.”
“It was burnt down,” the Witch exined. “The olddy told me that the theatre troupe dug a tunnel under the theatre to protect the children who had no time to evacuate from the invading soldiers. Therefore, when the soldiers came and found no one, they burnt the theatre down in a rage.”
“Were they… all burnt to death in the tunnels? The Happy Community was only established three years ago, and the nights had already be long before then. Hence, if they were all burnt to death, coupled with the circumstances, an urban legend would have existed long ago.”
“You’re right,” Yibei rubbed her nose. “The olddy said that when her elders were young, there were indeed strange happenings around the area, and they were the ones who witnessed it.”
…
After the theatre was burnt down, nobody lived in the area where the Happy Community is now located in.
After a year or two, all that was left was abandoned houses and overgrown foliage.
Li Aniu, the eldest member of the olddy’s family, fled to Huacheng to seek refuge with his rtives.
At the time, however, the war was raging on –munication was scarce, and it was hard to determine whether someone would be alive or not the next day.
When he came to Huacheng, he searched everywhere, but couldn’te into contact with any of his rtives. It was gettingte, so he was forced to stay in one of the abandoned houses to spend the night.
The abandoned houses were particrly creepyte at night, especially considering that there was not a single soul around. Aniu thought of some urban legends he heard when he was a child, and felt a little uneasy.
“You can’t afford to be scared… it costs a lot of money to stay at an inn…” he patted his face as he wrapped his coat around himself, running towards the abandoned houses.
Due to theck of maintenance, many trees grew in crooked manners. From a distance, they resemble twisted figures in the night.
As soon as he reached the houses, he could see flickering lights of fire in the woods ahead.
Moving closer, he could soon hear a hoe digging into the soil.
Following the noise, he was close enough where he could see anky old man in his sixties, and a kerosenemp that hung on a branch near him.
He swung his hoe and dug pits one after another on the ground. Every time he dug open a pit, he picked up a wooden board from the ground and set them into the soil.
Seeing this, Aniu suddenly broke into a cold sweat.
These wooden boards, about half a meter wide with one end cut into a triangle, are simple tombstones that weremonly seen in the surrounding area.
Few families are able to afford a funeral, so when one of their loved ones die, they would wrap them in mats, bury them in the ground, and insert a wooden board acting as a tombstone.
When worsees to worst, their corpses would simply be disposed off out in the open.
The old man was behaving strangely. He dug a hole, and set up the wooden board, but there were no bodies around. Aniu immediately felt that something was wrong, and didn’t stay any longer.
Since it was gettingte and he was running low on money, he bravely decided to return to the abandoned houses. He found a rtively intact house, hid in it, and used a wooden stick to act as a barricade on the door.
Laying down on the musty bed, his eyelids grew more and more heavy, and gradually, they closed involuntarily. Just as he was about to fall asleep…
The windows to the house swung open, and a pale face appeared by the window.
It was the same old man from earlier.
<em>He’sing to get me!</em>
The old man crept through the window, and snuck right up to the bed. He leaned down and stared right into his very soul – Aniu immediately closed his eyes, feeling that his heart was almost about to jump out of his throat.
At this moment, he could hear the old man cursing in a dialect, “Sonnie, ‘yer a human?! You almost scared the shit out of this ol’ man!”
Aniu was stunned for a moment, opening his eyes as he got up, “Mister, you’re human?”
The old man was visibly frightened as he took a few steps back, holding the hoe tightly in front of his chest, “Son, the hell would I be if I’m not human?”
“Well, I thought that you were a…”
“Ghost?”
Aniu didn’t respond. He simply stared at the old man in fear.
The two of them were in a staring contest, and the old man spoke, “Whatever. ‘Yer already here, and you can’t leave now that it’ste. I’m warning ‘ya – no matter what you hear outside… Stay. In. Side. If you don’t leave the house, you won’t run into… ya-know-what.”
After speaking, the old man turned to leave, but Aniu decided to pry more, “Mister? Why are you the only one here? Aren’t the houses here good enough to live in?”
The old man simply ignored him and cursed, “Son of a bitch!” as he kicked away the stick holding up the door, leaving.
…
“Ah, Aniu ended up ignoring his advice and left the house, didn’t he?” Jiangli interjected, sipping on her tea.
“Damn. How did you know?”
“Why wouldn’t I? The Night Div-”
“The Night What?” Yibei’s eyebrows moved, as if to say to her, “Yeah! Say it! If you say it, I’m the winner of this little game between us!”
Her eyebrows looked incredibly mean, and it made Jiangli want to punch her once on each eyebrow.
“…the Knight named Diff who mentored me said that among the various urban legends that he was exposed to, most of the victims that sumb to the urban legends were attacked because of their curiosity.”
<em>In fact, a person without any psychic potential will most likely not run into any urban legends over their entire lifetime. As long as they don’t stick their noses where they don’t belong, or if they aren’t unlucky.</em>
“How interesting!” the Witch nodded. She wasn’t sure if she was talking about how Jiangli was able to twist her words in such a short amount of time, or her knowledge of urban legends.
“Well, you’re right,” the Witch continued. “He did end up leaving the house. At midnight, he heard the percussions of gongs and drums, the plucking of a harp, somebody singing, and childrenughing. At the time, the only entertainment he had was watching salesmen brag about their products, so how could he resist the temptation of song and opera?”
“He went into the woods, following the source of the music,” she continued. “And she saw a stage in the middle of where the old man set up the tombstone – as soon as he stepped in, the children’sughter and the music abruptly stopped. On the dark stage, an actor stood in their costume, with their back to the stage, singing without any music apanying them. He wanted to run away, but the actor turned their back to him and floated over – he stopped running out of fear, and the actor stopped too…”
“Pause. I get it – there are urban legends spanning across generations,” Jiangli interrupted. “Then, what happened? Why haven’t there been any sightings of urban legends among so many people?”
“That’s a story for another time,” Yibei said, grabbing the remote control on the coffee table and pping it down. “Thank you for listening to today’s episode! We’ll be seeing you on the next one!”
“…”
“Come on, it’s gettingte. Why don’t you go to bed?”
“…”
She sat motionless on the sofa, folding her hands over her chest as she stared straight at the Witch. She looked as if she is an unhappy child who wasn’t satisfied with story-time before bed.
“…fine,” the Witch scratched the back of her head. “To put it simply, somebodyter sealed the urban legends away, and they would be forgotten over time, correct? However, when they were constructing the Happy Community, they identally dug the seal out, but there’s a whole other story to that, and I heard it from the old man who was driving the excavator. Care to listen?”
Seeing the gleam in her eyes, looking as if she was ready to yap on, Jiangli stood up and said coldly, “No,” before turning around and walking towards the bedroom.
<em>However, she’s unexpectedly proficient at doing these sorts of things, </em>she cursed inwardly.
“Hey! Come on… don’t sleep just yet! I have a lot more to say!”
Although Yibei wasn’t yapping about in garbage this time, she felt unsatisfied that her story was abruptly cut short.
She chased her superior to the door of the bedroom, only to see her sitting on the side of the bed with a sweet ‘smile.’ Patting the bed, she said, “What? You want to sleep together?”
“…?!”
<strong>TRANSLATOR NOTES:</strong>
EDIT: Thank you Imp and Catventurer4 for the tips! Adjusted the TL to reflect the changes.
Not very happy with the trantion on the first-half :v lots of things I wasn’t sure of (e.g., the Underground Club [地下人间会]? I’ve never seen this get mentioned before + the part of Tang Yao being a messenger [打听]). If there are any mistakes, I’ll fix them immediately, but OMG! That cliffhanger, and there’s only one bed… ??
As always, if you’d like to support the trantion, you can do so by clicking the button below! ^.^ Have a great weekend!