Chapter 152

Just before dawn, Tan Wenbin woke up. He was planning to go to the bathroom to relieve himself, then come back and doze a little longer.

The moment he opened his eyes, he saw Little Yuanhou sitting at the desk. On the wall hung a freshly finished painting. The figure in it held a candle, eerie and sinister.

Tan Wenbin immediately sat up and silently walked over behind Little Yuanhou.

He was startled. The river water was coming again.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Notify everyone else. Full alert.”

“Got it.”

Tan Wenbin threw on his clothes and left his dorm room, heading to A-You’s door.

At this hour, everyone else in the dorm was still asleep. Knocking directly would disturb the others.

Tan Wenbin raised a hand and patted his own left shoulder.

A Resentful infant lifted its head, ghostly aura spreading outward.

He knew very well that no matter how deeply A-You had been sleeping before, he would definitely open those vertical pupils right now: evil presence!

Sure enough, the dorm door quickly opened. Lin Shuyou rubbed his eyes and looked at Tan Wenbin. “Brother Binbin?”

“Notify Runsheng and Mengmeng. Full alert.”

Lin Shuyou’s expression immediately turned serious. “Understood.”

Tan Wenbin then went straight to the bathroom to relieve himself.

He had A-You pass along the message not because he was being lazy. It was because he knew that A-You, as the newest member of the team, really liked and enjoyed this sense of participation.

Even a simple errand was something he gladly embraced. It helped deepen that stamped-in sense of “I’m part of the team.”

Back when Tan Wenbin had first joined up, he had gone through the same phase himself. If he didn’t have something to do, he felt itchy all over.

Back in the dorm room, Li Zhuiyuan kept staring at the painting he had made.

Right now, he needed to sort out two questions.

The first question was: had the fifth wave arrived?

No. It should not have.

There was no way it could be this fast.

He had resolved the fourth wave ahead of schedule. What should come next was a fairly long period of calm, or rather, recovery.

Even if the river water wanted to change tactics against him, it would never stoop to relying on sheer quantity and relentless speed, pressing so hard that he had no room to breathe. That did not fit the aesthetic of the one setting the questions.

Put another way, if it really were that crude, Li Zhuiyuan would be glad to see it.

So this should not be his fifth wave. It was not being driven by the river water.

The second question was: what was the purpose?

At dinner that afternoon, the golden lion had opened its eyes at him.

That night, the lion spirit entered his dream and, even at the cost of burning itself away, passed him a message.

Was it warning him, or asking him for help?

This sort of thing had happened before. The giant fish of the second wave and the corpse-driving Daoist of the fourth wave had both, in effect, been asking him for help.

But that had been during river walk. He had no choice but to face it, and when the other side sought his help, it also meant he could gain certain benefits and assistance from it.

So Li Zhuiyuan believed the lion spirit was warning him.

It was not asking for help. They were not close enough for that, and the other side had not offered him enough benefit for him to go sticking his nose into its business.

Of course, even a warning carried its own ulterior motive. It was just that the request came after the fact.

Once he confirmed the warning was real, dealt with the problem, and acknowledged the lion spirit’s good intentions, he would naturally think of repaying the favor.

After sorting all this out, when Li Zhuiyuan looked again at the figure in the painting, it became much clearer.

So what, are you coming to find me?

Offering soup?

What, do you think you’re Meng Po?

Tan Wenbin came back.

Li Zhuiyuan stood up. “Brother Binbin, take the painting down. We’re holding a meeting.”

“Right away.”

The shop basement had excellent privacy, making it a good place for meetings.

Its one drawback was how dim it was. Even with a light bulb, the yellowish glow only made it feel more gloomy. Still, that suited the mood of the meeting just fine.

“Full alert” was a term from the Code of Conduct for River Walkers.

Once the order went out, every member of the team immediately cut off all unnecessary social contact, stayed within close range of one another, and stopped acting alone.

These were hard-earned lessons everyone agreed on.

Only before, this state had always been used in response to river walk. They entered it only after sensing the spray of the waves against their noses.

“This time, I don’t think it’s a wave.”

Li Zhuiyuan’s voice echoed through Runsheng’s room.

Yin Meng’s room was not suitable for use as a meeting room, because people needed to smoke.

Tan Wenbin sat there and lit a cigarette.

Lin Shuyou reached over, trying to copy him and light one too, but Tan Wenbin slapped the back of his hand and glared at him: Don’t pick up bad habits.

In truth, Li Zhuiyuan knew there was another reason Tan Wenbin could not quit smoking. As wave after wave passed, the two Resentful Infants on his shoulders had gained a certain measure of merit and revived further. The original seal was no longer fully able to block their influence on the host.

Tan Wenbin was constantly suffering from agitation and restlessness. Especially when thinking, his emotions would clearly grow irritable and unstable. But he had always been holding it in and had never said anything.

Runsheng, meanwhile, lit his “cigar.”

He was not good at thinking through major situations as a whole, but fortunately the team did not need his brain for that.

Even so, during meetings, he still hoped to understand as much as possible.

The room was not only dim now, but filled with drifting smoke as well.

If someone happened to pass by outside and leaned down to look in through the half-window, they would probably think they were seeing a bunch of ghostly shadows holding a meeting.

Xiaohei kept sleeping soundly, its dog nose twitching now and then. It inhaled the fragrant smoke Runsheng exhaled and looked utterly content.

Usually, when Runsheng burned incense in the room, Xiaohei would join in and absorb some too, like a living ventilation fan.

Xiaohei sneezed from time to time. Today, the smoke tasted impure.

Yin Meng used a rope to hang up the painting. There was a handle attached in the middle so the painting could slowly rotate in front of everyone.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “This is not river walk. The lion spirit gave a warning. I suspect someone is plotting against us.”

Tan Wenbin said, “Who could it be? We’ve always treated people well. We really don’t have any enemies.”

That was the benefit of settling scores by going straight for the whole household register.

When you thought about your enemies, the process of elimination was easy, because almost all of them had already been eliminated.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “It may not be aimed specifically at me or the team. The real target may be the Qin Clan and the Liu Clan. Uncle Qin’s river walk failure happened because outsiders plotted against him.”

Runsheng drew hard on his incense. His master’s death was a grudge he had to avenge.

Tan Wenbin pressed his lips together and asked, “Should we report this to the old lady?”

Any force bold enough to make a move against the Qin Clan and Liu Clan during river walk was bound to be extraordinary. Ordinary sects or families would never dare.

And this time, it was not tied to river walk and not stained by river walk karma. The old lady’s side could intervene.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “The Qin Clan and Liu Clan are both thinly staffed now, but if the old lady really turned ruthless and brought Uncle Qin and Aunt Liu with her, the outside world would still be wary.

“It’s true Uncle Qin failed at river walk because someone plotted against him, but the old lady could probably only guess which few families might have done it. She still would not be able to pinpoint the real culprit.

“That should be a tacit understanding and hidden rule in the competition among Dragon King clans.

“I believe that since the other side dared to make a move, they would definitely have cleaned up every detail and left no trace.

“There is no need to tell the old lady right now.”

As Li Zhuiyuan said this, a flicker of pain appeared on his face.

Fortunately, the light was dim, the room smoky, and he lowered his head in time, so no one noticed.

From the standpoint of pure reason, telling the old lady immediately was the correct move.

Back then, she had endured Uncle Qin’s matter and swallowed the loss in silence. But now she was older, and she valued him even more than she had valued Uncle Qin back then. There was no way she would choose restraint again.

So if she were told, the old lady would be left with only one option: bring Uncle Qin and Aunt Liu to the forces most likely responsible and go provoke them in person, prepared to fight to the death.

Not knowing exactly which family had done it did not matter. She could pick one unlucky target at random. The old lady, Uncle Qin, and Aunt Liu would sacrifice at least one person to tear a bloody chunk out of that family.

By doing this, they would make the others fearful and force that probing hand to withdraw.

For the already-collapsing Qin-Liu Dragon King house, this was the only solution.

The killing intent the old lady had shown during the day, while listening to him and Ah Li play music, was in fact an expression of exactly this mindset. She was already preparing to sacrifice herself.

For Li Zhuiyuan, suppressing this “correct” course of action and choosing emotion instead was painful.

In his mind flashed Li Lan’s expression while washing her hands, the look of someone disgusted by “stupid thinking.”

To ease his own inner torment, Li Zhuiyuan began searching for a new line of logic to make things hold together.

That was this: if the old lady did act that way, it might trigger another possibility. Those forces would once again realize just how unusual this generation of river walkers from the Qin and Liu families was, and that would make them even less willing to let them grow strong enough to restore their house.

In that case, that probing hand might not retreat at all. Instead, many more hands might reach toward him together.

And it could not be ruled out that forces one tier below the Dragon King clans might also want to muddy the waters this way, stir up conflict, and make the Dragon King clans wear each other down first, creating space and opportunity for themselves.

If this had been the Qin Clan or Liu Clan of the past, they would have had many more ways to deal with such a matter. They might not even have needed to fight. In their circle, a simple exchange of word and mutual notice would have been enough to settle it.

But now, the old lady had far too few cards left in her hand. That made the order in which she would play them very easy to predict.

Hah...

Li Zhuiyuan let out a breath. He felt better.

Lin Shuyou asked curiously, “Can people really just kill like that?”

Tan Wenbin explained, “Normally, no. River walk means acting on Heaven’s behalf. If you want to kill a river walker, either there has to be direct karma behind it so the act can be justified, or you have to pay a corresponding price for it.

“Take Zhao Yi that day. As long as he kept shouting about defending the righteous path, we had no way to remove that competitor in advance.”

Lin Shuyou said, “Then would they really be willing to pay a huge price just to get rid of us?”

Tan Wenbin pointed at the painting. “If they were willing, why not just send a few real experts directly? Why go through all this weird nonsense instead?”

The moment he heard that, Li Zhuiyuan suddenly looked up, his eyes sharpening.

“Everyone, I suspect my deduction was wrong from the very beginning.”

Everyone present froze for a moment. Even a bit of ash fell from the “cigar” in Runsheng’s hand.

They had long grown used to following Little Yuan’s extraordinary mind, no matter what happened, staying composed and seeing ahead. This was the first time, right at the start of an incident, that Little Yuan had denied his own conclusion first.

“That hand is far smarter than we imagined.

“I don’t know whether there is another Dragon King clan behind it, but if it dares to reach out, that means it has the confidence to believe it is at least not inferior to the current Qin Clan and Liu Clan.

“This is the first time I’ve truly felt the depth of a Dragon King clan’s foundations.”

A smile appeared at the corner of Li Zhuiyuan’s mouth.

The level of the other side’s planning was extremely high. An opponent like this did not make the boy afraid. Instead, it stirred excitement in him.

The effect was no less than controlling a Dead Sinker.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Paper and pen.”

Runsheng immediately took out paper and pen from the hiking pack by the bed and placed them in front of the boy.

Li Zhuiyuan picked up the pen and casually drew four waves on the paper.

“As A-You just asked, of course the other side is unwilling to pay the price.

“That hand is not only unwilling to pay the cost of killing river walkers for no reason, it is also unwilling to face the Qin Clan and Liu Clan’s extreme retaliation.

“It is laying out a trap.

“A trap so terrifying that after the fact, every other river walker would feel fear just looking at it.

“That lion spirit was never just giving a warning. It is part of the setup.

“The reason I got it wrong from the start is... our understanding goes deeper than that of normal river walkers.

“That point was made very clear in the previous wave, when our team was compared with Xiong Shan’s team.”

Tan Wenbin added, “River walkers...”

He understood.

But for the sake of the three whose eyes were still perfectly clear, he circled the key point.

Mostly, it was also to save Little Yuanhou the trouble of explaining further.

By saying “river walkers,” Little Yuanhou meant that Xiong Shan was not actually a river walker, though he was rich in experience and seniority. So what Little Yuanhou meant here was that, because of the Code of Conduct for River Walkers, their team was far beyond others of the same level.

That was also laying the groundwork for what came next.

Li Zhuiyuan continued, “If we lower our understanding and reset ourselves back to the level of ordinary river walkers, you’ll immediately see that this whole matter looks completely different.

“First, the lion spirit gives a warning, and for me that produces this painting.

“What should our first reaction be?”

Lin Shuyou blurted out, “A new wave. This is a clue!”

Li Zhuiyuan looked at Lin Shuyou and nodded. “Correct. Your reward is to copy the Code of Conduct for River Walkers and The Zhuiyuan Secret Scroll ten times each.”

Lin Shuyou said, “Uh...”

He really wanted to ask why getting the answer right still meant punishment by copying.

Li Zhuiyuan added, “Because you’re the least influenced by those two books.”

Lin Shuyou lowered his head.

He had been told to reduce his understanding and try putting himself in that mindset, and yet he had slipped into it instantly. Which meant his understanding had already been at that level.

Tan Wenbin, Runsheng, and Yin Meng each nodded a moment later. They really had been trying to switch their thinking, but it was difficult. At the same time, there was one thing they simply could not ignore: the connection to the next wave was too fast.

Li Zhuiyuan went on, “A-You’s performance was merged at the last minute. On our side, everything had followed normal procedure. Normally, there should not have been two programs of the same type colliding, so the problem should have come from the other side.

“The compromise was to combine what had originally been two separate acts into one. Two lions unfamiliar with each other going on stage together were bound to compete.

“So what unfolded for us yesterday afternoon was actually the normal chain of events.

“The lion spirit gave a warning and brought with it a sign of a new river walk wave. That creates a causal line we can trace backward. We would follow it upstream, go find the Zhou brothers again, find the event organizers, find the relevant staff at the other school, and keep tracking that line back.

“Not only that, I suspect that over the next few days, a second line and a third line will also appear, touching our surroundings and forming a combined force.

“And that is where this hand is truly clever.”

Tan Wenbin immediately blurted out, “Holy shit, it’s simulating river walk on us!”

Yin Meng picked it up at once. “If we fall during river walk, then even the old lady’s side would have no choice but to accept it. The real mastermind could avoid all suspicion and remain safe.”

“And if,” Tan Wenbin added, “that hand guides us into seeking out this...” He reached out and patted the painting. “Then we would be the ones taking the initiative to go knock on its door. Or in other words, we’d be the ones voluntarily going out to eliminate evil and defend the righteous path. In that case, the karmic cost that hand has to bear would be very small.”

Runsheng exhaled a thick smoke ring. “It doesn’t get stained from either side.”

Tan Wenbin took a deep breath. “That’s turning murder by proxy into an art form.”

Seeing that everyone else had spoken, Lin Shuyou contributed, “It really is scary.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “There is one flaw.”

Tan Wenbin, Yin Meng, and Runsheng all said in unison, “Too fast.”

Their team had only just finished the fourth wave. The fifth should not have come so early. That was the biggest inconsistency.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “But that is exactly what makes the other side truly brilliant, and truly terrifying. That hand has even calculated our river walk frequency.”

As he spoke, Li Zhuiyuan took the pen and drew a vertical stroke downward across the fourth wave he had drawn on the page.

“Isn’t now exactly when we would normally be carrying out the fourth wave?”

Everyone stood up and looked at the line. At first they were all puzzled. Then, one by one, understanding dawned on them. Right after that came gritted teeth, sharp inhalations, and pressed lips.

They understood.

The reason this flaw had appeared was because, under Little Yuanhou’s lead, they had completed the fourth wave ahead of schedule.

That was something that hand... did not know.

So it had chosen to make its move now. Under normal circumstances, this exact point in time would have been when everyone had just finished the third wave, their calm period was nearly over, and they were starting to gather themselves and focus, ready to catch any splash from the river water.

Once the effect of that flaw was removed, that hand really had calculated the entire board.

Tan Wenbin said, “No wonder you said just now that you’d seen what real foundations look like.”

Yin Meng said, “So all we have to do next is ignore the clues that appear over the next few days, and then we can avoid running into whatever this thing in the painting is?”

Tan Wenbin said, “If that hand can guide us into finding that thing here, then why can’t it guide that thing into crashing into us instead? It’s just that if we ignore it, that hand will have to pay a slightly bigger price.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Now I’ll assign tasks.”

Tan Wenbin and Runsheng set down the cigarette and incense in their hands. Yin Meng and A-You also straightened their backs.

“Lin Shuyou.”

“Here!”

“You will make contact with the Zhou brothers, the organizers, and the relevant officials from the school that submitted the act. You are responsible for tracing the line that has already appeared and following it upstream for me.”

“Understood!” Lin Shuyou first puffed out his chest as he accepted the order. “I absolutely won’t let Little Yuanhou down!”

He was thrilled. At last he could handle something on his own.

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Just investigate step by step. Even if you hit an obstacle, that hand will feed you clues, help you clear the difficulty, and guide you onward.

“If you can’t dig it out, it’ll be more anxious than you are.”

Lin Shuyou said, “...”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “The rest of you, once it’s daylight, continue your normal routines. Make it look like you’re actively receiving the river water, so it’ll be easier for the other side to pass the next clues onto you. You can go out more.”

“Understood!”

“Understood!”

Li Zhuiyuan lifted a finger and tapped his temple.

“There is one thing to pay attention to. This time is different from before. When you get a clue, speed is not the priority. Slowness is. At every step, slow things down as much as possible.

“Any new development at any stage must be reported and shared immediately. If you are outside, then report the progress back to Lu Yi at the shop.

“Tan Wenbin, give Lu Yi a raise.”

Tan Wenbin said, “Understood.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “We already ran the experiment. Think back and review it in your minds. In the last wave, how exactly did we get to Zhangjiajie?

“From now on, I want all of you to start figuring out your own script routes.”

The boy gripped the pen and, from the vertical line he had drawn earlier, pulled out another wave.

“That hand wants to construct a fake river walk wave and lure us into it so it can kill us by proxy, doesn’t it?

“Then this time...

“we’ll bring the real river water over there and drown it!”

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