Chapter Ninety-Three: An Unexpected Encounter

Elder Zhang, pulled along by Wang Jia, rode two shared bicycles to Riverside Park, three stops beyond their neighborhood, with Guai Guai seated in the front basket.

"What was the point of coming so far..." Elder Zhang muttered under his breath.

Guai Guai, however, was in high spirits. It was its first visit to Riverside Park. In the past, when Elder Zhang and Wang Jia took their leisurely evening walks with the dog, they had only ever stayed near the neighborhood, so Guai Guai's range of activity had always been very limited.

It sniffed here and there, then there, its tongue lolling out from time to time, wagging its tail at Elder Zhang and Wang Jia to show how thrilled it was.

"Look how happy Guai Guai is!" Wang Jia said with a laugh, then chided Elder Zhang for being ungrateful. "What's with that sour face? If I hadn't seen that your mind was miles away, do you think I'd have dragged you out here for a walk? And you still won't tell me what's really going on."

"I told you, didn't I?" Elder Zhang protested.

He had gone over everything with Wang Jia, item by item, in full.

Wang Jia snorted. "You definitely left something out. Otherwise, would you be acting like this over running into some old manager from the factory?"

"I told you that Fang Xi... that Fang Xi is strange." Elder Zhang's expression darkened.

"So what if someone is naturally young-looking? Otherwise, just like Xiao Cheng's nephew, the one you saw might not have been him at all, but his son or grandson." Wang Jia dismissed it.

Elder Zhang slowly shook his head.

He could not describe the fear Fang Xi had stirred in him. It was the kind of instinctive dread even he found unfamiliar.

Wang Jia fell silent, leaving Elder Zhang to one side while she played with Guai Guai, who was hopping around excitedly.

Riverside Park was lively at night, and because it covered a large area, it was divided into different activity zones. In the well-lit little square under the streetlamps, people were dancing ballroom-style, a loudspeaker playing music so that the singing could be heard from far away, yet it did not disturb the clusters of people chatting nearby. It was nothing like the five or six square-dance teams gathered at the larger plaza on the other side of the park, where the blasting music was enough to make your ears ache.

By the time Elder Zhang and his wife reached that area, Guai Guai was barking along with the singing too.

Soon it spotted its own kind. Not the familiar dogs from the neighborhood, but strange big dogs and little dogs. Guai Guai was clearly a social butterfly among dogs, tugging at the leash and wanting to go join the fun.

Elder Zhang was dragged along. Wang Jia followed too, and before long she was chatting with the other dog owners.

Naturally, all of them lived in nearby housing compounds, and all were middle-aged or elderly people much like Elder Zhang and Wang Jia, with plenty to talk about.

Guai Guai made new friends, and so did Elder Zhang and Wang Jia. Once they started chatting, everything else was temporarily pushed to the back of their minds.

At the small square nearby, one old song after another drifted out, classic tunes from the past.

During a pause in conversation, Wang Jia heard the music and said, "That's 'Years.'" She named the song and even hummed along for a line.

"Can you dance, Sister Wang? Go dance a song with your husband," one of the new friends called out.

Wang Jia was tempted.

She was a square-dance enthusiast now, but when she was young she had also been a regular at discotheques. Back then, she often went dancing and dating with Elder Zhang. They had, however, caught the tail end of the discotheque era; not long afterward, the discos all shut down one after another. By the time bar dancing made a comeback, the two of them were already too old to keep up.

The little square here was doing an informal kind of ballroom dance, and the exercise suited them perfectly.

The new friend helped hold Guai Guai, and Wang Jia dragged the reluctant Elder Zhang onto the tiled floor of the square.

The two of them lowered their heads awkwardly, watching each other's feet, then stealing glances at the steps of the people beside them as they learned to dance the slow four-beat.

Wang Jia had the foundation of dancing square routines every day, so she picked it up quickly and then turned to teach Elder Zhang.

Elder Zhang stepped through the motions a little clumsily, and Wang Jia laughed as she teased him. "You're still dancing all over the place, just like when we were dating."

"What do you mean, all over the place? I'm just half a beat slow," Elder Zhang shot back automatically, just as he used to do in the discotheque years ago.

They looked at each other and laughed.

Guai Guai tried to join in, but someone was holding the leash, and it whined with a touch of grievance.

After one song ended, then another, Elder Zhang and Wang Jia finally returned.

"Sister Wang dances beautifully. You can tell she has real practice," the new friend said, handing the leash back to Elder Zhang. "Guai Guai was getting anxious watching you dance over there."

"Guai Guai wants to dance too?" Wang Jia stroked the dog's head.

Guai Guai spun in a circle, then sprang up and hooked its paws around Wang Jia's waist.

The people around them burst into laughter.

Wang Jia actually led Guai Guai around the square in circles, looking utterly delighted.

Elder Zhang stood to one side, smiling as he watched them fool around, feeling considerably lighter.

The new friend said enviously, "I can't dance. My old man can't either, so we can only stand by and watch other people dance."

"Then let Sister Wang teach you later," Elder Zhang said.

The new friend covered her mouth and laughed.

The other dog owners nearby immediately agreed too, joining in for the fun and lining up to ask Wang Jia to be their teacher.

After Wang Jia had been dancing for a while, Guai Guai suddenly began to struggle. She let go of both of its paws, hurried back over, and said, "It needs the toilet."

The new friend pointed the way and explained, "People are dancing both this way and over there. Go a little farther that way. There's also a trash can beyond there. My old man just took Huahua over that way, and he still hasn't come back. He may have gone to the pavilion to watch people play chess."

Elder Zhang took the leash and stopped Wang Jia. "You go on and teach them to dance."

Wang Jia gave him a sideways glance. "You want to go watch people play chess, don't you?" Without waiting for Elder Zhang to answer, she turned to the new friend and agreed brightly, "Forget these old men. Let's go dance."

Old husband and old wife, each could see through the other's mind with remarkable accuracy.

After Elder Zhang took Guai Guai to the toilet and tossed the waste away, he began thinking about where to find that chess pavilion.

He stretched his neck and looked around, spotting two pavilion roofs in the distance. But the pavilions were surrounded by green trees, and though there was a faint glow visible, he could not hear any sound, so he had no idea whether anyone was actually playing chess inside.

Holding Guai Guai, Elder Zhang slowly walked on. After a stretch of concrete road, he glanced again toward the pavilion roofs and then turned onto a small flagstone path.

The streetlamps beside the stone path were unlike the bright lamps on the park's main road. These were elegant mushroom-shaped lights that illuminated only the ground beneath them. Overhead, green trees shaded the way, making the entire path exceptionally quiet.

As he walked, a creeping unease began to rise in Elder Zhang's heart.

He was not a coward. It was only that, after being startled by Fang Xi, he now found himself on an unfamiliar path at night, with nothing around him but the wind and the chirping of insects. A faint melody drifted from far away, and there was always the sense of leaving the human world and stepping into something otherworldly.

Guai Guai was far bolder, still sniffing here and there, endlessly fascinated by everything new.

Rustle, rustle!

Something suddenly stirred in the grass beside the path.

Elder Zhang jumped.

Guai Guai looked up and gave a bark.

As if in answer, a cat's meow sounded from the dark grass.

Elder Zhang let out a breath.

"Move along, move along," he said, pulling Guai Guai onward.

The flagstone path sloped uphill, and at the top stood an old-fashioned pavilion.

Yet inside the pavilion there was only a dim yellow lamp, with no people in sight.

This was clearly not where the park's chess players gathered.

Elder Zhang felt rather disappointed.

He stood in the pavilion and looked out toward the other areas.

From this higher ground, he could make out several heads inside the other pavilion he had seen earlier.

"Oh, it's over there," Elder Zhang said, pointing it out to Guai Guai.

Guai Guai was only as high as Elder Zhang's knee, and could only stare up at him in confusion.

"Come on, let's go down."

His earlier fear had receded, replaced by the old addiction of a chess enthusiast.

The pavilion had paths branching in all directions. Elder Zhang chose one and took another stone path, estimating that in about ten minutes he should reach the unfamiliar chess players. He did not expect the narrow trail to wind and twist instead of running straight in one direction.

Partway through, Elder Zhang went dumb with confusion. Looking back, the thick trees had swallowed even the pavilion roof from sight. Turning forward again, the stone path was still there, and the mushroom lamps still lit the ground near his feet, but the fallen leaves and wild weeds had noticeably increased, and the trees ahead leaned this way and that, looking as though no one had cared for them in a very long time.

He had come this far already, so he could only keep going.

Elder Zhang felt somewhat vexed.

The singing from the little square had grown more and more distant.

By the time Elder Zhang emerged from this narrow path and stepped back onto the concrete road, he could no longer hear the music at all.

The surroundings remained silent.

Elder Zhang had walked himself into complete patience, and even Guai Guai had become unusually quiet.

The streetlamps were sparse here, one end lighting the riverbank, the other illuminating an iron fence at the dead end of the road. Beyond the fence lay a patch of open ground enclosed by crumbling walls, overgrown with weeds that spread all the way up to the fence. In the open ground stood only two locked transformer boxes, silent and still. Farther away, in the corner where the wall met the ground, lay a dark mass that looked like a rubbish heap or perhaps a thicket of wildly overgrown weeds.

Elder Zhang had not expected to wander all the way to the park's edge, and although the place seemed desolate, there were strange tire marks on the ground, and at the end of the road by the iron fence sat tables and benches bound together with chains. They were filthy, but did not look unused.

Elder Zhang looked up and saw the deep blue night sky and, beneath it, vast stretches of empty factory buildings.

After thinking for a moment, he connected the place with the old textile mills along the river.

Only the previous month, the news had been saying that the textile factories here were to be converted into a museum, an art gallery, or something of the sort.

Come to think of it, when he had first started working, there had already been talk of redevelopment here. The plans had been drawn and redrawn; and only when his parents were still alive did they finally manage to create Riverside Park, while the reconstruction of the other sections never seemed to move forward. Some said the price could not be agreed upon, some said the mayor had pocketed the money, and some, even more fantastically, claimed that when construction began, they had unearthed the veins of a dragon beneath the foundations, so the whole project had to be sealed away...

"This place is so beautiful, and yet..." Elder Zhang murmured, leading Guai Guai to the riverbank.

He looked at the architectural vista across the river, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then, almost absentmindedly, he lowered his gaze and saw the river water beneath his feet.

The water rushed below with a steady, rhythmic sound. Light struck the surface but could not reach the bottom. The water shimmered, and there was also a blurred outline of Elder Zhang's own head. That half-formed human shape trembled with the rise and fall of the tide, so distorted that it was barely recognizable as a person.

Elder Zhang started violently. He stood rigidly and stared for a long time. Only after he recognized the eerie shadow as his own reflection did he finally relax.

He raised a hand to wipe away the sweat beading on his forehead and gave a self-mocking smile. "Getting old really does mean not being able to take a scare."

Saying this to himself, he did not look away.

He kept staring at the surface of the water for quite a while, and then suddenly he remembered the tourist trip he had taken to Dragon-Ascending Mountain.

Aside from unexpectedly running into the odd Fang Xi there, standing atop Dragon-Ascending Mountain and gazing out over the sea of clouds, then looking down into the bottomless valley below, had also left Elder Zhang deeply shaken.

Just like this moment.

To look far away was to see beauty; to lower one's head was to have fear suddenly rise up.

It was an instinctive terror.

The fear humans are born with, the fear of danger and of death.

Elder Zhang shivered.

He suddenly understood why Fang Xi had frightened him so deeply.

A warm sensation touched Elder Zhang's calf.

He turned his head and saw Guai Guai trembling, huddled against his feet.

Something dawned on Elder Zhang. His body stiffened, and he slowly raised his head.

Two figures had appeared in the abandoned open ground beside him.

There was no light there, but Elder Zhang's eyesight was excellent, and by the moonlight tonight he could still make out the two of them.

A man and a woman. The man was Fang Xi, while the woman was a stranger Elder Zhang had never seen before.

All at once, the woman's hair flew upward, her long locks writhing like Medusa's serpents in myth, lunging straight toward Fang Xi!

Elder Zhang was horrified, yet his legs suddenly found strength, and he dragged Guai Guai into a run.

Guai Guai trembled so badly with fear that it took a little while before it understood and began to run in a stumbling panic.

Once Guai Guai started, it shot ahead of Elder Zhang.

By contrast, Elder Zhang only then realized his legs had gone weak, nearly causing him to fall.

He reached out and grabbed the riverbank railing, and all at once his arm jolted numb from the impact.

Only afterward did a deafening crash reach his ears, and Elder Zhang's mind finally caught up.

Terrified, he turned to look, and there, right behind him, he saw the two figures, who had already leaped over the park's iron fence and appeared on this riverside promenade.

The monster in the trench coat was hanging from the railing, which had buckled beneath it and pressed into its chest and abdomen. Its limbs were long and slender, each one seven or eight meters in length. The two arms on its upper body ended in forks, each sprouting five black spikes.

Under the lamplight, it straightened up and lifted its face, revealing a warped and twisted countenance. Its features no longer carried Fang Xi's handsome appearance; they looked like a jumbled puzzle stretched by image-editing software, every part as long and narrow as its limbs.

When it looked up, the monster shook its head, and the disordered features somehow fell back into place, gradually taking on Fang Xi's face once more.

Across from it stood that woman. Her long hair had been severed, and blood dripped steadily from the cut ends, pooling on the ground and staining her entire body red. She still retained a roughly human shape, but her skin had turned a blue-black with a purple cast, reminding Elder Zhang of that animated film he had watched with his granddaughter during the New Year holiday, where the magic cauldron stirred by the little witch held exactly that eerie color.

The two faced each other down, neither paying Elder Zhang any mind.

Elder Zhang steadied himself with difficulty, tightened his grip on the dog leash, and began backing away inch by inch.

So nervous was he that he dared not breathe. At his feet, Guai Guai tucked its tail and lowered its head, copying his movements with its four little paws.

The night wind blew, and "Fang Xi" and the woman seemed to receive some signal. They moved at the same time!

Elder Zhang immediately lost track of everything in the blur. He heard only a sudden explosive crash as one of the roadside lamps shattered, scattering fragments all over the ground and plunging that stretch of promenade into darkness.

Bang!

Another impact.

Elder Zhang subconsciously looked toward the sound and saw a depression in the ground, the concrete caved in as if crushed by a heavy truck, with dense cracks spreading outward.

Screech--

The railing by the riverbank flashed with sparks, split cleanly in two, and then twisted into a knot. Someone yanked that twisted section free and hurled it away with a whoosh. When Elder Zhang looked in that direction, trees in the small grove he had come through were slowly toppling.

All Elder Zhang could see were wild black shadows in motion. Now and then a sound erupted here, a disturbance flashed there, and yet he could no longer make out the forms of Fang Xi or the woman.

Guai Guai suddenly whined and yanked hard on the leash.

Elder Zhang came back to himself, and strength returned to his legs as well.

He hurriedly ran after Guai Guai.

The fighting behind them gradually receded, while the music ahead grew louder and louder.

Reassuring human voices once more filled Elder Zhang's ears.

He could see the crowd at the little square in the distance.

He did not spot Wang Jia, but his heart still loosened at once, and the next moment his foot caught on itself and he pitched heavily to the ground.

Woof, woof, woof, woof!

Sweat poured from Elder Zhang's whole body. He could not even get back up, and amid Guai Guai's frantic barking, he lost consciousness.