Chapter 269 - Demolition (2/2)
Once we were ready, we embarked on our journey to Linnancangzhen Town. It turned out to be a rough and bumpy ride. A coal mining company once operated in the area and the terrain was left with many craters and crevices, where once we found my Forest Sprite from.
We passed through the sprawl of sinkholes, troughs, and ponds, pushing towards West until we finally reached the settlement situated at the further outskirts of Linnancangzhen, where there was this school just beside. Lin Feng yelled from the wheel, “Ah! Look, that’s my old school!” I stuck my head through the space between the car seats to look front, saying, “Wow, Lin Feng? That’s where you finished high school?” Lin Feng nodded tacitly before he lamented with melancholy, “To think that so many years have passed… I used to love…”
But he did not finish his sentence. Instead, his voice turned into a song. Harlem Yu’s Qing Fei De Yi that he had always loved so much. The song first came out when Lin Feng suffered his break-up and he could only be singing this song now because the memories of that former heartthrob of his weighed on his mind once more. It was in this school where they first met, although he could never say it out loud. Not with Yuanyuan sitting just beside him.
Chongxi and I sniggered quietly behind. Yuanyuan jabbed a finger at a little bridge that loomed just up ahead, saying, “Turn left here.” Lin Feng followed her instructions and maneuvered the vehicle. Then Yuanyuan said again, “Go straight from here. Yep, there should be a junction just in front…”
Before she even said it, I saw our destination. A humble settlement comprised of tenements and cottages, all fresh or old, with some even archaic and medieval which had large enclosed compounds. The alleyways which weaved through the little village were all small and narrow that some were too small for our car to pass through.
Yuanyuan raised a finger, pointing down on a remarkably cramped pathway between some buildings that stretched long and out of sight. “That’s the way,” she said, “Go in through there!” “But it’s too small!” Lin Feng grumbled saying, “It’s not even large enough for three persons walking together! The car will never make it through.” “Let’s walk in then!” Yuanyuan said, opening the door and she got down first. She pointed the way for Xiao Yu’s benefit, whose car stopped right behind ours and down came Chongxi and Big Sister.
We came out of the alley only to find that there were actually two other ways that we could have used to reach our destination. But these alternative routes had been clogged up by the machinery of the building team in charge of the demolition. We could be stuck without any way to even reverse our way out if we had come through either one of them.
The people of the team were huddled around one of the older residences with an earthen-wall enclosed compound that looked oddly queer with only a little hut in the middle of the grounds. Nevertheless, the view of the surroundings looked no less strange to us; the residence remained the only one still standing with the rest of its kind fully bulldozed to the ground.
We wade through the crowd of the people of the building team and found an old man at the little hut, gazing morosely at the monstrosity that was the track-hoe just outside his wall and the building team who were jeering at him.
Lin Feng looked around. Then he walked to a middle-aged laborer and asked, “What’s going on here, old man?” The man studied us all and asked dourly, “What are you guys doing here?” His tone was hard and unfriendly as if we were a bunch of good-for-nothings here to cause trouble. Lin Feng smiled and replied, “We’re plainclothes officers.” That answer made the older man snapped to attention and he smiled—this time looking more friendly—and said, “Ah, you’re the police.” And Lin Feng nodded.
The foreman would never have believed me if I was the one to announce ourselves as officers of the law. But Lin Feng was a wholly different matter. He once served in the army and he still retained that stern face and poise that convinced the middle-aged foreman well. “Well, it’s all because of this house, sir,” he explained, saying, “The family of this house has been paid their compensation and the old man’s children have given us their green light. Yet none of us seem to be able to do anything. We can’t even drive our excavator into the compound! The place looks like it’s been cursed, and a stranger told us that this house is old, so it must be haunted. Look, there’s the priest we found. He’s erecting an altar for a ritual!” He hugged himself, nudging with his chin at the direction of the house.
Lin Feng and I stood on our toes and we looked inside. There was another cluster of people, standing around a man dressed in the garb of a Taoist priest who was carrying a three-foot-long sword as he adjusted the items on the altar.
He took up a luopan which was lying on the table when he was satisfied, pointing his sword at it as he muttered some incantations. With my Spirit Sight I observed and saw a whiff of aura, pure and divine, bunching around the luopan as it glittered with flashes of gold. This Taoist priest… He’s certainly not a fake, that’s for sure!
Chongxi realized my expression shifting and asked hurriedly, “What’s wrong?” “That Taoist priest… him with the luopan… He’s not a fake… He has powers too.” “God!” Chongxi yelped with fear, “Get in there and stop him! We cannot let him hurt them!”
“Patience,” I waved him off and said, “Let’s look a little bit more.”