Chapter 17

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Chapter 17: Journey (Second Half)

Even when the moon had reached the middle of the sky, the excitement of the Valentine tribe in the distance remained the same, and the joy continued.

But it was a joy that some people avoided.

A petite figure walked through the stone forest. It had gotten dark, and the moon overhead couldn’t bring enough lighting. The shadows of the stone pillars made one unable to see the ground beneath them. When there came the sound of an eagle crying overhead, she lost her guard and knocked her head on a stone, groaning and singing in pain.

She was a human girl, maybe a Valentine.

The traveler jumped off the wind-eroded column and walked up to her. She retreated in fear, her back pressing tightly against the rock wall, and shouted, “Don’t capture me! Please, let me escape! Don’t tell the patriarch and the high priest!”

“Who are you?” asked the traveler.

The girl’s panic was quelled by this question and this voice. She summoned the courage to look up at the stranger. In the moonlight, the handsome traveler made her unconsciously open her mouth: “I… My name is Aya, a member of the Valentines.”

“Where are you going?” asked the traveler.

“Ant City… I want to go to the Ant City!” Aya whispered at first, but suddenly she said it out loud.

“You should go before dawn. The desert at night is very dangerous,” the traveler warned.

Was he concerned about her? Aya looked at the stranger in astonishment. He was very tall, fair-skinned—very different from the short brown Valentines—and handsome.

Aya suddenly looked back and gazed at the bonfire in the distance. She suddenly had an idea in her heart.

She stood up from the ground, dusted the dust and gravel from her skirt, and looked at the traveler with trepidation. He stood in front of her as quiet as the moonlight, as determined as a desert poplar that refused to fall. She was nervous, but she was forced by her inner anxiety.

“You… Do you want to ask me to dance? We can dance all night!” Aya got up the courage and rushed out an invitation that was implicitly out of line.

If people from the Valentine tribe were here, they would understand her. Aya was afraid that he couldn’t understand, and boldly squeezed a sentence from her throat: “I’ve grown up, I can do more intimate things than dancing, I can do it!”

When she finished speaking, she quickly bowed her head, afraid to see contempt from the traveler’s eyes. This shame, mixed with fear, made her red-eyed and so sad that she almost cried.

“I’m sorry, I’m a monk,” the traveler answered her.

Aya’s heart retreated. Even a girl like her who lived in a remote tribe knew what this meant—he would not rush to get close to a girl, and would not do anything more than the moment before entering marriage. She should apologize and run away in shame.

But the fear of the future was forcing her. Her lips trembled and she desperately begged: “We could get married, I don’t want gifts, I don’t want rings… We could get married tonight, and you wouldn’t have to visit me after tomorrow. Please, I don’t want to… I don’t want to…”

The traveler replied, “I’m sorry, I have a lover.”

Aya began to cry, shaking with tears. She was jealous of the lucky girls in the tribe who could dance with their favorite boy on this beautiful night while she was locked in her room, waiting for fate. She had escaped, but where could she escape to? She couldn’t cross the vast Sea of Tranquility desert, and could only go to the Underground Ant City—the hell on earth that frightened her. She doesn’t have the strength of a bear, the sharpness of an eagle, or the agility of a monkey. How could an ordinary human girl survive there?

Everywhere was a dead end, and there was no glimmer of hope. She finally despaired, wiped her tears, and turned to walk towards the village. She had escaped on impulse, but now that she thought about it, there was nowhere to go. Why shouldn’t she go back and accept her own destiny?

But the traveler stopped her: “Do you have some difficulties? Do you need my help?”

Aya stopped and turned to look at him. The traveler stood in the bright moonlight and watched her with gentle blue eyes. This stranger cared about her and worried about her pain. This thought makes Aya burst into tears. She couldn’t wait to tell the whole of her grievances, but when she was stared at by such a pair of eyes, she couldn’t say anything, she could only shed tears silently.

“Thank you… Sir… Thank you.”

Amidst the joyful celebration, this tribal girl with honey skin told her story intermittently.

The Valentine tribe was a tribe that had migrated here from somewhere else. Unlike the aborigines with high noses, deep eyes, and white skin, they had a darker skin color and were not very tall. In addition, since they had come later, their relationship with other tribes was not harmonious and they even suffered from discrimination.

Demons always liked pure human girls. As the Dragon Ant Queen aged, she asked for more sacrifices. The secret of her bloody cruelty was circulated in the Sea of Tranquility desert—she drank great amounts of the blood of virgins in an attempt to stop the traces left by time. Aya, who had just become an adult, was chosen as the Valentine tribe’s tribute this year, and would be sent to the Dragon Ant Queen’s palace in the Underground Ant City. She didn’t know if she would really face a bloodthirsty tyrant, but she knew that all the girls who were sent there had never come back.

Aya’s mother died young and her father had been bewitched by a trader and became a believer in Utopia, leaving the tribe to pursue this dreamlike land of perfection. Left alone, Aya was brought up by the tribe on the condition that she would be a tribute for the tribe when she grew up.

Aya, who had no choice, grew up in fear. In order to keep her pure, the patriarch and the high priest had forbidden her from having contact with the opposite sex. She felt sincere envy and deep fear when she watched her peers walk into marriage one by one.

Finally, in this unattended bonfire festival, she was moved by the joy and excitement. She quietly escaped from the village and wanted to mix into the Underground Ant City to live out the rest of her days. Then she met someone who changed her life.

Now, she and this man were sitting on a low and easy-to-climb wind-eroded column, looking out over the bonfire in the distance.

She confided intermittently, confused for a while, self-pitying for a while, and sometimes even felt guilty: “Maybe I shouldn’t have run away. If I leave, another girl will be sent there instead of me, and they don’t want to do that… They should have a better life.”

The traveler who had been silent until now told her: “No one should bear this pain, and neither should you.”

Tears flowed from her dry eyes again and Aya choked: “But everyone doesn’t think so. Since I’ve accepted the tribe’s support, I should repay them. This is a matter of course.”

“It is an obligation to raise a child. It is unjust to ask her to repay this obligation with her life,” said the traveler.

“It’s not my fault? Isn’t it because I’m too selfish?” Aya asked hopefully.

The traveler shook his head. “It’s not your fault, nor is it anyone’s fault.”

“Whose fault is it then?” Aya was confused.

The traveler couldn’t answer, and he was also thinking, if the world forced a warm and kind ethnic group to sell their own kind in exchange for surviving, whose fault was it?

“It’s the Devils’ fault,” the traveler said. “So we must destroy them and drive them back to the underworld, so that they will never come to this world.”

“That’s good. In this case, daddy wouldn’t believe in any Utopia anymore? A world without demons itself is so beautiful. It’s a Utopia already. I want to live in such a world. Everything is good, perfect and the best,” Aya said. Her poor vocabulary couldn’t express the world in her heart. She can only describe it as “the best”.

“What kind of world is it?” the traveler asked.

Aya thought hard and described the Utopia in her heart: “It must be an equal world. Besides human beings, there can also be demons that don’t harm people… I heard that there are such demons in the Underground Ant City, and some even marry humans. If they don’t harm us, I can accept their existence. No matter what kind of skin colour, like you or me, or whether we’re men or women, whether we have a faith or not, as long as we’re willing to be peaceful and friendly and not hurt each other, we should be equal and should be happy.”

The traveler was surprised. He didn’t expect an uneducated tribal girl to have such a mind and ideal, which made his heart that was blindly hostile to all demons ashamed.

Aya couldn’t help but smile when she thought about such a world: “It would be great if I could live in a world like that.”

With that, she smiled again and sighed softly: “What’s the point in dreaming of such ideals? We don’t even know if we can survive the next evil tide… There will always be some demons fleeing to the surface each month during those days. Last month, they ate five sheep that belonged to the patriarch’s family and they’ve eaten people before.”

Aya asked, “I heard that monks like you can do magic spells. Can you do that?”

“I don’t have that kind of power, but I have the Lord in my heart.” The traveler replied that he had faith even though he had been exiled.

“Would believing in the Lord make me as smart and powerful as you? Can I also believe?” Aya asked uneasily.

The traveler handed her a heavy book as an answer.

Aya held the book carefully, for fear that her hands would ruin the precious book. She looked at the words on the cover and sounded it out with difficulty: “The Canon, is that how you read it?”

She only knew some simple words and feared that she would remember wrong. After flipping through the pages, she was embarrassed to find that she couldn’t read even half of the contents.

“This is what my mother left me, and now I will give it to you,” said the traveler.

Aya closed the book in a panic, threw it back, and hit the traveler in the waist with it. He groaned and his face suddenly turned pale.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Sorry, I’m sorry!” Aya apologized fearfully, and she was so anxious that her tears fell down.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s a previous injury.” Although the traveler looked haggard, he had a calm expression, as if the wound on his body was really just a minor injury. He put the book back in Aya’s hands. “It doesn’t matter. I memorized this book very young. If it can help you, it has value.”

He didn’t think it was a pity to give the Canon to a girl who couldn’t even recognize its words. Moreover, the place where he was going was dangerous, and the result of going was that he might be left sleeping in the ground forever. If he let her go back with this Canon, at least the tribe wouldn’t blame her for her escape.

There was a kind seed in her heart. Whether she believed it or not, she should be treated well.

“Thank you, really thank you.” Aya thanked him repeatedly and was overwhelmed with joy when she held the book.

During this bonfire festival that she wasn’t allowed to attend, she had still received a gift. Maybe the traveler didn’t know the meaning of the gift, but it still made her jump secretly. There was a happy bird singing in her heart, almost flying out of her chest.

But he had a lover. Aya bowed her head sadly, trying to hide her sour mood. With her head bowed, she opened the book and read the words by the moonlight, secretly blushing: “Love is… is…”

“Love is patient, love is kind,” the traveler told her the pronunciation.

This heartfelt statement made her emotion surge. She seemed to be inspired by fate and bravely continued to read: “Love does not… what?”

The traveler told her slowly, “Love does not envy.”

Aya’s hand stroking the pages froze, and her foolish longing turned into full loss and self-mockery, which finally made her thoughtful.

Love is not envy. Aya silently read this sentence in her mind. Don’t be envious of the girls who can dance with their sweethearts, and don’t be envious of strangers who care about their loved ones. It was not her love.

The bonfire in the distance had become faint, the voice of celebration had gradually lowered, and the festival had come to an end.

Aya held the book and whispered, “I want to go home.”

The traveler said, “I can take you to the Ant City and help you settle down.”

“No, I’m willing to go back. Thank you,” Aya said. “But before you go, can I talk to you for a while? We can talk about anything.”

The traveler promised her.

Aya talked happily about the past, and stopped talking about the fear that made her feel miserable and helpless. Instead, she talked about the interesting things she’d encountered. She had been so angry when the bucket was pushed into the well by the sheep when she had been fetching water that she’d chased after the sheep. She had burned her hand when she was making naan and the neighbour’s boy had helped her fetch water to cool it down. After listening to the traders talking about the outside world, she had learned that there was a place called the Vatican. She was excited to talk about all these interesting things, because she didn’t think the traveler was happy. She wanted him to be happy, and she also wanted to know about his past, even if it was just his name.

But the traveler was always a silent listener, and he had no intention of telling his own story.

She didn’t know where he came from, what kind of pain and despair he had experienced, why there was such a gentle sadness in his body, and what kind of person he carefully sheltered in his heart.

But the traveler didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything.

Late at night, the young girl was very tired and sleepy. She murmured and asked, “Where is your lover? Where did she go?”*

*{E/N: he and she are pronounced the same in Chinese}

The traveler replied, “He is always in my heart.”

Aya couldn’t tell whether this is what the traveler said or what she dreamed. She fell asleep with the book as her pillow, and the traveler took the liberty of taking the strange girl back to the village. He covered her with a blanket, sat next to her to watch over her, and went nearby to find some dry wood to raise the fire and warm her.

The traveler himself didn’t sleep. He waited for the rising sun and then quietly left to continue his journey.

Before the start of this journey, he actually hadn’t had many opportunities to watch the sunrise, as he couldn’t see it in the Village of Dusk. When he’d moved to Neverland, he had spent half a year under the eternally starry sky. When he was on tasks outside, he was in a hurry and didn’t have the mind to wait for a sunrise. In fact, he didn’t have any attachment to the sunrise. If his lover was still there, it would be beautiful for them to watch the sunset together. The sunset never fell in the land of Dusk. They could sit side by side on the beach, holding hands and watching the end of time.

He wanted to take him to the snow-capped mountains to see if the snow leopard he had once treated still occupied the mountains, where there was a beautiful waterfall and ice lake and the frozen blue-green water amidst the ice and snow made the mountain as beautiful as a fairy tale. He also wanted to take him to the polar regions to see penguins. They could even adopt an abandoned baby penguin, feed it, and watch it stagger on the ice until it was strong enough to return to the colony.

He had many, many things he wanted to do with him. Maybe he didn’t want to do these things. Maybe he just wanted to be with him.

When people who love each other are together, they can feel each other’s hearts even if they don’t say a word.

But if the distance was between life and death, could these thoughts reach the other side of the Styx?

The traveler watched the sun rising over the horizon, and his heart was at peace. He was like a boat drifting from one port to another. He may encounter storms along the way, but when the boat arrived at the harbor, he would still feel lucky and never feel dismayed.

He never felt that he should take happiness for granted. His decision with his faith was not to seek happiness, but to let his heart find peace, even if he was punished for it.

It was better to suffer frankly than to live falsely. He knew that he wouldn’t run away. He had made a mistake and did not repent, so he should be punished. For him, such punishment was not pain, but atonement. All the sufferings in this world were to redeem the original sin that he was born with, and he had to pay for it with his whole life.

At dawn, Aya woke up from her sleep. She was covered with a blanket and didn’t know when the bonfire before her had been lit. There were still faint flames swaying in the wind, but the traveler had left.

Aya grabbed the blanket, picked up the book, and ran to the village in a hurry. The rocks and thorns along the way made her run too fast, and she accidentally fell to the ground.

She couldn’t care less about herself and picked up the Canon, only to find that a piece of paper had fallen from its pages.

She picked up the paper and turned it over. It was a hand-painted portrait of a handsome young man smiling at her.

There was a name in the corner, which should be the name of the person in the portrait. It was very simple, and she could easily read it out even if she couldn’t read much. She gently said: “Qi Leren.”

It was just an ordinary name, but the tender brushwork on the portrait made her voice go soft unconsciously. She wanted to take a closer look and feel the overflowing tenderness, but a gust of wind blew from the desert, violently and rapidly, and took the portrait from her unsuspecting hand, blowing it into the clear sky above the vast yellow sand.

The sand flying in the wind overwhelmed Aya’s eyes. She waved her arms wildly in confusion, but she could only grasp the yellow sand in her hands. When she opened her misty eyes again, the portrait had been brought to the sky by the wind, fluttering and rootless, and was about to disappear into the heavens.

Aya chased it without thinking, racing the wind all the way. A great sadness filled her heart and a voice in her heart made her run, run, run desperately… She lost her shoes, her feet stepped on stones, and blood flowed, but the pain of her body could not overcome her inner sadness and she still dared not stop, she wanted to catch what was about to be lost—until she tripped over thorns and fell heavily to the earth.

She fell in such pain that she fell to her knees and cried. Her feet had already been cut bloody, her knees were scraped open, and she was bleeding. Even her hands were full of cuts. She shrank back and wanted to give up, but she looked up and looked into the distance unwillingly.

The wind was blowing again, and a gust of wind sent that thin piece of paper to an unknown distance. Such a large desert, such a small piece of paper. In an instant there was no trace of it, only the vast yellow sand and blue sky.

Who was the man in that picture? Aya would never know.

It was doomed to be unknown, impossible to find and impossible to obtain.

And how could the emotion carried on the delicate paper withstand the relentless sand in the desert?

It would eventually be destroyed, buried and forgotten.

Aya was stupefied and kneeling in the hot sun, with mottled blood all the way behind her showing that she had made an almost crazy effort for a story with no answer. Her eyes, which were filled with the wind and sand, kept shedding tears, but they couldn’t wash away the hard sand in her soft eyes. It seemed that something sharp was stuck in her heart, so sharp and painful, but she didn’t know what it was.

She didn’t know anything.

Sadness and melancholy suddenly welled up in the girl’s heart and she burst into tears on this barren land, for a stranger whose name she didn’t know, for a stranger who only knew her name.

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Editor’s Notes: After checking three different mtls (my number has gone up again oh dear), I’ve determined that BMBL calls the book the Bible in the original Chinese. I’ve chosen to translate it as Canon in order to distinguish it, as BMBL has stated previously (and will again later) that, despite being very similar, the religion in this series is not Christianity.

I think this chapter is the first time I’ve cried a bit while editing. I encourage everyone to come back and read this little interlude again once you’ve finished all of Part II, there’s quite a bit that hits differently.

I’m going to be taking a one week break while we’re between arcs in order to do some catching up, so the next chapter will be up on June 18th.

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