A Prophet - Chapter 2 (Part 1)

Chapter 1 - The Immortal Children's Corpses Walking Against the Current

My real name is Liu Tianliang. My mother said I was born right around daybreak, so my father gave me the name Tianliang, which means dawn. When I first joined the gang, everyone called me "Foolish Liang." Later, Grandfather said, "Once you've joined the gang, you're our own flesh and blood. Don't call him Foolish Liang anymore." The Second Dam Master asked, "Then what should we call him?" Grandfather looked at me and smiled, saying, "With a head that big, just call him Big Head." From then on, everyone called me Big Head. The Second Dam Master often told me, "Your head is certainly big, but it's just full of mush inside."

Grandfather would sometimes ask me, "Big Head, do you regret following me?"

In truth, over the years, I've repeatedly pondered this question: do I regret it or not? Grandfather knew full well that I wasn't cut out to be a con artist, yet he still let me join the gang...

I used to be a waiter in a teahouse, and if Grandfather hadn't frequented the place for tea, I never would have met him. I always reserved his favorite table for him, and I would wipe the table and chairs spotless before he arrived. When he dropped his fan, I would pick it up for him. When he dropped a copper coin, I would retrieve it and chase after him to return it. After a long while, Grandfather stopped treating me like an outsider. Every time he came in, he would shout loudly, "Foolish Liang, brew a pot of Longjing for your master!"

And I would cheerfully respond, "Coming right up!"

I was chubby and acted a bit foolish, so everyone in the teahouse called me "Foolish Liang." Whether I was truly foolish or not, I knew well enough in my heart. In that turbulent, war-torn era, being a bit foolish kept a common fellow like me out of trouble.

One day while sipping his tea, Grandfather asked me, "Foolish Liang, what family do you have left?" I replied, "Reporting to Master, this humble one only has an old mother who passed away from illness late last year, and a younger sister married far away. Just left me as a bachelor at home."

Grandfather asked again, "Then how many coins do you make here in a year?"

I smiled and said, "Master, I don't have any real skills, I just know how to run errands. Our boss is kind-hearted and gives me enough to eat, so how would I dare ask for wages?"

Grandfather was silent for a moment before saying, "After closing time, come find me at this address. I have something to tell you." With that, he left me a slip of paper with his residence on it. I was grateful I had spent a few days in a private tutorial school, otherwise I wouldn't even have recognized the characters.

After the teahouse closed, I took the slip of paper and went to Grandfather's place. My heart thumped wildly the entire way. I had no idea what this master wanted with me, but my intuition told me it couldn't be anything bad.

After turning several corners, I finally reached Grandfather's residence—a very large courtyard house. The main gate faced south, and upon entering, there was a large date palm tree. In the middle of the pathway sat a huge water vat, flanked by eastern and western wing rooms. Further in was the main hall, and right as you stepped inside was a gang stronghold. Hanging in the center was a painting—a Song-dynasty-style splashed-ink depiction of an immortal. On either side were matching scrolls: the right read "Benevolent men practice benevolence and righteousness"; the left read "Preserve harmony, preserve goodness, preserve peace." I only learned later that Grandfather wrote these couplets himself.

When I arrived, Grandfather was holding a meeting with a group of people, numbering about six or seven. Just as I got there, the meeting concluded. After the housekeeper led me inside, Grandfather waved his hand, and the others all left.

Grandfather ushered me into his study and said, "Foolish Liang, sit. Let's chat." He then instructed a servant to bring tea. I was merely a waiter; usually, I stood while others sat, and watched while others drank. When he told me to sit, I didn't even know where to put my backside.

Sensing my tension, Grandfather smiled and said, "Don't be nervous, don't be nervous. Sit down, sit down."

I sat down trembling. A moment later, a female servant in her fifties brought in a pot of tea, filled two cups, handed one to Grandfather with a respectful "Please, Master," and then brought the other to me. I hurriedly stood up and nervously received the teacup. Grandfather laughed and said, "Sit down, sit down. Today, you are my guest."

I felt the muscles in my face tighten up and smiled, saying, "Thank you, Master, thank you, Master." I took a sip and nearly scalded myself to death, which set off a round of hearty laughter from both Grandfather and the old woman.

Grandfather told the maid, "You may leave." The old woman shot me a glance and walked away.

Left alone with Grandfather, I spun the teacup in my hands, unsure of what to say.

Grandfather took a sip of tea and asked, "Foolish Liang, do you plan on being a waiter your whole life?"

I answered, "Master, I don't have any other skills besides running errands. Getting enough to eat is good enough for me."

Grandfather said, "You keep calling me Master, Master. Have you never thought about becoming a master yourself?"

Hearing this nearly made me drop my teacup. I stammered in a panic, "Master, what kind of talk is this! I was born to serve figures like you. My life is cheap, how could I ever have a master's fortune?"

Grandfather's face darkened. "Spineless wretch!" I froze. This wasn't about having a spine or not—who wouldn't want to be a master waited on by others? But you needed the capability for that. I lowered my head and stayed silent.

Grandfather sighed and said, "Foolish Liang, you know what? I used to be even worse off than you."

"Huh?" I raised my head, uncomprehending.

Grandfather said, "Come with me."

Grandfather stood up, and I followed behind him out of the main hall and into the western wing room. The moment I stepped inside, it startled me—the room was lined with ancestral spirit tablets. Looking closer, I saw tablets for "Late Honored Father," "Late Honored Mother," as well as an elder brother, a younger sister, and a beloved younger brother. Confused, I stared blankly at Grandfather.

Grandfather lit a stick of incense, inserted it into the burner, and recounted those past years of old.

Grandfather's ancestors had once been members of the Heaven and Earth Society and had joined the Taiping Heavenly Army in the late Qing dynasty. By his father's generation, life was not too bad. After the Xinhai Revolution, his father even held an important post in the Nationalist Government. Later, when he joined the Constitutional Protection Movement, because of his firm support for Sun Yat-sen's armed protection of the constitution, he was assassinated in the military camp by the Guangxi warlords. To root out the family entirely, several executioners broke into Grandfather's home that night and ruthlessly slaughtered the entire household.

His grandparents were stabbed to death before they could even utter a groan. His mother and older brother fought desperately against the assassins; his mother's stomach was stabbed multiple times, her intestines spilling out, yet she clung stubbornly to the legs of an assassin while screaming at the top of her lungs, "Run! Take your younger brother and sister and run!"

Panicked and terrified, Grandfather fled with his younger brother and sister, running dozens of li through the night before finally stopping. He pulled his siblings into his arms, and the three of them wept bitterly.

That year, Grandfather was 15, his brother was 10, his sister was 8, and his deceased older brother had been 18. From then on, the three surviving siblings drifted through the streets, begging for a living.

One day while the three of them were begging on the street, a few men approached. One of them wearing dark glasses handed them a few sesame flatbreads and said, "Kids, I've got some odd jobs at my place. Help me out, and I'll pay you when you're done."

Grandfather looked at them, then at his starving younger siblings, and asked, "What kind of work?"

The man said, "Just washing bowls and wiping tables. It's not tiring."

Grandfather thought for a moment and said, "All right. Where is it?"

The man replied, "It's very close. Come with me."

At this point, Grandfather's eyes grew red, and he let out a long sigh, saying to me, "If... if I could live my life over again, I'd rather let my younger brother and sister starve to death than take them to that place."

Those men led the three siblings through several twists and turns to a deserted, dilapidated house. As soon as they stepped inside, handkerchiefs soaked in chemicals were pressed over their noses, and they lost consciousness.

Those men turned out to be local con artists. To pull off a scam, they didn't hesitate to manufacture an inhumane murder case. That year, there was a severe drought in the region, and the crops were withering away. The con artists spread rumors that this was the evil consequence of the locals failing to perform good deeds, and that "Immortal Children" would soon appear in dreams to give warnings. They instructed everyone to be mindful while sleeping, claiming that the "Hehe Immortal Twins" would manifest their physical bodies in the river and "walk as corpses against the current" to instruct the world. After spreading these rumors, the swindlers began searching for scapegoats. They didn't dare touch children from ordinary families lightly, but as luck would have it, they ran into three little beggar children. Street urchins like that wouldn't be missed by anyone if they died, so they used anesthetics to knock out the three siblings. Because Grandfather's brother and sister were close in age and similar in height, they strangled the two of them to death, dressed them in matching red and green clothes to disguise them as the "Hehe Immortal Twins," tied their backs to bamboo rafts, and set them afloat in the water. They attached a long straw rope beneath the rafts, leading all the way upstream. The next noon, two con artists slowly pulled the rope from upstream while the rest of the gang stirred up excitement on the riverbank, drawing a large crowd of onlookers. Because the river was wide and people stood far away, no one could see through the trick. The bodies of the boy and girl thus appeared to move upstream against the current, prompting the con artists to shout, "Corpses walking against the current! Corpses walking against the current!" Seeing the crowd gather thick on the bank, they sent a few men into the water who secretly snipped the rope with scissors and brought the two small bodies ashore. The con artists proclaimed that these two "immortal children" were the incarnations of the Hehe Immortals, who had repeatedly appeared in dreams to many people, and were now manifesting physically to urge everyone to do good deeds. By then, the people firmly believed the swindlers' words. The gang poured diesel over the two bodies and set them ablaze. Afterward, they mixed the ashes with clay, molded two mud dolls, and enshrined them in a temple.

From then on, the locals offered incense and donated money to the Hehe Immortal Twins in a steady stream, and this gang of con artists reaped a heavy profit.

Because Grandfather was too old to be of any use, after being knocked unconscious and strangled for a bit—which the con artists assumed had killed him—they threw him out into the back mountains to feed the wolves. However, torrential rain poured that night, the wolf pack never appeared, and Grandfather miraculously regained consciousness. He didn't die.

When Grandfather woke up, his brother and sister were gone, and he had no idea where he was. In the pouring rain, he screamed frantically, "Little Brother! Little Sister!" until his voice cracked, but the roaring rain and thunder drowned out everything. Standing in the downpour, Grandfather wept in despair.

After dawn, Grandfather made his way back into the city. Fearing he might run into those men again, he stole a few pieces of clothing drying outside a home near the city edge, disguising himself as a child from a respectable family. The moment he entered the city, he heard townspeople buzzing about the immortal children walking against the current, and an ominous premonition struck him. He followed the crowd to the riverbank, where the con artists had already fished out the bodies. At a glance, Grandfather recognized his younger brother and sister. His heart felt as though it had been stabbed with a knife, the pain so sharp he nearly passed out.

He wanted nothing more than to rush over and tear those con artists apart with his teeth, and he longed even more to throw himself over his siblings' bodies and cry to his heart's content. But he held back. His heart was shattered, but his mind was not. If he wanted revenge, he had to endure; otherwise, it would be a dead end. This was something ordinary people could not do, but 15-year-old Grandfather managed it. That was why he became Grandfather.

Watching his siblings' bodies burn, Grandfather bit his lips until they bled. He smelled the charred flesh of his brother and sister, watching everything before him with eyes burning blood-red.

Suddenly, one of the con artists spotted Grandfather in the crowd and exchanged a glance with the others. Two of them bolted toward him. Realizing something was wrong, Grandfather turned tail and ran. The two con artists chased him for a while before losing track of him, and Grandfather ducked into an alley to hide. After sunset, when he returned to the riverbank, the crowd had dispersed. Grandfather finally let loose and wept bitterly. Within less than a month, his family was destroyed—something he never could have imagined in his wildest dreams. For the first time, he contemplated suicide. Death, death, once you die it's over and done with. But the moment he recalled his mother's heart-wrenching screams and his siblings' helpless gazes, he repeatedly told himself: I cannot die. If I die, everything is truly finished. I want revenge, I must have revenge!

Over the following period, Grandfather secretly begged for scraps while tracking the movements of those con artists. He also disguised himself as a child from a decent family, trailing quietly behind old women—just like a grandson accompanying his grandmother to offer incense—to slip into that temple and pay his respects. Looking at the mud dolls on the altar made from his siblings' ashes, Grandfather forced back his grief, offering incense while silently vowing in his heart, "Little Brother, Little Sister, rest assured. Older brother will avenge you!"

Knowing that the temple's abbot was in cahoots with the gang of con artists, Grandfather dared not linger and fled as soon as he finished offering incense. He had to find those con artists first, then figure out a way to finish them off. He staked out the temple for days without getting a single lead. Racking his brains, he suddenly remembered the dilapidated house where he and his siblings had been drugged. He had been conscious before being drugged, and possessing a superhuman memory, he remembered the route. He decided to return to that house and stake it out to see if he could find any clues. Thus, one midnight after eating his fill, he sneaked back to the building. It was a courtyard among a cluster of old residences in the suburbs, its walls partially collapsed. Grandfather crouched outside the wall and listened for a moment; there was no sound. He imitated a dog's bark twice, still hearing nothing, so he vaulted over the wall into the house.

Pitch black inside, Grandfather felt around and found nothing except some broken furniture. He planned to nap there for a bit and stake out the haystacks not far from the house at daybreak. Just as he was thinking this, a flurry of hurried footsteps echoed from behind the house. Grandfather's heart skipped a beat as the footsteps drew closer. Panicked, he tried to run outside, but tripped over something and nearly tumbled over.

By the moonlight, Grandfather saw it was a long poker—an iron rod used at the time to tend stoves, about as thick as a finger with a wooden handle on one end and a sharpened point on the other, capable of reaching straight to the bottom of a furnace with a single thrust. Grandfather snatched up the poker, climbed over the wall, and jumped outside. Just then, the main gate of the residence was slammed open by several men. Hiding behind the wall, Grandfather peeked in and saw a few men carrying two chests inside, from which muffled groans seemed to come.

The men carried the chests into a room, and one of them produced a flint, striking it to light an oil lamp. Now it was clear; Grandfather recognized their faces. Two of them were precisely the con artists who had lured his siblings and him to this residence that day. At that moment, a ringleader told those two con artists, "You two keep watch tonight. Don't you dare just drink your fill and let these two old folks slip away, or Fourth Master will have your heads!" The two con artists hurriedly replied, "Don't worry, Second Brother! Don't worry, Second Brother!" With that, the ringleader swaggered off with the rest of the men. The two guards left behind pulled out a large jar of wine, sat cross-legged on the floor, produced a package of meat from their tunics, and began eating and chatting.

Grandfather stared fixedly at the two con artists, thinking, "I am going to kill you both!"

Yet he knew clearly that if he rushed out rashly right now, he wouldn't be able to beat these two robust con artists. He had to wait for an opportunity—until the two fellows drank their fill and grew groggy—before making his move.

Grandfather watched without moving for over two hours. Seeing that their wine was nearly gone and their tongues were starting to loosen, he gripped the long poker, slowly climbed back over the courtyard wall, and crept toward the room. Just as he reached the middle of the courtyard, one of the con artists suddenly stood up. Startled, Grandfather quickly squatted behind a pomegranate tree near the yard. The con artist staggered over, muttering, "Gotta... gotta take a leak..." He walked right up to the pomegranate tree, unzipped his trousers, arched his lower abdomen, and began to pee noisily. As he urinated, he sang, "Little widow goes to visit the graves, the fine rain patters down..." Grandfather was squatting right behind the tree, and the urine sprayed through the branches and splattered all over his face. Grandfather had planned to wait until the fellow finished peeing and started walking back so he could attack from behind, but this bastard took an awfully long time, and the urine kept splashing onto Grandfather's face. Enraged and unable to hold back any longer, Grandfather raised the poker and thrust it fiercely into the fellow's lower abdomen. Putting his entire strength into the thrust, he struck the man's bladder directly. The stream stopped instantly, a large hole ripped open in the guy's belly, and both urine and blood spewed out from the wound.

The fellow let out a miserable shriek, clutching his lower abdomen as he rolled around on the ground. Grandfather stood up and immediately thrust the poker into his throat. The throat was pierced straight through, and blood bubbled out. The guy tried to shout, but no sound came out, and within moments he stopped moving.

Hearing the commotion outside, the other con artist panicked and shouted from inside the room, "W-what's going on? Don't... don't mess with me, man!"

Grandfather dashed inside like a flash, slammed his knee into the man's chest to knock him down, and before the fellow could react, Grandfather raised the poker high and drove it straight into his throat. This time he used even more force, the poker protruding out the back of the neck. The wretch kicked his legs a few times and quickly stopped moving as well. After Grandfather killed the two of them, the muffled groans from inside the chests grew even louder.