On My Way - Chapter 25

Chapter 25 - The First Time I Felt Cheng Xia Was Truly Terrifying

"Don't be unreasonable. I can't just skip work that has already been scheduled," I said, pulling my hand away from Cheng Xia's.

I wasn't moving away forever; at the time, I just thought he was being inexplicably bizarre. I stood up, preparing to walk out.

I had barely reached the door when his hand slammed against it, blocking my exit.

"Go back." Even when he was losing his mind, he was quiet, which was why I didn't realize the severity of the situation at that moment.

I had completely exhausted my patience. "I'm not going back! Get out of my way!"

He grabbed my arm and yanked me back with such force that I was practically hurled against the wall.

My head hit the wall with a heavy thud, and for a moment, everything went black. Later, when I checked, I found a large, painful bump forming.

"Cheng Xia, are you sick in the head?" I was truly furious.

Cheng Xia locked the door and stood there, watching me in silence. His eyes were like bottomless black whirlpools.

In truth, under normal circumstances, I would have already sensed that something was wrong with him, but the pain had completely unhinged me. I began to curse: "Are you fucking sick in the head?! If you want to lose your mind, go do it in a mental hospital! Try touching me again and see what happens! I’ll beat your brains out!"

I had inherited my grandmother's true talent—I had reached the tenth level of a shrew's ability to berate someone. But Cheng Xia remained completely unmoved. When I finally stopped to catch my breath, he said...

He said...

He said, "Go back and eat."

I felt as if I had been ignited. I jumped and cursed: "Eat your mother... eat your sister's legs! I gave you face by being nice, and now you want me to eat? I'm telling you again, get out of the way! Or we are never, ever going to speak to each other again!"

While I was cursing and yelling, I reached for my phone to call a taxi.

Just then, Cheng Xia lunged at me to snatch the phone away.

Of course, I didn't intend to let him take it, but the disparity in our strength was too great. Without a single change in his expression, he pried my fingers open, wrestled the phone away, and walked into the inner room to lock it away.

I was absolutely livid!

I followed him, cursing and tearing at him, demanding he give my phone back.

But it was like hitting a cotton pillow the entire time. He didn't utter a word. After locking the phone away, he said to me, "Eat. If you can't eat, go to sleep."

It was then that I finally realized I might actually be unable to leave.

This realization caused my emotions—which I had only just forced down—to explode with exponential force.

I looked at the table full of food. I had rushed over that afternoon, prepared it all personally, and spoken to him with such sincerity.

And yet, he was being completely unreasonable! He was acting like a maniac!

Why the hell am I so pathetic?

"Fine, you want me to eat? I'll let you eat!" I lunged forward and flipped the dining table over. Fresh vegetables, red meat, hot oil, and boiling water were splattered all over the room.

Cheng Xia’s face was cut by flying shards of ceramic from the bowls, but he just stood there silently, letting me vent.

Then, he lowered his head and began to clean it all up.

"Give me back my phone! What right do you have to take it?!" I grabbed him like a madwoman, but he acted as if he couldn't hear me.

It was clear that he was the one who was mentally ill.

And yet, the one acting like a lunatic was me.

In the middle of the struggle, I slapped him across the face and roared, "Let me leave! Just let me leave!"

In that instant, the whole world went quiet.

Cheng Xia stared at me fixedly. His eyes were like two deep, black lakes.

And I finally regained a shred of sanity.

How could I hit him?

No matter how angry I was, I shouldn't have resorted to physical violence.

In that moment, I even thought of my father—how he used to swing his hand at my mother with reddened eyes, and how he had hit me, too. I recalled how I used to scream at him with a hoarse voice: "You only know how to hit people! The more incompetent you are, the bigger your temper!"

And now, I sat in the midst of the wreckage, looking at Cheng Xia, my fingers trembling.

Cheng Xia looked at me, too, and then he raised his hand.

He slapped himself hard across the face.

Then came the second slap.

The third.

The fourth.

I stared at him, dumbstruck. His expression was calm, almost gentle, yet he delivered slap after slap as if he couldn't feel any pain at all.

Finally, he stopped and asked me softly, "Is this enough?"

I didn't answer.

He stood up, went to the kitchen, and returned with a knife—a bright, silvery, glistening blade—and placed it in my hand.

"If it's not enough, there's this. Do whatever makes you feel better." He stared at me blankly, his eyes holding a shattered, frantic madness. "I was wrong. I'm sorry. But I won't let you leave."

My hand touched the sharp, silver blade. It was cold and thin.

The words his father had said to me, which had been circling in my mind, finally became reality.

Cheng Xia was sick.

The next day, I still appeared at the train station right on time.

After two days and two nights on the train, followed by five hours in a car, I finally arrived at the relocation site for Jiaolong Village.

This was another village called Uleji. It was a typical "hollow" village—most of the young and able-bodied adults had left to find work, leaving behind the elderly, the weak, the women, and the children. It was a vast area with a sparse population; the entire village had a permanent population of fewer than three hundred people.

The original plan was to resettle the Jiaolong Village residents here and merge the two villages.

However, the villagers from both sides had strong objections and frequently caused trouble at the construction site.

Just as I arrived at the site, I saw a cloud of dust in the distance. A young man was galloping toward us, whipping his horse frantically.

Because I had been violently motion-sick for hours, I was so weak that I simply stood there, foolishly frozen in place.

Seeing my idiotic look, the young man gave me a malicious grin, cracked his whip hard, and shouted something in a language I didn't understand.

I had only ever seen horses on TV, where they looked like gentle, herbivorous animals. But up close, I realized what a massive, terrifying creature a horse truly was. The white horse let out a shrill neigh and reared up on its hind legs; the hooves that came crashing down were literally as big as my head.

Just at the critical second, a hand grabbed me and tossed me to the side of the road.

In the next second, the young cavalryman happily charged across the construction site. Behind him followed a massive herd of horses, moving with the force of a landslide. They crashed through the newly set-up barricades, scaffolding, and wheelbarrows... everything was smashed to pieces.

All that remained was a sky full of dust, making it impossible to keep your eyes open.

The man who had pulled me away was shouting curses at the backs of the horses. I wiped my face and asked, "Who is he?"

"Just a local village punk. He pulls this stunt every few days." The man who had saved me was named Bater, a cadre sent by the county to coordinate the conflicts between the two villages. "Are you alright? Should you go wash your face?"

I shook my head, but the construction site couldn't afford to be sabotaged like this every few days.

Bater was a local, over 1.9 meters tall, but he had actually graduated from a prestigious university in Beijing. He spoke in a very scholarly tone: "There are historical tensions between these two places. They say that before liberation, they fought over water sources. Jiaolong Village killed many people from Uleji Village and stole their livestock, so they don't want to live together."

"But the notification was sent out a long time ago. Why didn't they make a fuss then?"

"Who's to say!" Bater slapped his thigh in frustration. "Now that construction has already started, choosing a different relocation site would mean losing a huge sum of money, and the county has no money to spare!"

I actually doubted that this was the real reason.

The logic was simple: both villages were incredibly poor. The love and hatred of poor people couldn't remain that persistent; survival was the highest law for the lower class.

Behind this persistent sabotage, there had to be underlying interests.

Zhao Yu was still at the hospital in the city, so I wandered around the village by myself for a while.

The distance between the two villages was generally quite large, and transportation around Uleji wasn't very convenient. There was only one bus to the county seat, and it took over an hour.

The only things in the village were a few small shops selling daily necessities and an internet cafe.

It was filled with old machines and thick, suffocating smoke. There were some children who looked like they had just graduated from elementary school, their faces still so young. There were also middle-aged men with bloated, fleshy faces, smoking and gaming at the same time.

The manager was a very pretty girl. Even her heavy makeup couldn't hide how young she was. She sat in front of a computer, sipping instant noodles, one leg crossed in black stockings.

"How much for an hour?" I asked in Mandarin.

She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Can't you look for yourself?"

There were words painted on the wall: "One hour of internet: 1 yuan."

I said, "Oh, you can speak Mandarin? That's great! I've been looking for someone who speaks Mandarin for a long time."

She gave me another eye-roll.

"Want to make some extra pocket money?" I said. "I'm looking to do some business here and I need a translator."

She slanted a look at me and asked, "How much are you paying?"

I was best at dealing with girls like this.

Because that was me when I was young.

And so, for a single MAC lipstick and 15 yuan a day, I acquired a beautiful little translator.

I wasn't in a hurry to understand the village situation.

First, I chatted with this little girl.

Bater was puzzled and asked me, "If you want to know about the situation in the village, you should go ask the elderly. What's the use of cozying up to a young girl?"

I said, "A pretty girl like this, who doesn't study, probably has a boyfriend who's relatively well-known locally, and this young boyfriend is usually the main instigator of the trouble."

I guessed right.

The girl’s name was Harina, only seventeen years old. She had a handsome, showy boyfriend who drove large trucks for the transport team.

"My guy is the toughest fighter at the Third Middle School," she said. "Once, for my sake, he got into a fight with some gangsters in the county. One against five! He almost crippled the guy on the other side before he had to drop out of school."

I gave her a look of impressed surprise. "That's hardcore. I'd love to meet him."

The company had assigned me a car, so I drove her to the county seat to find that boyfriend.

The road was muddy and bumpy, and I almost threw up the entire way.

"Qinglong!" Harina called out.

A boy with messy hair crawled out of the dorms at the transport yard, sleepy-eyed, with a cigarette tucked behind his ear.

His demeanor was a mess, and he smelled like sweat, but I recognized him instantly.

He was the dashing, reckless young man who had been riding the horse that morning.

Harina said, "This big sister wants to do business in our village and wanted to ask you about something."

Qinglong picked his ear, gave me a disdainful look, and then said something to Harina. I didn't need a translation to know it wasn't anything nice.

I said, "Hey, no rush. I just wanted to get to know brother Qinglong first. Come on, let's talk while we eat."

The barbecue here was actually quite good—very fresh lamb sprinkled with nothing but a little salt, and it tasted incredible.

Young people had great appetites. This brother Qinglong ate two pounds of lamb and drank a crate of beer, then happily hiked up his shirt. His stomach was flat, and he even had abs.

Finally, he revealed some information: "The people from Jiaolong Village are like this!"

He raised his dark, dirty little finger and said triumphantly, "They want to build houses here? In their dreams!"

"Why? Rumor has it the county is providing the funds. If Jiaolong Village moves here, the whole village will also get some major improvements!"

"Improvements my ass!" Qinglong and Harina sneered in unison. Qinglong continued: "My grandpa said that after the people from Jiaolong Village move in, they'll be living in new houses, and the new houses will block all our sunlight... If they dare build them, then it's 'white blade in, red blade out'!"

Harina looked at Qinglong with adoration.

I cleared my throat and asked, "So, what do our grandfathers think?"

Qinglong shouted, "Ten more lamb kidneys!"

I: ...

After an evening of chatting, I finally got some useful information.

The people of Uleji Village mainly resented the fact that once the Jiaolong Village people moved in, they would occupy the sunny spots along the river. They wanted to start trouble—after the houses were built, they wanted to live in the new houses while the Jiaolong people lived in the old ones.

And, of course, the people from Jiaolong Village wouldn't stand for that.

Rather than suffer that indignity, they would prefer to relocate elsewhere, so they were causing trouble, too.