I just became the Pirate King, and you're telling me I also time-traveled at the same time.

Chapter 1078 No trace of life

The cockroach's expression as it left wasn't one of running away, but of recording. It had memorized everything it saw: Su Wanwan's explosive power of lunar energy, the purity of the white wolf's bloodline, the protective strength surrounding Tang Sanzang, Chu Yang's fighting style, the weight of the golden cudgel—everything was recorded. Next time it returned, it would bring these things with it, with a targeted plan, with more thorough, comprehensive, and uncompromising preparation.

Sun Wukong jumped down from the sand dune, walked back to the group, took the water bag from Chu Yang, took a big gulp, and then handed the water bag back to Chu Yang.

"Next time, I, Old Sun, will beat up the one in the black robe," he said. "You beat up the one with the flat face."

Chu Yang took the water pouch, took a sip, and nodded.

"Change it if you want."

Su Wanwan sat on the sand, holding the white wolf, watching the two of them. The sun shone from behind them, casting long shadows that looked like two black pillars on the desert. The white donkey stood beside them, while the white dragon horse stood a little further away. Tang Sanzang was packing up his medicine chest, putting the bottles and jars back in order.

Continuing west past the Singing Sand Dunes, the landscape changed again. The desert didn't disappear all at once; it thinned out little by little, like an old blanket being repeatedly torn by the wind, revealing the hard, grayish-yellow soil beneath. Grass began to grow on the hard soil, short and close to the ground, its color a dull gray, easily mistaken for cracks in stone at first glance. After walking a while, the grass became denser, growing from close to the ground to above ankle height, and its color changed from grayish-yellow to grayish-green. Su Wanwan squatted down and touched the blades of grass; they were dry and hard, with finely serrated edges. A light scratch left a white mark on her fingertip. She had never seen this kind of grass before, neither in the Central Plains nor in Qiyue Ridge.

The white wolf recognized her. It lowered its head to sniff, then looked up at Su Wanwan, its pale blue eyes conveying, "Edible, but not tasty." Su Wanwan understood that look, smiled, and stood up to continue walking.

I could see smoke rising from chimneys in the distance.

It wasn't the thick smoke from dozens of chimneys billowing out simultaneously like in Ping'anji. Instead, it was a wisp, thin and crooked, like a thread about to break, rising from below the horizon, drawing a question mark on the gray-blue sky, and then being blown away by the wind.

Chu Yang quickened his pace upon seeing the wisp of smoke.

The village was small, with only twenty or thirty households. The houses were made of rammed earth, their walls pitted and uneven, like a face covered in pockmarks. The roofs were flat, piled with dry grass and branches, weighed down with stones to prevent them from being blown away by the wind. There was no archway or stone tablet at the village entrance, only an old tree. Its trunk grew crookedly, its bark cracked like an old man's hand, its branches sparse, half of its leaves yellowed and half fallen, the remaining ones hanging weakly on the branches, swaying in the wind.

An old man squatted under a tree, drawing something on the ground with a twig. He was so engrossed in his drawing that he didn't even look up, failing to notice Chu Yang and his companions approaching. It was the old woman next to him who noticed first. She was sitting on a rock, twisting hemp rope. The rope rolled back and forth between her rough fingers, the resulting strand uneven in thickness—some parts as thick as fingers, others so thin they seemed about to break. She looked up and saw a group of five people—a donkey, a horse, and a wolf—approaching from outside the village. Her hand paused, and the rope slipped from her fingers, rolling to the ground.

The old woman didn't pick up the rope, nor did she stand up. She just sat on the stone, looking up at them. Her eyes were cloudy, like two cups of muddy water, but Su Wanwan noticed that there was light in those cloudy eyes—not the light reflecting sunlight, but the light she emitted herself, like two oil lamps about to go out, swaying in the wind, yet never extinguishing.

"Guest," the old woman spoke, her voice hoarse like sandpaper, with a heavy Western accent, "Where are you from?"

Chu Yang squatted down in front of her, bringing himself to eye level with her: "I came from the Central Plains. I was passing through here and would like to ask for lodging for the night."

The old woman looked at him, a glimmer of light flashing in her cloudy eyes. She stared at him for a long time, so long that Su Wanwan thought she hadn't understood and was about to repeat herself when the old woman suddenly nodded and pointed deep into the village with the thick hemp rope: "Go forward, the third house. The one with the fig tree in the yard. That's my house."

Chu Yang thanked her, stood up, and led the group into the village. As they passed the old woman, Su Wanwan glanced down at what she had just drawn—a row of little figures drawn on the soil with a twig, their hands raised as if calling out or pleading for help. Below the figures was a long, winding line. After a few moments, Su Wanwan realized that it wasn't a line, but a snake.

The white wolf also saw the snake. It tucked its ears back slightly, let out a very low, almost inaudible whimper, and then quickly walked over, following behind Su Wanwan with its tail tucked tightly between its legs.

The third house the old woman mentioned was easy to find, because it was the only house in the entire alley with a tree growing in its yard. The tree wasn't big, much smaller than the old tree at the village entrance, but its leaves were green—not that lifeless gray-green, but a true, vibrant green, as if just washed by rain. A few fruits hung on the tree, scattered here and there, hidden behind the leaves, almost invisible unless you looked closely. The fruits were purple, with a thin layer of white bloom on their skin, gleaming softly in the slanting sunlight.

The courtyard had no gate, or rather, the gate was long broken, with only two wooden planks leaning precariously against the frame, leaving a gap just wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways. Chu Yang squeezed into the courtyard, the others following behind. The courtyard was clean, not the kind of clean that comes from being poor, but the kind of clean that comes from having nothing to be messy—a few bundles of dry straw were piled in the corner, and two broken earthenware jars sat on the windowsill, empty of anything. A string of dried red chilies hung under the eaves, the only colorful thing Su Wanwan saw in the courtyard.

There are people inside.

A middle-aged woman stood inside the threshold, holding a bowl half-filled with a grayish-black paste. It was unclear what it was made of; it looked like ground grass roots and tree bark mixed with water and boiled down. She saw a group of people enter through the gate, and her hand trembled, spilling a few drops of the paste onto the threshold like black raindrops.

"Auntie," Chu Yang said, standing in the courtyard without going into the house, "we came from the east and were passing through. We'd like to ask for lodging for the night. If it's alright, we'll pay for the room."

The middle-aged woman looked at him, then at Sun Wukong, then at Tang Sanzang, then at Su Wanwan, then at the white wolf, the white donkey, and the white dragon horse. Her gaze lingered on each of them for a moment before finally settling back on Chu Yang's face. She opened her mouth, and Su Wanwan thought she was going to refuse—this family was too poor, so poor that they couldn't even support themselves, how could they possibly take in five outsiders and three animals?

But what she heard was, "There's not enough room for so many people. The yard is fine, the main room is fine too. It's free."

Chu Yang took a small piece of silver from his sleeve and placed it quietly in a groove in the courtyard wall, making no sound. He then covered it with a piece of broken tile. The middle-aged woman saw this and her lips moved slightly, but she did not refuse.

When Su Wanwan entered the main room, she saw a little girl.

The little girl, about seven or eight years old, squatted on the floor in the corner of the room, cradling a cat in her arms. The cat was orange, skin and bones, its fur dull, like an old rag that had been washed too many times. The little girl was also very thin, so thin that the outlines of her collarbones and shoulder blades bulged out from under her thin clothes, like two undeveloped butterfly wings. Her hair was brown, braided into two thin braids, the ends tied with red ribbons that had faded to pale pink, but this was the only bright color on her.

She squatted there, looking up at Su Wanwan. Her eyes were huge, disproportionately large to her face, like two deep wells. The water was black, but something at the bottom seemed to glow. Su Wanwan squatted down in front of those eyes, took out a dry biscuit from her sleeve—one she hadn't finished yesterday. It was as hard as a rock, but soft inside when broken open. She handed the soft half to the little girl.

The little girl didn't take it. She looked down at the orange cat in her arms, then looked up at Su Wanwan, and gently shook her head.

Su Wanwan was stunned. She had encountered many rejections—rejected by humans, by demons, and by cultivators—but she had never been rejected by a seven or eight-year-old girl who was skin and bones and was holding a similarly skin and bones cat in her arms.

"I don't want it." The little girl's voice was very soft, as soft as a mosquito's buzz, but every word was clear. "Keep the cake for yourself."

Su Wanwan squatted there, her hand still outstretched, the dry biscuit still held up, not knowing what to say.

Chu Yang walked up behind her and squatted down in front of the little girl. He didn't take out any cakes, money, or anything else. He simply squatted there, at eye level with the little girl, and asked, "Is there some difficulty here?"

The little girl hugged the cat and remained silent for a long time. She lowered her head and rubbed her chin against the orange cat's head, and the cat let out a very faint purr, like a sigh. Then she looked up at Chu Yang, and a glimmer of light flashed in her large, deep well-like eyes.

"Shiva," she said. "We make offerings to him every month."

Chu Yang didn't ask any further questions and stood up.

That night, they spent the night in the courtyard of this family. Dry hay was laid out in the yard; the white donkey and the white dragon horse were tethered under the fig tree; the white wolf lay at Su Wanwan's feet; Sun Wukong leaned against the wall, his golden cudgel resting on his knees. Tang Sanzang didn't sleep. He sat on the threshold of the main room, turning the pages of his scriptures by moonlight, very slowly, taking a long time to read each page; it was unclear whether he was reading the scriptures or lost in thought.

Su Wanwan lay on the hay, her eyes open, gazing at the unfamiliar starry sky above. The sky in the Western Regions was different from that in the Central Plains. The stars in the Central Plains were scattered, like sesame seeds sprinkled on a black cloth; the stars in the Western Regions were clustered together, large swathes of them crowded together, like luminous grains of sand, densely packed, dazzling to the eye. She looked for a long time, until her eyes were tired, then closed them, her mind filled with the eyes of that little girl.

She wasn't asleep.

In the middle of the night, she heard a noise coming from the main room. It wasn't footsteps, but crying. Not a loud wail, but a suppressed sob, a muffled sound, like the wind whistling through a broken string. The crying was so faint that even the white donkey couldn't hear it—the white donkey was sleeping soundly under the tree, its hooves relaxed, its tail drooping, occasionally twitching, as if it were dreaming of eating grass.

Su Wanwan heard it, and so did the white wolf. The white wolf's ears perked up, and it turned towards the main room, then tilted its head to look at Su Wanwan. Su Wanwan put a finger to her lips, and the white wolf lowered its ear, but didn't close its eyes.

The crying lasted for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, then stopped, like a string that had been cut, abruptly ending.

The next morning, Su Wanwan was awakened by a commotion. It wasn't the noise from the village; the village was too poor to even raise chickens, so there was nothing that could make a sound. The noise came from the courtyard gate. Someone was talking, not loudly, but with an unsettling tone—not fierce, but with an air of absolute certainty that said, "What I say is the law."

Su Wanwan climbed up from the hay, her hair a mess like a bird's nest, and there were red marks from the hay pressing on her face. The white wolf had already stood up, standing behind the gate, its ears tilted forward, its tail horizontal, and its body slightly lowered. Its wound hadn't fully healed; a small, pale pink stain seeped through the bandage, but its posture showed no signs of injury.

Two people were standing outside the courtyard gate.

One of them was the old woman who had been twisting hemp rope at the village entrance yesterday. She was standing at the back, still holding the uneven hemp rope in her hand. Su Wanwan couldn't understand the expression on her face—it wasn't fear, it wasn't anger, but a very complex, wrinkled expression that seemed to be resigned yet unwilling to accept her fate.

The other one is a man.

No, he couldn't be called a man. He was something dressed in an ochre-red robe, with a human shape, but Su Wanwan's nose told her that he wasn't human. He had no demonic aura, no human presence, and none of the aura a living being should possess. He stood there like a candle—not a metaphor, but truly like a candle, because his skin was waxy yellow, smooth without a single line, like those cast wax figures in a wax museum, without pores, without body hair, and without any trace of life.

His face was long, with regular features, but so regular they didn't seem to grow naturally; they looked as if they had been carved stroke by stroke with a chisel. His eyes were closed, never opening. His hands were clasped in front of him, his fingers long and slender, his nails neatly trimmed and painted with a dark red substance—I couldn't tell if it was nail polish or something else.

He stood at the gate of the courtyard without saying a word, but the middle-aged woman—the little girl's mother—knelt before him.

She knelt on the muddy ground outside the courtyard gate, her hands supporting her weight, her forehead pressed against the ground, her whole body lying there like a folded blanket. (End of Chapter)