The Lost Tomb : Restart (The Sound Of Providence)

Chapter 119: Desire to go to Thunder City

In Uncle Three's journal, he recorded an example of a poet with God-given talents. I didn't know how many times I had heard of this example before. It was difficult to confirm if these memories had long been in the heart of that poet, or if they had really been inserted into that person's mind from the heavens on a destined day. This example proved that the heavens interacted with mankind.

People bewitched by thunder would want to go to a certain place as they grew older. This place had no name, but Uncle Three called it Thunder City.

According to literal interpretations, Thunder City was incredible. It spanned an area of 1,150 kilometers and the walls were almost 270 meters tall. It was said that the immortal Yellow Emperor turned into a thunder spirit and built Thunder City, but these explanations were based on Taoism. For Uncle Three, Thunder City was just a name. This "place" definitely wasn't a city, but no one actually knew what—or where—it was.

In other words, people would have a desire to go somewhere after listening to thunder, but no one knew where that place was.

Uncle Three thought up a lot of possibilities, which are discussed below.

He put forward a hypothesis that several conditions had to be met in order to form such a strong desire. The first condition was chasing thunder.

During your normal life, you wouldn't be affected if you heard thunder every once in a while. But all the strange symptoms Uncle Three had noticed would start to appear while you were chasing thunder. It was a result of chasing thunder clouds and hearing a lot of thunder in a short amount of time.

This situation would also occur when you repeatedly listened to thunder recordings. Of course, if you watched "My Fair Princess" [1] repeatedly in a short amount of time, it may also have the same effect.

Uncle Three also wrote a lot of other theories. For example, the temple where the Tathagata Buddha devoted himself to spiritual development was called Leiyin Temple [2]. Were there other people in other ancient countries who received information from thunder? No one knew.

Second, although you would be bewitched by thunder, no one actually knew where Thunder City was. In other words, the thunder only planted a desire, but not the information on how to get there. If this desire couldn't be satisfied, then it would become more and more intense as you aged. That was why people would keep following the thunder in hopes of getting information from it.

Uncle Three felt that Yang Daguang suddenly going crazy and starting to listen to thunder even more after they had separated was a result of this possibility.

But despite making all of these assumptions, Uncle Three ultimately didn't have any proof. They sounded reasonable, but he actually just twisted the words to make them sound logical. Honestly speaking, it sounded like he was talking out of his ass.

Yang Daguang was different from me; he and Uncle Three had experienced a lot. They hid everything they had collected about listening to thunder in the Yang family's ancestral grave, but it was later discovered and Yang Daguang's father was shot. As a result, Yang Daguang and Uncle Three's friendship came to an end. Maybe Chen Wen-Jin's relationship with them also played a role in this.

Since ancient times, people had written and sung about right and wrong, love and passion. The more they spread it, the more complicated and exciting it became, as if they had all experienced it themselves. History was like the weight of the world; it couldn't be touched and couldn't be debated. When you saw it, you pretended like you didn't.

I leaned back in my chair as it started to rain outside. I thought of the emotional entanglements that occurred among that small group of people during that time. Uncle Three liked simplicity. He was born and raised in a complicated world, so he knew from an early age that people were walking a dead-end road. While walking from Lanzhou to Dunhuang, you could see the Great Wall standing there amid the yellow sand. If you looked carefully at the foot of the city, you could see a bunch of fragmented bones. Uncle Three handed me some and said, "There are only so many feelings in the end. There's only so much love one can feel and so much heartlessness one can show, so don't blame your Uncle Three for not loving you, and don't blame your dad for loving you too much. In the end, there's only so much. We're lucky to get what we can. Nothing more, nothing less."

Now that I thought about it, maybe those words were the best answer he would come up with if I asked him, "How could you do such a thing to me?"

But he still chased Chen Wen-Jin all that time and refused to give up. When I asked him why, he said that the fate of a person's life was as thin as a string. When you put into a glass, the wine wouldn't overflow. That was it. If you could sort it out, then sort it out. If you couldn't, then there wouldn't be any more in the future. Uncle Three acted nonchalant on the surface and kept saying we should let go of things, but deep down, he never let go. Since there was nothing else that would occupy him, why even bother letting it go?

Yang Daguang was in a different position from Uncle Three when it came to this kind of thing. Uncle Three had been born with a burden of hatred and acted cautiously. If we think of it like pockets, he would pat his and say "no more, no more", but Yang Daguang was born with an empty pocket that he always wanted to fill.

Chen Wen-Jin was a very wonderful person and her relationship with Uncle Three was very simple. She also had a lot of responsibilities on her shoulders. As a result, no one's pocket was big enough for her. She only belonged to the world, so Uncle Three could only run around next to her, his eyes following her wherever she went. The same could be said for Yang Daguang. He probably kept his passionate eyes on her as well. Although he loved her deeply, it was difficult for him to understand her and get hold of her.

I looked at the photos I had found on Yang Daguang's body, which I had copied into my phone. His eyes seemed to show that he really liked her, but most men didn't know that this kind of "like" was only good for them. Uncle Three's "like", on the other hand, was the kind that was good for Chen Wen-Jin.

I thought hard about it, but there wasn't anywhere I wanted to go. I had heard a lot of thunder, but it didn't seem like it had made me crazy. In fact, my mind felt pretty peaceful.

Thunder City, what kind of place is it?

I didn't know why, but I suddenly wanted to go there.

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Notes:

[1] A 1998 Chinese period drama. 

[2] Leiyin means something like booming thunder. The important part is that lei=thunder. Fun fact: Tathagata is Buddha's name for himself and has many layers of meaning.