Faraway Wanderers Novel (English Translation)

Long Que [1]

Chapter 49.

By his features, that person looked about thirty years of age. Surprisingly, he was a quadriplegic; his limbs had shrunk to the size of those of a child’s, his exposed arms atrophied and wrinkled. His head was disproportionately huge and his neck was tilted to the side, as though it could not straighten one bit. He did not resemble a human at all, and looked greatly frightening. He sat on a wooden wheelchair, which slowly rolled out from that hole.

Ye Baiyi’s forehead creased slowly as he stared at that person. All of a sudden, he said, “You are not Long Que.”

Long Que and his Puppet Manor was a legend that had been circulating in the jianghu for a few decades; there was no way that the real Long Que could be this young. That person on the wheelchair emitted a screeching laugh, and said, “Of course, I am not.”

His eyes were extremely wide. Wen Kexing furtively whispered to Zhou Zishu, “Look at his eyes, don't they look like they’re about to fall out?”

Zhou Zishu felt that Wen Kexing had nothing better to do, as though Wen Kexing needed to jump at every opportunity to say something pointless no matter the situation, in order to feel like he had recouped whatever he had invested. He ignored him.

The person on the wheelchair screeched, “Who are you? You dare to barge into the Puppet Manor?”

Ye Baiyi gave this person a once-over, and was of the opinion that this person had a peculiar temperament and did not look to be a good person. Forcing himself to be patient with great difficulty, he spoke in an appropriate tone of voice, "I have matters to see Long Que about."

From Ye Baiyi’s perspective, he was speaking pleasantly, but to the ears of others, he was still speaking in that same unpleasantly stiff and arrogant manner. The person in the wheelchair turned his head around. Giant eyes regarded him, and a while later, he finally humphed coldly, saying, "That old numbskull Long Que, he's been dead long enough that even what's left of his bones have decomposed. Why are you looking for him?"

The trench between Ye Baiyi’s eyebrows was growing deeper and deeper. He stared at that person and asked, “Long Que is dead? How did he die?”

That person on the wheelchair said smugly, “Of course, I was the one who killed him.”

This was too unbelievable; trespassing the Puppet Manor made the three great experts of the present age extremely bedraggled, and they had nearly died within it. How could he, a person who couldn’t even walk, enter without being harmed at all and kill the master of the Puppet Manor?

Evidently, Ye Baiyi did not know what ‘tact’ was; he looked this person up and down, and said, “Don’t talk bullshit. If you can kill Long Que, a termite can shake an enormous tree. Unless you’re Long Que’s son--then he’d lie down, stay still and let you hack away at him.”

Once he heard this, Wen Kexing knew that things were going to get worse, and immediately told Zhang Chengling, “Get out of here, quick, run!”

Indeed, even before his words died down, that strange person on the wheelchair roared in rage, “You’re seeking your own death!”

He raised his hand and clapped it on the armrest. Human shapes, so many that they appeared as a tightly-packed mass, protruded from the four walls of the great hall. Thereafter, ten-odd bare-headed, polished puppets with ferocious expressions swarmed out from all directions. As he ran towards the exit, Zhang Chengling was unable to avoid them in time, and crashed straight into a puppet. That puppet was rather uncourteous, and rotated its elbow to split his skull open.

Zhou Zishu instantly flicked his finger, hitting Zhang Chengling directly in the knee so that he collapsed to his knees with a 'thud' and just barely dodged the attack. Zhang Chengling scrambled over to him, surveyed their surroundings, slack-jawed, and exclaimed, "Shifu, are we in Hell?"