In the dead of night at the hotel, someone was singing an old song in sorrowful harmony.
Wei Tianyang felt drawn by it, descending the stairs slowly, the staircase bathed in a faint blue light, ethereal as a dream.
Following the melodious sound of the hand accordion, he emerged from the stairwell and into the lobby.
The earlier dining arrangements had been cleared away, with low tables and chairs tidily lined up along the walls.
Above, chandeliers with candles burned with blue flames, illuminating a corner of the expansive hall.
A group of people sat under the light, softly singing the guerilla song; they were all quite old, men and women dressed simply, each with an old-fashioned rifle slung over their shoulder.
Among them were the men and women Wei Tianyang had caught a glimpse of during the day.
Wei Tianyang stood at the entrance to the corridor, gazing at this group of people. Their song seemed to possess a magic power that tinged him with melancholy.
As the song ended, they laughed out loud, then raised their beer bottles to clink together before tilting their heads back to drink them down.
As they set their empty bottles back on the ground, the beer inside silently refilled itself.
The woman who had exchanged a brief greeting with Wei Tianyang at the reception desk during the day spotted him and put a stop to the harmonica.
She looked at Wei Tianyang and said, "You've heard enough, haven't you?"
"It's quite nice," he replied.
"Come over here, let us have a look at you," the woman said with a smile.
Her appearance was robust, with a scar from a blade on her left eyebrow, her tone remarkable, as if she was the leader of the group.
Wei Tianyang clenched his right fist and stepped into the candlelight.
"Just a child," said the man who had been reading in the courtyard earlier.
"He is the only one who can see us," the woman stated.
Wei Tianyang stood there, subject to the scrutiny of the group.
"Aren't you afraid of us?" the man asked.
"There's nothing to be afraid of, it's not my first time," Wei Tianyang said.
"What's your name, child?" the woman asked with a smile.
"Call me Ishmael," Wei Tianyang responded.
"I don't want that freak's code name for you," the woman said, raising an eyebrow.
Wei Tianyang chuckled to himself, thinking that Yaha had actually been called a freak by them.
"My name is Wei Tianyang," he said with no need to hide anything from the dead.
"That doesn't sound like a name from Chicken Snake Country, it sounds... like it's from Yin Country. But your accent is purely that of Chicken Snake Country," the woman remarked with curiosity.
"I grew up here," Wei Tianyang replied.
The woman nodded and turned to the man beside her, asking, "What do you think?"
The man stretched lazily and said, "A Yin person who has grown up on our land. What do you think I should think?"
The woman turned back to Wei Tianyang and said, "Wei Tianyang, pass a message to that white-haired freak for us. Tell him to take his people and get out of this hotel."
Wei Tianyang said, "The hotel is so big, you won't take up much space. There's no need to disturb each other's water..."
He was cut off mid-sentence when he suddenly heard a commotion behind him.
Turning to look, a large group of men and women with AK47s slung over their waists emerged from the darkness, swiftly filling the whole lobby and surrounding Wei Tianyang.
"Wells' water? This has been our territory since 2059! Where did you come from, daring to infringe on the Chicken Snake Country Liberation Front's command post?!" the woman shouted menacingly.
Wei Tianyang's expression turned grave; he hadn't expected there to be so many of them.
Instinctively, he extended his right arm, revealing the Bone Knife, and thoughts of slaughter flickered across his mind, his eyes glowing in the darkness.
"He is..." The previously distracted man became serious after seeing his abnormal condition.
"Superpower Special Forces?!"
"Oh? Are they Yin Country's Superpower Special Forces?!"
"They have superpowers!"
The crowd began to stir.
"That's not right, he's still so young. Yin Country's special forces couldn't possibly be of this age!" a woman said as she stared at Wei Tianyang.
Wei Tianyang sheathed his Bone Knife, holding his right arm to calm his emotions.
"I'm not," he said simply.
The lie was too big to cover up; it was better to tell the truth.
"Not? Then how do you have superpowers?" the man asked.
"That perverted white-haired... his men, they all have superpowers," Wei Tianyang said.
The crowd was once again agitated.
"How... You've been living with them for two years and never noticed?" he asked.
"They're very cautious; only that white-haired one likes self-harm and killing rats. Plus, no one has ever seen us before; you're the first," the woman said.
After the woman finished speaking, the surrounding crowd burst into laughter.
"We are Medicine People who escaped from the pharmaceutical company, hiding here, barely surviving, planning our revenge," Wei Tianyang said.
"I'm not interested in your revenge. Our goals are more noble," the woman said haughtily.
"Do you know what year it is now?" Wei Tianyang asked.
As soon as he finished speaking, the surrounding people fell silent.
There were 2 months left in the year 2106.
Even if the guerrilla had some noble goal, more than 30 years had already passed...
"It seems like you've won, and yet it seems like you've lost, half and half," Wei Tianyang said.
Chicken Snake Country had previously been the scene of a liberation civil war. The radical faction had driven the military government back across the river, and to this day, they were still waging war against each other, with just about a ten-year ceasefire in between.
"No, we lost," the man said, shaking his head.
"Lost?" Wei Tianyang did not understand.
With a bitter smile, the woman said, "It took us 4 years to overthrow the military government, and just one week for our organization to split apart."
A split... was it betrayal...?
Wei Tianyang's expression turned solemn; he guessed something.
"This is where we'll be buried. Everyone from the original liberation front died here. The only survivors are the radicals who split off. The radicals stole the fruits of the revolution and gave the military government a chance to breathe. Just as we were preparing to rebuild our homeland, the civil war broke out... Many comrades sacrificed in vain," the woman said angrily.
"By now, they have become the radicals. What they seek is no different from the military government. That is the unity of military and government, military rule over the country, and a dead end where the citizens are nothing but the army," the man said.
"The people will become mere fuel for the war... Only the upper echelons of the radicals reap the benefits," the woman said.
Wei Tianyang took a deep breath; such was the broken fate of Chicken Snake Country.
"We can do nothing but watch our motherland fall to pieces," the woman's voice trembled, her eyes brimming with hot tears.
"Do you know how we died?" the man said with a smile looking at Wei Tianyang.
Wei Tianyang shook his head.
"This hotel used to be red. Later, it was burned black," the man said, smiling.
As he spoke, the appearances and shapes of the group began to change. Their skin and muscles twisted and curled, and under the blue lights, one by one, in the interplay of light and shadow, they turned into blackened charred corpses...