Dark Moon Era

His Precise Instinct lost its function.

How would he calculate time? How would he calculate life energy?

Tang Ling squatted down on a tree root, slicing the fish knife by knife. With every slice he cut, he clenched his teeth tighter and forced his tears back.

The fish fillet would soon be ready in probably another one to two minutes.

He had plucked some purple ginger leaves along the way to put into the soup to provide extra warmth to the body.

Tang Ling had no other options left. He stubbornly wanted to make a simple meal that was as warm as possible to accompany Su Siao in the upcoming loneliness. It was also to help him fight off the coldness and loneliness in his eternal sleep. How long would he have to be lonely during his sleep?

The bitterness in Tang Ling’s heart was erupting.

After the boiling fish soup was placed on the tea table, Tang Ling carried Su Siao over.

Su Siao was a little confused. It was just a very short nap, yet he had aged a lot again. His hands started to shake uncontrollably.

Tang Ling filled a bowl with soup and fed the warm fish fillet to Su Siao. He had removed the bones and the meat was cooked softly, so it slid easily down the throat.

Su Siao nodded, expressing how tasty it was. His eyes then showed a tinge of irony. Has it come down to this? Does he have to feed me now?

“Uncle, even if you are healthy, I should also feed you. That’s what it is.” What was what? Tang Ling could not even express himself properly. As usual, his words would be muddled whenever he was depressed.

“Give…” Su Siao passed the two black notebooks to Tang Ling and swallowed a spoon of soup. Then, he mustered enough strength to say, “The map to Darkness Port…Otherwise, you will die here in the mountains. The other one…has a lot of things inside…you must read it.”

Tang Ling nodded.

“Am I dying?” Su Siao pushed the bowl away. He could no longer eat but he was happy inside. He never thought he would be so at peace when he departed. The kid that he treated as half his son was beside him, a warm meal was on the table, and he was peacefully lying down in this mushroom cottage that housed countless memories for him.

All was well. He waited.

“C-Cigarette.” Su Siao lay down on the tatami mat.

Tang Ling lit a cigarette quietly and gave it to him before he adjusted Su Siao’s body to a more comfortable posture on the tatami mat.

He then grabbed the black overcoat and covered Su Siao’s body because it was getting a little chilly in the cottage.

Su Siao stroked the black overcoat affectionately. “This was from my wife. She died by the hand of my enemy after I came back from a mission. I took revenge for her.” Su Siao forced a smile at Tang Ling with his remaining strength.

Tang Ling held his hand tightly.

“It’s a little cold.” Su Siao curled his body up as he looked at Tang Ling profoundly. “I have a daughter. She’s missing. Her name is Su Lu. Find her for me. Bring her here and tell her I missed her. She will understand when she sees this cottage.”

It was Su Siao’s turn to grip Tang Ling’s hand tightly.

Tang Ling nodded. He also knew the pink lights in the cottage, the childish decorations and the cloth doll were all a little girl’s favorite.

“Whenever I’m bored, I come here to make some wood sculptures. I’m not kidding. That’s Mad Lion Su Siao’s hobby.” Su Siao’s eyes were half-closed.

Tang Ling did not move as the rapid drop in temperature made him want to stay still. Suddenly, the big-bellied lighting bug flew away because of the cold, so the cottage plunged into darkness.

“W-why did it fly away?” Su Siao was confused.

Tang Ling tightened his teeth while his other hand was shaking terribly.

“What’s the weather like outside?”

“It’s almost raining. It tends to rain during early autumn.” Tang Ling tried his best to sound normal.

“Oh, I, Su Siao, am dying on a rainy day.” Su Siao started to mumble gibberish. It sounded muddled as if every word rumbled in his throat though Tang Ling heard it clearly.

“Rona is in Ximi City. If you meet her there, tell her I got another woman and had a bunch of babies.”

“Mm-hmm.”

The box…open it. I know you have a way to open it, but don’t break it. I’m afraid that you just might.”

“Mm-hmm.” Tang Ling saw a thin layer of ice spreading quickly and almost freeze over the old man.

“The Dragon Army has gone into hiding, but the old Dragon Army isn’t important anymore. The important thing is that you should go and find the people that Tang Feng listed down. They will be your most important comrades.”

Tang Ling was silent for a moment before he answered with a muffled cry. Su Siao was going to sleep, and there was no reason for him to make the man mad for one last time. He wanted his uncle to have a sweet dream.

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but Tang Feng is my closest and best brother, and he is your father.” Su Siao tightened his grip on Tang Ling’s hand. The ice had frozen his legs.

The whole cottage was filled with a veil of mist. Every flutter of it would make one quiver.

Tang Ling endured the cold. He could still hold on for a while because he wanted to stay beside his uncle’s side for a little longer. Every second and every minute in the upcoming days, his uncle would be in loneliness, sleeping here alone.

“Here.” Su Siao mustered enough strength to raise his other hand. There was a True Capital coin in his palm.

Tang Ling silently held the coin in his hand.

“I-I also treated you as my son…from the moment…that you were born…you were…my son.” Su Siao shut his eyes. It was so cold that the sleepiness got to him.

“Mm-hmm, yes, Father. I thought so.” A drop of tear rolled down Tang Ling’s cheek, but before it could fall, it froze.

“I’m going to sleep…for a while.” The unfinished cigarette stiffened beside Su Siao’s mouth.

“Sure, have a good rest. I’ll wake you up.” As Tang Ling let go of Su Siao’s hand, the thin layer shattered. Tang Ling tightened his mouth. As though he felt like it was too difficult to part or was unwilling to accept it just yet, he called out to Su Siao, “Uncle? Uncle?”

There was no reply in the dark cottage as the temperature further dropped.

Silently, Tang Ling grabbed the two black notebooks and the black Dori Box into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.

He walked back to Su Siao and removed the cigarette from his mouth. Then, he put the frozen unfinished cigarette on the table where the warm fish soup had been frozen solid.

“I’ll come back and wake you up.” Every word that escaped his mouth was shaky. As his words echoed, he dashed out of the mushroom cottage and pulled the door close.

Covered in a layer of ice when he came out, he stepped across the intertwining roots and moved forward for a dozen meters before he turned around.

The drastic difference in temperature melted the ice on him into water. He stood there wet, gazing at the mushroom cottage that was turning into a big chunk of ice.

From then on, this big chunk of ice would stay in Tang Ling’s heart forever.

…

How did people feel when they were sad? What kind of feelings ran through their minds? What kind of thoughts troubled them?

Tang Ling had been through such heartbreaking moments twice. The first one was when his grandmother and San San left him. The second was Su Siao’s slumber.

Therefore, he was confident and qualified to say that his mind was blank and his body was numb while he felt lost with no direction in mind and had no idea what he was going to do.

For two hours, Tang Ling had leaned beside the dancing root tree in a blank state. The green, blue, and cream leaves were waving in his sight whilst the autumn rain drizzled like an illusion in the air.

Should he be doing something? Should he be thinking about something?

Memories came afloat, but he would see the people that he missed the most in them.

Tang Ling fished out the black box. Of course, he knew how to open it.

There were many rows of numbers on some very artistic-looking tracks. The tracks on the box converged to a single point where a sculpture of a little girl with a sweet smile but an unfriendly gaze was. More precisely, the track converged on the little girl’s hand. It was altogether very artistic.

He then started to rotate the rows of numbers on the track.

63527.

When the five numbers converged on the little girl’s hand, the box clicked and opened easily.

What was in the box? Tang Ling was not curious at all. He numbly opened it up. The box contained nothing but a silver piece of paper the size of a palm.

Tang Ling picked it up. There was nothing written on the front and on the back was a row of crooked words written in black ink: ‘There is no treasure that the great Quark Rockwell can’t steal like this Horror Lullaby List.’

The Horror Lullaby List? Tang Ling’s eyes turned red as tears rolled down and wet the piece of silver paper with the autumn drizzle. He was not curious at all about why the so-called Horror Lullaby List was on a piece of silver paper. He was also not curious about who Quark Rockwell was.

When he read the words, all the memories flooded his mind like the rising tide and drowned him instantly.

Everything started because of this list.

If I’m Tang Feng’s son, it means I’m also one of the names on this blank list. Then, the bloody night, grandmother and sister died, the Star Searcher must have something to do with this list. Then, Uncle Su Yao, no, Uncle Su Siao appeared.

“What should I do?”

“Finish this.”

It was such a big pot of meat.

“You are not qualified to know who I am yet.”

“You little bastard, do you want to get beaten up?”

“What’s with your appetite? Are you are a Harsheen boar?”

When he stood by the window at times, his generous looks and his depressing gaze seemed to reminisce about the past. Actually, was it because of me that he stayed strong and lived until now? His heart must have died a long time ago. He must have died in the memories that he kept looking back on.

I really don’t know whether my arrival gave him a new goal or not. It should have, shouldn’t it? He still wanted to find his daughter, didn’t he?

Tang Ling curled his fist, crumpling the silver paper in his hand, yet the paper did not retain the marks at all.

Tang Ling stood up, feeling a little lost. He fished out one of the black notebooks. When he flipped it open, there were messy scribbles in Huaxia language on the first page.

‘Hey, kid, by the time you are reading this, it means I’m already…’

Pak!

Tang Ling slammed the notebook shut. It was not time to read it because the mood was just not right. He nervously fished out the other one and flipped it open. The first page was a hand-drawn but very detailed map.

The map started with the mushroom cottage and went all over the Herrocky Mountain Ridge. If he were to follow the map, he would pass six safety villages, three safety sectors, and a safety city before ultimately reaching the seaside.

There were several strong strokes drawn on the sea, representing huge waves. At first glance, it was filled with an unusual sense of danger. By the seaside, there was a crescent area that had a long bridge extending from one of the edges and it was connected to an island. The crescent area together with the bridge and the island were all labeled as the Darkness Port.

At the bottom right of the map was another line of Huaxia words. The words were messier than the ones in the other notebook. It felt even wilder than Su Siao’s scrawling, but some of the words had rather round edges and seemed to have been written by a child.

‘Stupid kid, I believe when you see this map, you are still lost. It can’t be helped since you aren’t as smart as me. Go through the whole notebook. I’ve labeled every single sector of the map in detail. Remember to pay up, stupid.’

What the hell? Strange hatred rose from Tang Ling’s heart, and he really wanted to tear the section up. He knew who had written the words, but all he wanted to do was chuckle.

Did he arrange everything before his death? Did he decide that I’d be going to the Darkness Port? What is his goal? To revive the Dragon Army? Or show me fatherly love in these short sentences? If it is, why didn’t he leave the name of my mother?

Compared to his father, Tang Ling would usually imagine who his mother was. It was the softest and weakest part of his heart, so he never told anyone about his imagination and how he missed his mother.

With that in mind, Tang LIng’s heart started to feel bitter again. He turned around to the dancing root tree and then shifted his gaze to Safety Sector No. 17 which only showed up as an edge in the blurry rain.

It’s time to leave. It’s a little lonely this time. There’s no Uncle Su Siao, no Fierce Dragon Squad, no family, and I have to leave the place I once called home. It’s really a little lonely.

Tang Ling sniffled as he wiped his tears dry. Being 15 years old was a cursed year for him. Would he be like this when he was 30?

He still has to go to the Darkness Port because other than revenge, he still had to shoulder the new responsibility, Su Siao’s slumber, the 10-year promise…

The path ahead was blurry due to the autumn drizzle.

At the corner of the cemetery in Safety Sector No. 17, in front of Vian’s tomb, a lady who was holding a boy’s hand put down a bouquet of flowers.

“My beloved daughter, your friends have left. Those who can leave are blessed. I’m sorry that you have to sleep here forever. I’m also leaving with your little brother, Pandy. I’ve received your friends’ help and blessing. I’ll bring your brother to complete what you couldn’t.”

Amidst the drizzle, the lady wiped her tears away.

Behind Vian’s tomb was Amir’s. The young boy, who once had outstanding talent, made a mistake. Although he no longer had the chance to leave, in the future, he would have the chance to be by Vian’s side and gaze at her. That could be considered as the last bit of comfort.