Chapter 3 – The Third Ray of Light

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard Bus 81. This route starts from Hu Feng Town and heads to the central bus terminal, passing through the new district in East City and the Jinxiu Cultural and Sports Center… Please sit tight and hold on, the next stop is Bi Kong Community.”

After the announcement, the bus started with a jerk, carrying the last passengers toward their destinations.

As Ji Si settled into his seat, his unique attire drew quite a bit of attention. However, he didn’t hide or shy away; he let people look, and soon enough, their curiosity faded.

As the bus moved further from town, Ji Si looked back, taking in the familiar landscape one last time.

The town, located in a remote area, wasn’t known for its feng shui. Luckily, the people were simple and kind-hearted. Generations had sown good deeds and reaped good karma, enriching both the community and the environment through this cycle of mutual nourishment.

It wasn’t a rich town, but it was peaceful, making it quite suitable for retirement, after all…

Ji Si’s gaze lingered on the mountains near the town. The peaks were cloaked in clouds that slowly formed into a pair of abstract eyes, watching him as if to say farewell.

Good deeds lead to good outcomes, and the spirit of the place acknowledged this…

Suddenly, he heard a child in the seat in front calling out, “Mommy, the big brother sitting behind me is glowing.” The little boy peeked over the back of his seat cautiously.

At around four or five years old, children are both fearless in their speech and their third eye—their intuitive sense—is particularly active. It wasn’t surprising that the child could see the aura emanating from Ji Si.

“Shh, don’t make things up, behave,” the mother soothed. “That’s just the sunlight falling on his face.”

“But…” The restless child, glued to the window, couldn’t pull his gaze away once he noticed something else. He exclaimed, “Mommy! There’s a pair of yellow eyes in the sky! Look!”

The mother looked out the window and laughed, “That’s just a cloud that looks like a big dog. What eyes are you talking about?”

“They really are eyes, yellow ones! They’re staring at us!”

“…Yes, eyes,” the mother conceded, unable to correct him any further. She turned and apologized with an embarrassed smile to the other passengers, “Kids have such wild imaginations, always saying the strangest things.”

Ji Si nodded slightly and then added after a pause, “It’s not so strange. There really are eyes in the sky.”

At the woman’s disbelieving chuckle, the child immediately sided with Ji Si, thrilled to have found an ally. “I told you so!” he cried, before bombarding Ji Si with questions about whose eyes they were.

As the bus turned a corner, Ji Si looked toward the winding outline of the mountain, as if he could see back through the centuries.

A girl in simple linen clothes, smiling radiantly, approached by a fox that settled by her feet. Flowers and wild fruits shared their fragrance under the clear sky; the fox turned its head, its amber eyes shifting toward him…

“They belong to a fox spirit,” Ji Si began, like a storyteller from ancient times.

“Seven hundred years ago, at the foot of the mountain. A woodcutter’s daughter went to the creek to catch fish and met a limping fox.”

“It had injured a leg, unable to find food, almost starving to death. The woodcutter’s daughter, kind-hearted, shared half her cake with it, saving its life.”

From near death, the ordinary fox gained wisdom, and a bond formed between it and the woodcutter’s daughter. The heavens are heartless, but all creatures possess spirit. When humans treat other beings with kindness, those beings return the favor.

“They became friends.”

Ji Si continued, “The woodcutter’s daughter accompanied the fox from death to life, so the fox accompanied her from life to death. When she was buried in the mountains, it transformed its body into the mountain; as she became part of the earth, it let its fur grow into the trees. She fed it eleven cakes, and so it protected this land for eleven hundred years.”

If the woodcutter’s daughter hadn’t acted with kindness, her path would never have crossed with the fox spirit again.

The wild fox would have died in the woods, and the mountains would have remained barren. A land without its guardian spirit faced a massive mudslide that destroyed villages and submerged farms…

Was it his voice, or the story itself that captivated everyone? For a moment, the bus was silent except for the child’s wide-eyed wonder. “Is all that true?”

Ji Si remained silent.

Many legends are real, just as many children can “see” things others cannot.

However, when those around repeatedly feed them information like “it’s not real,” “you believe that?” “you saw wrong,” or “don’t make things up,” once the person believes it to be an illusion, the truth eventually becomes obscured.

Even the faint spiritual insight they have as children is extinguished by the flow of reality.

In the end, every possibility fades into obscurity.

“It’s all true,” the woman said, gathering her things and urging, “We’re three stops away from getting off, remember to thank the storyteller… uncle.”

The child nodded obediently, probably very fond of the glowing Ji Si, and stealthily took two white candies from his pocket, handing them over with both reluctance and pain.

As the automated announcement played, the woman was busy checking which stop they were at, missing the interaction.

“Thank you, uncle!” the child whispered. “I’m not allowed to eat candy; I stole these from mommy’s drawer, and I’m giving them all to you!”

The innocence and genuine sharing touched Ji Si deeply.

He unwrapped a candy and popped it into his mouth. Instead of sweetness, he tasted the natural essence of cotton—fresh, airy, invigorating, expanding!

Ji Si: …

He silently watched the child, who blissfully returned his gaze.

Then, Ji Si reached up, touched his lip, and slowly began to pull, extending a white edge from his mouth—pulling out a stark white “ghost face.”

Perfect, a face mask.

The bus fell silent, except for the child’s genuine awe. “Wow! Uncle, you can do magic!” he clapped wildly.

Ji Si: …

Many have tried to end me and failed. Yet you, with a simple face mask, nearly choked a divine High Priest to death. Truly, youth is formidable!

…

At the Central Bus Station, the mother apologized profusely, relieved that it wasn’t her child who had swallowed mask particles, which could have been disastrous.

Before parting, she insisted on giving Ji Si some money, then hurried off to catch her bus, leaving Ji Si standing at a crossroads with an unworn face mask in hand.

In front of him were four trash bins labeled for recyclables, organic waste, hazardous waste, and other waste.

So, the question was, what kind of waste does a moist cotton face mask belong to?

Presumably organic waste?

Ji Si pondered for a moment before tossing the mask into the organic waste bin. Subsequently, he was fined fifty yuan for improper disposal.

Ji Si: …

From last night’s arrival to this morning’s journey, he had already experienced a handful of setbacks, unprecedented in his previous existence.

No wonder his friends were reluctant to return; perhaps pre-apocalyptic Earth was a place where even the Chosen could constantly face losses?

He had visited Earth-like planes before where they either ended up in haunted villages solving mysteries, on war fronts saving worlds, or in dens of monsters fighting epic battles. And he, the High Priest, was always a guest of honor.

No chicken coops, no fines, no face masks. The unique High Priest of the cycle, he was welcomed everywhere he went.

Not like now, with the sanitation worker holding a broom and pulling out his phone, assertively asking, “Young man, will it be you sweeping or me?”

Ji Si, without a phone, reluctantly pulled out the last of his cash.

The sanitation worker took the money but, lacking exact change for fifty, repeated, “Young man, will it be you sweeping or me?”

A vicious cycle!

…

In a quaint café with dim lighting and rich aromas, Yu Mingyang sat behind his DSLR, coffee untouched, cake untouched, obsessively flipping through photos, his expression clearly agitated.

“How is this possible? It can’t be…”

Yu Mingyang spread out all the photos and scrolled through his phone’s gallery, muttering, “Even if the film was overexposed, it shouldn’t be like this; why can’t I capture anything?”

Twenty-something photos, all taken while riding Bus 81. Without exception, each featured a dazzling man and the five-year-old child speaking with him.

Foreground and background, innocence and gentleness. The child clung to his seat, in short hair, sweater, and cotton pants; the man told stories, in long hair, a white robe, and silver branches. One represented the future, the other the past, as if they were communicating across time. Despite the warm sunshine, nothing could match the warmth of this scene.

An ordinary bus ride turned poetic and enduring because of a legend.

He eagerly snapped photos, planning seven or eight themes, but was left cold when the prints came out—

Halos, golden and silver, spreading across the images, blurring the figures.

He could barely make out a human silhouette within the halos, but whether male or female, what they looked like, was completely obscured. Every single photo was like this, without exception.

He suspected a problem with his camera, but when he checked his phone, the saved images were the same. Any photo that captured the man was filled with halos.

“Ridiculous…” Yu Mingyang slapped the photos down on the table, laughing in frustration, “It’s bizarre, could it be like that child said, this man actually glows?”

He pulled out his phone and dialed a number.

“Boss Si, can you help me out?”

“I’m looking for someone.” Yu Mingyang explained, “In Chengdu, Sichuan, from Hu Feng Town at the start of the Longitudinal Mountains, on Bus 81.”

“Dressed in a snow-white robe, with silky long hair, and a handsome face, the only flaw is that he’s male.”

“Why am I looking for him?” Yu Mingyang chuckled, “Because he comes with his own special effects!”

Author’s Note:

PS: Ji Si: I come with my own special effects, Buddha’s light illuminates all.

Si Nuocheng: I come with my own BGM, terrifying like Si.