Wild Fire Bids Farewell To Summer Chapter 40

Qingming

The water level that rattled the skylights rose.

Huang Jinye squatted on the fourth raised limestone.When the right knee is bent, there is no customary gurgling sound in the joint cavity.The water is stagnant, as if frozen by low temperatures.He paused and adjusted his center of gravity, placing the weight on his left leg and his right knee hanging in the air.There were cries from above the river bank.

Feminine, repressed, torn apart by the mountain wind.Huang Jinye’s fingers stopped in mid-air.The cry pierced the silence at the edge of the shaft.He tilted his head and looked toward the river embankment, but his sight was blocked by the rock wall, and he could only see gray-white limestone layers.The crying stopped.Instead there were footsteps.Heavy and procrastinating, it’s Wei Meihua.Huang Jinye recognized that kind of pace – the proprietress of the stone factory, wearing overalls with the legs rolled up to her calves, exposing her ankles, stained with white stone powder.She was holding a bag of glutinous rice in her hand, which was to be sent to the Wei family, the kind that could be passed on to someone regardless of its nature.She paused above the embankment.He didn’t go down the shaft, he just stood there, a black silhouette in contrast to the gray-white mountain.The bamboo basket swayed behind her, making a dry friction sound.

The canvas bag lay at his feet.Wei Zhiheng’s bag.The leather is worn, with old tawny stains on the ivory surface and cracks around the edges.He opened the zipper, and the metal head made a dull sound.

There were three items in the bag: a glass jar containing turpentine, with 300 ml of liquid left; a plastic urn, white, with a frosted surface; and a limestone specimen, ivory white with gray flint strips and a flat bottom.

He started by removing limestone specimens.The stone appears off-white in the afternoon light, with straight bands of flint.He smashed the stone on the ground, bottom side down, making a dull sound as it hit the limestone floor.The stone acts as a counterweight to hold down the edge of the canvas bag.The spring breeze blew from the river bank, blowing the plastic urn in the bag.The box is light and there is a sound of fine sand rolling inside.

He took out the urn.Made of polypropylene, white, opaque.The raw material tape is wrapped around the seam between the lid and the box body, and the white polytetrafluoroethylene film is squeezed between the threads.He tore open the raw material tape, and the film broke, making a slight tearing sound.

The lid is screw-on.He turned it counterclockwise, and the plastic threads rubbed together, making a dry sound.The lid is open.

The ashes appear off-white inside the box.It is lighter than limestone powder and does not have the metallic astringency of stone powder; it is more astringent than flour and does not have the softness of starch.It’s the ashes – fine, dry, smooth on the surface, but there is a depression in the center, which is the scoop mark left by previous sampling.

Ashes have no smell.Or the smell is extremely weak, like dry dust, like the musty smell of old book pages, or like the smell of stones losing moisture after being exposed to the sun.

He stretched out his index finger and hovered over the ashes.He misperceived: It was limestone powder, the dust flying in his mother Wei Meihua’s stone factory, and the fine dust that filled the air when the rocks were smashed in Chapter 12.5.He dropped his finger.

Touch the surface of the ashes with your fingertips.It feels like the Braille I touched in Chapter 32, raised but wordless.The ashes stuck to the fingertips and filled the ravines of the palm prints.He raised his finger, and ashes fell from his fingertips.Gray-white, fine particles fell on the leather of the canvas bag and on the limestone ground, mixed with paper dust, and it was impossible to tell which was which.

Above the river embankment, Wei Meihua began to speak.Not to Huang Jinye, but to the air, or to Green Cen Mountain.The voice was low, Bunu, with a rough ending, like the friction of stones.Huang Jinye couldn’t understand it, but he recognized the syllable ‘Wei’, which has similar pronunciation in Bunu and Guiliu dialects.

He looked away.He took the glass bottle out of his bag.Turpentine.There is about 300ml left in the liquid level, which is light yellow, transparent and viscous.When the liquid sloshes, it hangs on the wall of the bottle and slowly flows down, leaving oil traces.

He unscrewed the cap.Plastic thread, black.

The smell of turpentine suddenly came out.The citrus aroma is mixed with the pungent resin, chemical, organic and gloomy.But the smell mixed with the wafting paper ash to form a strange aroma – like someone burning pine wood, or like the smell of limestone eroded by acid rain.

He tilted his head and sneezed on his left shoulder, the air hitting the fabric.Nose hung on his chin. He wiped it with the back of his right hand. There was still ashes on the back of his hand. The gray-white powder mixed with the transparent nose to form gray mud.

He tilted the glass bottle and hovered over the urn.

Stop action.

Hand hover.The liquid level of turpentine tilted inside the bottle, forming an arc, but did not flow out.He stared at the bottom of the urn, where a line of small words was engraved: Grade 2 (3) Class 01.The numerals are raised, creating shadows on the matte plastic surface.

He stared at that 01.The fingers are stiff and the joints are locked.The liquid level remains tilted in the bottle, and the surface tension is maintained to prevent overflow.Chapter 1’s student number plate.Paint box.Stairwell.Blood.

Three seconds.Five seconds.Seven seconds.

Liquid level breaks.

The turpentine flows out and the thick liquid forms a continuous thin line that falls into the ashes.The liquid made a slight hissing sound when it came into contact with the powder, like water poured into quicklime.The turpentine penetrates the ashes and spreads from the center to the surroundings, forming a dark, moist area that changes color from grayish white to grayish yellow.

He continued to pour.The liquid forms small pools on the surface of the ashes, then sinks and is absorbed by the powder.The ashes expand in volume, forming a paste that is semi-fluid, somewhere between a solid and a liquid.

He stirred with his index finger.Clockwise direction.Rotate your fingertips in the mixture and feel the resistance – not the heaviness of mixing the cement slurry, nor the delicacy of grinding the ink blocks, but a special, sticky resistance.This rotational movement is isomorphic to the wrist movement of grinding ink in Chapter 25, clockwise, circular movement, the rotation of the earth, and the flow of underground rivers in the limestone cavity.

The mixture has a uniform grayish-yellow color.It is darker than the original gray of ashes, and more turbid than the light yellow of turpentine.It’s gray-yellow, the color of limestone soaked in water, the color of Wei Zhiheng’s last body temperature.He raised his index finger, and the mixture hung on his fingertips, forming a string and dripping slowly.The gray-yellow paste elongates under the action of gravity, breaks, and falls back into the box.

He stopped stirring.Wipe your index finger on the edge of the canvas bag, and the mixture sticks to the leather, forming a gray-yellow stain that overlaps with the previous yellow-brown old stain to form a layer – the bottom layer is the old stain, the middle layer is ashes powder, and the top layer is gray-yellow paste.

He stood up.The right knee tried to make a friction sound, but it only made a short muffled sound, as if it was blocked by something.He lifted the urn. The body of the urn now had weight. The turpentine increased the density. The mixture weighed about 400 grams, which was close to the weight of the limestone specimen and close to the amount of Wei Zhiheng’s final weight loss.

He walked toward the edge of the shaft.The steps were heavy and light, heavy on the right and light on the left, but the rhythm was disrupted – when his left foot landed, the sound of Wei Meihua’s footsteps above the river embankment sounded at the same time. The rubber soles rubbed against the gravel, and the rustling sound formed a counterpoint to the sound of his spikes.He stopped on the edge, the soles of his shoes about thirty centimeters from the water.

He tilted the urn.The mixture flows out of the box mouth in a continuous gray-yellow trickle and falls into the shaft.The moment the liquid comes into contact with the water surface, there is no splash – the water surface tension at 16°C is high, and the mixture cuts into the water surface like a knife, forming a depression and then being engulfed.

But the gray-yellow paste did not dissipate immediately.They form an oil film on the water surface, float and spread, like a gray-yellow sedimentary film, covering the dark green water surface, and then slowly sink, be carried away by the current, or adhere to the rock wall, forming gray-yellow stains.

The pouring lasted a minute.All the mixture flows into the shaft, and a gray-yellow film remains on the inner wall of the plastic box, like the weathered crust of limestone.He turned the box upside down and shook it vigorously. The box made a hollow sound.The last drop of the mixture fell from the mouth of the box, hovered, stretched, and the surface tension maintained the hemispheric shape. After a second, it broke, fell, hit the water surface, fell into the gray-yellow oil film, and then slowly sank together.

The water is calm again, but no longer pure.A grayish-yellow oil film remains on the water surface, blown to the rock wall by the wind, and adheres to the location where the ferns sank, forming a new sedimentary layer.There are gray-yellow patches floating on the dark green water, which do not reflect light.

He put down the empty box.The plastic box became lighter, as if the heart was empty.He placed the box at his feet, next to the limestone specimen, white plastic against off-white stone.

He took his empty glasses out of his pocket.Plastic material, black, no lenses, rectangular frame with frayed edges, temples folded and tied with a rubber band.He unbuckled the rubber band and unfolded the temples, the plastic joints making a slight click.

He raised his glasses to the shaft.The empty frame is aligned with the dark green water surface. Through the two rectangular holes, the water surface appears a deeper dark green color.He needs weight.

He bent down and picked up the limestone specimen.The stone feels cold in the palm of my hand.He inserted the temples of his glasses into the pores at the bottom of the limestone specimen—the stone that scratched Wei Zhiheng’s left hand in Chapter 1, was held in his hand in Chapter 38, and now serves as a counterweight again.

The glasses are set on the stone, with the frames facing upward, like two empty eyes.

He lifted the combination up to his eyes.He misperceived: that was Wei Zhiheng’s face, the empty frame he wore after losing his sight in Chapter 32, and the door to the underworld.He saw a little grayish-yellow mixture stained on the edge of the frame, which was left when he wiped it with his fingers just now.

He dropped his arm and tossed the combination down the shaft.

The sound of entering the water was dull.The water splash is very small, only two circles of water ripples spread.The object sank, the weight of the limestone dragging the glasses downward.The gray-yellow oil film briefly separated and closed again at the entrance to the water.The object gradually became darker and lighter in the dark green water, and finally disappeared five meters underwater.The refraction of plastic and the precipitation of limestone are all swallowed up by darkness.

The water surface returned to calm, but the oil film was still floating, gray-yellow, recording the subsidence.

He turned around.This time my right knee made a dry rubbing sound, but the sound was short, like it was being cut.He picked up the canvas bag, the plastic urn, and the glass bottle – a light yellow oil film remained inside the bottle.He put the items into his bag and zipped it up.

He retraced his steps.The steps were heavy and light, heavy on the right and light on the left. But when dragging his left foot, he stepped on a piece of paper ash – black with red edges, the residue left by the grave sweepers on the river embankment.Paper dust stuck to the soles of his spiked shoes, crushed underfoot and mixed with limestone dust to form black mud.

He didn’t look back.

Behind him, the shaft continued to roar, or he was deafened.