C14 —- Strange Tales by the Lakeside

At dusk, the slanting sun hung on the ridges of the green mountains, reflecting the rugged waves of the lake. The sunset of the Golden Lake was extremely beautiful, and the lake water seemed to be melted with gold, emitting a warm and pleasing power that was completely different from its deep and mysterious appearance fifty years later.

 

Zhuo Yu sat by the lake, still holding the book Seven Day Talk in his hand.

 

“Asha, my grandfather once told me that I must look after the Golden Lake; it was his only wish before he died.” Zhuo Yu stretched his back and wondered, “But he was always an old man who hated troublesome things; why was he so attached to this place?”

 

 

Asha walked to his side, made a sharp lift, then carried the man back to the house. “Everyone, everyone has their most important person or thing.”

 

 

“Quickly put me down!”

 

 

“It’s going to be dark outside; you’ll get sick.” Asha’s sputtering was a little slurred, and he stumbled over his words.

 

 

Zhuo Yu was put on the couch, and he snapped the book closed. “When I was a kid, my grandfather always told me stories about the Seven Day Talk and the gold rush adventures my grandparents had personally experienced; how come I didn’t see them discover the Fountain?”

 

 

“That’s just a story.” Asha brought the cooked dinner to the table and carried Zhuo Yu to the table again, which was strongly protested by Zhuo Yu.

 

 

“Don’t carry me around as if I’m handicapped.”

 

 

What Zhuo Yu didn’t know was that his words were prophetic.

 

 

Three days later, a group of officials from Spring Town suddenly came, claiming to be from the development department, saying that they had their eye on this part of the Golden Lake and wanted to acquire the land here and transform it into a scenic spot, which would be used to boost the local economy.

 

 

The newly appointed mayor, Marcus, thought it was a good opportunity, so he kept going up to the mountains to lobby Zhuo Yu, trying to get him to sell the Golden Lake so that Zhuo Yu could make money and Spring Town could have a more affluent future, constantly brainwashing Zhuo Yu that it was a win-win choice.

 

 

But Zhuo Yu didn’t think so.

 

First of all, Spring Town was really too remote, and there wouldn’t be many tourists specifically rushing to see an ordinary lake. The golden lake’s scenery wasn’t to the extent of the world’s most beautiful scenery; it was just obscure, quiet, and warm.

 

 

So Zhuo Yu thought that it was a fraud, or they wanted to use this piece of land for any unknown purpose; building a scenic spot was just an excuse to cover up.

 

Secondly, this was the ancestral property left behind by his grandfather, and he had the right to deal with it personally, not to mention that this was his and Asha’s home, and he didn’t want to move away from the Golden Lake.

 

So after rejecting the town mayor several times, that good old average man finally bared his fangs to him.

 

 

On the day that Asha stayed at the school to get a picture taken for the archives, the mayor gathered several families and broke into the lakeside cabin with murderous weapons in hand, tying Zhuo Yu up with electrical tape and forcing him to sign.

 

 

The mayor let out a disdainful and pitying sneer at him, holding a transfer statement in his hand: ”You refused to sell your land when you were told to, and now you don’t even get any money, stupid outsider. You’ll only be a tourist when you return here in the future, won’t you?”

 

 

But Zhuo Yu didn’t accept this; although he wasn’t as tough on the outside as these burly men, he definitely preferred not to surrender.

 

 

After enduring nearly an hour of violent beatings, he still didn’t give in and refused to write his name on the transfer statement.

 

 

The mayor finally began to get anxious; he knew that the deformed freak with low intelligence could drive them away, and in order to have the Golden Lake in his pocket, he had purposely picked a day when the freak wasn’t around, but now that it was getting late in the day, he didn’t know how many hours his son would be able to stop the freak.

 

 

Asha, who was far away in Spring High School, also met with a lot of trouble at this moment.

 

He had been stopped at the exit of the school by Marcus Jr., who looked remarkably like his father, right down to the tip of his eyebrow, his face even had the same superior sneer.

 

 

“Look at that. I had wondered, why does this stupid big guy always wear a mask to school? So he’s a monster!”

 

 

Immediately, Marcus Jr.’s followers let out a rowdy, teasing laugh.

 

 

Asha took two steps back and covered his hockey mask tightly. He knew that nothing good would happen after today’s photoshoot.

 

 

“Why haven’t you said anything?” Marcus Jr. quipped, “Is it that your damned father didn’t teach you? Also, he’s Asian; you two are freaks; go back where you came from!”

 

Asha, who had been reluctant to argue with the group, was instantly annoyed, and he pushed the flailing young Marcus away, wanting to get away from these schoolyard punks.

 

 

However, his size and strength were too great, and little Marcus fell straight to the ground, his forehead hitting the floor tiles and bleeding instantly.

 

The bad vibes escalated.

 

 

Little Marcus had never suffered such aggravation in all his life. Before this incident, moving from the big city with his father to this unknown, shabby town was already the biggest ordeal in his life, and he never thought that today he would also meet the bogeyman, Asha.

 

 

Asha no longer cared about him and turned his head to leave, but Marcus Jr still remembered his father’s instructions and shouted, “You guys, stop him!”

 

Asha dealt with those punks as easily as a grown man crushed a small chicken. Just one person pushed, and all of them fell down. The onlookers immediately dispersed, fearing that they would be affected by this monster-like person.

 

 

Asha ignored the group of irrational teenagers; he had almost missed the last shuttle bus.

 

 

Rising from the ground, Marcus Jr. was also bubbling with real anger. “Go after him, go after him!”

 

 

He drove his open-topped sports car while his minions rode motorbikes and followed the school bus closely, wanting to give him a good time when he got off the bus, and on the side of Old Marcus, he finally made up his mind.

 

 

They broke Zhuo Yu’s legs.

 

 

The loss of blo-od, coupled with the severe pain, made Zhuo Yu’s consciousness blurred. He only felt that someone had written something on the transfer statement, and took his hand and pressed it on the ink pad, leaving fingerprints on the statement.

 

 

After doing all this, the mayor also didn’t want to stay in this cabin for much longer. He held the statement like an absolute treasure, and even his voice trembled.

 

 

“Mr. De Leon! We have finally done your will! The fountain has been found!”

 

 

Zhuo Yu tried to stop them, but the human body has its limits, and he fainted in pain and agony.

 

 

So, when Asha returned home, all he saw was a mess and Zhuo Yu, who had fallen in a pool of blo-od, with bone stubble piercing out of his legs.

 

 

His most important person…

 

 

Asha fell to his knees and let out a mournful roar.

 

 

Meanwhile, Marcus Jr. had arrived outside the cabin, and at a glance, he saw the misery inside, but he wasn’t at all surprised, for he knew his father’s methods.

 

 

Serves them right, he thought to himself. The pair of freaks were both worthless things, and had they succumbed to authority, they wouldn’t have ended up where they were now.

 

 

Besides, how dare that monstrous loser, Asha, hurt him!

 

 

It was simply intolerable!

 

 

Thus, Marcus Jr. let out a long string of laughter, and it was this laughter that completely enraged Asha.

 

 

Like a tiger intruding into a flock of sheep, he could easily break these people’s ribs with just a pair of hands, and it wouldn’t take more than a moment for them to suffocate to death if he squeezed their necks.

 

 

Asha was actually not as gentle as he appeared to be; it was the opposite. From a young age, there was an abnormal destructive desire in his body. Although he couldn’t remember the days before he was picked up by Zhuo Yu, he knew that it must not be the normal life of a child.

 

 

He was better at ki-lling than he was at day-to-day conversations, going to school, and dealing with complicated, headache-inducing relationships.

 

 

He was born knowing the most vulnerable parts of human beings, where to strike to make them stop breathing quickly, and how to inflict the most painful torture on his enemies. If Zhuo Yu hadn’t picked him up and taken him home, then the Golden Lake would surely have circulated the escapades of the Masked Serial Ki-ller.

 

 

But Zhuo Yu showed him what it means to be a human being, and he remembered Zhuo Yu’s teachings as he worked hard to make sure he could enjoy life as a normal human being.

 

 

He couldn’t ki-ll anyone, and he didn’t want to get Zhuo Yu into trouble.

 

 

Looking at Marcus Jr, who was about to die from asphyxiation, Asha finally let go of his hand.

 

 

“You guys, go! Get out of here!”

 

 

Asha used the greatest restraint in his life and gritted his teeth to let these teenagers live; however, his reward was a gu-nshot.

 

 

Marcus Jr.’s eyes were blo-od shot, and he fired his g-un in a frenzy—one round, two rounds,… until six rounds.

 

 

Each shot hit Asha’s body hard; some went through his lungs, some pierced the side of his waist, and the worst shot hit Asha directly in the spine.

 

 

Marcus Jr. shot all the bullets, but Asha was still alive; he was as tenacious as a monster.

 

 

At this moment, Marcus Jr. had to admit that maybe this guy was really overpowered to the point of weirdness. An unprecedented panic swept through his heart; he was afraid of both retaliation and legal sanctions.

 

 

He haphazardly fumbled for the dagger at his waist and ruthlessly stabbed Asha in the heart. The gushing blo-od stained his hands red; he was trembling, but he still spoke up with indignation: “What are you waiting for? Throw his body into the lake! Throw him far away!”

 

 

The teenagers did an evil deed, and in extreme panic, they could only think of Marcus as their backbone. They got up from the ground grimacing and joined forces to throw Asha into the car and drove all the way to the Golden Lake.

 

 

And Zhuo Yu, who was awakened by the sound of the fight, also saw the mask that Asha left on the ground.

 

 

The two of them thus spent their last conscious moments away from each other.

 

 

No one knew that Zhuo Yu dragged his broken legs and crawled from the wooden house to the other side of the lake, along the blo-odstains and stones.

 

 

Perhaps it was fate; Asha was too heavy for those teenagers to throw him too far, so Asha was pushed back to the shore by the gentle waves, rising and falling with the waves, as if the Golden Lake was also lamenting what happened to the two of them and was a bit intolerant of touching the poor child.

 

 

Zhuo Yu used all his strength to fish Asha up; thank God, Asha still had a breath.

 

 

The two of them just laid down by the lake, Asha unconscious, while Zhuo Yu was quietly looking at the sky.

 

 

He was wrong. He was really wrong. From the beginning to the end, he was an outsider to Spring Town. Maybe it was true what the mayor said: he’d be better as a travelling tourist, occasionally attracted by the scenery of the Golden Lake, and writing stories about it.

 

 

If he had accepted, none of this would have happened, right?

 

 

He even dragged Asha into it, and just because of his own stubbornness, Asha might have died too.

 

 

Zhuo Yu pondered for a long time under the misty hunting moon, but this peaceful atmosphere also had to be cruelly broken.

 

 

Old Mayor Marcus, who learned that his son had caused trouble, didn’t criticise his son, instead he praised him for doing well and bringing glory to the church. Of course, he wouldn’t care about his son’s decision; he just had to deal with the aftermath of those two.

 

 

Thus, the mayor, who had only left the Golden Lake not long ago, once again led others to return, but this time it wasn’t to snatch the deed but to destroy the bodies.

 

 

Zhuo Yu, who had lost all his strength, heard the sound of a car engine, and he struggled to even turn his head sideways. All he could see was Marcus’s well-made boots, and with them, the black hole of a g-un.

 

 

Things went as all tragic stories did.

 

 

One shot led to death.

 

Massive amounts of bl-ood poured into the lake, a scene so similar to how it had been thousands of years ago and one that finally evoked an ancient power in the land—the Golden Lake was furious.

 

 

With a deafening roar, Asha opened his eyes.

 

 

From then on, the “Killer Evil Spirit,”  which had been in the Golden Lake for half a century, was born.

 

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TN:

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See ya tomorrow ✌️