This Japanese Monogatari Isn't Lame
Chapter 109 - 108. Disaster Ferry

Chapter 109: Chapter 108. Disaster Ferry

After dinner and a bath, Beichuan Si finally returned to his room to take out the tape recorder and retrieve the cassette from his backpack.

At that moment, Nishijou Kurenai suddenly came up beside Beichuan Si.

Beichuan Si glanced outside at the weather.

Unbeknownst to them, a heavy rain had started pouring outside.

The heavy rain brought with it a strange chill. Kurenai seemed quite frightened by the weather, so she clung tightly to a corner of Beichuan Si’s bathrobe, leaning against him.

"Let’s listen together then," Beichuan Si suggested, crossing his legs and placing Kurenai beside him on the floor, then he turned on the tape recorder and inserted the cassette.

Accompanied by an uncomfortable, grating sound, the tape began to turn, and a noise with a clear electrical tone resonated.

"The recording has begun, Mr. Takayama."

A young, vibrant male voice sounded, probably the journalist who was writing about Shenzhu Village.

After a while, another deep male voice appeared, likely the ’descendant of the surviving worker’ mentioned on the tape.

The two men began to converse softly.

However, their quiet conversation mixed with the electrical noise sounded eerie and mysterious, giving one an inexplicable chill.

"My father, before he passed away, told me everything about the construction and renovation work in Shenzhu Village. He was the only worker who escaped from the village. Back then, as the Shenzhu Village people were aligned by both the Magong and Shenzhu Families, no one believed what he said."

"Moreover, there are legends everywhere about workers being embedded into walls as human pillars to appease the deity’s anger. No one would believe it, but within that..."

Takayama swallowed nervously; the sound on the tape seemed to blur for a moment.

"My father told me that the construction requested was not only for the houses of the Magong and Shenzhu Families but also involved some bizarrely shaped things above the Shenzhu Shrine... By the time he mentioned this, his expression had become somewhat vacant, as if he had forgotten things from such a distant past."

At this point, the Takayama on the tape seemed to recall something terrifying, his voice beginning to tremble.

"But what I didn’t expect was that my father, on his deathbed, suddenly lurched up as if something dreadful had latched onto him and he clenched my throat tightly, muttering just one sentence."

"One sentence?"

"Yes... I still remember the hideous, terrifying face of my father before he died."

"His voice was hoarse as he repeated that sentence: ’The mountain’s lament, the calamity descends.’"

The tape ended there, ejected with a click sound.

But Beichuan Si was not in a hurry to put away the tape.

The mountain’s lament, the calamity descends.

What did this sentence mean?

Beichuan Si assumed for the moment that the mountain’s lament was a phenomenon.

And whenever this phenomenon occurred, some form of disaster would descend.

"So what kind of phenomenon could it be?"

The entire Shenzhu Mountain was making noises like crying... It seemed to be a phenomenon of immense scale.

Beichuan Si’s mind was spinning rapidly, piecing together the clues he had; he soon summed up a point.

The phenomenon of wailing probably referred to the mudslide incident in Shenzhu Village that Beichuan Si had discovered through online research.

Indeed, looking at the outcome, the mudslide incident had indeed brought about a catastrophic disaster to Shenzhu Village. One could say that in the face of such a natural calamity, Shenzhu Village had vanished from the world without any resistance.

But there were also several puzzling points.

Why did most investigations mention that the mudslide occurred far from the location of Shenzhu Village, fundamentally unable to reach the villagers of Shenzhu Village, yet few villagers survived?

Boom, Boom, Boom!

Suddenly, a thick bolt of lightning flashed outside, and Beichuan Si felt his neck being tightly embraced.

When he turned his head back, he found that Nishijou Kurenai had climbed up to his neck at some unknown time and was holding him tightly.

The sound of thunder was as if mountains were truly roaring at each other, paired with the pouring rain, it made one shudder.

"Don’t be scared," the usually indifferent expression on Beichuan Si’s face softened as he touched Kurenai’s little head and stood up to open the inn’s main door.

The chill rushed into the room through the gap of the door in a mere instant.

The heavy rain pounded down, the dense raindrops forming a seemingly wind-proof curtain of rain.

They heavily struck the roof tiles, involuntarily making one’s heart tighten.

The landscaped miniatures planted in this Japanese-style courtyard appeared from afar like intertwining claws.

The pitch-black night, the bone-chilling weather.

All these gave Beichuan Si a particularly uneasy feeling.

It was as if from the moment he started investigating Shenzhu Village, a pair of invisible hands had been meddling with the progression of the entire incident.

Just as Beichuan Si intended to return to his room, a surprised voice suddenly sounded behind him.

"Mr. Beichuan?"

Beichuan Si looked back and found, not knowing since when, a somewhat bedraggled Master Yutian standing on the other side of the corridor, looking at him in surprise.

"It’s already so late, hasn’t Mr. Beichuan gone to bed?" Master Yutian asked while wiping water stains off his face with a white towel.

"I was awakened by the sudden downpour and just wanted to check out the night view. Have you just come back from visiting an old friend, Master Yutian?" Beichuan Si could smell a faint scent of alcohol on Master Yutian, suggesting he had been drinking, but not much.

"My old friend pulled me into having a few drinks, and it dragged on till now, he even suggested that I stay over at his place, but I declined," Master Yutian smiled and added, "It’s already very late, I won’t chat with Mr. Beichuan any longer. You should rest early too, Mr. Beichuan, especially since we have to set off early tomorrow."

"Okay." Beichuan Si nodded, watching Master Yutian walk towards the onsen with his change of clothes and a towel.

Fortunately, the inn’s hot springs weren’t outdoor, otherwise Master Yutian might have had to make do with an indoor bath for the night.

Beichuan Si shook his head, pushing these distracting thoughts out of his mind.

Tomorrow, he would have to join Master Yutian in performing an exorcism.

If Master Yutian couldn’t handle it, it shouldn’t be too difficult for him to step in.

After all, the resentful spirits possessing people were at most of low to mid-level strength; dealing with them shouldn’t take too much effort from Beichuan Si.

"Let’s go and jot down today’s findings and then head to bed," Beichuan Si muttered to himself, walking back to his room and closing the door behind him.

In an instant, the corridor fell back into a sinister silence, with the cold wind whistling past—

like a woman’s eerie wailing.

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