Chapter 52: Chapter 52: "You Can Do That at Level 1? A Straight-Up Cheater, Huh?
"..."
Chen Fan looked at Big Fish, who was staring up at him. His brow furrowed as he raised a hand, signaling Lame Monkey and the others preparing to mount the City Wall to wait. It was the first time he had truly sized her up. "You’re a girl?"
"Yeah."
Big Fish gave a slight nod.
"Why does a girl talk so crudely?"
"Huh?" A flicker of confusion crossed Big Fish’s eyes. "But wasn’t it you who..."
"I’m a man."
"Oh."
"Hold on, let me get this straight."
...
A rainy night.
Chen Fan stood on the City Wall, his brow tightly knit as he stared at Big Fish. Although he had been living with these people for many days, he wasn’t about to go pulling down everyone’s pants to check what they had between their legs.
How was he supposed to know there was a girl in his camp?
And she seemed... not normal.
’Night Watcher.’
This was the first special-type Cultivator he had ever encountered.
He glanced at the currently motionless gray fog outside the camp, then focused his gaze back on Big Fish. He could indeed make out some girlish features, like her shorter stature, slender limbs, and more feminine face.
It was just that...
She was rather flat-chested and childlike.
She didn’t fit the description of a beautiful woman at all, looking more like a naive, sheltered little girl from the village.
"I’m pretty curious. What abilities does a Night Watcher have? Can you tell me?"
"I can."
For some reason, Big Fish seemed to trust him now. She took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the fear that was rising in her eyes again. Then, her faint voice, mingled with the sound of the rain, drifted across the top of the City Wall.
"My father wasn’t a fisherman before."
"I think he was in the same line of work as you guys."
"What do you mean, ’in the same line of work as us’..."
Chen Fan frowned again. For some reason, he felt exceptionally uncomfortable tonight. It was the feeling of being on the verge of knowing something, but not quite grasping it—like a key that has fallen into a narrow crack, always just out of reach of your fingertips.
An incredibly grating feeling.
"Well, it was a place where everyone was someone important. There were lots of buildings, like Arrow Fortresses, and many people. It was very lively."
"Was your father an Architect?"
"No, he was just one of the leaders in that camp. The Lord thought highly of him. My memories are a bit hazy. That was from when I was ninety-nine years old."
"..."
Chen Fan reached into his pocket with a deadpan expression.
He needed a cigarette right now.
Desperately.
Only the curling smoke could suppress the fucked-up feeling churning inside him.
"So how old are you this year?"
"I’m eighteen this year."
"For you, age goes backward?"
"Yeah."
Big Fish lowered her head, hiding the expression in her eyes. Her voice grew quieter and quieter; if Chen Fan hadn’t been listening intently from such a close distance, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her at all.
"Night Watchers are born, not made."
"I was born a Night Watcher. When I was born, I was one hundred years old, in the form of a nearly decrepit old woman who crawled out of my mother’s womb."
"My mother died because of the difficult birth. To keep people from gossiping about me, my father took me from our hometown and joined a camp, claiming I was his elderly, confused mother."
"The Lord of that camp thought highly of my father, so my father believed he was appreciated and worked himself to the bone. It was only later that he learned it was me the Lord valued."
"The Lord knew I was a Night Watcher."
"Once, the camp faced total annihilation. The Ghost Tide surged toward us like a flood. The walls fell, one by one, and the Arrow Towers were destroyed. Just as the camp was on the brink of destruction, the Lord activated me."
"Before that,"
"neither my father nor I knew about my identity or my abilities."
"After being activated,"
"I wiped out the Ghost Tide, and I wiped out the camp."
"..."
Chen Fan gave Big Fish a strange look, trying to tell if she was spouting nonsense. "How did that camp compare to mine?"
"Much bigger."
"Be more specific."
Big Fish glanced around and pointed to a Level 4 Arrow Fortress on the City Wall. "That camp had more than twenty of these stone Arrow Fortresses."
"How strong was the Ghost Tide?"
"..."
After thinking hard for a moment, Big Fish spoke again. "There were probably a dozen or so at the level of that naked female ghost, Na Tian."
"And you wiped them all out by yourself?"
"Yeah."
"What level Cultivator were you at the time?"
"At the time, I didn’t know I was a Cultivator, nor did I know I was a Night Watcher."
"So, Level 1."
"I guess you could say that."
"A Level 1 can do all that? You’re a total cheater, aren’t you?"
"What does ’cheater’ mean?"
"It means I’m envious. So, how did he activate you? Is there some kind of switch on you?" Chen Fan looked Big Fish up and down, as if searching her body for a button or a switch.
"No."
Big Fish shook her head, choosing her words carefully. "A Night Watcher’s activation comes from their own will to protect. When I’m in despair and I want to protect something, I unleash a powerful force."
"It eliminates the immediate crisis."
"The price is that it consumes my lifespan, and... it doesn’t distinguish between friend and foe."
"I saw my father on the City Wall, about to be killed by a Ghost Object. In my panic and despair, everything went black. I don’t know what happened. When I regained consciousness, it was dawn."
"The camp had been razed to the ground."
"There were bodies everywhere."
"Only my father was sitting beside me. He said he would take me home."
"When I came to, my body was no longer that of an old woman but had become that of a young woman. I also gained knowledge about Night Watchers. I knew for a fact that I was twenty-seven years old then."
"So that’s why you returned to that seaside village in the northern Wilderness," Chen Fan said, guessing at what came next as he continued his questions.
"Yes."
Big Fish lowered her head again. "I don’t know why I didn’t kill my father during that first activation. At the time, I was secretly overjoyed for a long time, just glad that I hadn’t killed him."
"After that, we lived in the village for several years."
"Those years were very happy."
"Peaceful."
"The rainy seasons were a little worrying, but we always made it through safely."
"Until one rainy season, Ghost Objects fell from the surrounding cliffs into the village. Countless villagers died, and my father was in grave danger. I was activated again."
"When I came to at dawn, everyone was dead."
"My father was dead, too."
"When I woke up, I was nineteen."
"After that, I drifted from place to place until I met Brother Wang and joined Station 36 of the Jiangbei Chen Family."
"I want to protect the people around me."
"But I end up killing them with my own hands."
"It was also after that second activation that more information surfaced in my mind, as if it was something I already knew. If I don’t want to be forcibly activated, I have to carry ten Ghost Stones on me to suppress the power."
"That night... I wasn’t hiding the Ghost Stones on purpose."
"It’s just that..."
"If I had handed over the Ghost Stones..."
Big Fish didn’t say the rest.
But the implication was obvious.
The entire camp he had painstakingly built would have been instantly razed to the ground upon her third activation.
