Chapter Thirty-Five

  The dragonfly was still active after being hit by Kang Ya's wrist joint, and this time Kang Ya was holding the cart from behind, while another person was pulling it from the front. The stepmother's bean pancake was following beside the cart. What had grown in size for the dragonfly was not only their goods but also their population. Now even with three people on board at a time, this cart could still handle three shifts.

  Finally setting foot on his own country's land, the wandering dragon also finally felt a bit happy. He threw everything he should and shouldn't have brought onto the car, shouting at Kang Ya as he gazed out at the winding Nujiang River from the high slope.

  "Are the big ears good? Is the car good?" asked Mi Long of Kang Ya.

  "...Big ears slap well."

  The dragon was so happy that he patted Meng Ke's head and said, "Good boy."

  Kang Ya doesn't look at us, and we don't look at them either. But Mi Long is in a good mood now, so he insists on looking at us. "Hey, hey, who are those people? Their collars are all crooked! Let me fix them for you."

  That son of a bitch had a way, there was still a box of cookies in the car, he picked it up and slammed it to the side of the road. With a loud bang, the box hit the ground, and our growling stomachs immediately turned around.

  "The veterinarian is no good, I've snatched your rice bowl." Mie Long said with a sly smile.

  Hao the veterinarian could only dryly smile, but among us there was a thick-skinned guy who didn't care at all and picked up that box of cookies to share with us. While busy arguing with Mi Long, "Mi boss, how about giving out a can of food as a reward for each person?"

  The dragon said: "Are you full and have the energy to roll your eyes at me? Dream on, daydreamer. There are plenty of dead bodies piled up in the back, and there are plenty of little Japanese too, go get them yourself."

  The snake's butt reminded him: "Take a rest. Don't go any further, or you'll die, die, die! One glance at you and my anger rises from the heart, directly collapsing."

  "How dare he humiliate me? How dare he humiliate any of us?" said Mi Long.

  So much for that, but it can be certain that the dragon is not looking to die. He patted Kang Ya's back and let his porters pull the cart to a stop. The dragon also didn't want to sit with us, leaning against the cart, gazing out at the two living people and one dead person on the road.

  Kang Ya looked like he had been pardoned by a great emperor, but it was clear that these past few days hadn't treated him much better than us. "Is there any water?"

  The snake's butt said: "Bring canned goods for exchange."

  Kang Wan said: "Heavens! Where did I have it?"

  "I can guarantee that he has several hidden in his pants leg. I can also guarantee that he stole your boss's car - the unlucky star!" I called out to that Yunnan guy.

  Poor Bao Menxing is also a good household, but he has fallen to become a fighter and a running dog. He jumped up and blocked Kang Ya, and suddenly loosened Kang Ya's pants. Two cans rolled down the slope, and She Pi's buttocks rolled and crawled to catch them.

  We burst out laughing and pushed Kang Ya down among us, I grabbed a half-full water bottle to pour over him, but now Kang Ya wasn't thinking about quenching his thirst, he hung his head and didn't dare look at his master Mi Long, "Mi Long won't stop beating me until I'm dead... just look at these bruises on my body."

  "I said: 'He wouldn't dare. Does he have the nerve to kill you? Does he have the nerve to kill any of us?'"

  Because Kang Ya mentioned Mi Long, so I watched Mi Long. I found that Mi Long didn't look at us at all, including the commotion just now. What was tangled up was his neck. He kept leaning on the car and staring at two living people and one dead person on the other side of the road.

  "Veterinarian, someone's got their collar on wrong, can you fix it... Dragonfly?!" I called out to him.

  The dragon turned its head and looked at us for a moment, muttered something like "foolish thing", then turned back.

  Then we started whistling and laughing, the dragon looked at us again, muttered a sentence of "foolish play", and stood up to do some trivial chores of sorting goods, which was completely perfunctory, just to stop himself from walking in that direction, but he still kept looking over there while doing it. Finally, he didn't even bother with this futile effort anymore, and as he walked towards there, the part of the goods he had just sorted fell to the ground.

  Only the most numb bean cake went to pick up those goods that didn't belong to him and put them back on the cart. And we were all stunned, because the expression of the wandering dragon was too serious, there was nothing else, just seriousness and carefulness, such excessive seriousness and carefulness, gentleness, sadness, joy, loss, homesickness, heartbreak, only belonged to dreams.

  Bu Lao said to him: "Mi Long, can you let people be quiet?"

  The dragon muttered to itself: "How pitiful."

  "You're no help either." He added without raising his voice.

  No response.

  Mei Long was thirty-eight that year, he refused to live in the occupied area and fled to the pass when he was twenty-seven. We don't know what happened in his previous twenty-seven years, nor do we know how he spent his eleven years inside the pass. All we knew was that on that day, we saw a sleepwalker, dreaming of everything that had long since disappeared, and we felt that when he woke up with a start, he would die suddenly before our eyes.

  The dragon crossed the mountain road in our astonishment, this width that can only pass one car for him may be longer than all the roads these days.

  The demon stood in front of the two living people and one dead person, completely ignoring the dead person. We can't determine whether he looked at the woman more or the child more, his gaze was greedy rather than lustful, because he only had a pair of eyes, but wanted to take both people into his heart at the same time.

  The woman didn't look at him, her head hung low with almost scattered hair covered in grass and mud. The child stared at him like a puppy staring at a giant of the same kind, but this time the dragon was like a super-giant tame lion if it were a dog.

  The woman said in a low voice: "Can you help me get rid of my father-in-law?"

  The dragon opened its mouth, and we found that it suddenly became hoarse and stuttered, "Y...you...where did you come from?"

  He spoke up, and we woke up, and we could laugh again.

  "Northeast ah! Haha, Myanmar is northeast of it!"

  We laughed, even Hao the veterinarian laughed, we tried our best to use such rough jokes to dispel the sadness brought by the lost dragon.

  But the dragon lost its hearing from the moment it turned its head, "Your son?"

  The woman didn't lift her head or respond, while the dragon hesitated and reached out to touch the little kid's head. The turmoil of the past few days or week was enough to turn such a small, originally mischievous child into a little beast. He swiped his paw, leaving several scratch marks on the dragon's hand. The dragon carefully licked its wound with its mouth, unsure whether it was cherishing its own blood or the scars.

  "Where is your husband?" asked Mi Long.

  The woman replied: "You're dead. One shoulder pole is hard to carry, it's a hassle, or you already have a cart, so just make do with another load?"

  We don't think it's funny, but we laugh.

  The woman hung her head, and none of us had ever seen her face. I could tell it was out of dignity rather than shyness, she had that kind of silent endurance of scars - because when Míng Lóng suddenly reached out to lift her hair for a glance, she didn't brush him off in embarrassment or fright, but firmly grasped his hand and put it back in place.

  The dragon's fingers were pinching a blade of grass, which had been plucked from her hair, I was certain that the woman under her hair was looking at him, and she also saw her son and bodyguard kick the dragon in the knee, but the dragon remained bowed, with his waist bent and legs straightened, maintaining his devout posture and expression of seeing God.

  "My... get rid of this." The lost dragon lets the grass leaves in his hand fall to the ground.

  The woman asked: "Can you help me get rid of my father-in-law?"

  "Can you marry me?"

  We were stunned. After being stunned for a while, I punched Kang Yao's head, who was drinking water with his neck raised, and splashed water all over him. My opening made us laugh hard, and I laughed wildly.

  I laughed while rubbing my aching belly and smoothed out my laugh lines.

  I burst out laughing, I fake laughed, because it was too ridiculous. I laughed until my heart was about to break, because I thought I had been busy with guilt and hatred, but the foolish dragon found his happiness on the side of the road.

  The woman waited until we had finished laughing before speaking, because her upbringing made her unaccustomed to raising her voice over the sound of laughter. "My father-in-law made a coffin for himself, but it was only three inches thick and was burned along with his house. If you can give him a three-inch-thick coffin, then do so."

  The dragon said: "I can. However, don't get it wrong, I'm saying you marry me."

  Obviously they didn't mishear, because her answer was without hesitation, "If you can take us back to China and give us a home, I'll marry you."

  The dragon was taken aback by the ease and difficulty of the request, "Well, I don't want to marry a foreigner either."

  Then the woman made her final request: "If I die, you must treat Lebao well. Then I will marry you."

  The dragon spoke up the moment she finished her last word, he didn't hesitate at all, and we had already become thoroughly silent due to those two idiots' serious yet ridiculous repartee.

  "Even if you don't die, I will take good care of Lebao. Even if you don't marry me, I will still bring you all back to China. Even if I die, I will make sure these bastards behind my butt bring you all back to China."

  The woman said: "Then I'll marry you."

  The dragon straightened its waist and looked at the thin, belt-like Nujiang River in the wolf-toothed mountain range. It gazed at the giant rock on top of the South Tianmen Gate, which was covered with vines and roots, and the towering tree above it.

  The dragon who had just done the first big thing in his life let out a long sigh and before he could even turn around, he shouted at us:

  "Is there anything going on at home?!"

  We're playing both fools and mutes at the same time.