The Sacred Ruins

Chapter 17: Grief Without Tears

Panda Novel

"Moo!"

Yellow Ox vented out a roaring bellow. Its movement was surprisingly agile, indicating none of the typical clumsiness of a bovine creature. It shunned Chu Feng's rampaging charge with ease.

"Demon Ox! Do you have any ideas what you're doing?" Chu Feng ground his teeth, then charged at it again with a murderous look on his face.

However, his target object was the communicator this time. He needed to know exactly to whom Yellow Ox had been calling, so later on, he could give them a justifiable explanation for the strange calls.

Otherwise, how would the others think about this? Picking up the phone, then all they received was just a continual sequence of senseless bellow.

Picturing this scene, Chu Feng almost spat out blood in shame and embarrassment. He was on the verge of going berserk with a murderous intent.

Even if he accepted the challenge and braced himself to offer those people some sort of explanations, what exactly could he say? And who would believe him? This had evolved to a rather headache-inducing problem.

Was he going to tell the others that it was a golden calf who was using his communicator to converse with them? This would only further complicate the issue rather than solve it.

Despite all the complications it had caused, Yellow Ox was still not cooperative at all. With great agility, he was shunning Chu Feng.

Moreover, it stood in the yard with only two of its hind hooves. It was standing upright with its fore hooves cuddling the communicator, running in circles with Chu Feng as it tried to dodge him left and right.

"Give it to me!" Chu Feng cried.

Yellow Ox was even friskier than the most agile human being. It was bobbing, swaying, chirping and singing like a golden ape. It ran around a stone table, circling around with Chu Feng like an intelligent primate.

It still clutched onto his communicator and occasionally made a few more sounds of bellow into it.

Chu Feng's face had almost turned green. "Is this bastard still calling someone?"

"Demon Ox, I will kill you!" he yelled and blared. The burning rage almost made him faint.

Yellow Ox was only disdainful of Chu Feng's raging words. Contempt was written all over its face.

"Having committed every evil, yet still behaving aggressively out of bravado? Are you kidding me?" Chu Feng could not run fast enough to ensnare the calf, so he had to throw every possible item in the yard at it in order to distract it and slow it down.

To him, this was no less than a miserable torment. The longer Yellow Ox clutched onto that communicator, the more shameful and embarrassed he felt.

At long last, Yellow Ox halted its frisky movements and placed the communicator on the stone table.

Indignation and rage were written on Chu Feng's face. He felt like weeping and shed no tears.

Obviously, Yellow Ox was so curious and fond to the communicator, that even though he had put it down, it still tried to poke it with its dexterous front hooves.

Chu Feng glared at it and sat down by the stone table in great exhaustion. He glanced at the communicator, then he turned to Yellow Ox. What explanation would he give? How would he apologize on Yellow Ox's behalf for its ludicrous tomfoolery? He felt ever so frustrated.

He vented out a sigh then picked up the communicator. Since there were really no feasible alternatives he could think of other than telling the truth, Chu Feng had to gird up his loins and reveal the existence of Yellow Ox.

"Remember, in a few minutes, I would ask you to testify my words. All you need to do then was to make a few bellows when I ask you so. Understand?" Chu Feng urged it again and again.

Yellow Ox nodded with a guilty conscience in a seemingly cooperative manner.

Chu Feng froze when he turned to the list of contacts on his communicator. Where had all the contacts gone? Why were they not there anymore?

Chu Feng was completely dumbstruck. "Where did they go?"

Chu Feng suddenly recalled the very last moment when Yellow Ox was jabbing and nudging the communicator. Did it empty the whole list of contacts during then?

"Yellow Ox, you bastard! Look at what you've done!"

Chu Feng let out a yell. Only minutes ago, he was thinking of any possible remedies to this embarrassing incident; yet minutes later, everything had turned completely incorrigible.

"Who did you just call?" Chu Feng interrogated Yellow Ox in a rather loud voice. He had seen the name of Lin Naoi before, and she was the last person he wanted to be involved with. But who else did it call?

Yellow Ox shook its head with a smile that pretended to suggest a simple and honest nature. This meant that in simpler words, Yellow Ox had no ideas who it had just called either.

"How did you manage to get into my contact list?" Chu Feng was fairly frustrated.

It was this exact moment when the communicator suddenly came back to life with a rapid sequence of flashes. It was a call from Zhou Quan.

Zhou Quan's braying voice were instantly heard when Chu Feng picked up the call. "Demon Ox! How dare you keep on harassing me!"

"It's me," Chu Feng replied.

"Uh! Thank God! The communicator finally came back to you. That goddam cow just couldn't stop harassing me with calls after calls. And all it did was just 'moo, moo, moo...'"

Chu Feng grew stiff with unease and chagrin. It was conceivable what this silly cow had done to all the rest of the people from his contact list. Who else had the misfortune to sit through and endure this blatant series of harassments?

Chu Feng did not need to worry about Zhou Quan. After all, he had had personal experience of the frustration that came with this golden calf. He would have easily understood the cause of the troubles without much explanation.

After moments of silence, Chu Feng finally decided to make a call to Lin Naoi.

The call was picked up, but there were no words being exchanged between them. Soothing music was playing in the background as Chu Feng remained in silence. He did not want to rush to a serious talk about the issue at hand straight away. "I'm not a humdrum person," Chu Feng thought to himself.

Music faded away on the other side, but Lin Naoi remained taciturn. The two were left in muteness. Vaguely, they could hear the faint sound of each other's breath.

Silence lingered for over a minute.

Suddenly, Yellow Ox rushed to the stone table with its head raising up. It growled at the communicator with a blaring roar that almost deafened Chu Feng.

Chu Feng could clearly hear a sharp clicking of a shattered glass from the other side of the call. Without a doubt, the ear-splitting roar of the calf had also stunned Lin Naoi with a start. But then, she hung up on him.

For an extensive period of time, Chu Feng was stiff and rigid with disbelief and horror. He froze there until he suddenly gave vent to an angry shout. "You bastard! I will tear you limb from limb!"

Innocence was written all over Yellow Ox's face as if it was saying, "Didn't you just tell me to cooperate with you by making some bellow sounds?"

Chu Feng once again started chasing after the calf. The yard turned into a battlefield where man was screaming and ox was mourning.

At long last, Chu Feng was dead beat and done up. He went straight for his bed at his room. At this stage, he could not care less about those people on his contact list. All he wanted was to take a break from all the unrest and tumult that happened today.

Daylight had already given way to the darkness of the night when he finally woke up.

Chu Feng prepared a rich and sumptuous dinner to treat himself. This was his merit as well as his virtue. To rid any annoyance of the day, all he needed was a hearty feast.

Early on, his fingers were all itching for a fray with that bothersome calf, but his anger had started to dwindle now. Eventually, he forgave Yellow Ox and even fed it with some fresh grasses and fruits.

At night, Chu Feng was browsing through all sorts of reports on the process of the mutation that happened around the world.

Suddenly, the signal on both of his communicator and the television started losing stability. Clearly, it was under the effect of a disturbance of some sorts. He supposed it was most likely due to the loss of another satellite in space thanks to the attack of an extra-terrestrial plant.

At last, the effect of the disturbance dissipated, and the signal restored.

The internet then boiled with discussions.

Some semi-official news had come out, stating that almost all of the horrific plants that had been floating in mid-air had been destroyed and cleared up.

He was a bit worried, believing that this might not be the end of it, because many regions had been undergoing many complete alterations at the current stage.

Someone had uploaded a vivid photo that depicted the emergence of tens of thousands of great mountains outside that person's house. Just like those that appeared amongst the mountains of Taihang, these mountains were a sight of great majesty. Their towering height pierced through the clouds high above. They constituted the scenery from a fairy tale or a great fable that described the secret workings of nature.

There was another report stating that a young man ended up travelling hundreds of li before reaching a town that was supposedly ten li away.

Right now, the strange occurrences were no longer only a privilege to mountain ranges such as Mount Song, Wangwu Mountain and Taihang Mountains. Incomprehensible scenes and sightings emerged in many places. Mountains of tremendous height cropped up in groups of thousands everywhere across the globe. August waterfalls hung by the arduous cliff.

A revulsion of changes all seemed to have happened in a one-step process. It was not only limited to some special regions. Well-known mountains and rivers had all steamed with spirits and nimbus. Ferocious beasts and birds of prey indistinctly appeared in these areas, making the world a place ever so dangerous.

Ground fissure, power outage, communication failure, building implosion and collapse were no longer scenes of profound rarity. They could happen anywhere anytime, posing an ever-lingering threat to the life and well-being of people around the world.

It was late at night. Chu Feng quietly sat on the floor in his room. He knew that what had supposed to come had now come. It was time for the fiercest episode of changes to take place.

"Boom!"

Someone knocked on the door. Yellow Ox made a bellow.

Chu Feng opened the door. The golden calf signalled him to follow it into the yard.

Then, Yellow Ox sat on the ground, cross-legged with its head raised to face the starry sky. It began its special breathing exercise and hinted him to copy after it.

Chu Feng was surprised by the fact that Yellow Ox was pressing him to adopt its breathing system.

He calmed himself down and breathed according to that strange system, feeling that his body was surrounded by vigorous essence of life.

Moonlight was soft and gentle. It had been dim and hazy all night, but then it started thickening over Chu Feng's hair, as if there was an invisible force pulling over and gathering the light around him. At last, it became a holy aura of unmatchable sanctity.

Besides, the stars in the sky were also scattering their essence like a river trickling in the direction of Chu Feng.

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