The old building Kou Tong lived in, despite being near enough to the city center, was a spot of quiet amid the bustle. To get from the nearest main road to his house, you had to go through several narrow alleys. 

The unfortunate thing was that many ghost stories also started like this—on a dark and windy night, a man/woman/old person/small child was walking down a long and narrow alley when the streetlights in the alley broke, flickering overhead. Then, suddenly! the lights went out…there was a scream in the alley, like a dying stray cat…

When it came to Dr. Kou’s always negative moral character, this story became: on a bright and sunny afternoon, three men were walking down a long and narrow alley when the streetlights may or may not have broken, as they weren’t on to begin with…ahem. Then, suddenly! Huang Jinchen, walking in front, put his foot down and heard a noise. He stopped acutely in his tracks and saw that the flagstone under his foot had actually cracked. 

The three of them froze simultaneously, looking at each other in dismay. 

Kou Tong sighed loudly and patted Huang Jinchen on the shoulder. “Er-Pang, if you don’t lose weight, I’m leaving you. I’m only a poor temporary worker. I don’t have the money to change the floors every day.” 

Huang Jinchen protested frantically: “I never should have trusted this city’s infrastructure!” 

Yao Shuo chided, “Shh! Don’t talk! Listen.” 

A rumble came from underground. The flagstones the little street was paved with cracked along the fissure at Huang Jinchen’s feet. Huang Jinchen’s cheeky expression instantly turned serious. “Watch out!” 

None of them were slow to respond. As he spoke, they climbed one after another onto the narrow wall next to them, then looked in astonishment at the big hole that had opened in the ground. 

It spread slowly along the ground like something living, forked at its peak, then strangely calmed down. 

Huang Jinchen and Yao Shuo simultaneously looked up at Kou Tong and found that Dr. Kou was just squatting on top of the wall in a very vulgar posture, chin in his hand, looking fixedly at the big crack in the ground and pondering. 

“A crack in the ground, a fork…” Kou Tong frowned. “What does that represent?” 

Huang Jinchen, very uncomprehending, asked, “Why can’t we just talk about things directly? What’s the point of putting together this pile of mysterious, peculiar things? Why do there have to be such things as semiotics and mysticism? Do the people who study these things really have nothing better to do?”

Kou Tong thought about it, then, in a way Huang Jinchen could understand, said, “Because no matter the time and place, there are always some things that can’t be spoken of in too much detail. You get me.” 

Huang Jinchen pursed his lips and started going through his big sack. Then he got something like a yo-yo out of it. There was even a label on it, again in a child’s crooked handwriting. It said: “Do Not Fear Ghosts”—that was fairly in keeping with the original conception. 

“I’ll try with this thing.” 

Huang Jinchen deftly tore open the packaging and tossed the little ball off the wall. The little ball hit the ground and successfully bounced off, just like those toys that were sold for ten yuan a piece on the train. It began to flash on the inside and make beeping sounds. Then a childish voice said, “I’m not scared! Die mad about it! I’m not scared! Die mad about it!” 

Yao Shuo looked like this was a scene too tragic to bear. Kou Tong tilted his head up forty-five degrees to look at the sky, pretending that he didn’t know this buffoon. 

“Hey, hey, look, the ball is starting to roll,” Huang Jinchen, dying to make trouble, added. 

The ball bounded here and there on the ground, as though there was someone behind operating it, dribbling it while walking forward, walking while announcing in a soft voice, “I’m not scared! Die mad about it!” and things like that, resplendently going towards the place where the crack forked. Then it began to bounce nonstop on the fork. A thin sprout suddenly grew out of the ground. Then the thin sprout suddenly expanded and rose, knocking the silly ball aside. 

Huang Jinchen quickly reached out to catch it. In his hands, the little ball let out a sobbing voice: “…I’m not scared…” 

….It was pretty intelligent. 

The little sprout at the forking point grew and lengthened without restraint, turning into a big tree within a minute, as if it wanted to demonstrate the cycle of sprouting, flourishing, waning, and dying in an instant. 

There were apples hanging all over the tree. Then a branch curled up, separated into a head and body, eyes and scales, and a quickly flickering tongue—it had turned into a snake. Finally, twelve flashing golden leaves grew on the treetop. Then everything at last returned to stillness, becoming static.

Kou Tong turned his head to look at Yao Shuo. “Ghosts don’t go out in broad daylight. Well, what card is this? Have you recognized it?” 

“Apples and a snake… This must be the Tree of Knowledge spoken of in the Bible,” Yao Shuo said. “The twelve leaves probably represent the twelve signs of the zodiac… There’s an edition of tarot cards where these things appear on the Lovers card.” 

“Lovers?” Huang Jinchen stared. “That’s also a card?” 

“The Lovers represents a choice.” Yao Shuo frowned. “Supposedly, the apples and the snake in the tree respectively symbolize ‘wisdom’ and ‘desire.’ There’s also an interpretation that says that the choice the Lovers card represents is between ‘virtue’ and ‘desire.’ It originates in the Neoplatonic ideological trends of the Middle Ages. There was a trend of escaping the material to attain vitality…” 

Huang Jinchen said, “Isn’t that crazy? Without the material, how are you supposed to get vitality? Why do I feel like sounds like that…that what-do-you-call-it, Cheng-Zhu school¹, ‘get rid of human desire, preserve the heavenly principles’?” 

Hearing the first half of this, Yao Shuo had wanted to mock this gun-toting fellow’s ignorance, but hearing the latter half, he thought, He knows about that? 

Then he heard Master Huang give his own assessment of this ideological trend: “What it means is for people to live with their belts done up tight, not eating enough to get full, not being able to have sex when you want—isn’t that bullshit…” 

Yao Shuo felt that continuing to speak to this person would be an insult to his own intelligence. Kou Tong held himself back for a while, then really couldn’t resist expressing his own views. “Master Huang, your ideas truly are…brilliant.” 

Huang Jinchen gave two self-satisfied laughs, pointed to the tree at their feet that grew both fruit and snakes, and said, “So what do we do about this?” 

Kou Tong thought about it. “How about we try seeing whether we can go around it…” 

Before he could finish, he saw two walls “grow” from behind the mortal world’s counterfeit Tree of Knowledge. They became taller and taller, like the Tower of Babel in legend, trying to reach the sky. They were situated at the tail ends of the two forks. 

Kou Tong sighed. “I knew it. The answer is, that won’t work.” 

“Then let’s choose.” Huang Jinchen jumped down from the wall. Heaving his ridiculous big sack, he loudly said to the Tree of Knowledge, “I choose desire.” 

Kou Tong, sitting on the wall, looked at him in astonishment, feeling that this man really was both direct and self-sufficient, completely ignoring mainstream aesthetic concepts, sticking to his own ways, running wild with an “I do what I want, what are you going to do about it?” style. 

He had the calm of a person who killed with one shot and also this kind of wanton recklessness. Yet, unexpectedly, they mixed in this man without any contradiction. Kou Tong suddenly thought that he was a little fascinated by this man. 

He couldn’t resist asking, “Why not choose knowledge? Isn’t there anything good about being smart?” 

One of the standing walls fell. A little snake crawled down from the tree and crawled up ahead as though leading the way. Huang Jinchen looked back and said to Kou Tong, “What’s the use of knowledge? It won’t feed you or keep you warm. Haven’t you heard that ‘stupid children are much happier’?” 

That made sense! 

Kou Tong was at once convinced. He quickly jumped down from the wall, too, but a heap of little snakes fell out of the tree, blocking his way. As Huang Jinchen stepped over the fallen wall, the hoisted itself up behind him. 

Kou Tong said, “I choose desire, too. Can’t I go?” 

The crowd of snakes made way. The wall leading to “desire” fell once more, but Huang Jinchen wasn’t there. Kou Tong’s heart instantly sank—this tarot card was using choices to separate them. He looked back to speak to Yao Shuo, but the ground beneath his feet suddenly began to shake fiercely. A tongue of flame rose out of the crack. The rising temperature was scalding, hurting all of Kou Tong’s exposed skin. He had to retreat a few steps. 

Then the tongue of flame waned—a wall blocked the way in front of him. Yao Shuo was also cut off on the other side. 

Kou Tong turned his head. On one side was a wall, on the other was a deep little alley. He didn’t know which way to go. 

He suddenly felt a bit at a loss. He stood there for a while, then finally sighed, felt around in his pocket, and pulled out a water pistol—it was the one labeled Elephant's Bane. After Huang Jinchen had finished paying, he had casually stuffed a handful of one yuan bills into the gorilla’s basket, amounting to “buying” the pistol. 

But what could he do with a water pistol? 

Dr. Kou felt tearful. He was only a tech nerd a little stronger than the average tech nerd, and he had been sent naked into this instance to do battle without even a weapons pack. 

Now, Dr. Kou at last understood what it meant to be “completely unarmed.”