The Real Awakening

This story only gets more disturbing the more I re-read it…especially when I’m reading it carefully to translate and edit it.

Upon exiting the police station, Qin Ni immediately hailed a cab home. Throughout the entire journey, her head was lowered, seemingly in deep thought, a dark haze all over her face. Only after reaching her home’s front door did she finally return to her senses.

She tiredly lifted her bag to fish out the key. Just as she was about to open the door, it instead opened on its own.

“Mommy.”

A little boy around four or five years old stuck his head out from behind the door.

Qin Ni’s hand jolted in shock, the key falling with a clatter. She froze in place, staring blankly at the innocent and adorable boy. Yet whether it was because of the cold or some other reason, her legs began to tremble, and she unconsciously took a step back.

“Mommy.”

The boy’s young child-like voice rang out once more. He bent down to pick the key up from the ground and passed it over to Qin Ni. The corners of his lips sweetly drew back, shockingly revealing a mouthful of eerily white, sharp teeth, like an animal barely flashing its sinister appearance.

The boy looked up at her with a happy grin, excited that his mom had come home. However, Qin Ni lost her patience and roared out, “Go away! Get lost! I’m not your mom!”

She suddenly swept out her hand, striking the boy’s hand to drop the key. She then pointed at a bedroom door and reprimanded, “Go back! Go back to your bedroom! I’ve told you before, you can’t come out! You can’t call me mommy! And you can’t smile!”

The boy shuddered with fright from his mother’s ferocity, standing frozen in shock. The smile on his face gradually stiffened. Finally, his mouth frowned in hurt and he tightly pursed his curved, pink lips to slowly cover sharp teeth hidden inside his mouth.

“Go back!” Qin Ni glared as she raised her voice.

The boy dropped his head and the two remained in a deadlock for a few seconds. Finally, he still reluctantly turned around to slowly walk back into the room. With a click, the door was shut.

At the front entrance, Qin Ni let out a relieved breath as she shut her eyes in pain. She then bent over to pick up the key and dragged her heavy feet to the living room step by step to weakly collapse on the sofa.

The blood-red setting sun flooded through the windows like water, illuminating Qin Ni’s pale face. She pulled out her cellphone and stared at the screen in hesitation for a while. Finally, she still dialled a familiar string of numbers.

“Hello, Qi Yang, it’s me.”

The person on the other end of the phone seemed to be stunned for a moment. Two seconds later, he coldly replied, “Didn’t I say before not to call me again.”

Qin Ni trembled as she replied grievously, “Qi Yang, do you really plan to abandon me and Xiao1Bao like this?”

The other person sighed and replied, “Qin Ni, we’ve already divorced. I don’t have any relation with you two anymore. I can give you however much living expenses you need, but please don’t contact me again in the future.”

“But Xiao Bao is your son!” Qin Ni shouted.

“Shut up! I don’t have that kind of monster-like son! He was born from you! You were the one that gave birth to a monster!”

“That’s right, I gave birth to him, but he’s also your seed!”

“Bullshit! How could the Qi family produce that kind of monster?!”

“You—”

Before the words could leave her mouth, the other end had already ended the call with a slam.

Letting out her anger, Qin Ni threw her cellphone down and sank into the sofa while weakly holding her forehead.

After a while, a quiet, timid voice came out from behind her.

“Mommy…Xiao Bao is hungry…”

Qin Ni started, then raised her head and turned to look at the one that her ex-husband had claimed was a “monster” she had given birth to.

The boy hid behind the door, his head sticking out from a crack in the door as he cowered behind to look at his mother.

She slowly stood and walked into the kitchen to pull out a large chunk of bloody, fresh pork from the fridge, then tossed it at the boy. The boy was overjoyed by the turn of events and immediately pounced at it excitedly. He sprawled across the floor, using his hands to catch that piece of raw meat. He then tore through it and began to devour it ravenously.

As he ate, he looked up and his bloody mouth curled upwards to smile happily at Qin Ni.

When Qin Ni saw him, she covered her mouth and stumbled back two steps, unable to keep herself from noiselessly crying in anguish.

7 PM. Ye Xiao and Su Mu had just gotten off work and were sitting across from each other at a fast-food restaurant. The two of them had each ordered their own Chinese-style meal plus a cup of Coke, and proceeded to eat with a “friendly atmosphere”.

Naturally, this friendly atmosphere was a one-sided belief that only Ye Xiao held.

In reality, Su Mu had absolutely no intentions of eating together with this partner that he was already forced to interact with eight hours a day, every day. However, they had just so happened to have bumped into each other at the fast-food restaurant. Ye Xiao had immediately bounded over with his meal, like a fly that couldn’t be shooed away, stubbornly cramming together with him at a table to eat.

It was clearly a single person’s table, yet Ye Xiao had even dragged over a nearby chair to sit across from Su Mu, completely oblivious to the latter’s stormy expression. Ye Xiao brightly smiled and said, “Huh, don’t you think that when we’re sitting across from each other like this, it’s like we’re in the office?”

Immediately, Su Mu’s face turned even darker.

There were people of this type in the world that could not comprehend others’ words or their facial expressions, insensitive to the point where even if the sky came crashing down, they would simply use it as a blanket. And somehow, this type of person had managed to become a criminal investigator. It was truly unfathomable.

“Wei Jin Ping’s autopsy report will be out tomorrow. What are your thoughts?” Ye Xiao grabbed the spare ribs on his plate with his chopsticks and shoved it into his mouth to take a bit. “He should have eaten his own right hand too.”

Su Mu looked up at him but did not say a word.

Ye Xiao heartily chewed on the delicious ribs, pausing for a moment before ploughing ahead to say, “Tch, eating your own hand…just thinking about it feels disgusting. They didn’t even leave the bones, swallowed down into the stomach with the skin and bloody flesh. I really cannot imagine how it would taste. Besides, it should be super painful, shouldn’t it? How could a living person possibly bite down like that?”

As he spoke these words, he had already gulped down two ribs and a piece of cauliflower.

Su Mu remained silent as he lowered his head to quietly eat at his own meal.

Like Ye Xiao, he had ordered a ribs meal. However, he only ate the side dishes and rice, not touching the meat at all.

Ye Xiao quickly swept clean the ribs from his own plate like a tornado. He then glanced up to eye Su Mu’s plate across from him. With a snigger to himself, he secretly reached his chopsticks over to make a move on the largest rib there.

With a clap, his chopsticks were suddenly caught firmly by Su Mu’s chopsticks. They awkwardly remained at a deadlock in mid-air.

“Erm…I saw that you weren’t eating it, don’t be so petty. It should be fine if you just give me one piece, right?” The thick-skinned Ye Xiao shamelessly chuckled.

Su Mu frigidly shot him a glance and stated, “Even if I do not eat it, it is mine.”

“If you don’t eat it and throw it out, it’ll be such a waste. Why don’t I go through the trouble of helping you eat it?”

“Even if I do throw it out, that has nothing to do with you.”

“Wasting food is disgraceful.”

“If you want to eat it so badly, you can buy it from me.”

“You…”

Ye Xiao stared at Su Mu’s face that was like an eternally unmalting glacier, then muttered something quietly to himself as he resentfully retracted his chopsticks and mumbled, “I finally know why the girls in the logistics group are all so scared of you…”

Originally, a young and handsome man like Su Mu should have been extremely popular among the girls. However, since his entire body emanated a freezing air, it was truly too difficult to get close to him. Plus, his temper was strange and poisonous – even their other Special Crimes unit colleagues refused to partner with him. Only the thick-skinned Ye Xiao that often got scolded for causing trouble was willing to be Su Mu’s partner. Their other coworkers privately called them the “freak duo”.

Of course, the two in question were totally unaware of this.

Despite the embarrassing rejection, Ye Xiao was still beaming as he drank a sip of his Coke and gossiped, “Hey, did you know? I checked that woman named Qin Ni, and she’s actually married, divorced, and has a 4-year old son. Hmph, you can’t tell from her outer appearance at all. It really is true that beautiful women are demons.”

Ye Xiao shook his head, uncertain whether this was praise or lamentation. Suddenly, he heard Su Mu state, “I checked her too.”

“Huh, you did too? Hehe, as expected, you’re interested in the beauty as well. You rascal, even though you’re cold on the outside, you’re still passionate on the inside.”

Ye Xiao knocked his fist against Su Mu’s chest. Su Mu furrowed his brows and leaned back as he said, “I investigated her background.”

“How was it?”

“She used to be a student of D-University.”

“D-University? Holy crap, such a top-rated school? She didn’t show her true colours at all!”

Ye Xiao couldn’t help but feel speechless. He looked down to take a bite of rice, and after chewing for a while, suddenly froze to look up at Su Mu. He slowly said, “I remember…the first victim at the restaurant, Ouyang Shuo, seemed to have been…a lecturer at D-University.”

“Yes. And Wei Jin Ping also graduated from D-University.”

“Pfft, cough cough…cough cough cough…cough cough cough…” Ye Xiao choked on the rice, unable to voice any of the words stuck in his throat. He could only slam a fist into his own chest, his face red.

Su Mu saw the empty glass that Ye Xiao had already drunk all the contents of. Without changing expression, he picked up his own half-filled cup of Coke and slowly drank it.

D-University was one of the top four superior educational establishments in S-City, and even the entire country. Every year, many entrance examinees would sharpen their minds to squeeze their way in. The school not only had a graceful environment, but also a robust force of qualified professors. Even the bustling shopping street outside the campus entrance had young people scrambling around madly these days, as if just randomly walking around this street would allow them to inherit some of the scholarly air.

It was Saturday afternoon. Qin Ni was sitting inside a coffee shop on this shopping street in an inconspicuous corner. Her beautiful makeup and gaudy dress concealed her tired face.

There was still a thick scarf around her neck. A bitter and acrid cup of boiling, black coffee was next to her hand.

She had not slept a wink last night. Now, she had to rely on this cup of coffee to stay awake and rational.

Sitting across from her were two men around her age. One was on the chubbier side, the other was on the skinnier side. The chubby one was called Xu Yi Feng, the skinny one was called Hua Xia.

A pair of gold-rimmed glasses rested on Xu Yi Feng’s flat nose. His spit flew everywhere as he rambled on about his various brilliant exploits since graduating from university, such as climbing up from a small company employee to his current manager position in the district. Hua Xia was quietly sitting next to him, not saying a word from beginning to end. He appeared to be listening earnestly, but his absent-minded, uneasy expression betrayed him.

Qin Ni took a sip of her coffee and tiredly massaged her temples as she interrupted, “Yi Feng, Xiao Xia, the reason I asked you two to come out with me today wasn’t to chat.”

Finally, Xu Yi Feng stopped. Hua Xia looked up at her.

Qin Ni lowered her head, unconsciously swirling the coffee cup in front of her as she said, “You guys should’ve already guessed why I came looking for you.”

Immediately, Hua Xia’s face stiffened, though he still did not speak.

Xu Yi Feng pushed his glasses up as he shifted his gaze away. The abrupt silence made his unceasing torrent just now seem like it had merely been a cover. Indeed, he had only been speaking continuously in order to conceal his anxiety and unease.

After a long time, he replied in a low voice, “Qin Ni, I don’t want to talk about the incident from that year anymore.”

“Why?”

“The matter has already passed.”

“Stop joking, the matter hasn’t passed at all. I’m sure you understand that.”

“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know Ouyang and Jin Ping have died!”

“What? Ouyang and Jin Ping are both dead?”

The one that asked this was Hua Xia, who had been silent this entire time.

His head shot up to stare at Qin Ni in shock.

Qin Ni nodded and answered, “Yes, I saw them with my own eyes. Yi Feng, you and Jin Ping were such good friends. He must’ve also called you before he died, right?”

Xu Yi Feng started, then buried his head [in his arms] without a word.

Hua Xia bent over, trembling as he clutched his own hair. “Truthfully, he called me too. But…I didn’t answer…”

Qin Ni’s expression dimmed as she slowly stated, “Ouyang and Jin Ping are both dead. Zhu Nan is missing. Now only the three of us are left. It’s very possible that—”

“Enough! Stop talking, I don’t want to listen!” Xu Yi Feng abruptly growled out.

“You think that by running away, you can pretend nothing ever happened?” Qin Ni glared at him.

Xu Yi Feng shuddered and stared blankly at her. After a moment, he slowly sank back into the sofa like a deflated balloon, then struck the table in anger and regret. “How did things become like this?”

“I also want to know the answer to that question.” Qin Ni smiled bitterly. “Who knows which person will die next? It might be you, it might be me. Perhaps none of us will be able to escape.”

“It’s a curse! It must be a curse!”

Hua Xia nervously stood up, knocking over the cup of coffee on the table. The dark brown liquid slowly poured out, dripping down from the edges of the table.

“This must be the mermaid’s curse! We’ll all die! Everyone will die!”

His face twisted as he shouted emotionally and could not keep himself from tearing at his own hair. He then ran out onto the street like a madman, racing across the busy street in a single breath.

The brilliant afternoon sun tirelessly blossomed with light and heat, illuminating the road before his eyes so that it was a burning, bright white. He frantically ran across that scalding white until his muscles were weary, until the dizziness forced him to fall to his knees. He supported himself against an electric pole on the side of the road, gasping for breath. Then, he opened his mouth and began to vomit, throwing up dinner from the previous night, then the breakfast from today, then the coffee from just now, then just transparent, sticky stomach acid…

Even after he had thrown everything up, he still continued to dry heave. Eventually, he stuck his finger into his throat, sobbing as he struggled to dig something out. Until…until suddenly, a mound of mutilated flesh came out from his mouth. With a plop, it dropped into the pile of disgusting filth.

If one looked closely, one would discover that it was a blood-soaked ear. A human ear.

He stared in horror at the badly damaged human ear and shakily stood up, a low, despairing wail escaping from his covered mouth. He ran away, stumbling and staggering the entire journey. He had no idea how long he ran for; it was as if he was fleeing in panic from a wild beast. He burst into his house, weakly leaning against the door as he closed his eyes and weakly slid down.

“You have the nerve to come back?”

A chilling voice abruptly sounded out next to his ear. Hua Xia opened his eyes and slowly shifted his gaze to see a completely dishevelled, ashen-faced woman standing in the living room. Her bloodshot eyes were glaring maliciously right at him.

With much difficulty, he swallowed hard and dragged his heavy feet over towards the woman, step by step.

The woman let out a furious roar.

“Give my ear back to me! Give my ear back to me!”

One of her hands was holding a bloody towel against the side of her face while the other hand tightly clutched her husband’s clothes as she wailed, “Give my ear back to me, give it back…”

“Let go! Let go!”

Hua Xia violently shoved the woman away. But as soon as he turned around, the woman pounced at him again, frenziedly grabbing onto his sleeve. As she pulled at it, the terrifying blood began to drip down once more.

The woman silently cried, tightly clutching the side of her head that no longer had an ear.

Just two hours earlier, due to an everyday trifle, the husband and wife had gotten into a dispute that turned into a scuffle. In a lapse of consciousness, Hua Xia had actually used his teeth to bite the woman’s ear. Then, as simple as ripping a piece of paper, he had torn the entire ear off from her head.

The moment the human flesh still warm with fresh blood had touched the tip of his tongue, he had unexpectedly swallowed it without hesitation, like he was eating a plump chunk of meat. However, when that ear had slid down his oesophagus with a gulp, he had felt an unprecedented sense of fear too.

The terror and repressed emotions from the last few days came pouring out from the bottom of his heart like a flood.

“Scram! Get lost!”

He screamed out in rage and swung his hand, only to have the crazed woman bite into the back of it.

She bit down with a great amount of force, to the point of nearly piercing through his palm. He furiously slapped her. The woman crashed down onto the ground. He then hurriedly stumbled into the bathroom to hide, locking the door from the inside.

“Come out! Come out of there right now! Return my ear back to me!”

The woman stubbornly banged on the door outside in desperation as demanding screams ripped out from her throat.

He was stooped over the sink basin, his body trembling uncontrollably as he slowly opened his palms.

There were deep, semi-circular teeth marks in his rough palm. These were the marks that woman had just bitten with everything she had.

He dazedly stared at these imprints, and his shaking intensified.

No! Impossible! Impossible!

He fell onto his knees, sobbing in terror as he watched the small drops of green liquid leak out one after another from the bite wounds. It was his blood – that was the blood flowing out from his body.

Why is it like this? Why is like this?!

He frantically turned on the faucet to rinse away the terrifying drops of liquid. However, right after he washed it away, a new, steady flow of green liquid would pour out. No matter how he washed, he could not wash it all away.

In a frenzy, he rubbed his palms together. The more force he used, the fiercer the flow of the green blood became.

He began to whimper uncontrollably from his hoarse throat.

Outside the door, his wife was still screaming. He pushed the door open with a bang and jumped at the woman like a fierce creature, overpowering her down onto the floor. He firmly gripped her slim, soft neck, exerting more and more force.

“Shut up! Shut up!”

As he let out these angry shouts, as he cried in anguish, both his hands tightened like iron pliers around the constantly struggling woman. When he finally returned to his senses, he discovered that his wife on the floor had already stopped moving.

The woman’s eyes were bulging out like a dead fish, unwaveringly staring at him, glaring at him.

He crumbled onto the floor, blankly gazing at the still-warm corpse.

Without a doubt, there was always a murder case happening in some corner of the world every day, 365 days a year. Perhaps this was why the criminal investigator profession continued to grow as it passed through the generations.

When they received the phone call out of nowhere, criminal investigator Ye Xiao had been heartily eating instant noodles as before, his food filling the entire office with its strong and spicy aroma. It had caused the colleagues from other groups around him to shoot hateful looks of contempt towards him.

Yet the subject of the matter did not sense this in the slightest, eating with incomparable happiness. He was even making slurping sounds as he sucked in the noodles.

Right before a certain group leader was about to explode at the end of his patience, he instead heard Su Mu coldly say:

“Oi, someone reported an incident.”

“What incident?” Ye Xiao lifted his head, his mouth full of noodles.

“A murder.”

“Did the killer escape?”

“No, he was the reporter.”

“Self-surrender?”

“Yes.”

Once this exchange ended, all the other people in the criminal investigations group immediately lowered their heads in unison as if they had not heard.

Self-surrender was the type of case that was both troublesome and had little reward, so no one wanted to take it. Only Ye Xiao remained in high spirits. He put his half-finished instant noodles down and stood, patting Su Mu on the shoulder as he frankly said, “Come on, let’s go take a look at the crime scene!”

Su Mu silently stared at his own partner, then swept his gaze across their other coworkers around them. Without saying a word, he expressionlessly walked out of the office as well.

This was a very ordinary apartment complex. From the outside, it looked a bit old-fashioned. Over the phone, the reporter had stated the location of the incident as the ninth floor.

The rusty, metal elevator doors creaked open. In front of them was a long, narrow, and dim corridor.

Ye Xiao and Su Mu walked down, one behind the other. This place was very quiet, quiet to the point where it was slightly unusual. When they found the residence with the proper doorplate number, they discovered that the front door was not locked. Instead, it was barely closed. Some strange noises could be faintly heard through the narrow crack of the door.

Ye Xiao and Su Mu exchanged a look and they automatically slowed down as they reached out to noiselessly grab the doorknob and, inch by inch, widened the crack.

As the door opened, what entered their vision was a living room approximately fifteen ping in size. The living room windows had their curtains drawn, separating the inside of the room from the outside so that there was no sunlight to be seen in the dark space.

“Is anyone here? We’re the police. May I ask who reported the incident earlier?”

Ye Xiao took slow steps to cross through the front hall and enter the living room. The living room was quiet and empty; there was not a figure in sight. There was a mess on the floor, with newspapers scattered everywhere, shards of glass, a remote control, and clear bloodstains.

The air was filled with a faint stench.

Ye Xiao alertly surveyed the surroundings. There was a small bathroom behind him, the lights shining brightly inside. The faucet was on as well, gushing out water. This was the strange sound they had heard earlier from outside.

Su Mu put on a pair of white gloves and strode over to turn the tap off. Immediately, the entire space fell into an oppressive silence. Amidst this atmosphere, some other noises eventually became audible. These sounds were very weak, intermittent. They were like quiet sobs, but also like…some kind of animal chewing its food…

Rustle, rustle.

It sounded as if it was coming from behind the sofa.

Su Mu made a hand signal at Ye Xiao to be quiet. Ye Xiao nodded, and the two neared the source of the noise in small steps. As their angle changed, the scene behind the sofa unfolded like a movie in slow-motion, appearing in sections.

In the darkness, they saw the back silhouette of a man. He was kneeling on the ground, bent at the waist with his head lowered. A woman’s corpse lay horizontally in front of him. The woman’s grey eyes were wide open, and her body was covered in blood.

When Ye Xiao was about five steps away, he stopped in his tracks. The man seemed to sense people behind him, and he paused slightly. He then straightened his back and turned around bit by bit.

Ye Xiao was taken aback by the scene before him as it became clear.

The man’s face was distorted, his facial features sinisterly twisted together.

He was crying, tears flowing down his face. His crimson mouth was filled with some bloody, indistinct object, a large amount of blood streaming down from ceaselessly from the corners of his lips. Both of his hands were already dyed scarlet from the thick, reeking blood. One hand was still grasping a heart that was no longer beating.

Only half of the woman’s corpse remained. There was a bloody cavity in her stomach.

This man went as far as eating this woman’s corpse?

Shocked by the entire sight, Ye Xiao felt the sudden urge to vomit.

This was his first time witnessing the terrifying scene of a human eating another human.

Su Mu remained very calm, his face not changing as he looked at the man and asked in an indifferent tone, “You reported the incident?”

The man was in a daze. “Ah, ah.” He opened his mouth that was still dripping with blood, and large tears tears flowed out from his empty eyes.

Suddenly, he let out a crazed scream and stood to flee from the gap between Su Mu and Ye Xiao. As he ran, he cried out, “No! I didn’t want to either! I didn’t want to! No! No!”

“Oi! Freeze!”

Ye Xiao quickly chased after, running out the front door. He leaped towards the man and restrained him against the ground.

Unexpectedly, the man turned around to bite down on Ye Xiao’s arm.

Ye Xiao let out a pained yelp.

The man’s teeth were very sharp, able to instantly pierce through the clothing material and embed itself into the flesh. Ye Xiao felt that his bones were nearly about to snap from the bite and was forced to let go. The man immediately took this chance to crawl up and make his escape to the end of the hallway, not caring about anything else.

Su Mu pulled out his gun. But just as he took aim, he heard Ye Xiao shout.

“Wait! Don’t fire!”

Su Mu paused, only to see his reckless partner fly past him.

This was the ninth floor. The building had twelve floors in total. In his panic, the man fled into the stairwell, stumbling as he ran upwards. Ye Xiao followed tightly behind, clutching his bleeding arm as he gave chase up to the flat roof. The man gasped for breath as he sobbed, turning around to look at Ye Xiao as he walked backwards.

“I didn’t want this either…I really didn’t…”

As he cried, his bloody hands tore at his hair and he slowly retreated to the edge of the roof.

“Oi! It’s dangerous! Calm down first, we can talk things out,” Ye Xiao anxiously shouted.

The man shook his head, weeping grievously as he said, “No, none of us can escape…we will all die, all die…”

Then, he turned and climbed over the protective rails to jump off.

Ye Xiao inhaled sharply in shock. Without even thinking, he also threw himself over, rushing over the protective rails to grab onto the man’s collar.

The scene froze for an instant. Both were suspended in mid-air, the billowing wind rushing past their ears. Under their feet was an altitude of nearly forty metres. Ye Xiao had one hand desperately gripping the edge of the protective rails while the other injured hand was tightly holding onto the man. However, the blood from the wound began to pour out more fiercely, and he could not muster any strength.

“Hey, quick, grab onto me!” He shouted at the man.

The man remained unaffected. He slowly lifted his vacant eyes to look at him in despair as he murmured, “It’s not use, I can’t live anymore…”

“What are you saying? What exactly happened?”

“This is a curse…the mermaid’s curse…”

The man began to laugh neurotically. As he laughed and cried simultaneously, he forcibly freed himself from Ye Xiao’s hold and fell down towards the ground. Ye Xiao could only watch in shock as he helplessly saw the man quickly leave his line of sight. In the blink of an eye, the man turned into a black speck.

The mermaid’s…curse?

Ye Xiao was somewhat stunned as he stared in the direction the man had fallen. Even after a while of staying suspended in mid-air, he did not snap out of his daze.

“Oi, what are you doing? Performing high altitude acrobatics?”

A flat voice floated over with the chilling wind from above.

He looked up and saw Su Mu.

Su Mu was currently staring down at him with furrowed brows.

Ye Xiao chuckled awkwardly as he replied, “Er…um, could you give me a hand?”

Su Mu coldly gazed at him in silence for three seconds before stating, “Think of a way to climb back yourself.”

Then, he turned and left without a single backward glance.

“Hey! You heartless bastard, hurry and pull me up!”

1. This is Xiao (小) = little, not to be confused with the Xiao in Ye Xiao’s name (葉逍). “Little” is often added in front of a name to serve as a more intimate nickname. ↑