On that day when Krishna was angry, not only Zha lost consciousness. Children's immature ears were not strong enough for the shock, and most of the houses were filled with fainting people.
However, at the moment when the doomsday approaches, more sober people are panicking but anxiously monitoring the windows. They did not disobey the request because the doors and windows were tightly closed. There happen to be many gaps in the right places on the wall, which are usually blocked by internal hanging fixtures. This is due to the nature of the grass-based laminate material.
People wait for the next horrific or bizarre sight. Waiting for the fire flying in the wind, or the deadly fog. But nothing happened. After a long time after that moment passed, the people who went out for activities were also safe and sound.
Maybe Krishna was just temporarily angry. People try to come to a conclusion. Maybe that's the Collectors using their powers.
- But the chariot did not return.
Someone quietly gestured in a sheltered area of the market. Then the next person echoed. Another person agreed. People maintain absolute obedience in their daily lives, but their eyes are always paying attention to the direction of the highlands.
The collector did not return. Unlike all the years they had visited before, the chariot followed the direction of the wind to the water source and then went against the wind from the water source. This path must have made sense, because astute people have discovered that chariots don't actually fly particularly high. They must return to where they came from in order to open the portal to Krishna.
Regardless, the chariot can cross the peak. If you leave around the mountainous area, the chariot does not have to return the same way. This is how people explain the situation. Their eyes were still staring at the border.
Many days passed. When people got used to the dark sky, the owner of a single house appeared in the market. He was neither beautiful nor ugly, and looked no different from the locals, but everyone stared at him. People did not gesture to him, let alone approach him actively, but they followed him from a distance.
They wanted to know why he was alive. And even if the question isn't immediately answered, they want to know what he plans to buy.
He bought fuel, a powder ground from black stone mines. Sound line tubes, from smallest to largest sizes. Crystal oscillator can do the simplest lighting and power generation. There is also a small pot of floating waterweed in bloom.
People were disappointed that there was nothing precious about these materials other than the labor required, and that they could not be used to make anything complex beyond the most basic uses.
People who live alone are ready to leave. A particularly brave man stopped him.
What exactly do you do? the man asked with gestures.
Study the problems of life. replied the solitary man. People suddenly realized that this person was a doctor.
Physicians are rare. Perhaps the Collectors spared him for this. This is not impossible. In any case, the chariot with its long sling did not come back. Didn't come the next year either.
During that uneventful year, it was no longer forbidden to be near the house of someone who lived alone. Zha and several children around him began to like this. They often knock on doors and then run away. Sometimes I wait at the door to see if the doctor responds. Two or three times out of ten, the doctor would open the door and allow them entry. In that simple house, they happened to see some small objects that they had never seen anywhere else. A small piece of brightly colored metal. A rock that keeps swinging up. A thumb-sized moth capable of understanding certain hand gestures.
When Zha and other children stayed in the house of the solitary person, he never took the initiative to communicate with them, but he would not leave either. He sat on the only bench in the house and watched them coldly as they played with everything in the house. There were always sheets of snow-white paper in the room, but the doctor never wrote or drew on them. Only rarely did Zha see him pick up the paper and fold it into some random shape. The red insect that lives in the lampshade spreads its wings and tries hastily to escape.
Zha went home and described what he saw to his parents. He was told that these were healing materials. All physicians, even those who don't live up to their reputation, at least know how to treat and relieve rhythmic disorders.
Another year passed and the collectors came to visit. Zha's sister was born.
After waiting anxiously for fifteen hours, Zha's family realized that this was a dangerous delivery. A random risk that cannot be eliminated by good health, and then deteriorates into haemorrhage and shock. Zha's father called Zha and his sister, gave them ten crystal oscillators, and asked them to find the doctor.
Sister Zabi, who is good at running, took the lead in completing the trek on the mountain road. He knocked on the door of the solitary man and handed the crystal to him.
Save my mother and sister. he requested with gestures.
The solitary man still looked at Zha with his face lacking any emotional response. He quickly closed the door again.
Zha started to kick the door.
Before the door collapsed, the solitary man came out carrying a basket. In the basket were a bottle containing insects, a large bundle of red flesh thread wrapped around a sound tube, and several knives and thin tubes made of white paper.
The doctor took these to Zha's home. The pregnant woman's howls of pain soon died down as he entered the house. After a while, the baby let out a shrill cry. The doctor walked out of the room with bloody hands and a basket. His paper tools were spotless, but the moth in the bottle was twitching in deathly agony.
The skill displayed by the physician astonished all who learned of the incident. They praised him and thought that he was indeed an expert on life issues. Many people visited him before the scheduled delivery date, hoping to get him to check on things in advance.
Doctors always stay behind closed doors. Despite this, people began to respect him. They also came to him with non-medical questions, such as how to make livestock obey or increase their luck in finding minerals. Once the physician opens the door, his advice always makes a difference. Only once was he asked how to pursue love. The doctor looked at the person, then closed the door and never opened it to this person again.
Zha often went to the doctor's home. He has begun to learn how to make voice tubes, and often donates excess materials to others. Zha's sister was more interested in the humble house. She came here all day long and played with the moth in the bottle with gestures until it gradually died of old age.
In his second year of learning voice tube making, the Collector's Chariot finally came to visit him again. The timing of their visits had always been random, but they had rarely been so far apart before, and there were more of them than any time in memory. People were alert again, watching the chariot fly towards the mountains.
Nothing happened. There were no loud noises or any other unusual signs. The collectors' chariots also did not return, and people were certain that they had taken a long detour.
After the limelight was over, Zha still visited the doctor at his home. The aging doctor opened the door for him. There were several new moths in the lampshade beside the table, and they obeyed the same gesture as before. Zha's sister played with them, and the doctor sat in his seat, folding the white paper indifferently. He showed little concern, but he was present at the celebratory banquets when Zha's sister established a new home with another man who lived far away, and when Zha's wife gave birth to a child.
At the end of the banquet, Zha went to the doctor's home. By this time the doctor had become very old. He was originally older than Zha's father.
Zha asked the doctor to move out of the solitary house and come to his home, or to build another room near his home. Because the doctor is already very old and cannot bear the burden of living alone. There has never been a mistress in the house where he lives alone, so Zha is willing to help him spend a less lonely old age.
The doctor refused. He told Zha that he was going on a long journey. He will survey the entire world to make an important decision.
Zha disapproved of his plan. Because no matter how important the doctor's decision was, his body could no longer bear the arduous trek. The elderly should stay where there are people watching over them.
The doctor smiled. There was a cunning look in his calm eyes.
The next day, the doctor fell ill in the house. His body was horribly hot, but his face was as gray as yellowish pink stone. Zha stopped working to stay with him and cooled him with melted ice cubes. But everything was in vain. Within two days of rest, his condition had deteriorated irreparably.
In the last moments, Zha held the doctor's cold and rough hands. He couldn't help crying, as if he had really lost his father. The doctor lay on the carpet and asked him to open the wooden box on the table and take out a strange-shaped metal statue. He asked Zha to put the strange, aging water-weed statue in his hand, and the petals at the end fell on his chest.
Go turn off the lights. The doctor told him with a final gesture.
Zha left. When he returned, there was a body lying on the carpet. He groped with his hands and came across the doctor's cold face in the darkness, the smiling lips, and the tears staining his temples.
