Chapter 52: “You Can Do All That at Level 1? That’s Straight-Up Broken!”
…
Chen Fan glanced down at Big Fish, who was peering up at him with wide eyes. He frowned, raising a hand to signal Crippled Monkey and the others waiting to climb the Wall to hold off for now. Only then did he really take a moment to size Big Fish up for the first time.
“You’re a girl?”
“Yeah.”
(Big Fish gave a small nod.)
“Then why do you talk so rough for a girl?”
“Huh?” A flicker of confusion crossed Big Fish’s face. “Didn’t you, Station Master…?”
“I’m a guy.”
“Oh.”
“Step aside for a second. I need a moment to process this.”
…
Rain poured down through the night.
Chen Fan stood atop the Wall, brows furrowed as he studied Big Fish. He’d lived alongside these people for days now, but it wasn’t as if he went around checking what everyone had under their clothes.
How was he supposed to know there was a girl in their midst?
And truthfully… something about her felt off.
Watcher in the Night.
The first Special Practitioner he’d ever encountered.
He glanced toward the Gray Mist beyond the camp—quiet for now—then focused on Big Fish again. Now that he really looked, he could spot subtle traces of femininity: a slighter build, slender limbs, softer facial lines.
But—
Flat-chested. Childlike.
Not even close to a “beauty”—more like the clueless village girl next door from some forgotten backwater.
“I’m curious—what exactly can a Watcher in the Night do? Mind telling me?”
“Sure.”
For some reason, Big Fish seemed to trust him. She drew a deep breath, visibly forcing down the fear that kept welling up in her eyes. Her voice, barely louder than the rain pattering on the Wall, drifted through the darkness.
“My father wasn’t always a fisherman.”
“He used to work in your line of business, too.”
“What do you mean, ‘my line of business’…?”
Chen Fan frowned again. Tonight, he felt especially on edge—a gnawing sense that something was about to make sense, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. Like a key dropped into a crack, always just out of reach.
That kind of itch you can never scratch.
“I mean, he was always around people—not just regular folk, but the ones who built Arrow Bastions and all kinds of defenses. It was lively. Crowded.”
“Your father was a Builder?”
“No, just a leader at that Camp. The lord valued him a lot. My memory’s fuzzy—it’s from when I was ninety-nine.”
“…”
Chen Fan’s face was blank as he fished in his pocket.
He needed a smoke.
Desperately.
Only the curl of cigarette smoke could settle the storm of emotions churning inside him now.
“So how old are you, exactly?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“And here, age goes backward as you get older?”
“Mm.”
Big Fish lowered her head, hiding her eyes. Her voice grew so faint, if Chen Fan hadn’t been standing close and listening carefully, he would’ve missed it entirely.
“Watcher in the Night is something you’re born as.”
“I was born a Watcher. When I came into the world, I was a hundred years old—looked like a shriveled old crone, crawling out of my mother’s belly.”
“My mother died in childbirth. My father, not wanting people to gossip, took me away and joined a Camp. He told everyone I was his mother—just old and senile.”
“The lord of that Camp really valued my father. Dad thought he’d been recognized for his hard work and gave it his all. Only later did he realize—the one the lord wanted wasn’t him. It was me.”
“The lord knew I was a Watcher in the Night.”
“One time, disaster struck the Camp. A Ghost Tide hit—Ghostbeasts swarmed in, the Walls fell, Arrow Towers were smashed, the Camp was on the brink of annihilation. That’s when the lord activated me.”
“Before that—”
“Neither my father nor I knew what I really was. Or what I could do.”
“After I was activated—”
“I wiped out the Ghost Tide. And the Camp.”
“…”
Chen Fan stared at Big Fish, caught between intrigue and disbelief, trying to figure out if she was spinning tales. “So how did that Camp compare to ours?”
“It was much bigger.”
“How much bigger, exactly?”
Big Fish glanced around, then pointed at a Level 4 Arrow Bastion mounted on the Wall. “Those cube-shaped Arrow Bastions? That Camp had more than twenty.”
“How strong was the Ghost Tide?”
“…”
Big Fish thought for a moment before answering, “There were at least a dozen Ghostbeasts as strong as that naked Female Ghostbeast we fought the other day.”
“You took them all out by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“What Level Practitioner were you then?”
“I didn’t even know I was a Practitioner. Or a Watcher in the Night.”
“So, Level 1.”
“I guess so.”
“You can do all that at Level 1? That’s straight-up broken.”
“What does ‘broken’ mean?”
“It means I’m jealous as hell. How did the lord ‘activate’ you, anyway? Did you have some kind of switch on you?” Chen Fan eyed Big Fish up and down, half-expecting to find a button or a lever somewhere.
“No.”
Big Fish shook her head, choosing her words carefully. “A Watcher in the Night is activated by their own desire to protect. When you’re in absolute despair, desperate to save something, you explode with power.”
“You destroy whatever threatens you.”
“The price is your lifespan—and… you can’t tell friend from foe.”
“I saw my father on the Wall, about to be killed by a Ghostbeast. In the panic, everything went black. When I woke up, it was morning.”
“The Camp was leveled.”
“Bodies everywhere.”
“Only my father sat by my side, telling me he’d take me home.”
“When I came to, I wasn’t an old woman anymore—I’d become a young woman. That’s when I learned what a Watcher in the Night truly is. I remember it clearly: I was twenty-seven then.”
“So after that, you went back to that fishing village by The Sea, north of the Wasteland?” Chen Fan was starting to piece things together.
“Yes.”
Big Fish lowered her head again. “I still don’t know why I didn’t kill my father the first time I was activated. I was secretly happy for a long time—thankful I hadn’t killed him.”
“I lived in the village for years after that.”
“Those years were peaceful.”
“Nothing to do with anyone else.”
“Even though the Rainy Season made me uneasy, we always made it through.”
“Until one Rainy Season, when Ghostbeasts fell from the cliffs into the village. Countless villagers died. My father barely survived. I was activated again.”
“When morning came and I woke up—everyone was dead.”
“My father, too.”
“When I woke up, I was nineteen.”
“After that, I drifted from place to place, met Brother Wang, and joined the Jiangbei Chen Clan’s Waystation No. 36.”
“I want to protect the people around me.”
“But I end up killing them with my own hands.”
“After the second activation, more memories started surfacing—like I’d always known this stuff. If I don’t want to be forced into activation, I have to carry ten Ghoststones on me. That suppresses it.”
“That night, I wasn’t hiding Ghoststones on purpose.”
“It’s just that…”
“If I’d handed over the Ghoststones…”
Big Fish didn’t finish her sentence.
But the meaning was clear enough.
The Camp Chen Fan had fought so hard to build—if Big Fish were triggered a third time, it would be wiped out in an instant.