On the st day of March, I sat twenty meters above the ground, gazing out. A breeze called the spring wind occasionally brushed against my face, bringing with it an unexpected chill and an unusual smell.

  Shòu Zi stood behind me, covering his nose, and grumbled with a look of dissatisfaction, "Why come to a garbage dump for a spring outing when there are so many other pces to go..."

  Pàng Zǐ spped a premature mosquito that had nded on his face, unable to hold back his voice as he shouted at me, "Boss dy, today isn't even a public holiday. Why aren't we opening the shop and doing business? This pce is dirty, smelly, and full of mosquitoes!"

  "If you're not happy, feel free to leave. There's no rope tying you here," I said zily.

  The pce where I sit is a small hill, but most of its body is submerged in all kinds of garbage—household waste, construction debris, a colorful array. These useless discarded materials, accumuted over time, create the illusion of a continuous mountain range. It can be admired from a distance but never approached closely.

  In the beautiful month of March, with picturesque scenery everywhere, I hung a sign saying, "Owner is busy, closed for two days," at the entrance of "Endless" early in the morning. Then, I took Pang Zi and Shou Zi to the outskirts of the city near Yingyue Mountain. This pce, for many years, had been unreguted and eventually became a makeshift natural ndfill. Just as we arrived, an unlicensed and unregistered dump truck stealthily unloaded a full load of waste and then left nonchantly.

  Climbing to the top of the garbage mountain, you can see the Yingyue Mountains guarding the surrounding area at a gnce. They are truly continuous mountains, and the Yingyue River, which has a beautiful name but has actually been polluted into a stinking ditch.

  Pàng Zǐ and Shòu Zi exchanged gnces, but naturally, they didn't dare to leave.

  They knew I had a hundred ways to trap them without using ropes.

  "Boss dy, at least tell us why we're here!" Pàng Zǐ sidled up to me, a mournful expression on his face. "I don't know if breathing in all these smells will give us lung cancer."

  "With your EQ and IQ, it's really hard for me to expin things to you right now." I shook my head, looked up at the sky, and saw that today was sunny, with cotton candy-like clouds floating in the sea-blue sky. However, the entire Yingyue Mountain was shrouded in a gloomy, dark gray mist, blocking out the sunlight.

  Of course, humans can't see this yer of gray mist; at most, they feel that this pce is colder than others. But I'm not human; neither are Pàng Zǐ and Shòu Zi. That strange gray mist drifts and gathers in our eyes, rising straight from the surface of the Yingyue River to the sky.

  I pointed at the sky directly above the river and asked, "Do you see that gap in the sky?"

  Pàng Zǐ and Shòu Zi followed my finger and looked over. A faint, snake-like gray-bck gap, hidden in the much darker part of the sky, drifted by. The clouds covered it well, making it hard to spot without a close look.

  "That's called a ‘sky fissure,’" I said, lowering my hand. "Heaven and earth are connected by mountains and rivers, and from these, life energy flows. If this pure and vital energy from the mountains and rivers is lost, there will be less support between heaven and earth, throwing it all out of bance. Over time, this sky fissure will expand, and at best, we′ll face erratic winds and rains; at worst, disaster will strike, and all life will suffer. There's already a sky fissure over Yingyue River, and it's growing."

  Shòu Zi and Pàng Zǐ immediately turned pale; they had just recently watched the legendary film *2012*. Both of them grabbed my hand at the same time. “Boss dy, are you pnning to imitate Nüwa and patch up the sky? That’s quite the technical challenge!”

  "If anything needs fixing, it's your brains!" I shook off their hands, stood up, and looked at the lifeless mountains and rivers beneath us. "The reason these mountains and rivers have lost their vitality is because the gods who once protected them are gone."

  Shòu Zi rolled his eyes. "You mean something like mountain gods or spirits?"

  "If I buried you alive here, no one would likely find your corpse." I leaned close to his ear, saying it with all seriousness. He immediately jumped back, putting a good five meters between us.

  "Since there's nothing else to do, why don't I tell you a story?" I turned around, gazing intently at the Yingyue River, which had long since lost its original appearance.

  I have a pact with someone, a promise spanning a hundred years. Today, it′s time to fulfill it.