06Rust Escort Agency

"The Rusty Dart" tells an absurd fable about time, debt and inheritance. The lame old escort Chen Pojia received a strange escort - an iron box that could open by itself. The box contained 365 clay figures in his life, corresponding to every day since he could remember. This journey to the City Without Tears revealed a secret from thirty years ago: He had sacrificed a leg to exchange the life of a child with the God of the River of Tears. In order to repay his kindness, the child's father, Mo Chen, made clay figures to bear the daily pain on behalf of Chen Pojia, and stored these clay figures in iron boxes, forming a "pain diversion" that lasted for thirty years. During the journey, the escort team encountered bizarre events such as a parade of wild dogs, a broken bone scale of the Moon Scale clan, and a self-acting clay figure in a desert theater. Chen Pojia discovered that his prosthetic limbs had the same origin as the clay figurine's wooden tools, and the incompleteness of the shadow suggested that his soul had been absorbed. In the end, the truth is revealed: the iron box is the container of the oath, and the clay figure is the carrier of pain. The prosthetic limb needs to be buried together with the remains of the real leg (seven-section iron chain) at the bottom of the river in order for the oath to be broken. At the bottom of the River of Tears, Chen Pojia sat into the seventh ice coffin, completed the ceremony, but stayed there forever. Five years later, the apprentice A Qing inherited the escort agency, and rust spots appeared on his ankles; an elm forest grew out of the old site of the River of Tears, and wild dogs still walked in formation. Rust is like the background of rivers and lakes, spreading slowly over time, reminding everyone who passes by: some debts are passed down from generation to generation in the form of pain.