The woman rose slowly, lifting Zhao Hequan into the air by the throat.
She brought her face close to his, as if inspecting him with great care.
Gradually, from where her fingers gripped his neck, black spots sprouted and spread with frightening speed across his entire body.
The spots expanded and coalesced, forming one dark abscess after another. Each raised cluster bulged in the center, weeping foul fluid that slid down his body and gathered at his suspended feet, dripping in a steady trickle onto the ground.
Yet Zhao Hequan showed no sign of agony or struggle; he seemed to be still fast asleep.
A surge of dread rose within Li Zhuiyuan. If physical contact with this woman brought instantaneous rot and corruption, what about those two scraps of sloughed flesh that had landed on his face earlier...?
His skin began to itch.
He focused on the sensation. It was a genuine, physical itch, not a trick of the mind.
Yet no matter how intolerable it grew, he dared not raise a hand to scratch it.
The woman shifted to hoisting Zhao Hequan with her left hand alone, dangling him horizontally beside her. The contrast was stark—her frame was unnaturally, overwhelmingly massive. Li Zhuiyuan had been so stunned by her appearance and their mutual gaze that he had overlooked it, but now he realized her build closely resembled that of a temple idol.
Having secured her quarry, she carried Zhao Hequan down the terrace.
Her gait was steady, her gaze fixed straight ahead.
Yet halfway down, while her body kept advancing, her head snapped ninety degrees around to face him once more.
Li Zhuiyuan’s heart jolted.
She was still watching him!
Keeping her eyes fixed on his position, she continued moving until she finally descended off the terrace and passed beyond his field of view.
The itching on his face persisted.
Li Zhuiyuan remained completely motionless, keeping his eyelids cracked open by the barest sliver.
His perception of time distorted into unreliability; he had no idea how many minutes had dragged by, but he refused to flinch.
Without warning,
into the lower-left corner of his vision, that churned, raw face of seething flesh thrust forward.
She looked like someone who had already stepped out through a doorway, only to remember something forgotten—her torso still outside, craning her neck backward to peer back inside at you.
Those two rows of stark white teeth were the sole feature capable of expressing an emotion.
A slight gap parted the upper and lower teeth. Had skin and features been mapped over them, they would have formed a smile.
As if murmuring,
*Heh heh,*
*I’m just checking to see if you’re truly asleep.*
This time, however, Li Zhuiyuan was not caught off guard. He had anticipated this maneuver.
The pervasive chill clinging around him had never dissipated, which meant she had never truly departed; she had lingered nearby all along.
He could easily picture her standing motionless beneath the terrace.
Liu Jinxia had once warned that filthy things harbored an unnatural fascination for anyone capable of perceiving them. Thus, even if one “saw” such a creature, one had to act as though blind to it.
At long last, the suffocating atmosphere lifted. The chill faded away, the stifling warmth of the summer night swept back in, and the evening breeze brought fresh air once more.
It felt like stepping out of a walk-in freezer; from his flesh down to his soul, everything seemed to thaw.
This only made the itching on his face all the more unbearable.
It felt as though digging his nails in for just a few scratches would be the sweetest, most intoxicating relief in the entire world.
Even so, Li Zhuiyuan did not move.
His willpower had frayed, and his self-control was stretched to the snapping point, yet through sheer inertia, he held on, maintaining the exact sleeping posture and the narrow slant of his eyes.
Abruptly, the freezing cold struck again—fierce, sudden, and violent.
It was not that he was dragged back into the freezer; rather, the freezer had sprung legs, flung its door wide, and swallowed him whole.
Two soft thuds sounded by his ear, accompanied by the crisp clinking of iron chains.
Just ahead in his field of view, a pair of legs appeared. At their base hung two feet still dripping with foul pus.
They were Zhao Hequan’s feet, suspended as he was in the woman's grip.
She was standing directly behind him, her presence hovering right over his head.
She was still studying him.
At this moment, Li Zhuiyuan found her relentless persistence utterly incomprehensible.
If you are going to test me over and over again, why not simply hoist me up by the throat like Zhao Hequan?
Don’t you still have a free hand?
Then he recalled what he had overheard that day: two Haihe University students had taken a sledgehammer to smash the iron chains around the female Bodhisattva.
Those two had to be Xue Liangliang and Zhao Hequan.
Yet the woman had seized only Zhao Hequan, leaving Xue Liangliang behind.
Did that mean she could only carry off one victim per emergence?
In a flash, clarity struck him.
This was an inverse contest between himself and Zhao Hequan. If he betrayed the slightest flaw, the woman would very likely drop Zhao Hequan and drag him away instead.
Her repeated prodding was an ongoing deliberation.
Li Zhuiyuan had no intention of martyring himself to rescue Zhao Hequan. If forced to choose, Zhao Hequan was by far the better candidate to accompany the woman into the depths.
Besides, the man's promised land was America; with visas so difficult to obtain and the Atlantic so vast to cross, reincarnating directly over there might well prove a convenient shortcut.
Enduring raw agony was wretched, but the moment a dilemma was distilled into a contest, it meant being drawn back onto the very track he excelled at most.
The rushing chill arrived fast and departed just as swiftly; the woman had likely moved off again.
Yet Li Zhuiyuan remained frozen in place.
He ceased caring whether this dream had ended or whether the woman would return; he simply held that posture, his eyes keeping that exact hairline slit.
The itch on his face raged on, compelling him to seek an alternative distraction.
He began turning over the algorithms from the eighth volume of *Yinyang Xiangxue Jingjie*. Since he was stuck with nothing else to do and dared not move an inch anyway, he might as well devote his attention to study.
Within his mind, rows of human faces surfaced and blended into one another.
By now, whenever a face coalesced in his imagination, Li Zhuiyuan could shift it freely—male or female, aged or youthful.
Look closer, and the brows, eyes, nose, mouth, and ears underwent constant transformation.
Back in the capital, paper dress-up stickers were all the rage among young girls. A sheet depicted a model's silhouette accompanied by an assortment of hairstyles and outfits; one could peel off the desired pieces and stick them onto the figure using the adhesive backing, like a flat, simplified version of dressing a doll.
Li Zhuiyuan felt as though he were playing that very game, only the repository of features and accessories in his mind was infinitely richer than any boxed sticker set.
As he played along, a thought gradually took root:
Could he make this face move and speak?
The first seven volumes of *Yinyang Xiangxue Jingjie* consisted largely of rote memorization and heavy calculations; it was in the eighth volume that the discipline transitioned from empirical science into metaphysics—where “meta” represented a formidable threshold.
Thanks to his mother having dragged him to child psychologists so often in his youth, he had naively catered to her expectations and, guided by the therapists' prompts, actively manufactured an alternate personality for himself.
Could that same method be applied here?
The realization made his heart race. He felt as though he had stumbled upon the exact conceptual breakthrough needed to unlock the eighth volume!
Yet almost simultaneously, a sense of danger crept in. The alternate personality he had crafted years ago had remained entirely under his control; but if he constructed an independent persona within his consciousness modeled after someone else, would it still be safe?
“Little Yuanhou, wake up! Haha, still out cold? It’s time for us to head to work!”
Li Weihan’s voice rang in his ears, followed by the touch of a calloused, warm hand stroking his cheek.
Li Zhuiyuan knew he was truly awake.
He did not know whether the woman had returned to test him again after that final inspection.
Not that it mattered anymore; thoroughly engrossed in his studies, he had genuinely tuned out the external world. He hadn't been asleep, yet he had been more dead to the world than anyone in slumber.
“What’s the matter, Little Yuanhou? Sleep poorly out in the open?” Li Weihan asked with concern.
“No, Grandpa, I slept just fine.”
Li Zhuiyuan turned toward the dwellings and saw the university students up and washing. Zhao Hequan was among them, alive and laughing with his classmates.
“That’s good, then. Your Eldest Uncle fetched water; let’s wash your face.”
After a quick wash and collecting their breakfast, the villagers headed out early to the work site. Today’s quota was apportioned by village; if they finished ahead of schedule, they could return home early without enduring another night out here.
Li Zhuiyuan accompanied them to the canal bank. This time, he slacked off, finding a rock to perch on with his chin resting in his hand.
He was torn. He felt he had grasped the crux of the eighth volume, yet dared not experiment with it.
Intuitively, he sensed this resembled his reckless attempt at divining his own fate.
This line of work was laden with taboos—or rather, the discipline itself was constructed out of taboos.
The bustling, energetic labor around him gradually burned away the gloom lingering in his mind.
He loosened up. The first seven volumes were more than enough for reading casual physiognomy when bored; as for the eighth, it was not to be touched except in extraordinary circumstances.
Alright, time to help Grandpa and the others haul mud.
Just as Li Zhuiyuan moved to stand, his gaze dropped, catching sight of a gray patch on the inside of his left forearm. Checking his right forearm, he found an identical mark in the exact same spot.
He instantly reached up to touch his face. His skin felt normal, with none of the earlier itching upon waking; he had almost put it out of his mind.
It seemed he had not escaped unscathed after all.
The absence of marks on his face was easy enough to explain: the repercussions of that dream realm did not necessarily have to manifest on the facial features. The body he had inhabited then was not his physical form.
Li Zhuiyuan lifted both arms, examining the patches carefully. Though each was merely the size of a coin, such things were notoriously prone to spreading.
Just then, two figures approached—or more precisely, Xue Liangliang walked over, supporting Zhao Hequan.
The two constituted a surveying pair; whatever friction had flared up between them the previous night, they still had to complete their assigned duties together today.
“Big Brother, what happened to him?” Li Zhuiyuan asked.
“He isn't feeling well,” Xue Liangliang replied. “I’m taking him to see the doctor.”
Li Zhuiyuan noticed that Zhao Hequan’s neck had turned an ominous, purplish black.
Indeed. He himself had merely been struck by two falling scraps of flesh, whereas Zhao Hequan had been seized by the throat and carried off. Naturally, his condition was far graver.
Li Zhuiyuan gave Li Weihan a quick shout to let him know, then trailed Xue Liangliang and Zhao Hequan back to the terrace where they had slept, where a barefoot doctor was stationed.
The doctor unbuttoned Zhao Hequan’s shirt to inspect his symptoms, his expression darkening instantly.
“Doctor, is he poisoned, or was he bitten by some venomous insect?” Xue Liangliang asked anxiously.
“Where would we get insects that wicked around here? It doesn’t look like poisoning either—poisons don't take hold this fast. Didn’t you say he was perfectly fine this morning?”
“Yes, completely normal when we got up.”
“Ai.” The doctor looked troubled. “You'd better get him to the nearby township health center for an examination. I can only manage basic aches and fevers here.”
“Doctor, I have them too.” Xue Liangliang pushed up both sleeves.
Standing nearby, Li Zhuiyuan saw that round gray patches had appeared on the young man's arms, identical to his own.
It made sense. That woman had crouched before him the previous night, nearly snatching him instead of Zhao Hequan; having a few scraps of flesh drop onto him was only to be expected.
“Hurry to the hospital, then. Get yourself checked as well, in case it's some sort of infectious disease.”
“Alright. I’ll leave my friend here while I go look for a vehicle.”
The doctor frowned, but could only nod, fishing an old gauze mask from his pocket and slipping it on.
Once Xue Liangliang had dashed off, the doctor turned back to Zhao Hequan, whose consciousness was already drifting into a haze.
The doctor muttered under his breath, “This doesn't look like an illness at all... looks more like being fouled by a filthy thing.”
Barefoot doctors were individuals trained or designated by the state after the founding of the PRC, possessing foundational medical knowledge; they lacked official institutional status, serving as both farmers and healers. Though their medical expertise generally fell short of regular hospital physicians, they had played an immense role and made extraordinary contributions to improving and securing rural healthcare during a particular historical era.
Moreover, precisely because of their unique background, they often possessed an intuitive grasp of bizarre, intractable ailments and harbored less prejudice against the unexplained.
“What did you say?” Li Zhuiyuan caught the whisper and pressed with curiosity.
The doctor fell silent, unwilling to frighten a child with superstitious talk.
“Did he run into a filthy thing? Was he possessed?” Li Zhuiyuan prodded on his own initiative. “How do we fix it?”
The doctor chuckled wryly. “Little child, how would I know how to fix that? I’m a doctor, not a fortune-teller.”
Disappointment flickered through Li Zhuiyuan. It seemed he would have to wait until Great-Grandpa returned.
He had a general idea that Aunt Liu Jinxia and Aunt Li Juxiang likely possessed remedies for this sort of trouble, but he felt embarrassed to seek them out—the mother-and-daughter pair had a habit of resolving issues in ways far too crude and violent.
Before long, Xue Liangliang returned, accompanied by a middle-aged man in work clothes with salt-and-pepper hair.
The man possessed thick, steady eyebrows and a square jaw, projecting a natural air of upright authority.
“Engineer Luo.” Seeing him, the doctor rose promptly to greet him.
The man was the deputy director of the engineering project and a department head at Haihe University, who had spent recent years organizing water conservancy works throughout this region.
“Mm.” Luo Tingrui gave an acknowledging wave, stepped directly over to Zhao Hequan to assess his state, and hissed under his breath at Xue Liangliang, “Have you lost your minds? Who told the two of you to act so recklessly yesterday?”
“Department Head, it’s my fault.”
Luo Tingrui’s face remained dark. “Didn't I teach you? When construction runs into graves or shrines, they must be dealt with, yes—but even if conditions don't permit formal relocation, you still light a few incense sticks, offer a bow, and say a few courteous words before tearing them down! You two just took a sledgehammer and smashed right in!”
“Department Head, what should we do now?”
In truth, Xue Liangliang had intended to burn incense and bow before toppling the shrine, but Zhao Hequan had sneered, ranting about how this was the deep-seated flaw of the Chinese character, and brought his hammer down without hesitation. Xue Liangliang had had no choice but to follow suit.
Who could have predicted this calamity would strike the very next morning? Yet now was hardly the time to deflect blame.
“Where was the statue moved?”
“Hauled over to the western ditch, dumped with the construction rubble.”
“Good. Take him there right now. I’ll run to my temporary office to fetch some incense.
“Make amends first, then get him to the municipal hospital. A township clinic won't know what to do with symptoms like these. Finding a vehicle will take a bit of time anyway.”
“Understood, Department Head.”
Xue Liangliang hoisted Zhao Hequan onto his back and jogged down the terrace.
After a few paces, he glanced back and noticed Li Zhuiyuan trailing behind.
“You...”
Without a word, Li Zhuiyuan rolled up his sleeve to show his forearm.
Xue Liangliang stared in astonishment. “Little brother, you helped smash it too?”
“I don't know.”
In truth, Li Zhuiyuan was the most innocent victim of all. He possessed the passive ability to walk the yin path, yet the entire disaster had nothing to do with him.
“Then come burn incense with me. Once that's done, tell your family, and I'll take you along to the city hospital.”
“Alright, Big Brother.”
The two—or rather, the three—reached the western ditch where waste materials were piled. The female Bodhisattva statue stood there in solitary abandonment.
The laborers from the village retained their fundamental superstitions; they had refrained from leaving it flat on its back, propping it upright with a stone wedge at its side.
Setting Zhao Hequan down, Xue Liangliang walked before the statue and bowed respectfully:
“Yesterday was my fault. Please grant forgiveness...” He paused, glancing at Li Zhuiyuan beside him. “At the very least, please spare this child.”
Just the night before, Xue Liangliang had boldly proclaimed: *The world is materialist.*
Yet this seemed consistent with that view. In the eyes of a true materialist, so long as there existed an established pattern to investigate and resolve, even a ghost was a materialist ghost.
Li Zhuiyuan studied the idol with care. Having soaked in water or mud for who knew how long, its painted coat had largely flaked away and corroded. What met the eye was a vast, mottled surface resembling red rust, likely the natural color of the clay used to sculpt it.
Yet this perfectly matched the woman’s horrifying appearance the night before—churning, scorched, and bathed in raw blood.
Crucially, while the rest of the idol's facial features had worn away, the corner of the mouth retained a streak of white pigment on its teeth. Perhaps the paint was of a sturdier variety; moreover, judging from the sculpted jaw, the lower chin receded inward, leaving an indentation at the mouth that had kept it from being entirely caked with silt.
Li Zhuiyuan bowed as well. The jingle Great-Grandpa had recited while escorting Little Oriole surfaced in his mind; blessed with a sharp memory, he recalled every word verbatim and chanted it aloud:
*“Today we bring offerings, next year we bring rites;*
*Kindness done thus, is your heart satisfied?*
*Be it yin or be it yang, reason must prevail;*
*Avenge your wrongs, claim your debts, where justice tells the tale;*
*All mortals lead a bitter lot—drag no innocent down the trail.”*
Beside him, Xue Liangliang stared with eyes wide as saucers. In this young boy, he saw... professionalism.
Having finished the verse, Li Zhuiyuan added, “Incense will be here shortly. When I get home, I’ll set up a little offering table and place all my snacks on it to make it up to you.”
Xue Liangliang asked in bewilderment, “Will that really work?”
Li Zhuiyuan shook his head, speaking truthfully: “I don't know.”
He had merely copied down the answer straight from Great-Grandpa’s model test.
He lifted his arm again.
“Huh?”
The coin-sized gray spot had shrunk down to the size of a soybean, and its color had noticeably lightened.
Li Zhuiyuan blinked. Even he hadn't anticipated that Great-Grandpa’s formula would work so well!
“Let me see yours.” Li Zhuiyuan looked toward Xue Liangliang, needing a comparison.
Xue Liangliang spread his arms. Far from shrinking, his gray patches had actually enlarged.
He blurted out at once, “Little brother, quick, teach me what to say!”
“Alright.”
Xue Liangliang followed Li Zhuiyuan’s lead, repeating the entire verse word for word, only altering the final line about snacks to: “I’ll get dishes from the university dining hall and set up an offering table for you in my dorm.”
He finished and waited a moment.
Like someone scratching off a lottery ticket, Xue Liangliang yanked up his sleeves and let out a startled gasp.
The mark had shrunk, but not to the size of a soybean; it had merely reverted to its original coin-sized dimensions.
“What...” Xue Liangliang knitted his brows. “Could it be the Bodhisattva knows the food in our dining hall tastes awful?”
Li Zhuiyuan figured it was probably because the student had actually taken a hammer to the statue yesterday.
“Why is there a child here too?” Luo Tingrui arrived carrying a bundle of incense sticks.
“The boy ran into the same trouble.”
Luo Tingrui was surprised, but asked no questions, handing an incense stick to Li Zhuiyuan, one to Xue Liangliang, and taking one for himself.
As for the delirious Zhao Hequan, an entire handful was thrust into his slack grip.
Standing in the lead, Luo Tingrui bowed solemnly with the incense. Then, popping open his collar button and disregarding the dirt, he sat down before the idol, slapping the ground with one hand while clutching his chest with the other, pouring out his grievances.
He began with the hardships before the liberation, moved through the necessity and purpose of building roads, bridges, and water conservancy projects, and concluded with a stirring vision of the future.
He spoke with tremendous passion and pathos, shedding every ounce of an engineer’s detached rigor. An onlooker might have thought he was presiding over a grassroots symposium.
Moreover, seemingly worried that a local shrine deity might not follow Mandarin well, he deliberately seasoned his speech with thick Nantong dialect, clumsy and accented though it was.
When finished, he stood, pressed his hands over Li Zhuiyuan's and Xue Liangliang’s heads, and guided them in another bow with the incense.
Finally, he hauled the unconscious Zhao Hequan forward, forcing his forehead to kowtow against the earth.
With the rites complete, Luo Tingrui fastened his collar button once more, his demeanor instantly returning to calm composure.
Noticing Xue Liangliang’s gaping stare, he snapped curtly, “Learn from this. I picked it up from the old veterans. Spirits like this aren't all that common around Nantong, but when carving roads and bridges inland, you bump into them left and right. Over time, folks worked out this standard protocol, and it works remarkably well.”
Li Zhuiyuan nodded in deep conviction. Following the ceremony, the soybean-sized gray mark on his forearm had vanished, leaving only a faint, nearly imperceptible trace of discoloration. He was, for all intents and purposes, cured.
It was truly marvelous. Had they called in Aunt Liu Jinxia, Aunt Xianghou would probably have ended up writhing and rolling on the ground in agony again.
Li Zhuiyuan couldn't help pondering: could this count as an alternative evolution of occult practice?
Its core strategy was appealing to emotion and reason. Yet its true foundation seemed to be an overarching, righteous civic purpose—a profound moral weight before which even filthy things had no choice but to yield.
The patches on Xue Liangliang’s arms had receded to soybean size and grown substantially paler; the danger had passed. Even if a permanent blemish remained, it was nothing to an engineering student.
As for Zhao Hequan, his breathing eased somewhat, and he began groaning as a sliver of consciousness returned. But having suffered the worst from the start, even cutting his affliction in half... felt like the difference between a malady that could kill you ten times over and one that would only kill you once.
After all, Li Zhuiyuan had witnessed with his own eyes that “Zhao Hequan” had been hauled away by that woman.
Where had she taken him?
Li Zhuiyuan cast his gaze around the base of the statue. There was no obvious hollow to hide anything, but between the two carved feet on the pedestal, he spotted an engraved line of characters:
*Lady Bai.*
Was that the woman’s title?
It certainly matched the local naming convention, just as clients referred to Liu Jinxia as “Old Mother Liu.”
So this was no female Bodhisattva idol at all. Yet calling it one wasn't entirely wrong either, given that in the broad, imprecise pantheon of ordinary folk, nearly every female deity ended up being addressed as a Bodhisattva.
“Take him to the municipal hospital,” Luo Tingrui sighed, turning to Xue Liangliang. “Get yourself examined as well, just to be sure nothing lingers.”
Xue Liangliang pointed at Li Zhuiyuan. “This little boy should be checked too.”
“Right. Child, which village and production brigade do your folks belong to?”
“Brigade Four, Siyuan Village, Shinan Town.”
Luo Tingrui looked at Xue Liangliang. “I’ll explain to his family that you students are taking him into the city for an outing, and that an engineering vehicle will drop him home this evening. I can't leave the work site; you take them. The car should be waiting by the entrance now.”
“Yes, Department Head.”
Xue Liangliang supported Zhao Hequan once more and signaled for Li Zhuiyuan to follow. Sure enough, an engineering vehicle was parked by the western entrance, the driver waiting inside. The moment they climbed in, the car sped off toward the city.
Along the way, Li Zhuiyuan reflected that with Engineer Luo speaking to Grandpa and the others, his family would rest easy; as deputy director, Luo's stature carried more weight than even that of the town mayor.
By the time they reached Nantong People's Hospital, it was already ten in the morning.
Li Zhuiyuan inspected his forearm. Even the faint discoloration had completely disappeared, confirming a full recovery. Still, he intended to set up that little offering table once home to fulfill his vow.
Xue Liangliang was in a similar state, his soybean-sized spots fading into indistinct traces.
Yet unlike the two who had essentially recovered, Zhao Hequan seemed to bear the brunt of the agony alone.
Though he had regained a shred of awareness before departure, appearing somewhat improved, his condition deteriorated sharply on the road. He vomited repeatedly in the car, disgorging foul, sour liquid.
The driver was so distressed for his upholstery that he leaned on the horn with ferocious vigor all the way.
Upon arriving at the hospital, Xue Liangliang saw Zhao Hequan admitted through emergency, then held Li Zhuiyuan’s hand as they went through a battery of blood tests and examinations.
By the time they sat down to wait for the results, noon was approaching. Xue Liangliang bought several steamed buns from the hospital cafeteria to share with Li Zhuiyuan.
“Looks like we’ll have to wait until the afternoon shift begins to get our reports,” Xue Liangliang said, looking at Li Zhuiyuan. “Once we have them, I’ll take you to the shop outside to buy some milk and small toys for you to take home.”
“Thank you, Big Brother.”
“No need to thank me. When you get right down to it, I dragged you into this.”
The whole mess stemmed from him and Zhao Hequan taking sledgehammers to the shrine; how could a young child have wielded a heavy hammer?
Li Zhuiyuan lowered his head and took a bite of his bun. It had indeed been brought on by them, yet he bore no grudge.
A sunny, attentive, and warm person like Xue Liangliang was difficult to dislike. In fact, Li Zhuiyuan rather enjoyed acting out that exact persona himself...
*Hiss!*
Clutching the bun in his left hand, Li Zhuiyuan grabbed his head with his right, his expression twisting in pain.
Damn it, that sensation was surfacing again.
His vision blurred, accompanied by a sickening sense of dislocation between his consciousness and his physical flesh. In truth, this was the tangible manifestation of his self-concept detaching from his identity and relational ties.
In his mind’s eye, the cold, derisive gaze his mother had shown him so frequently in recent years rose once more.
He knew with stark clarity that if he allowed this symptom to slip out of control and complete its severance, he would forever forfeit his identity as “Little Yuanhou.” Confronted with family warmth and social bonds, he would become aloof and resistant, unable to put on an act even if he tried.
Yet he genuinely cherished this life; he refused to let go.
Had his mother not set the precedent, he might not have fought it so fiercely, might even have toyed with the idea of testing what that detached state felt like. But with her shadow looming before him, he was terrified.
Li Lan herself probably never imagined that all the pains she had taken to find child psychologists and stage interventions...
had proved far less effective than the warning of her own negative example.
“Xiao Yuan, what’s wrong? Are you hurting somewhere?” Xue Liangliang cried out in alarm, terrified the child was suffering some terrible complication on his account.
Inside his mind, Li Zhuiyuan began rattling off his family network at breakneck speed. This time, he even dragged out Grandpa Bei and Grandma Bei, while thinking of Qin Liang with heightened frequency.
That girl whose eyes held only him—he truly could not bear the thought of returning home only to meet her gaze with icy detachment.
At the same time, Li Zhuiyuan kept muttering: *I only found a breakthrough for the eighth volume of physiognomy; I haven't dared test it yet, so that doesn't count as mastering it! My Bagua algorithms for deducing fate aren't even complete; sure, my progress is fast, but what if I get stuck down the line?*
*No, even if I master both sets, Great-Grandpa’s basement still holds so many books! There’s no way I can read them all, no way I can understand them all. I’m bound to fail, bound to hit walls, bound to feel discouraged, powerless, and sick of studying!*
*Snap!*
A soundless click echoed within him, as though his conscious awareness and identity snapped back into alignment.
Li Zhuiyuan exhaled a long breath, slumping back against the chair, his face slick with cold sweat.
As expected, the frustration of academic inadequacy was the most effective anchor.
This sudden episode was very likely linked to having cracked the eighth volume the previous night, which had eroded his self-awareness as a struggling student.
“Xiao Yuan, are you alright?”
“I’m fine now, Brother Liangliang.” Li Zhuiyuan wiped the sweat from his brow, offering an intentional fib to set the older boy at ease. “It’s not from this. I have epilepsy.”
“Oh, I see. Sit tight and don't wander off; I’ll go fetch a warm towel to wipe you down.”
“Mm, thank you, Brother Liangliang.”
Once Xue Liangliang hurried off, Li Zhuiyuan caught a familiar figure from the corner of his eye. It was Ying Zi.
Was she in this hospital too? Had her maternal grandparents been transferred here from the township clinic?
Didn't that mean Great-Grandpa might be here as well?
However, Li Zhuiyuan refrained from leaving his seat to pursue her, worried Xue Liangliang would panic if he returned to an empty bench.
Xue Liangliang soon returned with a fresh towel. He gently wiped Li Zhuiyuan’s face, then motioned for him to raise his arms so he could slip the towel inside his short sleeves to wipe his chest and back, preventing him from catching a chill.
“Xiao Yuan, you’re not originally from around here, are you?” Xue Liangliang asked with a smile. “When I asked yesterday, you claimed you were a local, but when you had your blood drawn earlier, you were speaking to the nurse in the Nantong dialect. I could tell.”
“Mm. I lived in the capital when I was little, and only moved back to my ancestral home recently.”
“The capital! I’ve been there once for an inter-university academic exchange. I even visited Weiming Lake.”
Li Zhuiyuan thought to himself: *What a pity; we didn't happen to cross paths then.*
“I really envy kids who grow up in big cities,” Xue Liangliang mused.
“Where is your home, Brother Liangliang?”
“Me? I come from the rural countryside in Anhui. The houses back home are lovely, just a bit poor.”
Li Zhuiyuan nodded. He too found many of the old dwellings in Siyuan Village beautiful, particularly their tile roofs and sweeping eaves.
“It’s a shame, though. Once families back home do well for themselves, they tear down the old houses and put up modern brick buildings.”
“That's just to live more comfortably.”
“I know, but I think that once ordinary folks have better lives in the future, they’ll start enjoying traveling just like people in developed countries. If those old houses aren't torn down, they might turn into tourist attractions one day.”
Li Zhuiyuan looked at Xue Liangliang, struck by a perceptive depth of vision that commanded genuine respect.
He was neither an innate savant nor like the prodigies in Li Zhuiyuan’s class back in the capital, yet he possessed an extraordinary knack for discerning objective patterns and grasping the essence of future developments—a true gift of foresight.
Perhaps this was a form of genius in its own right.
“Haha, do you think I’m talking nonsense? Who would ever pay for a ticket and wait in line just to tour old houses and sleepy old towns?”
Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. “I think you’re probably right, Brother Liangliang.”
“You’re very sharp yourself, truly. I can sense it. How are your grades in school?”
“Pretty good. Not many kids in my class do better than me.”
“That’s only because you’re still young. The material in the lower grades is simple, so the gap is small and competition isn't fierce. Once you get to middle school, high school, and college, you’ll understand. Don't let it make you complacent now.”
“Mm, I understand.”
Li Zhuiyuan then pointed toward the stairwell. “Brother Liangliang, I just saw my cousin heading upstairs. Her maternal grandparents are hospitalized here, and my aunt and cousin are probably looking after them. I’d like to go see her.”
“Sure, I’ll go with you.”
“No need to trouble yourself, I can go on my own.”
“That won't do. Once the reports come back this afternoon confirming you're fine, I have to escort you safely home myself.”
“Alright, Brother Liangliang.”
The fourth and fifth floors housed the inpatient wards. Not knowing the patients' names, Li Zhuiyuan couldn't check the register and had to scan the rooms one by one.
Before long, a familiar, booming roar echoed down the corridor: “Dammit all, what the hell is going on here?!”
It was Great-Grandpa’s voice.
Li Zhuiyuan dashed forward, Xue Liangliang hurrying behind him.
Patients and family members emerged into the hallway, drawn out by the commotion to gawk.
Reaching the door of the ward, Li Zhuiyuan pushed it open.
Inside, Li Sanjiang gripped a peach wood sword, shielding Ying Zi, Third Aunt, and another middle-aged couple behind his back. On two hospital beds lay an elderly man and an elderly woman—evidently Ying Zi’s maternal grandparents.
Both elders were convulsing violently, blood leaking from their eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouths. Gouts of blood welled uncontrollably from their lips, not only soaking the bedsheets crimson but rapidly pooling into two spreading slicks across the floor.
Yet even in this agony, they strained with desperate, broken gasps to choke out:
“Mercy... spare our lives... Lady Bai!”
Chapter 19