游医

Itinerant Doctor

PRIEST

Translated into English by E. Danglars at edanglarstranslations.com.

Cover art by Xiermifen at twitter.com/xiermifen.

This is an unauthorized fan translation. To support the author, please purchase the original novel on jjwxc.

1

DR. KOU

ONE HEARD that people beyond the mountain used a new energy source. One heard that those city dwellers’ houses were like computers; they could talk, they could chat, they would do what you told them to do. One heard that if they were separated by a long and perilous distance, all they had to do was turn on a cellphone, and it would be like the other person was sitting in front of them, real enough to touch. One heard that some scientist was researching…some kind of space…some kind of principle, and in the future, there would come a day when those city dwellers could open their doors and immediately reach a far distant workplace.

One heard…

But none of this had anything to do with the little mountain village. Though the highway had already gone through here years ago, for reasons of geography, the road conditions were still poor. It was bend after bend. Every year there were many accidents. Goods from the outside coming in or people from the mountain going out were both extremely difficult things.

The goods and materials that many areas had provided in aid of construction had been delivered here with a great deal of labor in order to build little house after little house for the villagers, even more beautiful than the ones in the city, to repair the highway, and to put new roofs on the school and hospital. But people’s living conditions were still cramped. There were still old people who wouldn’t go to the hospital when they got sick, preferring to stay home and take a folk remedy, ask for blessings.

So there were many people who didn’t know that the human heart could also become sick, and that its sicknesses could be dreadful.

In an attic room, a teenage girl waking from a dream sat up, still with some confusion on her face. Just then, the curtains were lightly pulled open, and the evening sun slanted into the room. The man who had opened the curtains lowered his head and leaned against the windowsill with his head down. He took a deep breath of the fragrance of the camellias growing there.

Then he looked back and narrowed his eyes in a smile. “How are you? Are you awake?”

This was a very youthful man—not to say that he was young, but that he made you think that even in the future when he was middle-aged, even when he had become an old man with a head full of white hair, he would still be youthful, because he had a pair of especially happy eyes.

He had a head of short hair that always seemed a little messy. He was tall and long-legged, making him look even skinnier than he was. He had a smile that seemed to sparkle, making people unable to resist smiling along with him when they saw it. He was very likable.

The girl looked at him and suddenly felt the rims of her eye heat up. For a time she didn’t know how to express herself. She could only instinctively begin to cry. “Dr. Kou…”

Dr. Kou didn’t interrupt. He let her cry to her heart’s content while he quietly put away his equipment. He always had a very retro little satchel with him. When she was about through crying, he took out a small palm-sized box and passed over a package of tissues. “Here, wipe your face. The final treatment is complete. This box contains our hard work during these days. You can keep it as a memento.”

“A memento?”

“A memento of you coming back to life.” Dr. Kou winked at her, lifted his big backpack containing the equipment one-handed, and put it over his shoulder, like a long-distance traveler bringing along overweight luggage. Humming a wildly off-key tune, he opened the door and nodded to the girl’s parents, who had been waiting outside the door for a long time. “You can come in and see her.”

The middle-aged woman abruptly covered her mouth, holding back her sobs. She walked into the room. The girl softly called out “Mom,” and the suppressed sobs turned into weeping in each others’ arms. Dr. Kou stood at the door and nodded to the man who was expressing a thousand thanks. He turned and left, just as if he had never stopped there and had never done anything.

Kou Tong was an itinerant doctor.

Ordinarily, “itinerant doctor” has a more common synonym—“swindler.” And Kou Tong seemed a little more like a swindler than even an ordinary itinerant doctor, because he was a psychologist.

According to the usual understanding of common people, any person who lived on human food would have emotions. There would be times when they wanted to fight, and times when they wanted to curse. It didn’t amount to anything major. How could you determine that there was an illness in their heart? Wasn’t it just whatever the psychologist said?

If you said there was an illness, then there was illness; if you said it was better, then it was better. If that wasn’t being a swindler, then what was it?

It was better to have a specialist in shamanic dance. At least these people were the real thing; they hollered and rolled their eyes, jumping around for such a long time. At any rate, they were worth the price of admission.

But Kou Tong was just this sort of magical person. Rumor had it that he had a job, and that his post was in the world’s most mysterious department—this country’s “relevant department.”

Dr. Kou’s contributions to the relevant department were great. How great? Well, the relevant department’s business was top secret, so this couldn’t be talked about in detail.

Anyway, supposedly the top tier psychologists on the market had vastly improved their techniques with a treatment instrument. They could use some means to truly see what was in a person’s consciousness. And this instrument called the Projector had the utmost link to Dr. Kou. He was supposed to be one of the developers.

It was clear that while Dr. Kou was very low-key, he was quietly awesome.

But the awesome Dr. Kou didn’t always have so much research work. His work was usually a little leisurely, probably leisurely enough to make him frequently feel a little at a loss. So, imitating the Erlang god on TV, under the glorious name of bringing benefit to the masses, he took general directions but not orders.

When he had nothing else to do, with this as his excuse, he wandered around everywhere carrying his bag of equipment on his back like a mountebank. He didn’t care. Anyway, his face was thicker than a city wall. If someone trusted him and let him treat them, he would stop over for a while, cure the person, then leave. How much money the patient gave was entirely voluntary—anyway, he was traveling on public money… As for his practice, of course that also couldn’t be talked about in detail.

Kou Tong left the girl’s house, put a pair of very large sunglasses on his face, whistled, brought his equipment back to his hotel, then got himself ready and happily went to keep an appointment—a group of the village’s half-grown youths had extended the invitation to him, because they greatly revered him.

In the eyes of the village people, especially of the youths, Dr. Kou was a magical individual.

They all knew the girl from the Huang family. She was a weirdo. For no reason they knew, she tried to kill herself practically every day. The village people saw it as nothing out of the ordinary, because her suicidal behavior seemed to be even more frequent than menstruation—there were some days of it every month.

But after Dr. Kou came, he stayed at her house for a month and more, and Miss Huang became much more human-like. She didn’t try to commit suicide as usual. She could go out, and when she went out, she could say hello to people in the street. After another month, Miss Huang had turned over a new leaf. She was even getting along with her parents, who had formerly been like enemies to her.

To speak factually, Dr. Kou was actually more magical than those who did shamanic dance.

So the youths were prepared to extend to him their highest tribute: they had invited Dr. Kou to the big slope at the south entrance of the village to participate in their traditional activity—racing.

Of course what they raced were bicycles. The road hadn’t gone through here. There was a natural and precipitous slope. The people from the village didn’t normally pass through here, so it had become the children’s playground. In spring, a mountain full of wild flowers and grasses turned into a carpet. Amidst the carpet was a dirt road made by these “racing drivers” treading throughout the year. It was very smooth.

Riding a bike from here, taking both feet off the pedals, making all kinds of high-difficulty moves, hollering while charging down, was the first trial by fire for the boys to become “true men”—self-proclaimed, of course.

The truth was that every year, many brats broke their legs here, so many that parents and guardians used brooms to viciously threaten their children—if you ride down the big slope letting go of the handlebars again, then I’ll break your damn leg!

Sadly, whether it was getting your leg broken by falling or getting it broken by beating, the final outcome was the same, so the threats failed. The race meets carried on like a raging fire as before.

When Kou Tong arrived, the boys had already started.

A short boy saw him and immediately stepped up to welcome him. He wiped sweat from his forehead and shouted, “Dr. Kou is here!”

Apart from those who were still sliding down the slope and didn’t have attention to spare, the other boys all surged over and talked over each other explaining the rules to him, as well as explaining how awesome they were in front of their idol.

They were willing to group him as a fellow countryman, because Dr. Kou never acted like a “grown-up,” putting on a fierce look as though he was all that, unfathomably saying don’t do this and don’t do that—even though he really kind of was all that.

Kou Tong happily squatted to one side, observing a couple of rounds of matches. At last, he couldn’t resist itching to have a go.

The teenage boys fell over each other to give up their bikes to him. Kou Tong tossed his satchel aside, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and, like an overaged sufferer of middle school syndrome, took his feet off the pedals like the teenagers and whizzed down, crying: “Yahoo—”

His originally messy hair became even wilder. He raced all the way down to the bottom of the slope. Then, still unsatisfied, he pushed the bike all the way back up and put on an even sunnier smile. “Again. Who will come down with me?”

The convoy of “wild rabbits” was ready to set out. The boys stretched out their necks and yelled together. This time, Kou Tong even let go of the handlebars. Only his butt was still touching the bicycle. It was a frightening sight. His little fans yelled behind him: “Damn! Dr. Kou, you’re a real man! No mistake!”

“That was nothing. I’ll show you an even more difficult move.” Kou Tong pushed the bike out for a third time and got on it, panting slightly. The applause of the crowd was making him show off a little.

This time he held the handlebars. After stabilizing himself, he suddenly raised his feet and put them over the handlebars. Then, like a big bird, he let go with his hands and used his bent knees to send the bike forward. The applause rose to the skies.

Just at this stirring moment, all of a sudden, the woman from the Zhang family came over leading a crowd of adults. They must have received word and were prepared to encircle and suppress the illegal racing activity. The outcome was, they saw Kou Tong’s performance.

Zhang-da-jie was instantly scared white-faced. She yelled, “Good grief! Dr. Kou! Dr. Kou, come down! Oh, my goodness, why are you fooling around with this crowd of wretched brats? You’ll break your leg if you fall in this place!”

Grinning, Kou Tong answered, “No, I won’t.”

Zhang-da-jie stood on tiptoe. In the midst of many pressing affairs, she didn’t forget to pull over her own unlucky child and give him two fierce slaps on the back of the head. “It’s dangerous, Dr. Kou!”

Kou Tong said, “Don’t worry!”

“Gracious, how can I not worry? Come down!”

Then…

Then Kou Tong really did come down—because his legs were too long, bending them blocked his line of sight. He didn’t see a big stone roll up in front of the wheel and fell down.

At the time, Kou Tong heard an ominous sound. He lay on his side as he had fallen and buried his face against his knees. On one hand, this was because it hurt so much; on the other, it was because it was so humiliating.

He thought that perhaps he had very unfortunately…really broken his leg.

So the story begins with an unreliable itinerant doctor, by an even more unreliable method, breaking his leg.

2

THE GUN

THE MAN had a face with distinct outlines, not overly robust, that showed a bit of cynical handsomeness in the sun. His fingers were like a pianist’s, long, slender, and beautiful, extremely dexterous. No matter what he did with these hands, it would appear pleasing to the eye—even if he was handling a sniper rifle.

There was already shooting up ahead. People were shouting nonstop over the communicator hanging from his ear. This was a battle of armed police mopping up the remnants of scientific extremists.

“Requesting support, requesting support. The firepower at the back door is too strong, we can’t hold out! This crowd is fighting to the end!”

“Copy!”

“All units take note, take note not to let dangerous individual Number 002 escape. All units take note…”

Meanwhile, as always, he held up his gun, neither fast nor slow. He loaded the bullets, slid them into the chamber, and unhurriedly took aim.

“We have found Number 002. This is Squad 4. We have found Number 002!”

“Copy. Squad 4, report your position.”

The man narrowed his eyes and took a look from far away. He shook his head and laughed quietly. He indistinctly recited: “Number 002.”

“Approaching the back door position. Number 002 is attempting to run!”

“Intercept him!”

“Squad 1 is in position to support.”

“Copy!”

Another period of fierce gunfire. The man picked up the binoculars by his hand and looked, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips. He casually raised the gun and tilted his head, seeming to aim absent-mindedly.

“Warning! Warning! Unusual energy reaction detected on Number 002. He’s about to activate spatial energy equipment!”

“Block him!”

“All right,” the man added to himself—as though the others could really hear what he was saying. Then he suddenly squeezed the trigger. The bullet flew unerringly according to its precisely planned trajectory. The man didn’t even take a look. After shooting, he lowered the rifle and nimbly put it away. He touched the elaborate communicator, adjusted the frequency, and said in a serious tone, “Reporting! Target individual has been shot dead.”

There was a silence over the chaotic communicator. Then an obvious new recruit’s voice shyly said, “Squad 4, Number 5 reporting! The dangerous individual is dead. Spatial energy equipment warning resolved.”

Then, as though others couldn’t hear him, he quietly added, “Where did the sniper come from? He’s so awesome.”

Then there was a light click—it must have been a teammate next to him turning off his communicator, afraid that he would humiliate them.

The man put on sunglasses and put the big bag holding the gun over his shoulder. He rolled up his pant legs and slowly left the rooftop, humming some tune. He took out a phone and dialed a number. More dead than alive, he said, “Resolved.”

The person on the other end laughed. “So quick. A performance worthy of the finest gun.”

The man clamped the phone between his ear and shoulder and took out a cigarette. He lit it and gave an indistinct “yeah.” Seeming a little lacking in enthusiasm, he said, “When is my transfer order coming?”

The other person was silent for a while, then asked, “Jinchen, do you really want to leave?”

The man blew out a smoke ring and went downstairs. There was a car parked waiting there. He tossed the bag into the backseat and plopped into the passenger’s seat, casually rolling down the window and tapping cigarette ash outside. He didn’t look like a mysterious sniper. Rather, he seemed like a big, lazy cat.

He said, “I’ve sold my life for my country for so many years. Now I want to enjoy a quiet retirement. I don’t think that’s an excessive request, is it?”

The other person sighed. “I understand what you mean. I’ve already sent it up. You rest for a couple of days, and the organization will make arrangements for you. You’ll be notified this Thursday at the latest.”

The man whistled. “Thank you for taking the trouble!”

His name was Huang Jinchen, but few people knew this name. For the last decade and more, he had had another appellation and identity.

Science and technology were developing rapidly. Scientific terrorists had risen to the occasion. In this world, a terrorist organization known as “Utopia” had just been caught—no, rather than saying they had been caught, it would be better to say that after a difficult war, international allied forces had barely won.

This was a terrorist organization that had an “energy source” as their core, with human bodies as their carriers and human emotions as their fuel. Through a special process, they obtained and burned the “emotional energy” of innocent people’s lives and minds and developed all kinds of unimaginable weapons. They had nearly dragged the whole world into their mad “Utopia Alternate Space,” attempting to formulate new rules.

And in this war, the planted agent who had had the most critical effect had been Huang Jinchen, called a “gun” by the Utopia organization, serial number 11235.

Not a single person made a lucky escape once this gun got his eye on them. All the people in the world who used guns couldn’t help dreading this person, who was like someone out of legend. He didn’t have an abnormal body remodeled by Utopia. He couldn’t use that unthinkable energy system, and he didn’t have any bizarre abilities. He was only an ordinary person.

But an “ordinary person” who could easily pursue and kill people of extraordinary abilities.

However unbelievable the circumstances, even in an abnormal space where all weapons had been blocked, even a place where the laws of physics had changed, a place with abnormal energy reactions, a person he had gotten his eye on couldn’t escape the fate of getting a bullet between the eyes.

Whether enemy or comrade-in-arms, everyone felt a strange fear towards this legendary “gun,” because in his hands, a gun wasn’t a lethal weapon, wasn’t even a weapon at all, but some kind of magical object; also because he didn’t even seem like a person. Even among the comrades-in-arms who had fought for the same country, there was a rumor that said that “that gun” wasn’t actually a living person, but a robot manufactured by one the country’s secret bases.

That was how he could be so precise, just like his serial number in Utopia, 11235—the Fibonacci sequence; perfect.

How could a person have such terrifying psychological quality?

But in fact, Huang Jinchen didn’t drink machine oil. Time after time, he liked to drink certain brands of carbonated beverages that relevant departments had issued warnings against because their preservative content exceeded the standard. His normal hobbies weren’t wiping guns or target practice; he played an online game—of course, the game wasn’t the holographic club’s wuxia series, or the keyboard club’s World of Warcraft; he liked to play Lian Lian Kan[1].

Apart from this, though the government had given him generous work and benefits, in his leisure time, he still had hobbies that brought in a little extra income—for example, busking.

When he didn’t have a mission, wearing a pair of flashy sunglasses, a wooden guitar on his back, in a faded t-shirt bought wholesale from the zoo and ragged jeans with one pant leg long and the other short, revealing a pair of knock-off sneakers underneath, he would go sing for money on the subway. Sometimes he sang old classical songs. Sometimes he would take in a lot of money and, as if showing off before an audience, he would stir up an original song.

On Thursday afternoon, when the middle-aged man came to find him, Huang Jinchen was performing an English edition of “Two Tigers” for two blond, blue-eyed foreign children—the lyrics extemporaneously translated by himself. For some reason, he sang with a thick Russian accent: “Two tigers, two tigers, run fast, run fast…”[2]

The two foreign children heard this and stared blankly, feeling that this country’s children’s songs were truly abundantly vigorous. They absolutely couldn’t understand!

A middle-aged man with a refined pair of glasses on his nose, dressed up like a beast in human clothing, waited for the thunderous applause and laughter of the crowd to pass, then went over to pat Huang Jinchen on the shoulder. “Sir, I don’t know whether you have any interest in being recruited for show business?”

Huang Jinchen looked disdainful. “You talent spotters move too slowly. I’ve been showing myself off on this subway line for months, and you’ve only just discovered me. How bad is your eyesight? Tut, it’s no good being a little four-eyes.”

Then the train pulled into the station. Putting on airs like a superstar, he bowed towards the audience, then swaggered off hugging his guitar. The middle-aged man in glasses, under the eyes of the crowd, calmly left after him.

There was an audience member present who liked live broadcasts and recorded a full version of Huang Jinchen’s “Two Tigers” to post online, even naming it “Peerless singer, shaking the world with one song.”

When they came out of the subway station, there was a car waiting. The middle-aged man stepped up to open the car door for him, making an inviting gesture. “Big star, please get in.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t stand on ceremony at all. He plopped down, twisted around, and commented: “Listen, what’s this company of yours? Does it have assets? This crappy car’s seat is harder than the backseat of a bike. You’re so poor, and you still want to hire me? Can you even afford to hire an agent?”

The middle-aged man looked back and took off his glasses, revealing unmoved eyes. “How about I be your agent?”

Huang Jinchen sneered. “You? I don’t think much of you. You aren’t good-looking, either.”

The two of them laughed at the same time. Huang Jinchen put down the guitar and crossed his legs. “What, do they want to transfer me over to you?”

“That’s right, how about it?” The middle-aged man winked. “Sitting in an office every day, no need to struggle through the elements, no need to run around hoisting a gun bashing in people’s heads. Your rank would be higher than before, and the position is special, in a special training base. People from other places couldn’t direct you. When you aren’t busy, you can go out onto the grounds to plant crops. There’s earth, the environment is good. It’s suitable for a quiet retirement.”

Huang Jinchen considered for two seconds, then decisively shook his head. “Nope, I’m not going. General Zhong, sir, don’t go fooling us rough, uncultured fellows. I know about your blessed place, ‘the final contact base.’ No one can direct you, you can have a quiet retirement when there’s nothing to do, but when there is something do, you have to put your life on the line. Don’t think I don’t know you just got out of the hospital.”

Before General Zhong could speak, Huang Jinchen continued: “Although…I hear that the treatment at the ST Base is the best, and it’s true that no one can direct you. I could…heh-heh, work for you in name only, get myself a position. Don’t arrange concrete duties for me. I think fetching tea is good work. No need for me to step up when there’s business, and when there isn’t, I can collect my wages. Anyway, our comrades don’t have the unfortunate practices of the old society’s rich landlords. I figure there’ll be no need for this unworthy one’s attentions. When nothing is going on, I can skip work and go out to play guitar, get some extra income. Maybe one day I’ll hit it big.”

General Zhong didn’t speak. He only turned back to look at him from the passenger’s seat and tell him with his cool, distant eyes—wake up, kid, you’re drooling.

So Huang Jinchen obstinately sang: “Little sister, walk bravely onward—”

General Zhong sighed. Looking at this difficult person was giving him a bit of a headache. “Are you absolutely set on being discharged from service?”

Huang Jinchen sang: “Walk onward—”

General Zhong was silent for a while, then suddenly gave the driver the address of a hospital, interrupting Huang Jinchen’s ear-piercing demonic notes. “How about this? I’ll sign you up at the base. You won’t have to come to work normally. I’ll sign you up with the ‘special expert group.’”

“Are you guys that unwilling to let me go?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“You’re most excellent. No one wants to lose a talent like you.”

The corners of Huang Jinchen’s mouth curved in a slightly inscrutable smile. “What kind of ‘expert’? Are you telling me you’re going to sign me up as a ‘killing expert’?”

“The special medical treatment expert…group.” General Zhong paused delicately. “Before you, there was only the special medical treatment expert. I won’t conceal that there’s only one person. Normally, when nothing is going on, he also doesn’t come to the base much. I’ll take you to see this expert. Perhaps you’ll be interested in his work. Then you can decide whether to stay or not.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t oppose this. He sat quietly in the backseat plucking his out of tune guitar, thinking that worldly affairs were truly inconstant if he could one day do something he had as little to do with as being a medical treatment expert.

General Zhong took him right to the hospital. As he went ahead to lead the way, he said, “He recently had a bit of an accident and is staying in the hospital right now. Though you haven’t seen each other, I think that you must have spoken to him over a communicator during the Utopia war. He’s…”

His voice came to a stop when he pushed open the hospital room door. In the single-bed hospital room, a tall, thin man with a cast on his leg was standing up. Despite his serious injury, he was still misbehaving, standing on one leg like a rooster, swaying to keep his balance, holding a bowl of instant noodles he had scared up from somewhere, sharing it with a stray cat crouched on the wall by the window.

He drank a mouthful of broth himself, then picked out a noodle for the cat. It was very dramatic.

“…Dr. Kou,” General Zhong finished unflappably after silently looking at this groundbreaking doctor for a long moment.

3

LAO YAO

KOU TONG in his alternative getup turned his head and got a clear look at the two people standing at the hospital room door. He immediately smiled like spring sunshine. The cat standing on the wall, however, as a stray cat that had to to fend for itself, naturally had to have a slightly higher IQ than a house cat that runs when it sees a mouse. It seemed to sense danger instinctively, yowled, and leapt down from the wall, not having time to eat the instant noodles.

Huang Jinchen, smelling a hospital room full of instant noodle scent, looking at Kou Tong swaying like an unsteady bamboo pole, wondered how this person could still be smiling more brightly than a lucky cat. No doubt he would have luck making money if he hung out with him.

Kou Tong, with one leg lame, hopped over vigorously on the other leg. He turned out to be very agile. General Zhong was shaken by the sight and quickly went to hold him up, but Dr. Kou didn’t appreciate the kindness at all. He gracefully felt around in General Zhong’s pocket. At lightning speed, he fished out his wallet. “Hey, instructor, why are you always so polite? Coming to visit the sick is one thing, why bring presents?”

Huang Jinchen stood by watching, gasping in admiration. He determined that his future colleague was an eccentric.

General Zhong wasn’t annoyed in the least. He very calmly said, “There’s a compensation payment in there. While you weren’t injured on the job, the base believes that you were still serving the people, so the compensation has been approved.”

So, with one leg in its cast held up, Kou Tong leaned against a wall, took out a stack of Grandpa Maos, and began to count, his technique practiced enough to stand comparison to a bank teller.

For the sake of his own future personal safety, Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist putting in a question: “How did you get injured?”

“Racing,” General Zhong said.

Dr. Kou said, “Heh-heh, how embarrassing for me.”

Huang Jinchen looked Dr. Kou’s skinny body up and down and once again felt that a man of true talent doesn’t make a show of himself. “An eight-cylinder?”

General Zhong: “…”

“…A bike,” said Dr. Kou.

Huang Jinchen’s eyes opened wide. He looked Kou Tong over again and felt that there was something especially familiar about this person—he was clearly even more of a freak than himself! As he thought this, he simply regretted than they hadn’t met earlier. So he looked tenderly at Kou Tong for a long time, then forced out a sentence: “I’ve met this brother before.”

Kou Tong played along: “Bao-gege!”

Huang Jinchen said: “Lin-didi!”

General Zhong looked gloomily out the window at the bare wall, feeling that he was truly a little superfluous standing there.

These two lowlifes hit it off from the start. When they had finished claiming a family tie like the Second Red Army joining the Fourth Red Army in Yan’an, they at last remembered that there was still a general surnamed Zhong beside them. Kou Tong gave a dry cough. “Instructor, this person is…”

General Zhong coughed lightly. “This is a colleague who has been newly transferred to the base. I think that the two of you have some affinity for each other, so I was planning to transfer him to assist you in your work.”

Kou Tong stared. “My work…”

But General Zhong interrupted him. He laughed. “Now that I mention it, though you haven’t seen each other before, you have spoken. Kou Tong, this is that legendary gun, code name 11235, named Huang Jinchen. Do you still remember?”

The improper smile vanished from Kou Tong’s face for a moment. Then his gaze shifted to Huang Jinchen. He paused, then put on a slightly complicated smile. “Friend, it’s you.”

Huang Jinchen froze. Only one person had called him “friend.” In their final battle against Utopia, there had been a person standing in for General Zhong at the “final contact base.” Regardless of the firefight outside, or how the each country’s armed forces were fighting an energy war, or the danger of the surroundings, that person had stood watch at the other end of the communicator with an amazing calm. Using Huang Jinchen’s eyes, based on all the information gathered about the Utopia anti-government organization’s leader, he had judged that person’s behavior step by step.

In the end, you could say that perfectly removing the inhuman organization’s old man had been the result of the two of them teaming up.

Huang Jinchen still remembered how, over the slightly poor signal of the communicator, that person had asked what his name was in a firm voice, and how he had said to him, “Don’t worry. This time you won’t be out on your mission alone. I’ll be here the whole time and do my best to protect you.”

After over a decade on his own, already death-proof, when even he suspected that he was a robot, these words had seemed to suddenly inject him with a pulse.

For a moment, Huang Jinchen had even felt himself form the mistaken impression that there really was someone standing behind him. Looking at Kou Tong, he found that the person on the other end of the communicator actually would have looked like this.

In a flash, it seemed like he had known him for a long time.

“Handsome,” Huang Jinchen said, leaning against the door and throwing him a coquettish gaze, “you never did tell me your contact information.”

Kou Tong, keeping his balance with difficulty, covered his face with both hands and “bashfully” said, “I’m not the kind of person to casually go along with anyone.”

Huang Jinchen immediately brought out the wooden guitar he was carrying on his back, showing himself off like an old-fashioned high schooler from the 80s of the last century. “Well, do you think you can casually go along with me?”

Kou Tong turned his head and said, “General Zhong, copy my personnel file and send it to him. That has not only my contact information and usual email, there’s also my residential circumstances and the women of dubious character composing eighteen generations of my ancestors. I, Kou Tong, am currently single and unmarried. Carryings-on are welcome. Serious inquiries only.”

Huang Jinchen laughed aloud. He felt that it had been many years since he had been so happy. He pounded Kou Tong on the shoulder. “Handsome, you really are both low and capable, truly too suited to my tastes.”

His fist set Kou Tong swaying where he stood, nearly plopping down onto the ground. He felt that he couldn’t quite digest this meal. Quickly, he politely said, “The same to you, you’re too generous.”

General Zhong suddenly felt that…he had actually made a rather inappropriate arrangement. He could only give another forceful dry cough. Even he felt that it was as though he had swallowed a chicken feather. Then he took out a folder. “Dr. Kou, I’ve also come here because I want to ask for your help with a little matter.”

“As expected, suspicious folks bearing gifts always have a hidden agenda.” Kou Tong’s expression twisted, suddenly becoming delicate. He didn’t repeat the Peter Pan vitality with which he had hopped over on one leg to snatch the wallet. He stumbled back to sit on the hospital bed, bent over, and cried out, “Instructor, my leg hurts.”

“It’ll be good to have something to take your mind off it—Jinchen, go over and sit.”

Kou Tong unwillingly took the file. “Instructor, I have a crippled leg. When I enter the Projector, if there’s carnage, will I be reimbursed for an on-the-job injury?”

“We’ll treat you if you’re injured and bury you if you’re dead,” General Zhong said very responsibly.

Dr. Kou sighed lengthily. Huang Jinchen felt that, sitting there all twisted up, he looked like an eggplant struck by the frost. But the moment he opened the file, this insolent, seemingly boneless doctor’s expression suddenly became grave and serious, just as if he had a split personality.

So he couldn’t resist drawing close to look, too. He found that the file was a biographical sketch of an old soldier named Yao Shuo. This person seemed to be entirely plastered in medals, covered in glory from beginning to end.

“This is an old comrade-in-arms of mine,” General Zhong said. “I’ve felt that he’s been a little off lately, and I’ve managed to convince him to come have a chat with you.”

“Oh?” Kou Tong hadn’t finished reading yet. He raised his head and looked at him. “What’s the matter with him?”

“I couldn’t say. I just feel he’s a little off.” General Zhong took out a cigarette and looked at Kou Tong. “Can I smoke in your hospital room?”

“Yes,” Kou Tong said happily, “the nurse isn’t here. Give me one, too.”

“Get out. The patient should behave.” General Zhong glared at him. “Lao Yao used to be a very sociable, very smooth person. Lately the atmosphere has been too tense. Everyone’s been out of contact because of the Utopia business, and then I was in the hospital for a while. He came to see me.

“As soon as he came in, I felt that something was off. Here was a person who used to love to laugh so much, but apart from forcing a couple of laughs when he came in, he kept his face all tense afterwards, and his gaze drifted. He couldn’t say a few sentences without his mind wandering. I asked him what was wrong, and he didn’t answer, only said he was fine.” General Zhong leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and blew out a smoke ring. “Then, he had hardly said anything when suddenly he looked at me and came out with, ‘Listen, didn’t you get here because you were asking for it? Who will be grateful to you for getting injured? All right, they were fighting to the death, but why did you get in on the action? In your position, going into battle yourself, aren’t you a stupid cunt? Who will remember you? That final contact base of yours can’t be exposed in public. Who knows about you? Who will thank you?’”

General Zhong frowned. After a while, he finally continued: “At first I thought he was just in a bad mood. Then, a couple of days later, someone suddenly told me that he was divorcing his wife. When I asked about it, it turned out that it was because he had flown into a rage at his son and smashed an ornamental copper paperweight over the child’s head. It took eight stitches. He was all bloody when they brought him to the hospital. If I didn’t understand Lao Yao, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but I know he isn’t that kind of person. He’s always been a model husband, and a model dad, the kind of person who wouldn’t let the moon shine if his son wanted the stars. How could he do such a thing?”

Kou Tong was listening earnestly. Now, he suddenly asked, “Have you talked to him?”

“I did,” General Zhong said. “He didn’t want to listen to me. Two sentences, and he got mad. When he was mad, he started attacking me with words, saying that I was a meddling busybody. I couldn’t understand him at all. It was like all those years of friendship had been for nothing.”

“Wait, then how did you convince him to come see me?” Kou Tong frowned.

General Zhong shook his head in some exasperation. “That’s just what I wanted to tell you. He’s always refused to seek the aid of a psychologist, and he argued logically that psychologists were a crowd of pedants who couldn’t even understand the human heart as well as he could. They were no use. So I tricked him and said that there’s a batch of trial runs for some equipment at the base that needs a group of volunteers to help, but with the base’s special circumstances, there aren’t many people who know of it, so I can only ask internal personnel to help.”

Kou Tong rubbed the center of his brow. He closed the folder. “All right, I understand.”

General Zhong forced a smile. “Thank you for your hard work…both of you.”

Now, Huang Jinchen at last put in a word: “Lao Zhong, this special medical treatment expert group of ours, what does it actually do? It doesn’t sound to me like it’s cutting people open.”

“It’s cutting their heads open,” Kou Tong said shamelessly.

Huang Jinchen crossed his arms and said indecently, “What? I really didn’t know that grown men like us had so many complicated little thoughts that we needed to have psychologists brought in to comfort us.”

“Only occasionally.” General Zhong stood up and patted Kou Tong on the shoulder. “Rest up. I’ll contact you when the time comes—you two will still be free most of the time.”

“What will I do when I’m free?” Huang Jinchen asked with interest.

General Zhong said, “Go on a scenic tour.”

Kou Tong said, “Eat, drink, and make merry.”

The two of them spoke almost simultaneously. General Zhong laughed, said goodbye, and turned to go.

Huang Jinchen instantly felt that he had found a cushy job.

4

THE PROJECTOR

HUANG JINCHEN thought that Kou Tong’s voice over the phone was slightly different from his voice when he spoke normally. He couldn’t say what kind of feeling this was. As a sniper who aimed from the shadows, in certain respects he was much more sensitive than an ordinary person.

When Kou Tong’s voice came over the phone amidst chaotic background noise, Huang Jinchen suddenly felt that he seemed to have returned to the first time they had met; hearing this voice, it was as if he could obtain some kind of mystical peace and tranquillity from it.

“General Zhong wants us to go over today—Dr. Kou, how’s your beggar’s chicken leg[3]?”

“Not bad. In another couple of days, the hospital will break the mud, and then it’ll be ready to come out of the pot.—Where are we meeting? I’ll take a taxi over.”

“No need, I’ll pick you up on my way.” Huang Jinchen draped on a jacket and casually asked, “Where are you? Not at the hospital, right? Why does it sound so busy?”

Kou Tong paused, then gave him an address.

Huang Jinchen said, “…What are you doing?”

Kou Tong gave a dry laugh. “Resting. Just resting.”

Huang Jinchen picked up his keys and went out. On his way out, he automatically felt for the cabinet in his living room. On opening it, there was a drawer full of handguns, rifles, and cold steel. He stared blankly for a moment, then remembered that in the future he wouldn’t need these old mates. He couldn’t resist clutching his head. He was suddenly a little at a loss. Then he shook his head and smiled. In the end, he couldn’t resist hiding a little handgun under his pant leg. Then he opened the door and went out.

Kou Tong was in a foul-smelling gaming hall. When Huang Jinchen found him, he discovered that the white-clothed angelic Dr. Kou of his imagination, with his crippled leg, was showing a strong will despite his disabled body and playing mahjong. Never mind the mahjong, there was also a stack of playing cards by each person’s hand.

What? The pure and honest children don’t understand?

Huang-ge understand at a glance, anyway. This Dr. Kou, who despite being a little inattentive towards his duties passed at any rate for a government employee, wasn’t using his fingertips to draw circles on a bald head like Ikkyū[4]—he was gambling.

Dr. Kou was blowing out a string of smoke rings with his leg in its cast sticking up, pushing a handful tiles with soaring heroic spirit. He knocked on the table. “Mahjong! Comrades, pay up!”

A bushy-bearded fellow next to him, his facial features bitter, counted out some playing cards and gave them to him. A horse-faced middle-aged man was pointing at him and laughing. “That’s great, Lao Xiong! How much of your money is Kou Tong walking away with tonight?”

The bushy-bearded fellow looked pitifully at Kou Tong with dark, liquid little eyes. “He’s always laying traps!”

“You’re always giving up winning tiles.” Kou Tong turned his head and nodded to Huang Jinchen, then stood up leaning on the table. “Come on, come on, settle up, settle up. I’m not playing anymore today. Work to do.”

Lao Xiong looked at Huang Jinchen with tears of gratitude, as though he were a Goddess of Mercy helping the needy.

However they counted up the money, Kou Tong collected his winnings from the circle and tucked away a handful of red Grandpa Maos. He once again put on a brilliant and insolent smile like a lucky cat’s and swaggered off after Huang Jinchen.

Huang Jinchen helped him into the car and put his crutch aside. “You have a knack for making money. Good work.”

Kou Tong gave him a meaningful look. “Little comrade, come along with me, and there’ll be meat to eat.”

Huang Jinchen turned his face and smiled very naturally at Kou Tong. Kou Tong himself spent all his time wandering around and was the type to make himself at home everywhere. Huang Jinchen’s sideline was in busking on the subway, so unfortunately he was also the type to make himself at home everywhere. As if they had known each other for years, the two of them rambled nonsense the whole way to the place where General Zhong was picking them up.

To the outside world, the ST Base was a very mysterious place. Although, when the structure of government had failed entirely, it had become the final contact base in the war with the Utopia terrorist organization, in peacetime it was only an unknown “relevant department.” Its location was extremely remote. It had the most cutting-edge technological equipment…as well as the most rustic living conditions.

For example, for a stretch of the road leading to the base, not even the highway could get through. There was nothing but a dusty dirt road. Going along it was like riding a roller coaster. Behind the base, there was a stream and farmland, as well as a few scattered villages whose inhabitants made their living primarily through farming.

When they arrived, it was already very late. The Lao Yao General Zhong had spoken of would only arrive the next day. Kou Tong went to adjust his equipment. Huang Jinchen squatted in the yard for a while with his head raised, looking at the clear sky, feeling that the air in this mysterious base in the valley was much better than in the city. It was as if the stars had been rinsed clean with water.

He took a deep breath, sat in the middle of the yard, and pulled out an apple. Not even washing it, using his sleeve to wipe it, he began to munch, suddenly feeling a little bewildered.

Kou Tong adjusted the base’s equipment. This huge Projector was also called the Multidimensional Frequency-Altering Space. It could cast a person’s consciousness into a special frequency space and could even take the person themselves inside. Compared to the little Projector he normally carried on his back, it was the difference between an air gun and a cannon.

This enormous Projector, from planning to final perfection, had had a great deal of his heart’s blood poured into it. When Kou Tong saw it, it was as if he was seeing his own wife. He ran over to tinker with hearts in his eyes.

General Zhong followed him, steadying him when he saw that he couldn’t find his footing. The two of them seemed to be old partners; they had a kind of wordless tacit understanding. When the instrument was just about adjusted, General Zhong suddenly spoke: “I transferred Huang Jinchen over to you without consulting you…”

“Oh…yeah?” Kou Tong stared for a moment, then carelessly said, “Don’t worry, he’s pretty easy to get along with.”

General Zhong stared at his back in silence for a moment. “Huang Jinchen wants to be discharged from service. The higher powers don’t want to let him go. When Lao Yang mentioned this to me, I suddenly thought of you. You…well, you’re all grown up, and you’re always on the move. If you have a slightly more reliable person to take care of you in the future, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

Kou Tong unblushingly said, “I’m pretty reliable.”

General Zhong slowly pointed at his beggar’s chicken leg and said, “How did you do that?”

Kou Tong didn’t speak. He kept his head down, adjusting the instrument. After a while, he suddenly laughed. “Anyway, he won’t stay long. I don’t have any objections.”

Kou Tong swayingly reached for his crutch. General Zhong held him by the elbow, helping him stand firm. Kou Tong looked out the window. Huang Jinchen was just brandishing an apple core, taking aim at a little bird in a tree. The little bird hopped and bounced, taking absolutely no notice of this man who seemed like a mental patient. The outcome was that a fierce wind suddenly attacked it, and it unfortunately turned into a bird tragedy—it was hit on the head by an apple core bumpy from nibbling and fell right down from the fork in the tree.

“He’s a person of great ability,” Kou Tong commented, arms crossed in front of his chest and eyes narrowed. “In his teens, when other children are still in their rebellious phase, he went to that place alone and grew up bit by bit all on his own. He’s spent all these years surrounded by carnage, and now that he’s suddenly come back, there must be a disparity. I’ll keep him for a few days. When he’s accepted the situation, I’ll send him to do what needs doing.”

General Zhong followed his gaze and nodded. “Thank you.”

Kou Tong lowered his eyes and laughed. “Instructor, why are you being polite to me? If you need my help with anything, just say the word. I won’t argue. Just as long as Your Majesty doesn’t entrust his son to me on his deathbed again.”

General Zhong’s expression softened. “That…”

Kou Tong turned his head, leering. “But entrusting your wife to me is no problem.”

General Zhong slapped him on the back of the head.

Huang Jinchen was just deliberating whether to stew or roast the bird he had knocked down when he heard movement behind him. He turned to look and saw General Zhong nod to him and leave. Kou Tong was leaning by the door. He beckoned to him. “007, come here, come here!”

With one look at his joyous smile, Huang Jinchen felt that everything was just fine. He dusted off his butt and got up in a very good mood, eagerly strolling over. “What is it, handsome?”

“Let me show you how we’re putting food on the table.”

Full of interest, Huang Jinchen went in a circle, observing the world’s greatest Projector. He very pertinently commented, “It looks like a big boiler.”

Kou Tong instantly felt that he had met a kindred spirit. “That’s right. It’s my design. I used the dining hall’s big water boiler as reference.”

Huang Jinchen thought that Dr. Kou truly was a genius. He went over and touched the thing a few times, then asked, “How do you use this thing?”

Kou Tong stood beside the big boiler with an evil smile. He quickly brought up a control panel on the “big boiler” and entered a program.

Huang Jinchen felt dizzy. He seemed to have been crushed flat and quickly dropped into a black hole. He was surprised and automatically crouched down into a ball, ready to roll away at any moment, his hand feeling beside his foot.

But he didn’t fall heavily at all. He came lightly to the ground and found that he was on a stretch of soft sand. Huang Jinchen raised his head in astonishment. Kou Tong was standing not far from him. The strange thing was that the crutch he had been holding was gone, and he was standing firm, as though he was perfectly intact.

The two of them were standing on a deserted island with white sand at their feet. Occasionally a seabird floated by.

The island was very small. There was only a small forest on it. But in the middle there was a tower. The tower was very thick and heavy. It had no doors or windows. Whoever had built it, it was extremely tall, so that people standing at the bottom couldn’t see the top of the tower even tilting their heads back. It seemed to poke into the clouds.

All around was boundless ocean. A faint salt breeze blew. Everywhere was the sound of waves. Sea and sky were the same color.

Huang Jinchen slowly relaxed and turned his head to look at Kou Tong, who was staring at the tower. “Is this…inside that big boiler?”

“You could say that.” Kou Tong was standing very upright. “The Projector is a special spatial instrument. It can take people into different spaces. The frequency of the spaces is adjusted according to a set program. It matches up to the thinking of the people who enter. Just now, I adjusted it to target everyone who entered the space. In other words…”

He smiled inscrutably. “This space is the outcome of our two consciousnesses overlapping.”

5

FIRST SHOT OF THE GREAT ADVENTURE

HUANG JINCHEN squatted down in amazement and touched the sandy beach at his feet. “It’s just like the real thing.”

“It is the real thing,” Kou Tong explained. “The Projector doesn’t pull a person’s consciousness in; it creates a seemingly illogical space based on the person’s consciousness and adjusts frequencies to superimpose that space over the one we live in. It’s quick, convenient, and environmentally friendly.”

Huang Jinchen glanced at his leg. “All right, then what’s up with your leg?”

Kou Tong stamped on the ground. “The human body is a substance. This is an alteration brought about by entering an altered space. I believe it’s an intact leg, so it is an intact leg.”

Dr. Kou jumped twice in place. Then, under Huang Jinchen’s meaningful gaze, his originally injured leg suddenly went weak and wouldn’t hold his weight. He went to one knee on the ground. Huang Jinchen, feeling very accomplished, said, “It really is the overlap of two people’s consciousnesses! See, I didn’t believe it, so you’re lame again.”

Kou Tong said, “…You have such a practical mind.”

Huang Jinchen grinned. He walked over and kindly helped Kou Tong up. He asked, “So normally when you diagnose patients, do you also go in yourself?”

“I go in myself, but I can set up the Projector to block the influence of my consciousness.” Kou Tong stared gloomily at his seemingly intact leg. Right now, it could only exercise the function it had when in a cast—being in the way.

This Huang really was an asshole, Kou Tong thought, grinding his teeth as he limped one-legged on the beach supported by Huang Jinchen.

He couldn’t resist turning his head to look at Huang Jinchen. He thought, This asshole is really pretty capable, though. His leg had in fact been intact, and then it had instantly become no good. It showed that Huang Jinchen had instantly changed his ideas.

A person could control what he said or didn’t say, but it was hard to control what he thought or didn’t think. It was easy to say “change your ideas,” but actually doing it was rather difficult.

It seemed that, as expected, this guy wasn’t only a genius; he was a great genius.

Huang Jinchen, supporting Kou Tong as he hopped breathlessly, was also secretly sizing up this long-legged scoundrel in a white coat. He thought that if it was only his own consciousness that had been rolled into the instrument, right now he would definitely pull out a gun to silence him. But instead Kou Tong had turned up this confused overlapping space and dragged himself in as well. It would have been rather rude to kill him, making himself appear too ungracious.

All around, apart from the sea, there was only the sky. There was only a little island without enough room to turn around on and nothing worth looking at. The two of them naturally rushed towards the tower in the center.

Huang Jinchen asked, “What do you think is inside?”

Kou Tong thought about it. “No doors, no windows—clearly we aren’t allowed in. I think that there may be something not very nice in there.”

Huang Jinchen asked, “Are you hiding something naughty in there?”

In tones of righteousness, Kou Tong said, “How could that be? Though I have great admiration for both big-chested beauties and delicate beauties and occasionally like a spot of gambling, overall I’m a respectable person.”

Huang Jinchen was very contemptuous of his aesthetic. He tactfully said, “Your aesthetic is too traditional.”

Kou Tong modestly awaited instruction. Huang Jinchen, gesticulating, said, “The chest isn’t important. As long there’s a little, it’s enough. The critical thing is to look at the legs. Think about it—during exercise, you can have her wrap those long legs around your waist, and they’ll go all the way around. Then you get some ecstatic little accompaniment. That’s the genuine product.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Kou Tong nodded to indicate approval. “Come on, Expert Huang, wipe your mouth. You’re drooling.”

Expert Huang wiped his mouth without any embarrassment. He pointed at the tower in front of him and said, “A fly can’t sting a seamless egg. How do we get in?”

The two flies with their three legs made a big circle around the tower. At last, Kou Tong spotted a little window on the side of the tower, around the height of a second floor. He slightly regretted not having brought tools in. Huang Jinchen let go of him, made him stand firm on his own, then backed up a dozen meters.

A run-up, a leap, and like a big gecko, Huang Jinchen was clinging to the tower’s smooth stone wall, hanging with one hand from a small notch just under the window. His arm strength was considerable. He easily hung from one arm, then pushed the tower window open with his elbow and poked inside to look around.

There was no pornography inside the tower, and no mahjong table. There was only pitch darkness.

Surprised, he took out a small flashlight and swept the inside of the tower with the paltry light.

Inside was a large space. Looking from the outside, it seemed that seven or eight people would be able to surround this tall, narrow tower with their arms; but looking through the window, it seemed to be a single space with apparently endless darkness.

Huang Jinchen remembered what Kou Tong had said. This was only an abnormal space projected from consciousness; inside it, true laws of physics and logic didn’t exist—could it be that it wasn’t the same size outside and in?

The shadows let off chill, dank air and a slightly putrid smell. His flashlight shone on the wall. There were many murals painted there, like the murals of some religion. They were brightly colored and realistic, but the contents were strange.

He was planning to get a little closer when he heard Kou Tong below, leaning against the tower with his arms crossed over his chest, raise his head and ask, “What do you see inside?”

“A big-chested, slender-waisted, long-legged super beauty,” Huang Jinchen blurted out in response, tightly clinging to the window lattice and moving a bit further inward, attempting to see what was drawn on the walls a little more clearly.

It was a person…or it wasn’t. He had a green, toothsome, monstrous head and a knife in his hand; the tip of the knife was dripping blood, but the thing he had killed hadn’t been drawn. The monster with a beast’s head and a human body was only quietly looking out from the picture with its head tilted; the eyes seemed to be alive.

What did this mean?

Huang Jinchen thought about it, couldn’t understand it, and could only keep looking down. He saw a painting of a bridge over a racing river. The bridge was covered in people and livestock, heavily trafficked. But under the bridge was a crack; the support was about to give out.

Something seemed to be floating on the surface of the river, but before Huang Jinchen could look closely, he heard the roar of a ferocious beast come from the bottom of the tower, nearly shaking him off the window. He was startled, feeling a foul wind hit him in the face. He automatically let go at once and flipped backwards, firmly falling to the ground. The tower shook fiercely, as though something inside was about to rush out.

But Kou Tong was still leaning against the tower without moving, his head raised to look at the monster’s face coming out of the tiny window…or rather, it was only the monster’s eyes.

Its eyes were the size of the window. Its heavy breathing was rapid. A foul smell came from it. Then there was an even greater roar. It rammed its body against the inner wall of the tower with all its might, making a dull, loud sound.

“Oh, I see…” Kou Tong looked in admiration at the only visible corner of the monster’s big head. “So this is how fashionable Expert Huang’s tastes are!”

Huang Jinchen threw himself over, grabbed Kou Tong, and rolled aside. The ramming made a big crack in the side of the tower. Stones dropped down from above, striking the place where Kou Tong had just been standing.

Dr. Kou’s elegant white coat became covered in sand, but he was still a little detached from the situation. “Wow, what a hot chick!”

Huang Jinchen stared at the crack that was growing larger and larger and took the handgun from under his pant leg. “The hot chick saw how handsome I am and started getting ideas. She’s staging a prison break.”

Just as he finished speaking, the tower suddenly collapsed. The monster’s roars covered up even the roar of the ocean waves, thundering so loudly that it numbed their ears. It seemed to be three stories tall; who knew how it had fit into that slender tower. Its sharp fangs seemed able to reach the ground. Its whole body was bright red, as if it had escaped from hell.

“The chest is pretty big, the legs are pretty long…but what about the waist?” Holding onto Huang Jinchen’s arm, Kou Tong hopped up on one leg. Amid the sea breeze and monster’s ferocity, he looked on attentively and questioned.

“So slender you can’t see it.” Huang Jinchen abruptly pulled the trigger, firing three times into one of the monster’s eyes. But while the bullets hit its eyeball, they didn’t go in. They raised sharp sparks and bounced away.

The monster was enraged. It howled and threw itself at him. Huang Jinchen pulled Kou Tong. “Let’s run for now. I think that our little bodies won’t be able to stand up to this girl.”

Kou Tong staggered when he dragged him. Huang Jinchen immediately remembered that inconvenient injured leg and yelled, “That leg of yours is obviously just fine! It’s not broken! Run!”

Before he had finished, the shackled feeling on Kou Tong’s leg suddenly disappeared. He stumbled once, and then he could put both feet on the ground again. The two of them ran ahead, and the monster chased behind. They went almost the whole way around the little island.

Suddenly, Kou Tong pulled Huang Jinchen to a halt and squeezed into the depths of a thicket. The monster’s body was huge. The trees were in its way. It was very impatient, opening its fierce maw and biting through a tree with a howl.

“What a clever mouth it has!” Huang Jinchen said, staring dumbfounded. Not giving up, he gesticulated, still holding the little handgun. “Where do you think it has a soft spot on its body? Where’s its weak point?”

But Kou Tong didn’t have attention to spare for him. He quickly dug up a little black box from under a tree. His fingers quickly entered a code. The lid of the box popped off. Huang Jinchen took a glance. Loading a bullet into the chamber, he quietly asked, “Is that a controller? Why was it buried under a tree?”

“In different spaces, the controller’s position can’t be the same.” When the little black box’s lid popped off, a clear screen and keyboard jumped up inside. The big howling monster was approaching step by step. Kou Tong didn’t so much as raise his head. “Since neither of us was screened off, the controller entered the space at random. When we’re with a patient, the system will screen us off, and we’ll bring the controller along.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t believe this; if it really had entered at random, then wouldn’t it have fallen into the sea? How could he have found it so easily? Then he fired at the monster’s tongue. The bullet bounced off. “Tsk, that still won’t do. Dr. Kou, my conservative estimate is that the hot chick is still a minute away from us.”

“OK, no problem.” Kou Tong thought that a minute was ample.

But before he had finished speaking, there was a howl, and the monster lifted a tree in its mouth, uprooting it and sweeping it horizontally. Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen simultaneously rolled nimbly in two directions. Kou Tong yelled, “Didn’t you say there was another minute?”

Huang Jinchen yelled back, “I didn’t know it was going to use a rolling pin!”

Kou Tong’s fingers hopped over the keyboard as though about to take off. Then there was a swish, and a crack suddenly appeared in the ground. From far away, Kou Tong warned him, “The space’s frequency is beginning to enter an unsteady segment, careful…”

Then he vanished. Huang Jinchen stared blankly. All of a sudden, he felt as if the sand under his ass had grown suckers. It was like being dropped into a toilet. He swirled around and around for ages then at last was “flushed” out.

He opened his eyes—he was once again standing in front of that big boiler. Dr. Kou, holding his crutch, took two limping steps and plopped into a chair.

The two of them were silent for a while. Then, simultaneously, they began to laugh.

“This job is too stimulating.” Huang Jinchen was the first to voice his feelings. “It’s easy to accidentally end up with renal weakness.”

6

LAO YAO (1)

THE TWO of them recovered from waging war on the beach against an iron maiden, as well as the intense exercise of a high-difficulty two-person, three-legged threesome. They rested for a night, and the next day saw the spoken-of Lao Yao.

Lao Yao was about the same age as General Zhong, and extremely thin. Huang Jinchen looked him over objectively and found that he looked a little like a big triangle-faced green mantis, but he didn’t say so—after all, he, like Kou Tong, was dressed in a dignified white coat and was aware of having a faint air of a beast in human clothes.

He still couldn’t understand the mysteries inside that big boiler the day before. What was a Projector? Kou Tong had spoken a string of principles combined with practical application, and in truth it had made him dizzy. Science fiction novels regularly had things about “going into people’s brains” or “going into people’s dreams,” but Dr. Kou had said that wasn’t it. The space was real…but how could it be real?

If it was real, why could he dictate the state of Kou Tong’s leg?

If it was real, what if they had met with miserable failure last night and accidentally been used to pick that big-chested, long-legged young lady’s teeth? Would they then really have lived on only in their comrades’ hearts?

Also…if the space was made of overlapping consciousnesses, why would there be that bizarre tower in the middle? Why would there be a monster trapped in the tower?

And then, what was the monster breaking through the tower a metaphor for? Why had Kou Tong hastily produced the controller and taken him out?

Before his thoughts had stopped wandering, he heard Kou Tong being peculiarly admonished by Lao Yao. The reason was that Dr. Kou wasn’t meticulous. The top button of his white coat was undone; added to his crippled leg, his whole style right now was a great challenge to tradition. Therefore, Lao Yao took one look at him and was displeased. He turned and very directly asked General Zhong, “Is he from your department? Are your personnel so lax in discipline? They can’t maintain a standard appearance? Young people these days…ha!”

When he laughed, Huang Jinchen saw his facial expression twitch and was worried that this was facial paralysis from a stroke.

But Kou Tong was good-humored. After a moment’s blankness, he appropriately raised his hand and firmly did up all his buttons. Then, leaning on his crutch, he performed a high-difficulty salute.”Old…”

He had probably wanted to say some appellation like “old chief,” but Yao Shuo laughed bitterly again and passed directly between Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen. He took off his gloves and disrespectfully tossed them aside. “Listen, Comrade Researcher, don’t give me that. Of the people at your base, who doesn’t outrank me? A useless old thing like me, I’m worried this unmerited respect will shorten my lifespan.”

Huang Jinchen frowned. He was about to speak when, in the time it took to turn his head, Kou Tong, despite walking on three legs, somehow moved a bit faster than even he did. He had already turned and come up in front of him, still with his lucky cat’s expression like a spring breeze, his face as unmoved as a mountain, just as if he had been tempered by working customer service for transportation and communications.

Before Huang Jinchen could gasp in admiration, Kou Tong turned his head and quietly said into his ear, “In our line of work, the first skill to practice is not fighting back when hit and not talking back when cursed.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t answer, his face full of interest. Kou Tong saw and sighed inwardly, thinking that this Huang Jinchen really was a hopelessly idle lord who had come out for a personal taste of real life.

Then Kou Tong glanced at General Zhong. General Zhong was trembling inwardly; he kept feeling that the look in Kou Tong’s eyes was very meaningful.

A long time ago, a phrase had been in circulation at the base for a long time—if you weren’t worrying about Kou Tong acting indecently, you were worried about him pretending to be decent. General Zhong suddenly had an ominous premonition. He thought that Dr. Kou was beginning to pretend to be decent, and he instantly felt a bit of a headache coming on.

The four of them went directly to the “big boiler.” Yao Shuo frowned and looked up at the most advanced instrument in the world with no intention of bowing down and worshipping. Instead, he was inclined to despise it. Though he had said that everyone in this base outranked him, he still treated Kou Tong with an elder’s overbearing air of command. “Tell me what the hell this thing does.”

“It’s a simulated training field.” Kou Tong pushed up the plain glass spectacles he was wearing and smiled with a scholarly flavor. “It’s like this, old chief—as you know, sir, outside of urgent wartime conditions, the ST Base is normally a training camp, so we want…”

Lao Yao interrupted Kou Tong once again. It seemed that he was deliberately not letting Kou Tong finish any of his sentences. Without so much as looking at General Zhong’s expression, he gave a thumbs up and said, “Of course I know that. Your secrecy level is high, like this. You won’t make an appearance until the critical moment, not like us cheap little soldiers who have to shed our blood and lay down our lives whenever there’s the slightest natural or man-made disaster anywhere.”

Huang Jinchen stood in an observer’s position, watching the fun, thinking that this big mantis had come here looking for a beating today.

This speech of Lao Yao’s was very off. Even General Zhong’s expression was unhappy. Explicitly and implicitly, he was saying that the base was privileged and aloof, not doing any work, not appearing until the final moment, a place specially for supporting lords—though no matter how you sliced it, even if the base really had been a place for supporting lords, when it came to the most dangerous times, these “lords” still had to put their lives on the line. Saying this in front of General Zhong, the head of the base, who had just come back from the hospital after narrowly escaping with his life, was truly too hurtful to public feeling.

Kou Tong pretended not to have heard, adjusting the instrument with his back to them. He looked back and said to Lao Yao, “Old chief, please carry a weapon and prepare for battle. Jinchen, come here. General Zhong, please step back.”

Yao Shuo hesitated. “I have to bring my own weapons?”

He turned his head and saw that Huang Jinchen had taken off the white coat that had been binding him. Under it, he was wearing a form-fitting jacket, looking like an arms dealer with handguns hanging at his waist and a rifle on his back.

Finding that he was at the center of attention, Huang Jinchen, imitating Kou Tong, squeezed out a refined smile. “Just like this will be good, sir.”

For some reason, he thought that Yao Shuo’s cheeks twitched again.

But when they entered the projection space, Huang Jinchen found that this time he had been worried over nothing. According to what Kou Tong said, this time their two consciousnesses had been completely blocked by the machinery. What they entered was entirely Yao Shuo’s consciousness’s projection space.

The grass is always greener on the other side; Huang Jinchen looked at the tall buildings and neon streets in front of him and compared them to his experience yesterday, feeling that he finally understood the difference between a developed country and a developing one.

There were actually people coming and going in this high street, and there was the sweet smell of a candy shop floating in the air. In front of them was a four-way intersection, behind was a huge billboard and a large swathe of villas with lots of luxury cars and beautiful people going in and out. All kinds of beautifully made-up women and elegant men brushed shoulders with them, just like a crowd of celebrities.

Yao Shuo only came around then. He pointed to a streetlight that had just changed and snorted at Kou Tong. “This is the simulated training field you mentioned? Please tell me what the contents of the training are. Eating, drinking, and making merry?”

Kou Tong unblushingly said, “This is exactly why our equipment needs a trial run. Sometimes it produces all kinds of disorder based on different qualities of the enterer—when Jinchen and I tested it yesterday, we accidentally fell into a big sea and got chased by an octopus. That’s why we put aside our embarrassment and asked General Zhong to go through his private contacts to invite you and some other friends of his to come help.”

Yao Shuo waved a hand. “All right, all right, can we get out?”

“Not immediately. For the sake of the stability of the equipment, there are certain maximum and minimum time controls.” Kou Tong brought out this lie without hesitation, Huang Jinchen thought admiringly, even better at pretense than Huang Jinchen himself, who had been a planted agent.

Yao Shuo snorted, turned, and went into a street, heading directly towards a coffee shop.

Huang Jinchen took the opportunity to hide the weapons he was carrying. He walked behind, pulling at Kou Tong, who was already walking on both legs. He consulted him on a professional question: “Didn’t you say that the two of us were blocked? Why is your leg better again?”

“We’re blocked with certain parameters. We can make some simple definitions—for example, I thought it was very unlikely that we would walk right into a Second Iraq War battlefield, so I defined a box for that gun on your back.”

“I still don’t particularly understand the Projector’s mechanism.”

“The operation of the human brain is extremely complex. Many people may not only be unable to control their own ideas, they may not even notice what they’re really thinking—of course, I’m not talking about a person who has received special training like you.” Kou Tong maintained a certain distance from Yao Shuo, following behind. He lowered his voice and patiently explained to Huang Jinchen, “In a person’s brain, countless operations are going on at the same time. Because of this, it’s very hard to link two people’s consciousnesses. That would be extremely chaotic.”

Huang Jinchen nodded quickly.

Kou Tong continued: “So, adopting the technological means of the special space, when we use the Projector, it isn’t to let you enter a certain person’s thoughts, it’s to materialize those thoughts, to compose a complete space with certain special rules and adjust the frequency to superimpose it onto our real space. This way, the subject and our personnel can enter that space together.”

Huang Jinchen quickly asked, “So who thought up that big monster we ran into yesterday? It sure wasn’t me.”

Kou Tong patiently said, “It wasn’t me, either. It was the outcome of the combination of my subconscious and yours. Lacking parameters, it’s hard for me to say what it concretely represents. Without concrete analysis, relying solely on rough guesswork is definitely unscientific. Moreover, while the projection of a single person’s consciousness is comparatively clear and will have unified rules and logic in it, it’s much harder to speak about multiple people’s consciousnesses overlapping together. Sometimes it can be very unstable.”

“So…what if in our future work, we run into another friendly guest performer like yesterday’s big girl? It’ll be glorious—will we be martyrs?”

Kou Tong was amused. “Don’t worry, we won’t die. The Projector is in nonfatal mode.”

Huang Jinchen frowned, his expression a little confused.

“Let me draw an analogy.” Kou Tong drew a coordinate plane on his hand. “You understand that, right?”

Huang Jinchen nodded, indicating that while he had entered the great classroom of society at a young age, he had still received a basic education. “My math teacher taught this when I was little. It’s an x-axis and a y-axis, right?”

Kou Tong said, “Right, that’s about it. It doesn’t matter what you call the axes—let’s suppose that each point on the vertical axis can map onto the horizontal axis in some way. For example, let’s say two to one. So if the interval on the vertical axis is from one to two, then interval on the horizontal axis is from one half to one, right?”

Huang Jinchen nodded. After a moment, suddenly seeing the light, he said, “Oh, so when it’s been projected, it’ll be missing a segment—for example, the wheel containing biting the dust will be removed and not projected?”

“That’s right.”

“So why were we running?”

Kou Tong smiled. “Even if it’s not really getting hung up on the wall, that doesn’t mean you can avoid dying in the space. It’s just that the means of dying here have been forcefully broken off from the space by default. Anyway, to tell you the truth, the feeling of dying isn’t that pleasant.”

Huang Jinchen was itching to have a go, planning on a spot of novelty seeking.

Kou Tong pretended not to see, sped up a little, and surreptitiously said to Huang Jinchen, “Hurry up. I’ve duped the old thing. Let’s follow him. This is the projection of his own consciousness. Even though he doesn’t know that, he still instinctively knows where to go.”

7

LAO YAO (2)

AS SOON AS he had met him, Kou Tong had found that Lao Yao wasn’t especially interested in acknowledging him. He seemed to have some animosity towards everyone, including towards his self-professed old friend General Zhong, and even more towards himself.

Why?

Ordinarily, when initially entering someone’s consciousness projection space, as long as the people who entered behaved a little—not performing aggressive actions, unlike, for example, Master Huang, climbing tall towers, smashing people’s windows, and harassing the locals—the space itself, before the internal conflict had emerged, would be comparatively peaceful for a time, reflecting the surface level of a person’s consciousness.

Judging from appearances, Lao Yao at any rate wasn’t a man of solitary disposition.

A single person’s consciousness projection was different from the overlapping projection of multiple people. When multiple people overlapped, as a buffer against two parties’ consciousnesses clashing, people apart from the enterer would rarely appear.

But a single person’s consciousness projection space was very stable, with fixed rules. It was an integrated whole. Ordinarily, the degree of activity inside could reflect the importance a person attached to interpersonal relationships.

The well-trafficked road in front of them at least showed that Lao Yao was a person used to social engagements, inclined to be sociable. A person like this, at Lao Yao’s age, reasonably speaking ought to be very slick. Even if he really did hold animosity towards someone for some reason, that person would unlikely to sense it, let alone be directly criticized with words.

He must have some already uncontrollable conflict in his mind.

As Kou Tong thought this, he subconsciously turned his head to look at Huang Jinchen. He found that Master Huang was looking with a scrutinizing gaze at the people in the street passing by them nonstop. Kou Tong’s gaze flashed behind his plain glass spectacles. More than once, he had thought that Huang Jinchen’s gaze was very cool.

Yes—not cold, cool.

At a glance, Huang Jinchen was a man who was good at making himself at home, rather well-spoken, capable of entertaining and fooling around and also quite capable of tact; but when there was someone sitting next to him, even if everyone was gathered together for very relaxed chat, if someone accidentally pushed their cup towards him a little, he would always unconsciously shift his own cup at the same time.

Huang Jinchen, as a “gun” who had been undercover in a terrorist organization for a long time, was probably accustomed to this mode of living behind a telescopic sight. He could lower the frequency of his breathing to the extreme for hours at a time, lay in one place unmoving, attentively waiting for a target.

It was very hard for others to imagine what kind of state he was in then. Sometimes Kou Tong even couldn’t help doubting whether he could tell apart the people his eyes saw and the people in his telescopic sight.

Always called a “gun” by others, would he subconsciously objectify himself and others?

Just then, Huang Jinchen gently poked him with his elbow. “Hey, hey, the old thing is pretending to be fashionable. He’s going into the coffee shop.”

Then Huang Jinchen looked down and found that Kou Tong was pretending to be absorbed in fiddling with a control box he had taken out from somewhere, even convincingly holding down the music-playing Bluetooth earpiece clamped to his ear. Pretending that it was a communicator, he seriously said, “How much longer until the trial run is over? Oh…OK, fine, as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter to me, but the old chief came all this way. Don’t make him put in useless work along with us.”

Huang Jinchen watched admiringly as, seeming to be acting in a play, he stepped into the coffee shop and rather apologetically nodded to Yao Shuo, who was already seated. “I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.”

Just as though it were the truth!

The lights in the coffee shop were dim. Somehow, though outside it was noon with the sun high in the sky, as soon as you walked through the door, you seemed to be walking into night. The music was low and deep. There weren’t many people inside. All the customers were quiet, sitting scattered throughout the corners, vague and obscured, their privacy well protected.

Huang Jinchen’s pupils quickly dilated because of the darkness. His footsteps paused slightly. Kou Tong noticed and quietly explained to him, “You must have spotted it. This is a peculiarity of the projection space. There are many things you can’t judge according to common sense.”

Yao Shuo occupied a two-person seat, ordered a drink, and leaned back in his chair while stretching his legs out, taking up nearly all the space under the chair across from him, clearly not planning to associate with them. Kou Tong didn’t make himself obnoxious. He tactfully sat with Huang Jinchen in a small seat by the counter.

Huang Jinchen then asked, “You can’t judge according to common sense, but there must still be a theoretical basis, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t this thing be too bizarre?”

“There is.” Kou Tong kept an eye on Yao Shuo. His voice was low, and his speech was very slow. “He doesn’t know where he is, so from the beginning, on the basis of instinct, he led us into this place. As I said, he is this projection space’s master, so he instinctively knows where to go. For him, this coffee shop represents a conflict.”

Huang Jinchen blinked, indicating that raising his level of professional skills was truly his top priority.

“For example—on one hand, he’s a forceful, overbearing person, but on the other hand, he’s hiding some weakness. Adding in some external reasons—we’ll call this stimulation by sources of stress—this is currently making the contradiction in his mind erupt. He can no longer regulate it himself, and that’s what leads to abnormal behavior.”

Huang Jinchen appeared to come to a sudden great understanding. “Oh, that makes sense.”

Kou Tong suddenly looked at him and said with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, “To put this kind of conflict into a concrete form, I’ll take an example. Let’s say you yourself. Though on the surface you appear very extroverted, very indifferent to trivialities, liking friends and a good time, in reality you feel very distant from others. You’ve drifted for too long outside of ordinary society. You don’t know how you ought to treat others, how to get along with others, and you’re afraid of giving yourself away… Huh? Master Huang, what is your hand feeling for?”

Huang Jinchen’s hand was automatically reaching for the gun hanging at his waist. Hearing Kou Tong’s voice, he immediately paused and seemed to come around. His hand continued to reach downward as if nothing had happened. Finally, he put it very naturally on Kou Tong’s thigh and winked at him. “Here we are in the dark. What do you think?”

Kou Tong was aware that he was a sesame stalk of a man with no meat on his leg. He didn’t know who was taking advantage of whom with this groping. So he didn’t even dodge, only continued: “So you see, when someone turns the subject to you, you automatically become nervous and perform an instinctive aggressive or defensive action. Then your intellect catches up to your instinct, and you use another means to change the subject.”

As he said this, he suddenly covered the back of Huang Jinchen’s hand on his leg with his hand. His hand was a little rough, with all kinds of old scars on it, but it was very warm. This sudden warmth made Huang Jinchen’s body tense involuntarily. But before he could react with any thrill to this intimate contact in the dark, Kou Tong removed both his hand and leg and laughed. “Of course, you shouldn’t take what I just said seriously. It’s just a little technique that ordinary swindlers use to get close and trick others into trusting them.”

For a time, Huang Jinchen couldn’t catch up. “What?”

Kou Tong shrugged. Very relaxed and cheerful, he crossed one leg over the other, picked up his coffee from the table, drank, frowned, and said, “You don’t object, do you?”

Before Huang Jinchen could asked what he didn’t object to, he brought over two portions of sugar and put them into his own coffee. Then, very parochially, he commented: “Doesn’t this swill taste like medicine dregs? Only idiot foreigners drink this garbage.”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

He felt that these words were unworthy of his beast in human clothes getup.

Kou Tong went on as though nothing were the matter: “Each person has a double nature. Over a long period of time, a person’s psychological state, existing in a balanced state, can’t have the characteristics of only one side. It’s only that normally, the majority of people can’t especially show their dual nature or psychological state to others, so they’ll always emphasize one side. So when putting on airs and hitting on someone, one of the infallible moves is to deliberately display a side with characteristics contrary to the other person’s, whether it’s true or false. At any rate, it makes them think you’re very cultured, very like a stranger who is a soulmate with a deep spiritual connection and preference towards them.”

Huang Jinchen pondered deeply, then asked, “So are you saying you’re hitting on me?”

“…” Kou Tong paused. “I’m explaining professional techniques to you. People in our line of work, apart from not fighting back when hit and not talking back when cursed, also have to learn how to safely avoid being struck by lightning for acting pretentious.”

Huang Jinchen cast a deep look of worship upon his senior. But Kou Tong’s attention had turned to Yao Shuo. “He won’t let others approach, and his movement crinkling the candy wrapper looks very fretful… What do you think he’s fretting about?”

Huang Jinchen said, “Didn’t Lao Zhong say he was in the middle of a divorce?”

Kou Tong asked, “Can we trust what General Zhong says?”

Huang Jinchen accordingly answered, “Certainly not, or else sows could climb trees.”

Kou Tong laughed, thinking that this colleague really played along well.

When he laughed, half his face was hidden in darkness. Even someone sitting across from him could only see one eye on his slightly turned face. There was only a pale yellow lamp on the table, making everything look soft and hazy.

Huang Jinchen suddenly found that Kou Tong’s pupils were proportionally somewhat larger than other people’s, so when he looked fixedly at someone, his gaze looked very affectionate, nearly exuding tenderness, especially when his lips tilted up slightly as he looked directly at you; you could simply stick it right up on the wall as the year’s most healing smile with no problem.

Huang Jinchen was suddenly very regretful that he hadn’t picked up his topic from before. It wouldn’t have been unacceptable to be hit on a little by a cool guy like this.

Just then, the front door of the coffee shop was kicked open from outside. Dazzling light shone in, nearly blinding everyone. As Kou Tong instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes, he quietly said with a bit of excitement, “Here it comes!”

Huang Jinchen’s vision was much better at adjusting than his. He could already clearly see the people at the door. He saw two gun-toting men standing there dressed up as classic bank robbers, holding guns, faces covered in stockings, showing only their eyes. The slightly fatter one of them domineeringly fired twice at the ceiling. Amid cracking glass and screaming, he yelled, “Open the safe, take out the money, put it in the sack! Stay put, don’t touch your phones. Anyone calls the cops, I’ll kill you!”

Huang Jinchen wasn’t familiar yet with the rules of play of the Projector’s mystical space, so he couldn’t quite work out at first whether he had transmigrated or whether these two guys had walked into the wrong room.

8

LAO YAO (3)

HUANG JINCHEN almost automatically hid himself in the shade of a plant, his movements agile, noiseless, like a shadow sticking to the wall. Kou Tong took no notice of him. His attention was entirely concentrated on all the light and shadow in the coffee shop.

This place was very particular. On the one hand, it was extremely dark, a special place for Yao Shuo. On the other hand, this quiet and secretive darkness had now all of a sudden been broken by these two bizarre intruders. The dazzling strong light from outside mixed with the darkness in the room, developing into an extremely peculiar phenomenon—the coffee shop was now bright, now dark, the alternation in time rather than in space.

Kou Tong closed his eyes slightly and gave his head a toss. He was a little dizzy from the alternating light and dark. No one would be very tranquil in strange surroundings like this. He felt a kind of sharpened anxiety.

This was the master of the space wavering. Because his mental condition was unstable, the projection space he created would also be comparatively chaotic.

Just then…

There was a gunshot. Without warning, the robber walking in front fell face upward with an obvious bullet hole in his forehead. Only then did the blood slowly start to trickle down.

To shoot someone dead in confused circumstances like these without a sound… Kou Tong couldn’t help pressing his temples, thinking that Huang Jinchen could be a real shit-stirrer.

But before he could act, the coffee shop’s lights, flashing like a haunted house’s, suddenly stopped flashing. All the light was held back outside the front door. The people inside, like unprofessional movie extras, were only interested in watching and forgot their lines. After a long time, they finally realized that someone had died and started to scream in the dark and dash around like headless flies.

Yao Shuo, who had been lying low, pounced without warning, nimbly removing the other robber’s weapon, kneeing the backs of his knees and twisting his shoulders. A good sword remains sharp with age—in one smooth movement, he brought the unlucky stupid thief to the ground, holding his neck.

Then someone turned on the lights in the coffee shop. Warm, rather suggestive lamplight radiated out. At the same time, police sirens sounded outside the door.

When things were settled, Lao Yao withdrew and gave Huang Jinchen an unusually cold look. “Did you shoot?”

Before Huang Jinchen could speak, Kou Tong took a step to stand between the two of them. He stepped up from Lao Yao’s left side, blocking Huang Jinchen with half his body. The movement was very natural; it seemed that he wanted to separate the two of them, but it also didn’t seem especially deliberate.

Kou Tong lowered his voice. “Mr. Yao, I’ve already notified our system testers outside. They’ll adjust the equipment as soon as possible and let us out. Set your mind at ease, sir.”

He spoke slower and slower and quieter and quieter, finally biting the last words off unusually crisply. Then he glanced at Huang Jinchen and waved a hand slightly. He turned and invited Yao Shuo to go on ahead. “It’s a mess here. It looks like there’s more space that way. Let’s go there.”

Yao Shuo looked at him in dissatisfaction, but he didn’t say anything too unpleasant. He only looked at Huang Jinchen again from a distance and said with strong objection, “In my opinion, the existence of privileged classes is the beginning of corruption. Your department has always lacked oversight, and anyone at all can be recruited to it. It’s completely lawless.”

Kou Tong pushed up his glasses and didn’t comment on his words. Anyway it was General Zhong who would be upset to hear this.

Huang Jinchen looked outside and rolled his eyes, silently putting the gun on his back and following far behind them. For some reason, as soon as he saw that old fart Yao Shuo, his hand rather itched; he imagined what it would be like to hold the old thing down and wring his neck, all this and that…that kind of hardcore scene of bloody violence.

He was so deeply absorbed in his daydream that he even put a foot wrong and stepped on Kou Tong’s heel, nearly tripping both of them at the same time.

Huang Jinchen stuck out his tongue, having a premonition that the wet blanket Yao would have something else to say. Sure enough, the wet blanket Yao frowned disapprovingly and cleared his throat. “Look at the state of yourselves. You can’t stand properly or sit properly. Haven’t you received military training? What is this? You two…”

But Kou Tong ignored his feudal head of household chatter and went right around him. They had unconsciously come to the coffee shop’s back door. There was an ancient “Staff Only” sign. Kou Tong pulled down the sign and opened the narrow door.

In that moment, Huang Jinchen, following behind Yao Shuo, acutely noticed that the muscles on Yao Shuo’s shoulders twitched unconsciously, as if he wanted to stop Kou Tong, but when he thought about it, he didn’t understand why, so he could only remain in this awkward posture, standing blankly where he was.

Huang Jinchen craned his neck and saw that, unexpectedly, there was a mountain behind the door. It was as if it had connected to another world when Kou Tong had opened it.

The mountain was extremely high, with a wide ridge, but squeezed into an enclosing wall. Whatever monsters were being suppressed under the mountain, the enclosing wall less than two meters high actually had the whole mountain trapped inside it.

The light from the front door was like midday, but at the backdoor it was dim twilight. The sun was gone, and the light in the sky had darkened. There were only the mountain’s craggy stones and the withered branches hanging down from high up, unbudging in the windless night, like the body of some monster.

Just then, the ground beneath their feet began to shake violently. Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen simultaneously heard a mechanical male voice say into their ears: “Warning, warning, space unstable, space unstable, collapse within half a minute—”

A loud sound. A huge stone rolled down from the mountaintop, hurtling directly towards the coffee shop’s open back door. Huang Jinchen jumped. He grabbed Kou Tong’s collar and pulled him back several steps as though lifting a rabbit, crying out, “Get down!”

The big stone crashed into the small back door. Grit and rock fragments flew everywhere, hitting them like bullets. The ground shook more and more violently. They lay on the ground hardly daring to move. In hardly any time, they were buried.

As Huang Jinchen was feeling more and more like a bulb of garlic planted in the earth, the familiar feeling of being squeezed came back. Then he plopped down onto the ground. The two spaces that had just been overlapping hadn’t left each other the least memento, not even a piece of grit.

Huang Jinchen extended a hand towards the one-legged Dr. Kou, planning to pull him up, when Yao Shuo suddenly burst into hysterical howling: “Is that the result of your research? What the hell is this thing of yours good for? Each year, the country gives you funding, squeezes so much money out of the taxpayers to support you people each year, just so you can make this completely senseless, completely pointless scenery simulator?”

General Zhong, hearing this, quickly opened the door and came in. “Lao Yao, if you have something to say, say it to me, or if there’s something you’re unsatisfied with, you can…”

Yao Shuo snorted angrily. “Vermin feeding on government money.” Without so much as a look at General Zhong, he strode out.

“What’s going on?” General Zhong turned and asked Kou Tong when he was gone.

Kou Tong’s double-layered face deflected Lao Yao’s mental attack firmly away from his true skin. He carelessly stood up, leaning on his crutch, and sat formlessly in a hardwood chair, holding up his leg in its cast. He raised his eyelids and glanced at General Zhong. “You’re asking me what’s going on? I haven’t asked you yet.”

General Zhong sighed and looked up at Huang Jinchen, who had stood back and was fiddling with his gun as though watching the show. He pulled up a chair and sat across from Kou Tong, softening his tone. “First tell me what you saw.”

Kou Tong pulled up the big boiler Projector’s monitoring record and put the microchip into a little folder he carried on him. “For the concrete circumstances, I can perform an analysis, then write you a report. Looking on the surface, it’s likely that this old friend of yours frequently feels unbearable anxiety because his psychological stress is too great. He’s very keen on saving face. Even though he normally seems smooth and slick, in reality, he’s not very good at communicating with others. When too much stress amasses in his heart, he has nowhere to release it, so he only gets more and more anxious. When his internal conflict becomes unbalanced to a certain degree, it makes him unable to control himself, the way he is now. So he instinctively uses negative words to deliberately wound others as a way of releasing stress.”

General Zhong was silent for a moment, but Huang Jinchen, listening in, nodded very thoughtfully, feeling that this really did seem to be the case.

After a while, General Zhong somewhat irritably lit a cigarette. “So what do you think the source of his stress is?”

Kou Tong blinked. He leaned back and rubbed the leg in the cast. “Instructor, you’ve actually always thought of me as Doraemon’s all-purpose machine, haven’t you? You think I know everything?”

General Zhong gave him a deep and bitter look. Even Huang Jinchen in the corner felt this “sexy ray” and was instantly shaken, breaking out in gooseflesh.

“The source of his stress.” Put under pressure, Kou Tong had to start speaking properly. “Do you know what a source of stress is? It can be anything. For example, you fart, and I can’t walk easily, so I can’t get away at once and have to smell it and feel very unhappy. That’s also a source of stress.”

Huang Jinchen said: “Pffft.”

Kou Tong waved a hand. “That’s all right, Master Huang, I was just bringing up an example. There’s no need for you to demonstrate.”

Then he continued: “Many things can constitute a source of stress, but they won’t necessarily cause a person stress. Different people will have different reactions to different sources of stress…”

Huang Jinchen, putting his studies into practice, picked up: “For example, I can walk easily, so if I hear a fart, I’ll immediately hold my breath and walk out, so it doesn’t constitute stress.”

General Zhong turned his head and looked at Huang Jinchen, who was showing a sudden great interest in psychology and looking pleased as punch. He regretted his own arrangements so much that his guts hurt. He only remorsefully said, “He really was only bringing up an example.”

Kou Tong laughed and pulled up the last image from the projection’s monitoring record. The room’s curtains closed automatically, and the screen froze on the mountain trapped by the enclosing wall. The picture was a little blurred. Kou Tong said, “It was here. The coffee shop was very dark, extremely dark, reflecting a powerful desire for self-protection. His self-protection has gone overboard. It’s nearly aggressive. There was an acute conflict midway, but he suppressed it. It was also that unconscious precaution of his that trapped us in this place, unable to go in or out. So when his feelings were slightly relaxed, I gave him the hint of ‘going to a more spacious place.’ So he unconsciously took us to this door.”

General Zhong stared closely at the picture as though unwilling to relax in the least.

Kou Tong said, “But I was overhasty today. As soon as he saw what was behind that door, though he doesn’t know what the Projector is, he must have faintly realized something. The things behind the door strongly provoked him, so the space collapsed at once—now I need to understand something of this guest’s…”

“I remember this.” General Zhong suddenly pointed at the wall enclosing the mountain in the picture. “The courtyard walls of his house are like this.”

“Oh…” Kou Tong withdrew his hand and propped his chin on his long, slender fingers. “The provocation comes from his family?”

“I’ll have someone look into it.”

“Yeah… Hey, listen, instructor.” Kou Tong suddenly raised a hand and closed the image. He leaned forward and cleared his throat but lowered his voice. “Instructor, don’t keep me in the dark. What do you suspect Yao Shuo of having done that made you come ask me to perform a psychological assessment on him?”

General Zhong’s expression froze.

Kou Tong shook his head. “Forget it. Since when have you been able to keep me in the dark? Even if you put two black eyes on him, Yao Shuo wouldn’t become a national treasure. There’s not enough to make you privately use the base’s equipment to give him an assessment, is there?”

General Zhong was silent for a long moment. He stood up and lay a hand on Kou Tong’s shoulder. “I can’t say.”

Kou Tong shrugged, showing that he wasn’t surprised at all. General Zhong looked at him and sighed. “I’ll supplement his family materials as soon as possible.”

“If possible, I’d like to see his family members,” Kou Tong added.

General Zhong agreed and left, closing the door.

Kou Tong stood up, leaning on his crutch. When he looked up, he found that Huang Jinchen was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hugging his precious gun, looking his way with a curious expression.

Kou Tong said, “What?”

Huang Jinchen said, “Is Zhong Shiliang an old flame of yours?”

9

LAO YAO (4)

KOU TONG said, “What did you say?”

Huang Jinchen thought about it. He didn’t know why he had suddenly come up with this question, and he thought he had been speaking out of turn a little, so he clutched his hair. But then again, he thought that he had already asked, and it was no good giving up midway. A person ought to finish what he started. So he said, “It’s nothing… Mostly I keep seeing you two making eyes at each other.”

“Like this?” Kou Tong took off his beast in human clothes glasses and flashed his smiling eyes at Huang Jinchen. “‘I’ve had many male partners. You could put together a full game of ‘Legends of the Three Kingdoms[5]’ if you added them up. You want to join?”

Huang Jinchen immediately looked Kou Tong up and down. Beaming, he said, “No problem, I can do that!”

“Partner Huang!” said Kou Tong.

“Partner Kou!” said Huang Jinchen.

Then Huang Jinchen opened his arms, turned his face, and smiled like a flower in the spring sunshine. “Come on, partner, lay one on me!”

Kou Tong, leaning on his crutch, swayingly walked out, brushing past him with calm and self-possession, saying with an appearance of propriety, “This style is too bold. It’s no good. Since I am a conservative person, let’s start instead from the step of mutual study and go forward together.”

Huang Jinchen watched him limp out, insisting on squaring his shoulders and raising his head as though ready to fight for the revolutionary cause, and felt deeply entertained. He burst out in laughter.

When he was finished laughing, he found that Kou Tong was gone. Only then did Huang Jinchen remember that Kou Tong had avoided the crucial question. He hadn’t gotten any answers!

So the unusually active gossip-loving heart in his chest flamed up with fighting spirit. He felt as though he had suddenly been possessed by a motley group of wives and sister-in-laws at the end of a lane. He felt a deep interest in Dr. Kou’s love affairs.

Kou Tong returned to his room and replayed all the images caught by the monitoring system, making notes on paper as he watched. His plain glass spectacles hung in front of his chest. The hair in front of his forehead, which needed cutting, hung down, the longest strand already laying on the bridge of his nose.

The recording was over an hour long. Kou Tong played it seven or eight times from beginning to end, occasionally stopping, pausing it on a certain picture to study it for a long time. When he had just about finished watching, he found that it was very late. It was completely dark outside. As soon as he straightened up, his back gave a crack, sore and painful.

His fingers holding the pen lightly tapped twice on the table. Then he took out his phone and dialed a number.

It connected after two rings. A man picked up and said in an indolent tone, “Yeah? Dr. Kou?”

“That’s right.” Kou Tong narrowed his eyes in a smile, tossing his pen aside. “I didn’t startle you out of someone’s bed, did I?”

“What do you think?” As if on purpose, the man laughed in a quiet, unusually sexy voice. “What do you need me for?”

“I want to find out about someone.” Kou Tong took out Yao Shuo’s photograph. The man in the photograph had a very solemn expression. He was facing the camera, his face tense, without a trace of a smile. Probably because he was getting on in years, his cheeks drooped, making his cheekbones stand out a little. The corners of his mouth were turned down and pursed. He seemed somewhat harsh. “A person called Yao Shuo. Have you heard of him?”

“Yao Shuo?” The man paused. “Yeah…I think I remember something. Wait a minute.”

The sound of quiet conversation came over the phone. Kou Tong wasn’t in a rush. He held the phone, waiting, his fingertips tapping on a line of small writing: “Voluntarily requested to withdraw from front line service.” He thought about it, then lightly underlined the word “voluntarily.”

Just then, someone knocked on the door. One-legged Dr. Kou hopped over on his single leg to open it and saw Huang Jinchen standing there holding a plastic bag. Not standing on ceremony, before Kou Tong could speak, he walked in on his own and pushed aside the messy pile of stuff on his table. He opened the bag he had brought. The aroma of food floated out. Kou Tong touched his stomach and really did feel a little hungry.

The man on the phone didn’t make him wait too long. After a moment, he told him, “Wait until I look into it for you tomorrow, then I’ll give you concrete information.”

Huang Jinchen watched him say “all right” with a soft expression, then put down the phone. The flames of gossip once again began to burn. “A chick? A partner?”

Dr. Kou sat down boldly, wiped his hands, and very heroically bit into a chicken leg, winking cheerfully at Huang Jinchen. “What do you think?”

Huang Jinchen clasped his bosom. “You’re so unfaithful!”

Without delay, Kou Tong lay bare his true feelings, indistinctly saying, “No, partner. In fact, you’re the one I like best.”

Huang Jinchen blinked.

Kou Tong carelessly wiped some grease from his lips. Putting his loyalties where his interests lay, he said, “Because you brought me tasty food.”

Huang Jinchen was silent, feeling that his friendship with Dr. Kou was in fact built only upon a plump chicken leg.

He moved over a chair and sat next to Kou Tong, reaching out to go through the messy notes Kou Tong had taken. He saw that amid a series of incomprehensible phrases, Kou Tong had written an expression in black fountain pen and drawn a circle around it as if emphasizing a label: midlife crisis.

“What does this mean?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“Oh, the literal meaning.” Kou Tong’s cheeks were stuffed full. He was demolishing food at an astonishing rate. Perhaps he was hungry after missing dinnertime. All ten fingers moved together, eliminating the enemy troops like rolling up a mat. “Some people, when they reach a certain age, have more and more responsibility pressing on them, but physiologically, their abilities fall increasingly short of their wishes. Their careers may plateau or begin to decline. For the sake of saving face, they’ll incline towards shirking others’ judgements, wallowing in past glory. Their ability to accept new things declines, their ability to learn drops… Is there chili pepper in this?”

Huang Jinchen said, “Eat, don’t be picky.—From what you say, Old Man Yao is being so weird because of piddling crap like that?”

“When middle age meets adolescence, a person of this age may feel fed up with unchanging family life, or may have strained relationships with their children due to difficulty communicating. So with the double pressures of family and career, owing to their strong self-respect, even if their stress surpasses their ability to cope, they still won’t have a desire to say what’s on their mind or seek help. Instead, they’ll develop an extreme desire to protect themselves.”

When Huang Jinchen finished listening, he thought about it carefully, feeling that there was some sense in this. So he nodded slowly. “Say, you do have a knack for this. It’s not just tricking people.”

Kou Tong spat out a chicken bone. He had done his best not to leave a single scrap of meat on it. Even a dog couldn’t have gotten anything from it. Then he took some time out of his busy affairs to glance at Huang Jinchen, thinking, What is he asking about this for? Is this great personage really planning to change professions?

Huang Jinchen’s position at the ST Base was only nominal. In order to keep him from disturbing the base’s regular work, General Zhong had stuck him with Kou Tong, like a forced marriage. Of course you couldn’t count on him to do any serious work.

For the past few days, Huang Jinchen had been in a zestful state of observation, aimlessly watching the fun and being entertained.

Kou Tong knew that he was currently rather at a loss, like a constantly tensed string that had suddenly relaxed and for a time could do nothing but quiver wildly.

In Huang Jinchen’s life, there were no goals, no convictions. The coolness in his eyes in fact came from indifference—nothing and no one could arouse his interest. He didn’t want to keep living his previous stimulating but precarious life, but he also hadn’t been able to find a new mode of living.

Kou Tong considered and felt that he was about finished eating, so he bent down and took two bottles of beer out of the little cupboard under the table, like a conjuring trick. Under Huang Jinchen’s derisive gaze, he familiarly rubbed the mouths of the bottles and removed the caps of both. Then he opened a drawer and got a bag of greasy roasted peanuts out from under a stack of deadly serious documents. He tore open the plastic wrapping and dropped it onto the table.

“Come on, let’s have a drink and chat.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t hesitate to pick up the beer bottle and down a swig. “Shit, that’s awesome! Where did you get it?”

Kou Tong grinned and quietly said, “My private stash. The base doesn’t allow alcohol, be quiet about it—come on, I’ll tell you what we have so far in Yao Shuo’s case…”

So that night, after eating and drinking his fill and listening for half the night to a lecture on theoretical case analysis with a practical application, Huang Jinchen simply stayed in Kou Tong’s room.

Kou Tong had a somewhat bad habit—he went to bed later than the dogs and got up earlier than the chickens.

At the first glimmer of daybreak, he felt himself blearily waking up. Before he had opened his eyes, he already faintly saw a white mist. In front of the white mist, Kou Tong looked for a while and felt exasperated—this scene was truly too cliché, and it was too familiar. He seemed to have become a practiced hand already. Stiff with boredom, he reached out to grab. He grabbed the white mist as though reeling in silk from a cocoon, squeezing it now into the shape of a rabbit, now into the form of a bun.

Behind the white mist, a mirror slowly appeared, with an identical Kou Tong sitting there squeezing white mist, silently looking back through the mystical reflection. There was no smile on his face. The somewhat long and slender eyes inexplicably looked a little grim.

The person in the mirror and the person outside the mirror were both located in wide expanses of darkness. Only the UV-protection lenses hanging in front of his chest reflected a bit of faint light. That milky white light seemed to shroud only him. Kou Tong took a deep breath and smiled at the mirror, but the person in the mirror remained apathetic.

Kou Tong’s smile slowly cooled. He lightly touched the mirror. It was like touching the surface of water. At a light touch, ripples spread out.

The form of the person inside blurred. But a moment later, the surface of the mirror stilled, and he was still sitting there like a statue, his long and slightly luminous eyes quietly looking at the person outside the mirror, like an outsider looking on objectively.

Kou Tong sighed. Then he stood up and with incomparable familiarity picked up the stool he was sitting on and smashed it into the mirror. The mirror shattered—he seemed to have repeated these actions hundreds of thousands of times. He tossed the stool down. Not even so much as looking at the human figures reflected in the shards, he strode towards a darker place.

Fierce light spilled in. Kou Tong at last opened his eyes and saw a feeble whiteness in the faint light. He let out a breath, feeling a little cold. There were no covers over half his body—they had been snatched by Huang Jinchen.

Kou Tong rubbed his face and sat up, feeling that sleep had left him with a bit of a stiff neck.

10

LAO YAO (5)

THERE WAS no additional work that day. Huang Jinchen had nothing to do, so he put a gun on his back and went in to investigate the “big boiler.” This time, no one went in with him. With something of an exploratory air, he went in and out, playing around.

Kou Tong had to go back to the hospital to get his cast off. He left first thing in the morning. Henceforth he could at last stand upright and walk like a human being.

When they were seriously injured, people always had to pay a price if they had passed adolescence but were still wreaking havoc as though they were in middle school—for example, though Dr. Kou walked out of the hospital on his own like a human being, his walking posture was still rather novel. His wounded leg couldn’t quite find its strength and didn’t cooperate very harmoniously. After holding the wall and swaying, practicing for a while, he was tired enough to waver. So he decided to give himself a day off.

He let General Zhong know. Standing in place, Kou Tong considered the future direction of his life in a very elegant posture. Then he waved a hand to flag down a taxi.

He passed through the city center and arrived at a rather remote block. Though he was walking on one and a half legs, he still rather smoothly went over the dilapidated railing of an elementary school for migrant workers’ children, taking a super shortcut to a little alley behind the school.

This place forgotten by the city planners had the nearly abandoned school playground on one side and low single-story houses on the other. Someone’s worn out cardboard boxes were blocking the way. There was just enough room for a single person to pass through. The thin cry of a cat made Kou Tong raise his head. He saw a little stray cat laying on the brick and tile roof, shakily sticking up its little tail and looking wide-eyed at him.

Dr. Kou, who could appease babies crying in the night, felt around in his pocket and turned up a piece of soft milk candy. He tore open the wrapper and stood on tiptoe.

The stray cat was probably still a kitten. It was very timid. Seeing someone extend a hand towards it, it couldn’t resist backing up, its tail shaking at a higher frequency. It warily bared sharp little teeth that hadn’t fully grown in yet and, putting on a show of strength, cried out again.

Dr. Kou put the milk candy on the edge of a tile. The little stray cat hesitated. Then, as though feeling that this person was harmless, it meowed twice, then tentatively drew a step closer. It lowered its head to sniff the milky white candy, then licked it.

Kou Tong smiled, turned, took the UV-protection glasses out of his pocket, put them on, and slowly walked on like a beast in human clothes.

At the end of the houses, there was a small shop with a door god stuck to the door and a peach wood sword hanging up. The walls inside were stuck full of yellow talismans drawn with cinnabar. Like a frequent visitor, Kou Tong pushed aside the greasy, filthy curtain and went in. He leaned by the door, waiting, and saw a middle-aged woman with her back to him, talking to a bizarre old blind man wearing sunglasses.

The old man said, “Looking at your and his Eight Characters…eh, there’s something I really shouldn’t be saying.”

“Please tell me, sir.”

“Eh, there’s a saying that has it that it’s better to destroy ten temples than a single marriage, but husband and wife must spend their days together day in and day out. Their fates must not be mutually destructive. In the past, when the ancients were married, they had their Eight Characters reckoned to make sure they matched, and chose an auspicious date. Only then could they fix a date to marry. But people these days, they’ve lost the traditions of their ancestors. Look here, ma’am, in the years since your marriage, your husband, has he been having a hard time in his career?”

“Yes! Since he was young, he’s never been able to accomplish his ambitions. At first he could still make progress, but then it got worse and worse…”

“And he began drinking to excess.”

The woman said, “Yes! How can you know everything?”

“Your child must be an adolescent, soon testing into…”

“Testing into high school.”

The old man twirled his beard, pursed his lips, and reckoned for a time, shaking and swaying his head. He sighed. “Madam, you have a fire fate, and your husband, he has a wood fate. Think about it, when wood meets fire, doesn’t it burn up?”

Kou Tong watched the stupid woman looking at the old man as though clutching her last hope. “Then, sir…what should I do?”

“Your Eight Characters and his are at odds. You ought not to be together in this life. After your marriage, your husband must have encountered many vile persons and been obstructed in his career. You must also have tasted of the bitterness of the mortal world while with him. Enduring hardships, every day his temper becomes irascible, until he can’t even control himself, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, yes! Too true! It’s just how you say!”

“The resentment between the two of you proceeds from your past lives. The disturbance has not yet ended in this life. I fear that…in the future, it will fall upon your child as well.” The old man continued to sway. “Lately…has the child been having trouble at school?”

This sentence turned on the waterworks for the woman. Her eyes instantly reddened, and big teardrops came pattering down. After a long time, stopping and starting, she said, “I understand…what you mean, I know, the two of us, we should never have been together.”

The old man very considerately got out a tissue and gave it to her.

The woman collapsed emotionally, sobbing. After sobbing for a long time, about fifteen minutes, she slowly calmed down. A determined expression appeared on her face. She took a stack of bright red bills from her bag and put it on the table. “Old immortal, thank you so much. What you’ve said is right! I’ll go do what I have to do and divorce him. I’ll take my son and raise him into a man myself.”

“Hey, hey, good…” What was good was the cash. Blue light was about to start shining from the old man’s eyes. His hands like chicken’s feet were grabbing for it when Kou Tong, leaning by the door, gave a heavy cough. The old man saw him and, as though caught in the act of stealing, quickly drew back his hands and looked upright and proper, as though he viewed money as worthless muck. “Well, you’re being too polite. I don’t want your money, madam. The world’s people are confused. For those who cultivate, like me, pointing people onto the right path is the equivalent of improving our own karma, accumulating good karma for ourselves. We do fine without things that stink of money. Take this back. If you think that what I said has merit, when your family and friends are in difficulties in the future, they may as well come and see me.”

Kou Tong wanted to laugh but thought that in the presence of that bitterness like the family member of a murder victim, it wouldn’t be very appropriate for him to laugh, so he had to hold it in, feeling that the muscles of his face were twitching a little. He turned his face away and stealthily rubbed them.

When the woman had left with profuse gratitude, he ostentatiously walked in and plopped down in front of the old man. “Immortal Ji, will you tell my fortune?”

Immortal Ji looked askance at him and snorted. He slowly stood up, closed the door, and hung up a sign saying “Three fortunes completed, come early tomorrow.”

Then he turned his head and glared at Kou Tong, seething. “Is there any need to tell your fortune? You’re a bringer of bad luck. You’ve come to stand in the way of my livelihood!”

Kou Tong said, “Don’t talk crap. Egging the woman on to get divorced and taking her money, aren’t you worried that the Kings of Hell will pull out your tongue when you get there?”

Immortal Ji rudely slapped him on the back of the head. “You’re the one talking crap. That’s feudal superstition!”

Kou Tong looked at him in admiration, thinking that even an armored car would feel inferior next to a face that was this thick!

Immortal Ji lit a cigarette and slowly said, “She’s come to me many times. She has many wounds. At a glance, they come from domestic violence. You saw her clothes. While they aren’t name brand clothes, they’re still quite tasteful. She must be a woman who cares about appearances and likes cleanliness, yet she came here in her slippers—if she wasn’t at her wit’s end, would she be in such a rush?”

Hearing this, Kou Tong thought it made some sense. He asked, “How did you know that her husband was unable to accomplish his ambitions because he encountered vile persons? And that he drinks to excess?”

“Well, she told me herself.” The old man breathed out a leisurely smoke ring. “She said herself that her husband doesn’t come home after work but fools around with others outside and only comes back in the middle of the night. I’ve seen plenty of men like that. When they’re out in public, they let themselves be bullied and put on a helpless act. Then at night they drink some cheap swill and go home to throw their weight around with their wives. Doesn’t matter why they’re unable to accomplish their ambitions, most of the time they’ll still blame it on others. ‘Encountered vile persons’ must be his own excuse. Anyway, that woman, she doesn’t strike me as the kind to endure humiliation. The two of them must fight a lot. How could she not be irritable, spending her life with a person like that?”

Kou Tong laughed. “Then how did you know that her child’s grades weren’t ideal? The child might have been particularly sensible. Doesn’t everyone say poor people’s children start managing the household young?”

“When did I say that the child’s grades were bad?” Immortal Ji was entertained. “I just asked her whether the child had been having trouble at school. If there was trouble, then she would naturally think that I had hit the nail on the head, and if there was no trouble, then couldn’t I just have said ‘that’s good’ and moved on? When she came last time, there was a practice exam book she had bought for the child in her bag. I glimpsed a corner of it. So I knew there had to be a child of that age in her house. Even if the child didn’t have trouble at school, when she heard that, she would still have thought that I wouldn’t ask a useless question. It would have been a warning to her that the child was at a critical moment and she had to provide against possible trouble.”

Kou Tong was speechless, suddenly thinking that these old fortunetellers were the true experts.

Immortal Ji looked him over and said, “How come you have time to come see me and aren’t out fooling around?”

“My leg is bothering me,” Kou Tong said unblushingly and magnanimously. “I went out a while ago and had an accident, broke my leg, and the cast has just been removed. Now it still doesn’t hold up well. It would spoil the fun.”

Immortal Ji looked at the glasses on his face and snorted unhappily, muttering, “That’s evasive.”

“I just…suddenly wanted to come and sit with you for a while,” Kou Tong finally said quietly after a while.

“You can sit with me. Take your glasses off, look here.” Immortal Ji gestured at his own eyes. He had taken his sunglasses off at some point. His eyes were not only not blind, they had an old man’s particular incisiveness.

Kou Tong hesitated.

Without warning, Immortal Ji rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the messy scars on the forearm of Dr. Kou, who wore long-sleeved shirts year round. Most of these scars were cuts from sharp implements; some were cigarette burns. The cuts were all deep on the outside and shallow on the inside, as though…he had made them himself.

Immortal Ji coldly said, “I’ve already seen this. What are you still scared of me seeing?”

Kou Tong laughed wryly and rolled down his sleeve, buttoning his cuff. He took off his glasses and quietly looked at Immortal Ji.

“Have you been dreaming again?” the old man asked, puffing on his cigarette.

“Yeah.” Kou Tong laced his fingers together and put his elbows on the table. “This time I smashed the mirror, and it broke, but the person inside didn’t come out… I feel…like he won’t come out for the rest of my life.”

Immortal Ji didn’t answer.

“When I got up, I saw the mirror in my room and automatically did the same thing I do in my dream—I smiled at the mirror. But the person in the mirror didn’t smile at me. I suddenly thought then that…”

“That someone else had appeared in the mirror?” Old Man Ji asked.

“No… It was that I had been trapped in the mirror. I nearly smashed the mirror again. I only recovered when my colleague called to me.” Kou Tong frowned, his expression suddenly a little weary. “Of course, I may just have been confused first thing in the morning, but Old Man Ji, we aren’t people to believe our own lies. I’m afraid that…if things keep going like this, this will become a hallucination.”

The old man frowned. “Scared of being trapped in the mirror—what kind of anxiety is that? Have you been inside your own consciousness space?”

“I have. It’s very unstable and collapses rather easily.”

“Oh…” The old man thought for a long time, then spoke cautiously: “Kou Tong, are you a little scared that…”

But before he could finish speaking, the phone in Kou Tong’s pocket rang. He took it out, looked at the incoming caller display, and casually explained, “It’s Su Qing, I asked him to look into someone for me yesterday… Hello?”

The moment he picked up the phone, Kou Tong’s faint anxiety, pallor, and haggardness all magically vanished, as though he was once again a man who could sparkle when given a bit of sunlight, so happy it was as if he hadn’t grown up. After less than two sentences, he hastily stood up. “I’ve got it, thanks… Fine, no problem, I’ll treat you to dinner another time.”

Then he hurriedly said goodbye to Immortal Ji. “I have something to do today. We won’t speak anymore. I’ll come see you again another time.”

He turned and ran.

11

LAO YAO (6)

KOU TONG ardently said goodbye to Old Immortal Ji, whose words were caught in his throat. He flicked his sleeves and left without taking away a shred of cloud.

Old Man Ji had a pair of enormous sunglasses on his head. He narrowed his sinister triangular eyes, feeling that this Dr. Kou, who came and went like the wind, had come from far away to make no contribution apart from getting in the way of his livelihood. Thinking of his deep grief when he had been parted from the cash, the old immortal set aside his position and lay down a ferocious curse: “Bah, rotten brat. Those who squander my emotions will come to a bad end. Take care that you aren’t held down for the rest of your life!”

…This story tells us that whether an immortal is real or fake, you can’t casually offend him, or else, like the pirates of the Caribbean, you’ll live a desolate life bearing a curse, no matter how attractive you are—of course, that’s a story for later.

When Kou Tong returned to the base, he saw Lao Yao’s wife Dou Lianqing.

She was supposed to be nearly forty, but she was well-preserved and still seemed very young. She was suitably dressed and pretty, sitting a little uncomfortably in the room, speaking now and then to General Zhong.

Huang Jinchen was sitting there having nothing to do with anything, avidly looking the woman up and down. Kou Tong felt that Dou Lianqing was about to burrow underground from his gaze. So he walked over decisively, took off his coat, and threw it over Huang Jinchen’s head, blocking the constantly emitting X-rays, then picked up the uniform of the base’s researchers and draped it over himself—owing to a hardware problem, he couldn’t walk as if on wings; he could only sashay gracefully over and unhurriedly sit down. Like a beast in human clothes, he said, “Hello, Madam Dou.”

His voice was magnetic and his expression was erotic. There was about him a contradictory sense of both steadiness and youthfulness. He wore a likable smile like someone trying to get ahead in the world. It was simply spring covering the earth, returning warmth to the mortal world—Huang Jinchen, having liberated his head, thought that Ximen Qing must have carried on with Pan Jinlian in just this way[6].

So Koumen Qing…er, Dr. Kou quietly exchanged some idle chat with Dou Lianqing, handily directing her attention from General Zhong onto himself. Whether his technique was excellent, or whether it was simply that he looked more genial than General Zhong, the woman who had just been on edge seemed to relax somewhat. Her fingers stopped ravaging her bag.

Then Kou Tong turned and said to General Zhong, “Leave this to me. You go ahead.”

General Zhong nodded. He looked at him as though wanting to speak but holding back, then turned and left. Kou Tong looked at Huang Jinchen. Huang Jinchen quickly sat upright and straightened his clothes, pretending that he was diligent and eager to learn, very desirous of staying to observe. Kou Tong took back the coat he had just dropped and draped it over his arm. He said to Huang Jinchen, “Go sit over there.”

Then he turned and said to Dou Lianqing, “Don’t be nervous. This is my assistant.”

Huang Jinchen was most expert at holing up in a corner where no one would see him, then letting off sniper fire. He could slow his breath and not move a muscle for dozens of hours at a time, as though he didn’t exist. In ancient times, he would have been an excellent candidate to study the Tortoise Breath Technique.

Indeed, after hardly any time, Dou Lianqing had completely forgotten that such a living creature existed.

When she had slowly relaxed, Kou Tong glanced at the bag in her hands, then very naturally used a hinting gesture to put the coat hanging over his arm aside. Dou Lianqing automatically performed the same action as him, putting down the bag she had been holding in her arms.

Then she took a deep breath. As though she had lowered a barrier, a bit of exhaustion appeared in her expression. She raised her hands and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t mind telling you, Lao Yao and I…we’ve been having some problems lately. I don’t know what to do… He’s always so irritated, and when I ask what’s wrong, he won’t say…”

“Take it slow.” Kou Tong pushed a box of tissues towards the woman whose eyes were quickly reddening. He gently patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t rush. We’ll take our time talking. Lao Yao often loses his temper, and he’s becoming more and more uncommunicative, right?”

Dou Lianqing nodded. “Yes. I know that a family needs to communicate. It says so on TV. But…he doesn’t want to say anything to me, and I can’t ask. He gets angry as soon as I ask. That day, I came home and saw that he was…was even hitting the child. He even hit the child on the head with a copper paperweight. Such a heavy thing, and he just… I thought he would die, I was so scared! So I said to him, if you want to kill my son, you should kill me first…”

Dou Lianqing became more and more agitated as she spoke. Finally she was sobbing almost too hard to talk.

Kou Tong spoke to her quietly. Huang Jinchen looked on. But as he watched, he began to feel bored, so he got out a gun and lightly began to wipe it.

This was a woman who couldn’t do anything but cry when she ran into a problem. Since General Zhong had brought her in, Huang Jinchen had found out that this Dou Lianqing was not only a full-time housewife, she was also one of those women with an especially gentle, especially feeble disposition, with stronger dependency than the average person. In ordinary times she probably hardly put a foot out the door; it seemed that she wouldn’t be able to find her way around if she left her house. When someone spoke to her, she could spend ages being terrified.

Like a rabbit—this was Huang Jinchen’s assessment.

He had been doing this job alongside Kou Tong for less than two days and he was already starting to feel bored. He had the feeling that he had left the front line and become the director of a women’s federation, listening to timid female comrades tearfully lamenting household problems; after hearing enough of it, his head hurt a little.

Couldn’t she do something instead of staying with him? Huang Jinchen couldn’t understand it. In his understanding, after a clip of bullets, everything would be smooth.

But he was still well-trained, sitting there looking extremely patient. Yet he wouldn’t devote his attention to Dou Lianqing anymore. Instead, he began to observe Kou Tong.

Huang Jinchen’s first impression of Kou Tong had been his particularly confident voice.

In the midst of war, this man was like a jack of all trades who wouldn’t suffer from stage fright no matter where you put him. No matter who fell, he would be able to hold out. With his eyebrows raised, he looked fixedly at Kou Tong’s back, which was slightly bent because he was leaning forward. Apart from his researcher’s gown like a layer of garlic skin, he was wearing only a shirt, making his spine stick out. Huang Jinchen stared for a long time, lost in thought, then came to the conclusion that “his waist is really thin.”

A grown man like this—Huang Jinchen crossed his arms over his chest, watching Kou Tong familiarly soothing the woman’s emotions, leading her to speak more about Lao Yao’s circumstances. He thought in astonishment—why would he do a job like this?

He looked critically at the woman again, thinking that this was so-called civilized society, where even shrimp and little fish had “human rights.” If this was ancient days, where the weak were prey to the strong, would there be any use for such a person to be alive?

Amid a hail of gunfire, they had groped around in the dark abyss to bring peace to the world. So many people had died on the way, so many had been injured; they had done almost everything humanly possible for this country and this society, protecting the lives of the common people, protecting them so they could sit safely at home, like this person, and live a life of dignity.

Why weren’t these people content with their lots? They wept and wailed all day about trifles, looking all around for help.

Weak people seemed truly loathsome—women included. This was Huang Jinchen’s second conclusion.

During this time, Dou Lianqing’s emotions had basically been steadied by Kou Tong. She sat there wringing a tissue soaked in tears, her head down, awkwardly smiling at Kou Tong. Then, with Kou Tong’s help, she slowly began to tell about the trivialities of her home life.

She didn’t seem to have much self-confidence. Whenever she finished saying something that contained some subjective assertion, she would look at Kou Tong like a stray lamb and say, “That’s only my opinion. What do you think?”

Huang Jinchen became even more derisive, indifferently thinking, Look, this is the outcome of civilization—it has produced a thing like this, specializing in wasting resources, without a single useful aspect.

As he saw it, this was just like humans protecting giant pandas—simply out of having nothing better to do. Those things only ate one type food. When the bamboo flowered, they would go hungry. They couldn’t catch prey, they couldn’t run, they even had difficulty giving birth. Shouldn’t they have been eliminated by natural selection long ago? What right did they have to go on living?

What was the value of insisting on squandering vast quantities of human and material resources on protecting these things?

He had thought that Kou Tong was one of the rare people he esteemed, but it turned out that he did this job that was about the same as being a panda keeper. So Huang Jinchen came up with a third conclusion: Dr. Kou really was kind of a weirdo.

Dou Lianqing talked at length about Lao Yao and things at home. Lao Yao had in fact changed a great deal over the last few years, especially since his request to withdraw from active service had been approved. The man who had originally been very cheerful had suddenly become devoid of human feeling.

Quick to anger, touchy, ready to twist others’ meaning, communicating less and less with his family, not spending time with his son anymore; it was as if he had become more busy after withdrawing to the second line of duty.

“I don’t know what to do. What should I do?” the woman mumbled. “I feel very pained. We argued recently, and I said I was going to divorce him, but…but…”

Kou Tong gently said, “You don’t want to leave him?”

Dou Lianqing looked at him in confusion. “Leave him? How will I live if I leave him? I’ve never…I’ve never thought of what it would be like not to be with him one day. I think… I…I don’t know. You’re a psychologist. Can you tell me what to do?”

In her agitation, she even grabbed Kou Tong’s sleeve like a drowning small animal, looking at him with tears in her eyes.

Tsk—Huang Jinchen silently lowered his head, hidden unobtrusively in the shadows, wiping his gun again and again.

With great patience, Kou Tong spoke to the woman for two or three hours. Then he escorted Dou Lianqing out. She had been half-dead when she had come, but she was very pleased when she left. Feeling that he had been holding back a little too long, he went back inside, got out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and opened the black cover of the notebook he had been using.

“Fed up, aren’t you?” Kou Tong suddenly said to Huang Jinchen as he flipped pages without so much as looking up.

Huang Jinchen stared, raised his eyebrows, then slowly stood up and plopped into the chair Dou Lianqing had been sitting in. “Is this what you do every day?”

The movement of Kou Tong’s hand paused. He raised his head, held his cigarette between two fingers, and looked at him with a smile. “Yeah?”

For the first time, Huang Jinchen didn’t joke or grin cheekily. He paused, then earnestly said, “I think it’s too bad.”

“What’s too bad about it?” Kou Tong stuck the cigarette in his mouth, laughed, and turned over the black cover of his notebook. “I think it’s pretty good.”

In Lao Yao’s consciousness space, he had explained to Huang Jinchen that a consciousness space was a real space, but he hadn’t had a chance to tell him the nature of the “people” inside. According to the average person’s understanding, “people in a real space” ought to amount to “real people.”

But Huang Jinchen had been able, without any hesitation, even methodically, to kill that person in the coffee shop.

As Kou Tong thought this, he raised a hand and dialed an internal number. “Hey, instructor… Yeah, she’s gone. Come over here, I’ll talk to you about Yao Shuo.”

12

MOUNTAIN (1)

LATER, General Zhong hit the table furiously. This was aimed at Kou Tong.

The latter was leaning back in his chair like a lord, with one leg crossed over the other in a very high-difficulty move given his current physical condition. He calmly summed up: “Instructor, from the scientific standpoint, I think that right now you ought to clear your internal heat and preserve your vitality.”

Huang Jinchen was earnest and sincere: “Comrade Lao Zhong, I think that you usually work very hard, running around everywhere, pulling down the east wall to repair the west wall, and you’re always stuck here, unable to go home. It must be a long time since you’ve seen your wife. You must miss her.”

General Zhong said, “Huang, you shut up. The room is so small. Hold back a little, don’t talk shit.”

Then he took a deep breath and turned his head to look at Kou Tong. He extended a finger and pointed tremblingly into the air for a long time. “You really are…you really are…”

Kou Tong chatted idly: “Understanding the circumstances to the best of one’s ability is fundamental good faith on the part of a projection worker.”

General Zhong plopped into a chair, his skinny cheeks pulled taut. “Kou Tong, oh, Kou Tong, you must feel awful if you’re not making trouble for one single minute!”

Kou Tong blinked and quietly said, “I suppose that the document the RZ Unit is tracking down right now falls into the category of ‘can’t talk about this in too much detail’?”

General Zhong ground his teeth. “You knew that, and you still called Su Qing!”

Kou Tong blinked very innocently. “Not being able to talk in detail is a political problem. What does it have to with me?”

General Zhong was so angry that his nostrils widened to twice their size. Huang Jinchen watched with his eyes open wide, shifting the hard copy files on the table back, thinking it would be better if they didn’t get burned up by him breathing fire.

General Zhong, inflicting suffering on the innocent, glared fiercely at him.

Kou Tong crooked a finger. “Jinchen, pour General Zhong some water.”

Huang Jinchen, wanting nothing but to make trouble, immediately drifted over in his swivel chair, stopping precisely in front of the water cooler. He grabbed a single-use cup, poured cold water, and put it in front of General Zhong. “Come on, anger harms the liver. Though a man’s kidneys are supposed to be the most important…”

General Zhong only wished for the cup to contain sulphuric acid so he could splash him like a big black bear. He clutched the single-use cup for a long time, took a deep breath, didn’t look at Huang Jinchen’s face, and turned to Kou Tong. “You know, in that war…Utopia, it was an enormous organization…”

Kou Tong was amused. “Utopia nearly took over the world, the RZ Unit was turned into an illegal organization, and I fled here and there with them and even got shot at by this mighty Planted Agent Huang. I’m aware of all of it from start to finish.”

Huang Jinchen immediately made a belated effort to lay bare his true feelings: “If I had known that you were in that group, I never would have fired.”

General Zhong ignored him. He continued: “A terrorist organization—especially one that has been branded a ‘modern scientific terrorist organization’ by the media—must involve a large quantity of research funds, armaments, and all kinds of convoluted interests. Do you understand that? With Utopia kicking up such a fuss, the connections below it must have been deep-rooted and complex. Do you know how many high ranking people were implicated?”

Kou Tong candidly said, “I do.”

General Zhong’s breath caught in his throat. He only let it out after a long moment. “Kou Tong, at any rate you nominally work for the base. Though you came into contact with the RZ Unit in a time of emergency, afterwards it ought to be them doing their jobs and you doing yours. You shouldn’t keep getting involved with them.”

“It’s only a personal connection.” Kou Tong laughed. “So…I hear that the file that was lost was a blacklist?”

“Yes, you could call it a hidden lead. Some people used Utopia to resell illegal medicines. This involved a chain of interests. It’s possible that…among those who took part, there may be some…” General Zhong was a little fidgety. “This thing can’t be investigated openly. I’ve heard that the people implicated may be individuals with real power. They’re rather hard to touch, so this has been conducted in secret. Because the matter is very grave, each person who may be involved has to be investigated one at a time. And on that day, this crucial document went missing.”

“There was no backup?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“There was no time,” General Zhong said. He noticed that there was a rather admiring expression on Huang Jinchen’s face and glared at him. “Do you know what it means to conduct something in private? The personnel taking part are kept strictly confidential. There won’t be much manpower involved. They had just gotten their hands on the name list through certain channels when it was lost. At the time, Yao Shuo was the only person who could have touched the safe.”

“Oh…” Kou Tong nodded.

“‘Oh’ my ass!” General Zhong remembered again. “Now, because of you, the RZ Unit has intervened. Where Utopia is concerned, they have the greatest scope of authority from beginning to end. This thing has become complicated!”

Kou Tong laughed mockingly. “I just called up a personal friend. I know Su Qing has a lot of connections and asked for some information about Yao Shuo. I didn’t say anything about the rest. As I see it, the RZ Unit intervening in this business is most likely because the working personnel investigating it slipped up and were found out by their outwardly foolish but inwardly clever Captain Hu, right?”

“However you put it…”

General Zhong had only said this much when Kou Tong interrupted. Kou Tong very pertly said, “But that also doesn’t have to do with me—I’m not responsible for investigating illegal medicines, and I’m certainly not responsible for catching terrorists. I’m only an itinerant doctor who spends most of my time seeing the sights and occasionally doing a projection appraisal.”

Huang Jinchen looked at General Zhong, suddenly seeing the light. “No wonder that Yao character looks all constipated and grouches at everyone. All this time, it’s because he’s suffered an unrighted wrong.”

Kou Tong cooperatively said, “He must have been very uncooperative before to get tricked into coming to me.”

“Oh, an extralegal inquiry.” Huang Jinchen nodded.

“One that hasn’t turned anything up,” Kou Tong picked up.

“And because of some stress, it’s been kept under wraps, concealed even from the doctor making the appraisal.” Huang Jinchen paused, then commented: “Cowardly.”

“If this were the past, I figure it would have come to illegal punishment, sticking him into a filthy hole with the rack and thumbscrews, taking whatever came out.” Kou Tong shook his head, putting on a great show of earnestness. “I also figure that the Human Rights Decree promulgated the year before last really has put some obstacles in the way.”

The two of them exchanged a look with the sentiment of close friends relaxing in each other’s company. General Zhong couldn’t take it anymore. He hit the table so hard that all the office supplies trembled. “Both of you shut the fuck up!”

Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen had a strong tacit understanding. They simultaneously made a gesture of zipping their lips. The position of the base was particular. General Zhong was always dealing with innumerable secrets. He rubbed his temples. Faced with these two on top of all of that, he really felt that his hair was going to turn white from frustration. He simply didn’t know what to do.

Kou Tong looked at him. He lowered his voice. “General, psychological assessment isn’t reliable. Everyone on Earth knows that it can rarely serve as evidence in court. No one asked you to do this, did they? My guess is…someone transferred files from you—people on two sides. So you wanted to know for yourself what was going on, right?”

General Zhong sighed. “Getting mixed up in this, even if you’re completely clean, you’ll still feel upset. Lao Yao and I really are old friends. He’s some years older than me. He looked after me quite a bit just after I enlisted. Back then, he wasn’t as prickly as he is now. And it’s true that I advised him to seek consultation, only he never listened to me.”

“Do you think he’s the person responsible?” Kou Tong asked.

General Zhong hesitated. “If this was two years ago, I never would have believed it. But during these two years… For some reason, he’s suddenly begun to attach a great deal of importance to money. In fact, I’ve gone through some private channels, and I know that his finances haven’t been completely clean over these last two years.”

Huang Jinchen laughed coolly. “So why are you still asking? You already know that his finances aren’t clean. Whether he’s connected to this business you’re talking about or not, this Yao Shuo isn’t any kind of gem, is he? He’s not insane, and he’s not stupid. He can count taxpayer money, and he’s so full of himself—why are you still managing a person like this?”

Kou Tong looked at this very unprofessional interloper and found that he was in fact very handsome. Only his lips were particularly thin, especially when he had his head slightly lowered, looking at the ground with an indescribable coolness on his features. So he considered and asked General Zhong, “So…what you mean is that he wasn’t like this two years ago?”

“It started when he voluntarily withdrew from active service.” General Zhong frowned. “I had just taken over the base then. He suddenly told me in private that he felt tired and didn’t want to keep going. He had already submitted paperwork saying that he wanted to step back and do things that didn’t take so much worry. His child had just started his last year of high school then. It was a crucial moment. Based on his circumstances, his actions could be understood, so our superiors approved it.”

“Oh…” As though he had thought of something, Kou Tong leaned back lightly, tapping his chin with the shaft of his pen. “It started then.”

“Though I don’t understand it, I still know that something must have gone wrong. It’s as though his whole outlook on life changed. If there was nothing wrong, how could a person change like this?”

Kou Tong nodded and slowly wrote something in his notebook. After a while, he raised his head again. “Have this Mr. Yao come again, go into the projection again.”

“Fine, I’ll think of a way.”

General Zhong was very efficient. Two days later, Yao Shuo once again appeared in front of the big boiler. Huang Jinchen looked at him critically and thought that he was no longer like a big mantis—he was like a big weevil with his withered skin, taking petty advantage and pulling low tricks, even putting on airs.

This time, the big boiler didn’t drop them onto the bustling street. When Huang Jinchen could see the scenery in front of his eyes clearly, he found that they were at the foot of a mountain—that mountain surrounded by Yao Shuo’s courtyard walls.

13

MOUNTAIN (2)

THE MOMENT they touched down, the ground under the three people’s feet trembled violently. Some stones of various size rolled down from the mountain. They could practically feel this place’s repulsion and vigilance towards them.

The moment they touched down, Huang Jinchen dodged with abnormal keenness and agility. Kou Tong had somehow carried the space’s control interface inside. He was wearing those useless UV-protection lenses. Their black frames were rather large, blocking his gaze to a great extent, so in a moment of inattention, he very unfortunately got hit in the face with some grit and fled the area under attack practically covered in dirt.

Huang Jinchen raised his head and looked up at the sky. He felt that if you often walked by the sea, you were sure to get your shoes wet; though Dr. Kou claimed to know how to act pretentious while avoiding getting struck by lightning, it would still be hard for him to avoid one day becoming a crater.

Only Lao Yao was comparatively safe. Though he stood there very calmly, not moving a muscle, the rocks and grit seemed to avoid him. Though they were in free fall, when they came in range of where he was standing, they would still grandly turn away.

Yao Shuo folded his arms in front of his chest—this was a very typical, not especially friendly defensive gesture; a person who performed this gesture regularly clearly wasn’t afraid of others perceiving his enmity—and stood some steps away, coldly watching Kou Tong pat dust off his white coat.

But then, surprisingly, the space stabilized. The indications of a coming landslide vanished.

Kou Tong took off the lousy glasses blocking his eyes and very sloppily wiped them with his fingers.

He looked at Lao Yao’s expression and knew that this astute middle-aged man had likely already guessed something. At first, some provocation from this scene had led Yao Shuo’s consciousness projection to be as unstable as last time, but now he had evidently calmed down.

So he smiled—Huang Jinchen kept thinking that this fellow Kou Tong’s smile was a professional specialty, containing a great deal of technique. According to the judgment of his discerning eyes, this definitely wasn’t natural; it must have gone through a great deal of theoretical and practical training, chatting and bullshitting in real life, as well as correcting himself nanometer by nanometer in front of a mirror.

Kou Tong seemed like a person who easily made others relax and be unable to resist feeling well disposed towards him. Adding in his superb assimilation skills, within a few minutes of starting to converse, he could always make people view him as having interests in common with them. If he had used this to flirt, he would have been undefeatable.

But Yao Shuo’s expression seemed even more savage. He seemed to have a deep-rooted wariness towards others. These was a teenage rebelliousness about him like a second youth; through the grinding of many years of experience, he had become increasingly intractable—it was as though he had a mirror in his heart that reflected people’s goodwill towards him with the greatest degree of malicious conjecture.

In everyday terms, on seeing Yao Shuo, you knew that he definitely thought Kou Tong had ulterior motives, that his smile hid a knife.

“I heard you met my wife?” Yao Shuo raised his chin slightly and looked at Kou Tong with thorns in his words.

“I did.” Kou Tong closed the control box. “It’s like this. I’m very sorry. Because your friends and family are very concerned, they’ve concealed…”

“Enough, it’s an investigation, isn’t it?” Yao Shuo lightly interrupted him. “Don’t pretend. I looked into it when I left. I know what this thing is. Simulated training field… You really can make things up.”

He let out an unusually sharp jeering laugh and looked at Kou Tong with an unusually disdainful expression—as though this lie Kou Tong had made up was an insult to his intelligence.

Kou Tong accordingly shut his mouth, decisively changing tactics. He restrained his smile. Looking strictly businesslike, he made a gesture. “Since you already know, sir, I won’t waste words. I hope that you can cooperate with our work, and we can all be spared trouble. Could I ask you to take us up the mountain to have a look now?”

Lao Yao paused for a moment, snorted, then, without so much as a look at the two of them, strode up the mountain.

It was a strange thing—though this mountain looked bizarre, Lao Yao seemed to know at the bottom of his heart where to go. They went in a half-circle around the foot of the mountain, then saw a little path up the mountain that seemed manmade.

Lao Yao silently went on ahead, leading the way. Kou Tong didn’t try to communicate with him again. From the control box, he took out a keyboard that could float in midair and slowly follow along with his footsteps. He pressed a button, and a transparent screen appeared on it. Huang Jinchen noticed that in the corner of the screen was a small camera, flashing. It must have been filming. Kou Tong took some notes as he walked.

When the two of them were about ten meters away from Lao Yao, Huang Jinchen drew close to nip Kou Tong’s ear and ask, “He knows. What’s going to happen?”

Kou Tong was silent for a while. “In reality, the great majority of the time, I only enter people’s consciousness projections after obtaining their approval—well, what we did before isn’t forbidden, either. This thing was invented too recently. Though a few countries are already attempting to apply it practically, they still haven’t come up with regulations concerning it—the more cooperative the patient is, the more stable the space is. The whole process becomes smoother. But ordinarily, people instinctively hide their true problems. That’s what makes the consciousness spaces have distorted logic and sometimes even be full of danger.”

Huang Jinchen thought about it and switched to an idea that was comparatively easy for him to understand. “You mean that he’s going to take us on a wild goose chase.”

Kou Tong hesitated. “It’s not something he can control. For example, in our overlapping consciousness space before, you used some intense method of suggestion to convince yourself, making yourself believe that my leg was lame, so it became lame under your influence…”

Huang Jinchen rubbed his nose. “That’s because you really were lame at the time.”

Kou Tong smiled, showing that he hadn’t taken it to heart at all. “Apart from that, most people haven’t undergone the relevant training. It’s hard for them to perform at your level, so they can’t resist this space. Instinct is telling him where to go, but that ‘instinct’ itself contains resistance.”

“I see.” Though Huang Jinchen said this, his expression still seemed perplexed.

Just then, a wind suddenly rose in the projection space, like the howling of some beast. It came from the mountain. Huang Jinchen looked down and found that the enclosing wall was growing bit by bit. As they went up, the enclosing wall became taller and taller, making it seem that they would forever be encircled by it.

Kou Tong suddenly shut the cover of the control box. The black box very conveniently became invisible. He stuck up a finger and quietly said, “And that intense resistance and self-protectiveness will sometimes be very aggressive.”

“What does that…”

Before Huang Jinchen could finish, there was a sudden huge sound behind him. His gaze sharpened. He threw himself forward practically out of instinct, dodging with a nimble forward roll. At the same time, he pulled the handgun out from under his pant leg and raised his hand, ready to…

But when he turned his head, he froze.

Attacking him wasn’t a person. Rather, it wasn’t a living being at all—it was the enclosing wall that they couldn’t avoid no matter what.

Near the summit of Yao Shuo’s house’s courtyard wall, probably for decoration, there was a row of patterned tiles. These were mottled with ivy, moss, and the corrosion of time. The pattern on the tiles was no longer very visible; out of the holes the tiles “grew” a row of close, scalp-numbing firing holes.

Yes—you couldn’t see the gun butts or who was shooting, but they simultaneously aimed at the surrounded people.

Yao Shuo also heard movement now and looked back, frowning. As soon as he saw, he was also startled. Pointing to the enclosing wall, he asked Kou Tong, “What’s going on?”

Huang Jinchen’s throat bobbed slightly. He turned his head to solicit the brilliant opinion of a professional. “Dr. Kou, ordinarily, what should one do when encountering circumstances like these?”

Kou Tong looked blankly for a while at the gun barrels aimed at his whole body. After a moment, he rather uncertainly said, “Maybe…throw your hands over your head and get down… Do you think that would help?”

Huang Jinchen was speechless for a moment. He was forced to acknowledge that this “brilliant opinion” was very original.

There came the familiar sound of a bullet being loaded. Huang Jinchen grabbed Kou Tong by the collar and held his head down. Kou Tong felt a bullet nearly brush past his scalp. Then he was quickly pushed by Huang Jinchen. “No good. We’ll die if we’re hit, but they won’t. Run.”

There was no need for him to say this. As though Kou Tong could read his mind, he nimbly leapt up. The three of them took to their heels and fled amid the hail of bullets. Luckily, Lao Yao, the oldest of them, was appropriately able-bodied, and he was quick. Following Lao Yao’s lead, they dove into a mountain forest, the thick trees blocking the gunfire behind them.

But the unusual latticed wall, as though it had absorbed some powerful fertilizer, grew taller and taller, then taller still, nonstop, not leaving them alone.

“Fuck, I’m not the type of man to die preserving my chastity, but I’m still afraid of being harassed like this!” Huang Jinchen roared, craning his neck. “Dr. Kou, please don’t just move your legs, think of something to do!”

The peculiar quality that had caused Dr. Kou to break his leg riding a bike came out into the open. It seemed that his strength was pretty good. He could still catch his breath. He said, “Run for now, don’t worry, we won’t die if we get hit!”

“We can’t die! According to your coordinate whatever theory, dying in the space should feel the same as a real death, right? It would be tantamount to opening your eyes and finding that you had reincarnated and gone outside!” Huang Jinchen gripped a big tree branch and swung himself up like a monkey, then grabbed another branch—he was too familiar with gun battles. He had already found that all these bullets basically traveled at an ordinary person’s height. If they climbed a tree, they could get a moment to catch their breaths.

Kou Tong glanced out of the corner of his eye and reacted at once. He yelled to Yao Shuo, “Up the tree!”

Yao Shuo understood. Following Huang Jinchen’s lead, he immediately climbed the tree.

Kou Tong, looking excited, said, “So this is the rule of the enclosing wall—they’ll only follow where we step. If we’re all in the same tree above sea level, the wall will judge that we haven’t risen and maintain its original height of attack.”

Huang Jinchen lay on a branch, panting as he looked at him with a smile. “Fine, Dr. Kou’s belated efforts are really good.”

Yao Shuo said, “Hmph!”

Kou Tong waved a hand. “How embarrassing. Let’s rest a while. I’ll think of what to do.”

Huang Jinchen saw Kou Tong hang from a tree branch and take the little black box out again. He couldn’t resist sticking out his head. “Listen, Brother Gunner, you be careful. There’s only one of that thing. If it breaks, there’s nowhere we can buy a new one. We won’t be able to get out.”

Kou Tong didn’t so much as look up. “There’s a backup in the space, but as a precaution against extraordinary circumstances, it isn’t in my hands. But the space recognizes me as the controller. If something happens to this one, it will lead me to find the other one.”

Huang Jinchen thought about it and thought that it made sense—when they had been together in the consciousness space before and no one had held the control box, Kou Tong really had seemed to know where the thing was.

Just then, Kou Tong found that the signal on the screen seemed to have been disrupted by something. The screen went white for a moment, then restored.

He frowned and looked at Huang Jinchen with lingering fear, thinking, Did this big crow’s mouth get it right? Has something really gone wrong?

“Here’s what I think. We’ll leave now. There are some things I want to discuss with the old chief.” For safety’s sake, Kou Tong decided to go out to examine and repair the big boiler. “I’ll…”

Before he could finished speaking, a dialogue box suddenly appeared in a corner of the screen with a bright red Arabic numeral “2.”

Kou Tong stared blankly. He knew what this meant. It meant that a second person had entered the projection space. In other words, it had inexplicably turned into two people’s overlapping space.

But the control box was still in his hands. This was impossible!

But in just the time he was dazed, the number in the dialogue box suddenly went up again and again. In the blink of an eye, it had risen to seven. Before he could even see the last number clearly, the black box’s screen suddenly flashed, and a warning popped up:

Insufficient privileges.

Then, in front of the three of them, the black box in Kou Tong’s hands suddenly vanished. It dissolved into powder and was gone!

Kou Tong blinked and immediately came to an accurate conclusion: “Well, we’re screwed.”

The hail of bullets had stopped at some point. The mountain began to collapse—

14

SEVEN PEOPLE (1)

“STARTING AT 16:00 this afternoon, due to abnormal activity on the surface of the sun, the whole globe experienced varying degrees of impact from a magnetic storm. Communications were cut off for a time. It is reported that they were restored two hours ago…”

General Zhong nodded expressionlessly and turned off the news. Five or six of the base’s technicians surrounded the already quiet big boiler, getting up to their tricks…no, they were very seriously and earnestly examining and repairing it.

General Zhong asked, “How is it? Can the communication equipment connect to Dr. Kou?”

A technician with a goatee shook his head. “No, the instrument’s communication channel has been broken. We have no way to determine their position.”

General Zhong said, “How could it break?”

“According to Dr. Kou’s initial design, after entering the projection space, the controller will be held by a person who has been screened off. The system will automatically believe that this person is the ‘principal figure.’ Even if some unexpected harm comes to the controller, he can still find the backup controller by following the system’s hints. If none of the consciousnesses that enter have been screened off, however, a principal needs to be set before entering the space and given controller privileges. Now I’m afraid that the principal privileges have been canceled.”

This fellow’s tone was very unique. He was like a robot, detailed and methodical, spitting out one word after another, as though he couldn’t express his accuracy if he didn’t speak this way.

General Zhong looked at him with a pained expression.

The goatee raised his head to look at his colleagues, climbing up ladders and scrambling, opening one circuit board after another. He calmly said to General Zhong, “Per my personal conjecture, Dr. Kou would have screened off his own consciousness and entered as the principal. And owing to the disturbance in the magnetic field this afternoon, the instrument malfunctioned. According to the record, seven random consciousnesses have been pulled into the projection space that before belonged to one person, including Dr. Kou himself. Therefore the system automatically stripped away his principal privileges.”

General Zhong nodded. “Very good. You mean that Kou Tong can’t get out because he can’t find the controller inside?”

The goatee pushed up his glasses as though this matter was of no concern to him. “According to the design manual, if the principal is divested of privileges, and no secondary principal was set in advance, they must now be in a condition of having no principal.”

General Zhong’s head swelled hearing this. He rubbed his forehead and took a deep breath. “Fine, whatever. Think of a way to get them out, then we’ll talk. I don’t understand a thing about this. Have Kou Tong himself come repair it.”

The goatee, still speaking evenly, said, “I’m afraid that won’t work, either.”

General Zhong sincerely felt that a time like this, the only thing he could do was roll his eyes.

The goatee continued: “According to the theory of the multi-frequency space overlap, when a space is composed of two or more individuals’s overlapping consciousnesses, owing to all kinds of conflicts, it will be very unstable. In our tests, a three-person one could just hold out, but a four-person overlap will collapse within thirty seconds. But due to the problem of the magnetic irregularity, after the system’s temporary disorder, seven people we have no way to identify were drawn in for reasons unknown, so that inside the projection space now…”

General Zhong’s eyes lit up. “So when the space collapses, they’ll be able to get out?”

The goatee paused. “No. Up to the present, they’ve already been inside for over four hours, and the space remains very stable. This shows that some as yet unknown closed loop has manifested inside the Projector. Put plainly, we currently have no way to determine Dr. Kou’s spatial dimension, and we have no way to disintegrate their space from the outside. They may have fallen into some unknown coordinates. There is a 86.7% possibility that the projection rules are no longer in operation.”

General Zhong nodded blankly. “Oh, I see. So what you’re saying is, that bastard Kou Tong is in arrears on his gaming card?”

The goatee thought about it, then gravely said, “You could understand it that way, sir.”

“So if they want to get out now, they have to find a backup controller that’s hidden in some unknown place…” General Zhong repeated to himself.

The goatee seemed determined to break off each shred of hope for him. He dully responded, “The location of the controller is totally random. In a projection world with altered rules, it may be at the bottom of the sea, at the peak of a snow-capped mountain, at the mouth of an erupting volcano, or in the belly of some prehistoric carnivorous animal…”

General Zhong couldn’t take it anymore. “Wu Xiangxiang, shut up!”

The goatee’s flapping lips, as though voice-operated, tightly shut at once.

General Zhong went around the big boiler twice, like a donkey pulling a millstone. “So what do we do now?”

No one paid attention to him. General Zhong said angrily, “Wu Xiangxiang!”

“Reporting! You told me to shut up, sir.”

“And now I’m telling you to talk!”

“Plan One, as soon as possible, break through the technological barriers of all spatial dimensions, use the communicator to contact Dr. Kou, and notify him of the backup controller’s location.”

General Zhong nodded. This sounded pretty good.

Wu Xiangxiang continued: “Estimated time of completion is eight to ten years.”

General Zhong: “…”

“Plan Two, as soon as possible, repair the Projector equipment, upgrade its system processes, locate the position of their space, remove the projection, and bring them back. Estimated…”

“Fuck your estimates!” General Zhong smacked Wu Xiangxiang’s head with a thick folder, like a sitcom dad. “You have thirty days, no more!”

Wu Xiangxiang, his expression still blank, finished his sentence: “…estimated time of completion is within thirty days.”

Kou Tong and the others weren’t buried by the mountain. The mountain and the shooting wall that had been hot on their tails suddenly disappeared, as if into thin air. Then, like cotton, the three of them slowly floated down from midair…at a uniform speed.

Even the ever-restless acceleration of gravity had gone on strike.

After an initial adjustment, Huang Jinchen, with his unique coarse nerves, began to amuse himself, pulling all kinds of stunts as he fell slowly through the air, now somersaulting, now performing martial arts gestures, having the time of his life.

Yao Shuo, stiffly maintaining an upright position, turned his head away disdainfully.

Kou Tong knew that matters were grave. He quickly checked all the equipment he was carrying.

Huang Jinchen only then found that under Dr. Kou’s human exterior were hidden countless electronic products—a wire here, a wire there. He couldn’t resist pointing and saying, “Wow! A Teletubby!”

Kou Tong grimaced, his expression a little stiff.

“What’s wrong?” Huang Jinchen “swam” over in a freestyle stroke.

“All the equipment has gone out of commission, and our link to the outside world has broken off,” Kou Tong said. “Also, I’ve suddenly been divested of principal privileges by the system.”

“In other words…”

“In other words, we can’t find the controller now and have no way to get out.” Kou Tong grabbed his hair twice, turning it into a mess. “This wouldn’t happen normally, unless the Projector met inference from external physics…”

“How could the system divest you of your privileges?” Yao Shuo at last deigned to speak.

“While we were in the tree just now, I noticed that the number of consciousnesses in the projection space suddenly increased. In other words, the space we’re in now is a very complex overlapping space, likely made of the overlap of seven people.” Kou Tong frowned, seeming unable to understand why it hadn’t collapsed yet. “Of course, it may be even more…since when the number display reached seven, my privileges disappeared. As I understand it, this is because the screening on my own consciousness vanished.”

“The two of us have also been drawn in?” Huang Jinchen’s brow furrowed tightly. “So…that one, the monster we had our way with last time, will it come back looking for revenge?”

Kou Tong smiled dismally. “If only…”

Just then, they finally landed. The amazing thing was, the ground was unexpectedly soft, light pink in appearance, as though the three of them were standing on a big piece of gelatin. Kou Tong stamped on the ground and found that it was also rather elastic. They had returned to the outermost layer of Lao Yao’s consciousness space—the busy street, with people around them coming and going. The people didn’t limp as they walked on the soft ground, keeping their balance rather well; even the cars were moving normally.

And the unusual coffee shop they had been to before was by the road, with a tall streetlamp standing up at the door with a very non-mainstream lamp in the shape of a childish five-pointed star on it, letting off a soft milky white light.

Kou Tong unconsciously put his hand on the lamppost and suddenly felt that the sensation wasn’t right. He scratched it gently, and a layer of chocolate-colored fragments appeared under his nail. He licked it, and his eyes instantly opened wide. “This lamppost is made of chocolate!”

Huang Jinchen said, “What?”

Then he very boldly broke off a part of the lamppost, stuck it into his mouth, chewed, and judged: “Yeah, milk chocolate, pretty good—hey, the lamp up there looks like a piece of candy, do you think…”

Before he could finish, Kou Tong grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the coffee shop.

“What are you trying to do? Eating a lamppost in the middle of a crowd?” Kou Tong kept his voice low, asking this strange question in a strange tone of voice.

Yao Shuo laughed coldly. He seemed to have already confirmed the fact that his two companions were a little mentally deficient.

The things inside the coffee shop weren’t very different from the last time they had come, but the deep-rooted darkness was gone. This time, Kou Tong didn’t have Lao Yao act alone. They occupied a small table by the window and sat down.

“This is very strange now.” Kou Tong glanced at the street. He lowered his voice and said to the other two, “I don’t know what actually happened outside, but reasonably speaking, a multi-person overlapping space is very fragile. Even if it doesn’t collapse, there definitely can’t be people inside it.”

Yao Shuo considered. “The first time I came, for some reason, it was like I understood that I needed to go into this coffee shop. But just now, I didn’t feel that at the door.”

“Because this isn’t your sole territory,” Huang Jinchen said, beaming. Then he turned and asked Kou Tong, “There are many people here. What does that mean?”

“I took part in inventing this machine.” Kou Tong sighed. He absent-mindedly picked up a cup and drank, not noticing that it contained the coffee he had not long ago judged as “flavored like medicine dregs.” “So I understand that, reasonably speaking, this can’t happen. Some malfunction I haven’t encountered before must have happened in the Projector. The technicians are likely to have a very hard time doing rush repairs.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Huang Jinchen wasn’t smiling anymore.

Yao Shuo frowned. For a moment, they all thought that he was going to say something unpleasant, but he only stretched his legs, leaning back relaxed in his chair. He picked up his drink and slowly drank, turning his head to look out the window.

He seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief.

Kou Tong also became silent, joining him in looking outside. Suddenly, his phone rang. The three of them froze simultaneously. Huang Jinchen asked, “Didn’t you just confirm that all the communicators had gone out of commission?”

Kou Tong fished around for ages before finally turning up his phone. When he took it out, he took one look at the incoming caller display and seemed to have been struck by lightning.

“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Huang Jinchen asked. “Who is it?”

“My…my mom?” There was actually a faint tremor in Kou Tong’s voice.

Huang Jinchen blinked. “What’s wrong with that?”

Kou Tong suddenly raised his head. “My mom…passed away fifteen years ago.”

…Shit! He really had seen a ghost!

15

SEVEN PEOPLE (2)

KOU TONG believed that the moment his fingers pressed the key, he meant to pick up. But somehow he pressed the key to hang up.

He kept his head down, his expression seeming unusually grave. At any rate, Huang Jinchen had never seen him so grave. It was as though he was facing not a phone but the end of the world.

The three men’s gazes paused on the slider phone that seemed to have turned just now into the TV from The Ring. Half a minute later, it rang again. The words “Call from Mom” once again cheerfully popped up.

This time, Kou Tong carefully distinguished left from right and picked up. “Hello.”

A woman’s voice came from the phone, a very soft voice. There were some women whose voices could only tell you their gender but were hard-pressed to inspire others with any fine fantasies. But there were other women who could dazzle people the moment they opened their mouths. The woman on the phone was like this.

Kou Tong’s phone was on speaker. He put it on the table. The woman gently said, “Why did you hang up on me?”

The glib Kou Tong, who could pull a truck full of nonsense, was at this moment dumb as a wooden chicken, utterly speechless, like a child who had been sneaking out of class and was suddenly called to the podium by the teacher. He couldn’t say a word.

Not getting an answer, the woman asked, a little doubtfully, “Hello? Tongtong, can you hear me?”

Huang Jinchen was horrified by “Tongtong” and stamped on Kou Tong’s foot under the table.

Kou Tong said, “Ow! Huh? Oh…I’m driving, can I call you back later?”

He pronounced the lie unblushingly, as though he had it at his fingertips. He was obviously a practiced hand. Then he stamped at the place where Huang Jinchen’s foot was under the table. The latter dodged very nimbly. Since the floor of the coffee shop wasn’t made of gelatin, Kou Tong once again grimaced in pain.

The woman was a little disappointed. “Oh…then be careful. I just wanted to ask whether you’re coming home for dinner this weekend?”

“I’m not…” When the words reached Kou Tong’s lips, he suddenly stopped, frowned for a while, the said, “All right, I’ll be home tonight. And…can I bring two friends with me?”

“Sure, that’s great! It’ll be lively with more people. I’ll make a few extra dishes!”

Huang Jinchen noticed that Kou Tong seemed to be avoiding the places where he ought to be calling her “mom.” When he hung up the phone, Yao Shuo looked at him, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

Huang Jinchen sincerely said, “Don’t rush, don’t be scared. When your hands stop shaking, we can take our time talking about it.”

“I think I know approximately what’s happening now.” Kou Tong decided to follow along with Lao Yao, going the serious route, firmly ignoring Huang Jinchen. “In the initial stages of this Projector’s design, I had a tentative plan to develop a program with a treatment function—you said that you looked into it, so you should know that whether a person is screened off or the main conscious subject of the projection space, they don’t play a role in the projection space. In other words, there are other living beings in the space, but there aren’t people who interact with outsiders like us—in my planned program, the system’s automatic generation could set a character for an outsider using the projection system and let the conscious subject live inside.”

“That magical?” Huang Jinchen sighed in admiration. “So if you wanted a guy, you could have a guy, and if you wanted a girl, you could get a girl!”

Kou Tong shook his head. “It was only a tentative plan. Human psychology is too complicated. Even if you know where a person’s problem is, you still need to set a course of treatment according to their specific circumstances, and much of the time relevant drugs are also needed. At present, this tentative plan can’t especially be realized. The only part I could resolve with the program was the system randomly assigning the conscious subject a character. I did that, and it was an incomplete program. For some reason, it suddenly activated just now.”

“So now you have a mom,” Huang Jinchen summarized.

In that moment, Kou Tong’s expression went blank. After a long while, he quietly said, “When I planned it, I never thought there would come a day when it would operate, so the ethical problems involved…”

But no one paid attention to him. Clearly the others didn’t especially want to discuss societal and ethical problems. Huang Jinchen had already eagerly called a server over, as though going to see Kou Tong’s ghostly mother was a very stirring great adventure.

Yao Shuo, meanwhile, got out his own phone and stared at it blankly for a while. When Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen were standing and ready to leave, he finally came around and stood up as well in agitation.

Huang Jinchen asked, “Chief Kou, do you know how to get home?”

“By the back door,” Kou Tong said pithily—as though the coffee shop’s back door had turned into an Anywhere Door that could take you anywhere from the Ice Age to Messier 78.

This time, the back door didn’t open onto the mountain susceptible to natural disaster. Instead, there was a not very wide alley, perhaps a little wider than the average alley, but still not reaching the level of a “street.” There were old-fashioned, mottled apartment blocks on both sides with iron sheets stuck on the doors, much of the writing on them already indistinct. You could just make out information like “So-and-so Family Floor.”

This didn’t form a neighborhood, and it certainly didn’t amount to real estate. There were a few small stands in the alley—they must have been illegal. There were also many rooms rented on the ground floor that had been turned into little shops. There were bicycles and pedestrians coming and going, the ringing of bells rising and falling, seeming very lively.

This was over a decade ago… This was the thought that came to the three men simultaneously as they stood at the mouth of the alley. Six or seven years earlier, according to city planning, these unruly residential areas that didn’t form neighborhood had nearly disappeared.

Evidently, based on Dr. Kou’s face with its expression like a coffin and the complicated look in his eyes, Huang Jinchen judged that this must be his way home…or rather, his former way home.

The old hedgehog Yao Shuo suddenly calmed down. He followed the two of them somewhat absent-mindedly.

Whether because it had been too long or because Dr. Kou’s memory wasn’t very good, the tangled alleys seemed to pose a bit of an obstacle. Often, walking and walking, he would think that something was wrong, then retreat and turn down another path.

Huang Jinchen bought a roast lamb skewer by the road and ate as he walked. He watched Yao Shuo take his phone out and at last get up the courage to dial a number. Then, probably not waiting for it to connect, he hung up.

Huang Jinchen’s glimpse was very good. He saw that the person he had dialed was “Lianqing.”

Dou Lianqing—Yao Shuo’s wife.

Huang Jinchen ate, getting his mouth covered in grease, and silently came to a conclusion. Yao Shuo was scared of seeing his rabbit-like wife.

At last, after Dr. Kou had taken them down countless paths, the three of them stopped outside an old apartment block, climbed the very poorly lit, very dim stairs to the third floor, and reached a door with a big upside down “fortune” character stuck onto it.

This apartment’s security door was of the very, very ancient style. You could see the metal-barred door inside with a not very well-matched Spring Festival couplet pasted on either side. Half of the horizontal scroll over the door had fallen off.

Kou Tong stood at the door for a long time, then lightly reached out a hand. His fingers touched the outdated Spring Festival couplet. One touch, and he drew back.

On the wall next to the Spring Festival couplet, a kid rather lacking in public spirit had written “Kou Tong’s House.” The “Kou” character was even written incorrectly, missing a horizontal stroke; it was all crooked.

Kou Tong lowered his head slightly. For a moment, Huang Jinchen, standing on the stairs, thought that a trace of wetness flashed in his long, narrow eyes.

But it was only a moment. Then it vanished without a trace.

The sound-operated light was very dim. Under this light, the man’s profile looked softer and more delicate than usual. It seemed to run counter to those acts of his that violated law and discipline. Kou Tong’s brows seemed unusually neat for a man, as if they had been plucked. They were also very long, their tips covered a little by his hair, with a lingering, unspeakably romantic air.

For a moment, Huang Jinchen felt his heart throb. Then, deferring to his original intentions, he thought, This guy really is a looker. Looking at him makes your heart itch.

At last, Kou Tong took a deep breath and reached out a hand to twist open the unlocked security door. Before he could knock, the door opened from inside. A woman still carrying a spatula in her hand came out to greet them with an expression almost of happy surprise on her face. “Tongtong, you’re back! Hurry, come in, I was just cooking and heard the door.”

This woman looked very young—because she had been dead for fifteen years in the real space, her time seemed to be frozen back then. She looked like Kou Tong’s older sister. Kou Tong’s appearance took after hers quite a lot.

Kou Tong pretended to search for his slippers, lowering his head, not daring to look at her. He only lightly said, “…Don’t call me that in front of people.”

He still couldn’t call her “mom.”

Kou Tong’s mom warmly welcomed Yao Shuo and Huang Jinchen, gave Kou Tong an understanding look, and accordingly said, “No problem. Expert Kou, please take your seat. We’re eating soon.”

Then, extremely vigorously wielding the spatula, she returned to the kitchen. After a moment, she stuck her head back out. “Expert Kou, take your friends to sit in the living room. Oh, don’t forget to wash your hands before eating!”

Huang Jinchen said, “Pfft…”

Kou Tong pressed down on his temples, for once feeling a little awkward.

The three of them went into the living room. Suddenly, Kou Tong stood still, raising his head to look at a photo frame hanging on the wall. In it was a photo of a somewhat younger Mother Kou and a little boy around two or three years old. Judging by the facial characteristics, the little boy must have been Kou Tong as a child. Mother and son were very harmonious, but…the composition of the photo was very strange.

At a glance, it made you think that something was missing.

Kou Tong narrowed his eyes. “Strange.”

“What is it?”

“This photo used to be a full family portrait.” Kou Tong drew a finger over the unnatural blank space to the little boy’s right. “This used to be my…father.”

Huang Jinchen thought, Huh? “Mom” and “father”—these two forms of address don’t match.

Yao Shuo, who had been taking a spiritual journey, suddenly turned his head. In a low voice, he asked Kou Tong, “Could it be that your father simply doesn’t exist in this space?”

“That’s possible.” Kou Tong paused. “My programming installations were incomplete. Reasonably speaking, this program doesn’t have a unified standard—what identity it ought to give to the conscious subject and what surrounding people he has contact with are probably generated randomly. It’s very likely that someone who used to exist wouldn’t exist, or a person who didn’t exist may appear.”

Yao Shuo took his phone out again. Huang Jinchen at last couldn’t resist saying, “If you want to call your wife, then call. You won’t lose face. It’s annoying watching you shilly-shally. Aren’t you finished?”

Just as he finished speaking, Kou Tong’s mom came out of the kitchen carrying two dishes. “Call? You can use our phone to call. It’s a fixed rate, anyway, it’s already going to be paid.”

Huang Jinchen quickly stepped forward and fawningly said, “Big sister, let me help you.”

Kou Tong’s expression twisted. “What did you call her?”

Huang Jinchen flattered: “Of course! Big sister, you look so young and pretty that I can’t call you anything else. It would be against my convictions!”

Bursting with joy, Kou Tong’s mom asked, “Xiao Huang, do you like bamboo shoots?”

“Bamboo shoots with fried bacon,” Huang Jinchen shamelessly ordered.

Kou Tong’s mom clapped her hands. “There’s some bacon in the fridge. Wait, I’ll go fry some up for you!”

Huang Jinchen laughed. From Kou Tong’s point of view, he seemed to have erupted into lechery.

Yao Shuo looked from one to the next and at last called Dou Lianqing. He nearly held his breath, seeming to be planning what to say to her. But from the phone came a cold mechanical voice: “The number you have dialed is not in service…”

Yao Shuo’s expression suddenly became very complicated. In an instant, all the blood drained from his face, but a trace of relaxation irresistibly appeared.

Then he thought of something and called another number. It was once again not in service.

Yao Shuo was blank for a long moment. He swayingly walked up to the couch and plopped down as though letting all the breath out of his body. Then, with great struggle, he put on a calm and objective expression. “My wife and son’s numbers aren’t in service. Does that mean…that they also don’t exist in this space?” he asked Kou Tong.

16

SEVEN PEOPLE (3)

AN OFF-ROAD CAR drove into the ST Base. A hand reached out of the driver’s cabin and flashed a special ID. They were immediately allowed in. When the car stopped, some uniformed people got out.

The driver was a man with deeply-carved features. Then a dazzlingly beautiful man got out of the passenger’s seat. After him came a little four-eyes who seemed to be wrapped up in wires; in a flurry, he rescued himself from the clinging wires. Another tall and skinny man with a cigarette in his mouth stood behind him waiting, looking impatient.

The captain of the RZ Unit, the “imperial diplomat” Su Qing, the technician Chang Dou, and the field agent Fang Xiu… As far as General Zhong was concerned, this group had come to make trouble and no mistake. Very good, excellent.

“Fuck, what are they doing here? Is the RZ Unit here to get in on the fun again?” When General Zhong heard the news, he became even more irascible. His expression looked like someone had stepped on his foot. Then he had to come out to meet them, out of habit putting on an honest and tolerant smile. “What wind has blown you all here?”

“We hear Yao Shuo has been brought to the base?” Su Qing’s gaze swept around in a circle. Beaming, he said, “I’m sorry, we’re acting under orders to investigate the business of the name list. We’d like everyone to understand and cooperate. What do you say, General Zhong?”

General Zhong was very irritated. He inwardly cursed, This damned smiling tiger. But he couldn’t curse aloud. He could only pretend to be honest and tolerant in his misery, saying, “Of course—though Yao Shuo came to the base for an assessment, and we’ve had a bit of problem with the instrument. They…may not come out for a while.”

Su Qing’s expression went blank. He asked, “‘They’ means…Kou Tong?”

General Zhong nodded bitterly. Su Qing exchanged a look with Captain Hu, seeing his own thoughts reflected in the other’s eyes—That…really did sound like a stunt Kou Tong could pull.

Technician Chang pushed up his glasses and very sincerely said, “Well…if you need help with the technical aspect, I can…”

“You can what?” a cold voice came from behind General Zhong. Chang Dou gave a start, like a little rabbit startled by cold water, automatically shrinking back. The goateed Wu Xiangxiang, in a pose as fashionable as his alluring name[7], appeared—moving his arms and legs together, walking as stiffly as if his knees couldn’t bend. Then he gave Chang Dou a critical look, waved a hand, and asserted, “We have no need for your help. I can see that you don’t belong to the portion of people with the highest IQ.”

Everyone looked at him as though beholding a paragon of wisdom.

Wu Xiangxiang calmly pushed up his glasses and pronounced his reasoning: “Because you don’t have a beard.”

“…” General Zhong was silent for the three seconds of peculiar atmosphere during which no one spoke. Then he turned his head and asked, “What is it?”

“We’ve discovered something.” Wu Xiangxiang pushed up his glasses again. His goatee, which symbolized supreme intelligence, undulated gently in the wind. “During the time the server was disturbed, Dr. Kou and the others were taken to an unknown program. Neither the Projector’s instruction manual nor the designs mention this program.”

“So…” said General Zhong.

“So you mean that this unknown program was likely made extemporaneously by Dr. Kou himself,” Chang Dou got in first to say. Then he stroked his clean-shaven chin, not knowing what he wanted to prove.

“Yes.” Wu Xiangxiang glanced at Chang Dou and nodded. “We need some time to analyze what this program actually is.”

Then, not waiting for the others respond, Wu Xiangxiang continued to say to Chang Dou, “You don’t need to be anxious to show off. This only proves that you’re a little cleverer than these others—seeing that none of them have beards.”

Then he nodded to General Zhong, turned around, and floated off.

Chang Dou hesitated. An indignant look appeared on his always somewhat foolish-looking face. He turned his head and asked the RZ Unit’s Captain Hu for permission with a murderous look. Captain Hu paused, then nodded. “All right. It’s an emergency, and we do in fact have some pressing questions to ask Yao Shuo. We can temporarily transfer you.—General Zhong, it’s no problem if Technician Chang goes to help out?”

General Zhong smiled painfully.

Chang Dou turned his head again and looked at Fang Xiu with a slightly less murderous look. Fang Xiu could only sigh and, as if encouraging a working dog, pat Chang Dou on his bird’s nest-like head. Chang Dou’s batteries immediately filled up, and he charged like an angry bird—towards that jeering lean pig.

The three people trapped in the unknown program passed the evening in peace. This space was like a roundworm living in the heart—it had what you wanted and didn’t have what you didn’t want…even if it was only subconsciously, just a passing thought.

The chattering Kou Tong seemed to have eaten something funny. From having dinner to helping clear the table, he didn’t say a word, becoming a mouthless gourd. Yao Shuo also had something weighing on his mind. He had been through many years of ups and downs. His emotions didn’t really show on his face. When he wasn’t talking, his features only showed sadness and happiness within a narrow range, his mind wandering off somewhere unknown.

Only Huang Jinchen kept up a constant chatter with Kou Tong’s doomed beauty of a mother, fully enjoying himself.

Only when it was very late did Kou Tong suddenly ask, “…No one’s touched the unfinished things in my study, right?”

Kou Tong’s mom was just cutting up fruit. Without looking up, she said, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing nice in your lousy study, one weird strongbox after another… I don’t even let the hourly cleaning lady touch your study when she comes.”

Kou Tong gave a “yeah” and quietly said, “Then I’ll go have a look.”

He had already noticed how she had jokingly called him “Expert Kou.” This was likely a hint at the identity this space had assigned to him. The system hadn’t given him any other prompts. This showed that in this space, he likely lived here. According to his habits, it wasn’t very likely that he would work in a single place for many years; some rather important documents would probably be in his study.

And those concerning the Projector’s special program were likely to be among them.

Kou Tong closed the study door like a thief. First he looked everything over and quickly came to a conclusion: this wasn’t any room in the apartment he had lived in as a child; it was the study in the apartment he lived in now.

He opened the lowest cabinet of a big bookcase and took a small strongbox out of it.

Just then, the door behind him opened. Kou Tong’s fingers paused. He turned and saw Huang Jinchen boldly walk in.

He had an apple in his mouth and was carrying another peeled one that he gave to Kou Tong. Then he pulled over the chair in front of the desk and plopped down in it. He crossed one leg over the other and loftily looked the room over.

“Your mom took Yao Shuo to the guest room. I’m staying with you,” Huang Jinchen voluntarily reported. “Your mom’s cooking is delicious.”

Fiddling with the strongbox, Kou Tong laughed lightly with his head down and said nothing. He quickly entered a very long code and opened the strongbox. He took a little “boiler” the size of a desk lamp from it.

“What’s this?” Huang Jinchen asked, craning his neck.

“My template for the first generation Projector,” Kou Tong said. “It may not be much use.”

As he said this, he hooked up the power supply and pressed a switch on the boiler. Huang Jinchen hopped up. “Hey, hey, hey! It’s smoking, it’s smoking!”

Kou Tong said, “Help me get the power supply out, hurry!”

Huang Jinchen deftly pulled out the power supply. The little boiler puffed. There was popping and crackling inside it, then a sharp sound. It went silent.

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Kou Tong rubbed his forehead. “It really isn’t much use.”

Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist stroking his hair. In a very good mood, he thought, It really does feel good. It’s soft.

Kou Tong crouched on the ground, having no attention to spare to make any comment about his vulgar gesture, because he was carefully opening the little boiler’s cover, planning to investigate what malfunction had happened inside it. Then he found that there were two big-headed, narrow-bodied mushrooms growing in the cracks of the instrument’s complex wiring and microchips. Half of the mushrooms’ umbrellas had been blackened, looking very coquettish…

Huang Jinchen went blank for a long moment. Then he rocked back and forth with laughter.

Kou Tong sat on the ground, shook his head, and also laughed.

When Huang Jinchen had laughed enough, he slowly pulled out a box of cigarettes, put one in his mouth, and lit it. Through the thin smoke, he sized up Kou Tong, sitting on the floor. Then, like an understanding older brother, he softly asked, “Better now? You seem to have been in low spirits for a while, as if you’d turned into a different person.”

Kou Tong didn’t even look up. “Really?”

Huang Jinchen laughed quietly. “Didn’t get on with your beautiful mother? Or did you feel awkward when you saw a mother hardly older than you?”

Kou Tong was silent for a while. He deftly pulled the mushrooms out, yanked out the microchips and a pair of wires from inside, inspected them for a while, and found that they really had burned out. He shook his head. “No.”

Huang Jinchen, sitting in the swivel chair, leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, tilting his head to look at him. “Really?”

Kou Tong glanced at him and didn’t answer.

Huang Jinchen looked and looked, and suddenly wanted to do something demeaning, for example…kiss Kou Tong’s face, tease him, something like that, all the better to make him immediately jump up off the ground, wipe his face and curse, fly into a rage…

He slowly drew close, but before he could put this thought into practice, in a flash, Kou Tong seemed to remember something. He got up and stood on tiptoe to feel around on top of the bookcase. He found a small projection and pressed on it. The bookcase suddenly opened into two sides at an invisible seam, revealing a safe set into the wall.

Huang Jinchen had no time for regrets. He stared dumbfounded, not noticing as cigarette ash fell to the ground. “Kou…Kou Tongtong-tongxue, please tell me, which one of us is the real spy?”

17

BLAB

THEN, like a shrunken 007, Kou Tongtong-tongxue gave a Huang Jinchen a boundlessly flashy smile of the model specially used to pick up girls, then began to mess around busily with the magical safe.

There was a clink, and a little door about ten centimeters large popped out from a corner. Compared to the whole incomparably huge secret wall worthy of an imperial household, it was as if you had spent ages picking the lock of a castle and finally opened up a dog kennel.

Huang Jinchen raised his head and looked up at the study’s somewhat elderly ceiling, feeling that his emotions had been deeply wasted.

Kou Tong pulled out a somewhat aged-looking file pouch. The things inside were disorderly, very uneven. Huang Jinchen looked in past his shoulder and found that the first things to fall out were a few yellowed old photographs. Before he could get a clear look at the people in the photographs, they were put away at light speed by Kou Tong. Then there was a university admission notice and some yellowed letters with faintly visible bloodstains…

The strangest thing of all was a Smurfs poster torn into four pieces!

Kou Tong found that Huang Jinchen’s face was twisting this way and that like a compass needle in an indeterminate magnetic field, so he explained a little awkwardly, “Everyone has had a period of passion, don’t you think so?”

Huang Jinchen paused, then nodded silently, feeling that Dr. Kou’s passionate point was very unique. Though given that his strongbox could turn into a mushroom farm, this was actually nothing.

Huang Jinchen looked sidelong at him, thinking, It really is nothing.

You always had to be a little more tolerant towards good-looking young men. With someone of Kou Tong’s S-Class, never mind a Smurfs poster locked up in a safe, even if he had been wearing Ugg boots like a Smurf’s big feet and carrying a “Fight Gargamel” banner while streaking, you could still find a way to forgive him.

…It must be said that Master Huang, who walked an unusual road, hadn’t noticed that he possessed the particular quality of every die-hard fan—selective tolerance.

When he had flipped through to the end, Kou Tong at last found a small stack of documents—rather than saying they were documents, it would be better to say that they were a middle school student’s coordinate geometry scratch work, all written by hand, as messy as could be, with all kinds of equations normal humans didn’t understand spread out all over, labeled with annotations filled with all kinds of “alien” nouns.

“What’s this?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“My notes from when I temporarily had the idea of making this program.” Kou Tong sat on the ground, flipping through them page by page. He grabbed a pen out of a little drawer under the desk and began to write and draw, looking very much like the real thing.

“Are you a tech nerd, too?” Huang Jinchen asked, drawing close.

“Half a technician, not especially a nerd,” Dr. Kou said.

“I see.” Huang Jinchen, who had left school in his teens to specialize in the business of murder, made a fairly accurate determination about himself—It turns out I’m half illiterate, he thought.

Kou Tong read and read and began to frown. The materials weren’t very complete, only the products of a fit of excitement. They hadn’t been put in order at all, and there were gaps in many places. Even if he put it all in order, he still didn’t know what program had gone wrong because of the disruption to the server resulting in diverting them here. As for how to get back, he was even more at a fundamental loss.

Huang Jinchen read along with him for a while, putting on a serious look. He found that he still didn’t understand and stopped pretending to be a person of culture. He got out his phone and started to play around, amusing himself.

His phone was special. There was no name on it, only numbers and simple letters. Opening the call log, there was a string of serial numbers, like his previous name—11235. It had a particularly cold and discomforting sense of mystery.

In his boredom, he somehow turned on the sound, and out of the knockoff phone drifted the sound of “Love Sale.” After a couple dozen years of history, this song could still make a person’s butt clench—truly an unvisited altar.

Kou Tong was also shaken. He took time out of his busy schedule to glance at him and saw him scrolling through his call log. Dr. Kou saw at a glance that there were people whose code names were in square brackets, so he asked, “What do the brackets mean?”

“They’re dead,” Huang Jinchen said without looking up. “Before there also used to be parentheses, showing the ones that were going to be dead soon, though now they’ve all been squared off.”

Kou Tong was silent for a while, then asked, “Which one am I?”

“10086[8],” Huang Jinchen said.

Kou Tong: “…”

Huang Jinchen explained: “Won’t fight back when hit, won’t talk back when cursed; you can do business with it, you can check your balance, and sometimes it acts cute. You can fool around together when nothing’s going on.”

“…” Kou Tong blinked. “I think your appraisal of me is pretty high.”

Huang Jinchen raised his head and grinned. “Must be.”

Kou Tong kept his head buried in the complicated materials and deductions, feeling a little irascible—for example, he wanted to pick up a hammer and smash a certain person’s reflectively white front teeth.

Since entering this unknown space, he had started having a bit of a hard time controlling his own emotions. There were people whose emotions naturally had few fluctuations, people with gentle dispositions who wouldn’t easily become overjoyed or deeply grieved. There were others who had to rely on conscious control and professional accomplishments to remain calm.

Unfortunately, Kou Tong was the latter.

For a psychologist, he sometimes seemed to be too erratic. A person who was too erratic and lively was generally unlikely to have a calm and tepid nature. He had put in a lot of effort and could fairly effectively keep his emotional fluctuations within the scope of professional requirements, but only inside the threshold of endurance. Here, he couldn’t quite hold himself back.

The projection space made it very easy for people to lose control. He had been deprived of his principal privileges, amounting to getting caught up in the space. He was also human; he breathed, he felt the whole gamut of human emotions. It was hard for him to be as aloof as the elders already buried in the earth and hanging on the wall.

So he held his tongue, but his brow furrowed tighter and tighter. This made it look as though Kou Tong’s always smiling face belonged to a different person. These were evidently the same features, but because of a bit of uncontrollable worry and irritation, they looked very grave.

Suddenly, a finger tapped his forehead at extreme speed. Kou Tong gave a start and automatically leaned back. He found that Huang Jinchen was looking at him.

“White button-down.” Huang Jinchen pointed at his clothes. “Long pants. If you add in frowning, it makes you look especially ascetic.”

Kou Tong looked at him blankly.

“Bad mood, huh?” Huang Jinchen was understanding. With unlimited earnestness, he advised, “Well, all men sometimes get fired up. If you shoot off, you’ll feel better.”

Kou Tong’s eyes met his for three seconds. Then he suddenly stood up, rolled up the documents, picked them up, and dropped them back in the safe. He shut the bookcase with a creak, picked up the jacket hanging over the back of his chair, and strode out.

Huang Jinchen asked, “Where are you going?”

Kou Tong said without looking up, “I think that what you said has merit.”

When he opened the door, he ran into his mom, holding fruit and milk and planning to knock on the door. Kou Tong’s mom said sweetly, “Tongtong, you should drink some milk.”

Huang Jinchen said, “Pfft—”

Kou Tong was silent for a moment. “Though the common saying goes that you can still have a growth spurt at twenty-three, I’ve passed the developmental period.”

Kou Tong’s mom said, “It’s to help you sleep!”

Kou Tong said, “It’s not like I have to go to school for makeup classes tomorrow.”

Kou Tong’s mom didn’t speak. She stood there with her limpid eyes, holding the tray, blocking the way, using her expression to denounce her unfilial son.

Kou Tong looked into her eyes for three seconds, then at last picked up the cup and drank it dry in one gulp. He draped his jacket over himself. “I have something to do. I’m going out. I won’t be back tonight.”

“Tut.” Kou Tong’s mom shook her head. “Children have their own lives to live when they grow up.”

Then she adjusted the aim of her barrage to Huang Jinchen, who was furtively watching the fun. She genially said, “Will you have milk, Xiao Huang? Should I add a spoonful of chocolate powder? What about honey?”

Amid evening pleasure-seeking, people’s moral outlooks seem to decline a great deal. After leaving home, Kou Tong familiarly went to a rather out of the way bar. This place included the overlap of his consciousness. Kou Tong knew that the system would lead him to certain places according to his thoughts.

Right now, he was in a corner with his back to the light, sitting across from a beautiful-looking, blind drunk youth, putting on a cultured tone.

“I’m in pain. Do you know that feeling? Do you know that feeling? The whole world…the whole fucking world is having fun, and it’s like I only have myself.” At this point, the youth stopped for a while. The alcohol must have made his brain short circuit a little. He temporarily forgot how to speak. Then he asked, “Do you get it?”

Kou Tong silently covered the back of the youth’s hand with his hand. He was wearing his UV-protection glasses. The lamplight fell on the lenses, a thin layer of flashing light glancing off, making his half-covered eyes look extremely gentle. When he looked at someone else like this, he seemed unusually affectionate, as though the person he was looking at was someone he had loved for many lifetimes.

But the unusually “affectionate” Dr. Kou was impatiently thinking, The hell I understand, I just want to hurry up and get you in bed.

The youth put his hands over his eyes, tilted his head up at a forty-five degree angle to look at the wall light, and said, “Don’t look at me like that. If I get addicted, I won’t be able to give it up.”

Kou Tong averted his gaze and laughed quietly. He removed the glass in front of the youth and softly said, “Don’t drink too much. It’ll hurt your stomach.”

These words seem to turn on a tap. The youth instantly collapsed.

Kou Tong stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned over and said into his ear, “You’re in a bad mood. You should hurry home.—I’m sorry, miss, could you get him a cup of hot milk?”

His patience was truly limited today. He had decided to switch to someone else.

Just then, the youth suddenly put his arms around his waist. “Don’t go!”

Kou Tong thought, Huh?

The youth boldly raised his head and looked at him. As though making a heroic sacrifice, he indistinctly said, “Don’t go. I need your warmth today. You…”

Kou Tong didn’t say a word in protest. He reached out to help him up and went out, thinking, Why didn’t you say so sooner? I rather need you to cool down.

Just then, his phone began to vibrate wildly in his pocket. Kou Tong took a look and saw that it was Huang Jinchen. He refused the call. After a while, a text message arrived. Huang Jinchen, in an insolent tone: “Calling 10086 personal service!”

Kou Tong simply deleted it, turned off the phone, removed the battery, and swaggered out to rent a room with his prey.

Huang Jinchen occupied Kou Tong’s bedroom on his own. He stared at the phone for a while, waiting. He called back and heard the technical voice said: “The number you have dialed is not available…”

“Crap,” Huang Jinchen said. Then he slapped himself in the face. “That’s what you get for opening your big mouth!”

Then he got dressed, got up, opened the window of Kou Tong’s bedroom, looked outside, and nimbly jumped out, not caring how many floors up he was.

18

CRISIS

IT WAS EASY to find Kou Tong. Huang Jinchen tore a photo off the wall of Kou Tong’s bedroom, put it in his wallet, went to a nearby bustling area with bars and other places to go cruising, then asked everyone in turn.

Their circumstances were very complicated now. Huang Jinchen was certain that though Kou Tong had gone out to relieve his worries, he still wouldn’t dare to go far.

To make this process easier, he also adjusted his expression while looking at the screen of his phone, making himself look as pained and hard-pressed as possible. He complained tearfully to everyone he met, “My fellow and I had a fight today, and to get back at me, he ran out in a fit of pique to get a bit of this and that, I’m very miserable now, very disturbed… Don’t pay attention to how clever he looks, he’s actually not quite right in the head, if he got kidnapped and sold, he’d even help them count the money! What will happen if he gets taken advantage of? Ahhh, I’m so worried.”

He went through three streets. Practically everyone knew that there was such an “overaged feeble-minded child” who had gone missing, and his so-and-so not only wasn’t shunning him, he was totally infatuated, persistently looking for him, going around with a photograph asking everywhere.

It must be that good things come to those who work hard…or perhaps that the lowly are unmatched?

By coincidence, a bartender remembered this person and gave Huang Jinchen a very hesitant glance, because from what he had seen, this fellow was not only not especially feeble-minded, he was very skilled in seduction. At a glance, he had picked out the best-looking person in the bar and acted decisively, succeeded smoothly and relentlessly, then left.

Huang Jinchen sighed gloomily. “It’s all the fault of TV dramas. But it’s one thing for others to imitate them—how can he also imitate them?”

The bartender saw the light somewhat.

Huang Jinchen wiped the corners of his eyes, where there were no tears. He lowered his head, and very melancholically said, “What do I do? His brain isn’t very good, and he’s attractive. There will definitely be people bullying him and taking advantage of him!”

The bartender expressed deep sympathy.

Then Huang Jinchen, on the verge of tears, looked up. “Can you tell me which places nearby you can rent rooms at?”

Ten minutes later, carrying a small piece of paper and a detailed map, Huang Jinchen walked out in self-satisfaction. Another fifteen minutes after that, he found the location of his target.

Kou Tong was single, well-off, and attractive. He was very relaxing and pleasant to be around. Simply put, he was a very charming adult man. Adding in his unconventional loafer’s habits, you could practically predict that this person’s private life wasn’t especially restrained. Now moreover it seemed that he was an omnivore, making no distinction between men and women.

Huang Jinchen had always thought that there were some people of the sort you couldn’t resist taking a second look at when you passed them in the crowd, but the vast majority of them, if you were to compare them to things, were like jewel-bedecked ornaments, like gold chains the width of a thumb and diamond rings the size of a pigeon’s egg.

They were eye-catching. Anyone would be able to see their value. But when you had worn them long enough, they would become boring.

But some people were very concealed, like a type of low-key, understated expensive watch. Even if you wore it regularly, it would still be mostly covered by your sleeve and only occasionally glimpsed by those with a mind to see who could tell good from bad; only then could their restrained luxury be understood.

Regardless of the rest, being with a person like this would first of all make you feel that you had excellent taste.

Kou Tong was just such a person.

But because Master Huang was very narcissistic, he took for granted that not just anyone would have his taste and vision, would understand how to appreciate an elegant work of art. So many mediocre people—even if they met the highest quality product the mortal world had to offer, it would be like a cow chewing peonies—pure waste.

Given this understanding, at the thought that right now Kou Tong was perhaps very indiscriminately having a one-night stand in some little hotel with a person picked up from who knew where, the self-professed subway entertainer and folk artist Huang Jinchen felt awful.

He simply wished to grow wings and fly up to block any conduct that obstructed his appreciation of beauty.

When Huang Jinchen found Kou Tong, Kou Tong was wearing practically nothing but a wide-open long-sleeved shirt. Through the gap in the curtains, his slim but powerful-looking waist was visible, as well as his half-revealed legs, looking even more slender and straight. From the standpoint of flirtation and provocation, he looked perfectly methodical, extremely sexy.

The appearance of the youth under him couldn’t be seen, but his yells made a listener break out in gooseflesh. Huang Jinchen frowned, feeling that he could be said to have come in time. This scene truly was too sickening. To describe Master Huang’s feelings, it was like a lover of calligraphy seeing an authentic Wang Xizhi[9] put on a bench and sat on.

…Though it seemed that this authentic work was doing it of his own free will, Huang Jinchen still felt that this was a real fucking eyesore.

So he made a very dramatic entrance. Like a trapeze artist, clinging to the wall, he broke the window of Kou Tong’s third-floor hotel room with a kick, then simply raised the curtains and went in, his movements and conduct extremely aggressive and obvious. Breathing from the diaphragm, he yelled, “Caught in the act!”

The follow-up to this doesn’t bear speaking of, because in doing this thing, Master Huang…truly was too despicable.

At any rate, twenty minutes later, the youth was gone. Kou Tong came out of the bathroom dripping cold water, casually wrapped in a bathrobe, the smile as universally appealing as cash gone from his face. He was giving off an air of “I’m in a very bad mood,” fiercely eviscerating Huang Jinchen with a gaze that looked as if he was beholding a class enemy.

He plopped down into a chair, crossed one leg over the other, lit a cigarette that may have been pre- or post-coital, then tersely said, “Say whatever you have to say!”

Huang Jinchen looked him over. After a while, he leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers together and propped his chin on them, and very solemnly said, “Kou Tong, I want to say something to you. No matter what happens, a person ought to have self-respect. A person with self-respect, whether he’s feeling aimless or worried, can’t be knocked down. With enough time, everything will pass. I think you must see the sense in that.”

Kou Tong stared at him dumbfounded, even forgetting to put his cigarette in his mouth. He seemed hardly to dare believe that proper speech like this could come out Huang Jinchen’s mouth!

Huang Jinchen smiled. In the dim, suggestive lighting, his features seemed deeper than usual. “A person’s life is very long—here, give me one, too—and sometimes there’s stress. For example, when you might not see the light of day tomorrow. When you go to sleep every night, you hear the slightest sound of a door outside and feel nervous and immediately start awake, clutching the gun under your pillow, as if you can’t live without it.

“You change places every day so no one will find you.” Huang Jinchen breathed out a mouthful of smoke. His whole face was hidden behind the smoke, and his somewhat cold-looking eyes had warmed considerably. He softly said, “Actually, in a game, each person can’t only be a killer. There’s no one who can avoid getting involved forever and remain in control of the whole plot. When killing others, you have to prepare to be killed by others. It’s a painful way to live.”

Through the smoke, Kou Tong looked carefully at his expression. According to his professional expertise, he judged that Huang Jinchen was speaking nine parts falsehood and one part truth. So he didn’t respond, only sat there waiting to see how he would go on.

Huang Jinchen continued deeply: “But I think that if a person has to spend his whole life that way, that’s too miserable, isn’t it?”

Kou Tong nodded cooperatively.

Taking advantage of the opening, Huang Jinchen said, “So in a person’s life, he has to live among beauty. There are many things that can be kept back in the endless passage of time, clung to and appreciated, for example, a piece of music, a landscape, a painting, or…”

He stood up, stubbed his cigarette out against the wall in total disregard for public spiritedness, and put his hands on the armrests of the chair Kou Tong was sitting on. Through the somewhat long hair half-covering Kou Tong’s forehead, he looked into his eyes and said like a noble lover, “…a person.”

Kou Tong raised his head and looked at him. He stood his ground, heartlessly thinking, Fuck, I just played this trick myself, is retribution in this life really so fast?

Huang Jinchen kept looking into his eyes. He stopped in midair for two seconds, calculating—when you had seen the flower, it would be too much of a pity not to pick it. So he continued lowering his head and very provokingly kissed Kou Tong’s slightly smoke-flavored lips.

Kou Tong didn’t dodge, feeling that the taste was all right. Because his nightlife interests had been disturbed by Huang Jinchen, he began to rapidly consider whether to take him to account. He weighed the merits and demerits for a while. When Huang Jinchen’s poorly-behaved tongue was making its way into his mouth, Kou Tong came to a decision—forget it.

He put a hand on Huang Jinchen’s firm chest and uncompromisingly pushed him away.

“Sorry, I have a principle.” The principled Dr. Kou righteously said, “The rabbit doesn’t eat next to its warren.”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Kou Tong yawned, stood up, and got under the covers with absolutely no sense of crisis. He instructed, “It’s too late tonight. I’m not going home to sleep. Leave money to fix the window before you go.”

Huang Jinchen got a stack of bills out of his pocket and put them under an ashtray without so much as looking at them. Watching Kou Tong lie on his side and get ready to go to sleep with no sense of danger, he suddenly remembered what had recently happened in this very same bed and found that he was hard!

It seemed that that aggressive yet elegant and leisurely half-naked rear view could stimulate a man’s desire for conquest to the greatest extent. Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist imagining…what would it be like if he switched positions?

“I’ve put the money on the table.” Huang Jinchen felt that his voice was a little dry, so he licked his lips. “Requesting to warm your bed!”

Kou Tong opened his eyes and glanced at him. He visually estimated the width of the bed and decisively said, “Nope, I kick in my sleep.”

“All right, go ahead and kick!” Huang Jinchen pounced shamelessly, hugging Kou Tong through the covers and rubbing against them. “Just one night. We can squeeze in.”

Kou Tong wrestled a hand out of the covers and tried to push him by the shoulder. Huang Jinchen brazenly refused to budge, holding his wrist and clinging.

Just then, Huang Jinchen’s fingers slid up. He suddenly felt a spot on Kou Tong’s forearm that was…uneven. So he casually rolled up Kou Tong’s sleeve. Kou Tong, who had been pushing him as though playing around, suddenly sat up in bed and threw Huang Jinchen off.

Huang Jinchen’s arm had been thrown against the nightstand, but he was a little dumbfounded.

Though it had only been the blink of an eye, he had still seen the criss-crossed scars on Kou Tong’s arm. No wonder he kept his shirt on even when going to bed with someone.

“You…” He spat out this word, then automatically shut up, because he had seen that Kou Tong’s face was frighteningly pale.

The two of them were awkwardly silent. Just then, the whole bed abruptly began to shake. Kou Tong nearly rolled off. Huang Jinchen scooped him up, but in the end the two of them fell to the ground together. The lightbulbs and fluorescent lamps exploded at once. The room went black. Then the whole room began to shake fiercely. There were screams all around.

“What’s going on?” Huang Jinchen asked loudly. “Is the space unstable again?”

The glass over their heads suddenly broke. Huang Jinchen bent down, drew his neck back, and held Kou Tong down with half his body, amounting to covertly protecting him. He covered his head.

There were countless crisp sounds of shattering. Many things burst. It was as if there was some invisible wave in the air, exploding things one after another.

“It’s not unstable. I’ve seen this once before.” Kou Tong held down Huang Jinchen’s shoulder. “Stand up, let’s jump out the window.”

The two of them jumped out of the window one after another. The whole block was affected by the explosions. The people covering their heads and fleeing weren’t in the minority.

“It’s a chain collapse caused by the projection’s conscious subject planning to kill themselves,” Kou Tong said quickly. He let the crowd of people like headless flies pass. “It’s one of the people who got pulled in with us.”

He raised his head, looked all around, then found a beam of light rising to the sky in the northwest. He pulled at Huang Jinchen. “Over there!”

“Chief, what are we going to do?” Junior Master Huang humbly asked for instruction.

“Prepare for a crisis intervention.”

19

INTERVENTION

HUANG JINCHEN ran two steps into the cold night breeze, then suddenly felt something was wrong. He pulled Kou Tong back, took off his jacket, which was ballooning in the wind, and put it over him. In the midst of turmoil, he loudly said, “Chief, you can’t go into battle dressed like that!”

Kou Tong said, “Shit, brother, we’re about to die, don’t be so meddlesome.”

Huang Jinchen said, “Huh?”

Kou Tong said, “It’s happened before that a patient couldn’t tell the space from reality and killed themselves inside. After the conscious subject collapses, the space immediately collapses…”

Huang Jinchen said, “Isn’t that all for the better? We’ll get out, then.”

Kou Tong said, “Like hell! I’ve already told you we’re in an unknown closed loop program now. I wasn’t planning on using this program when I made it, so I didn’t set the projection’s limiting values!”

Huang Jinchen reacted quickly. “So you mean that if you get hung up here, you may really be hanging on the wall from then on?”

Kou Tong considered, then very systematically said, “I have no way to determine that. The possibility is probably fifty-fifty.”

Huang Jinchen was silent for a moment. Then he cried out, “Fuck! Then what are you waiting for?! Run!”

The two of them rushed through the streets that were shaking like a magnitude 4 earthquake. Though Huang Jinchen admired Kou Tong in the manner of admiring an ancient hand-painted porcelain vase, he now became deeply aware that this half-superior, part-senior really was as unreliable as a vase. He felt a chill go up his spine, a dismal chill about the future that rose from the heart.

The two of them ran through the street as though trekking over mountains, dodging countless obvious and hidden attacks. They made it to the bottom of a tall building—it was very easy to find, because the whole area around them was collapsing, while only this one small area seemed like the eye of the storm, unusually quiet.

For professional reasons, Huang Jinchen was particularly sensitive towards tall buildings. Almost at once, he saw a teenager on the roof, with his feet sticking out suspended in midair, sitting on the railing, his thin arms planted on either side of his body, holding onto the railing, looking down with an indistinct expression.

“Up there.” Huang Jinchen pulled Kou Tong over, his gaze quickly turning sideways. “Follow me.”

He familiarly took Kou Tong through the building’s emergency passage. The door was locked, but to Huang Jinchen’s eyes, these locks may as well not have existed in the first place. There seemed to be a super processor in his brain that could turn any kind of bewildering three-dimensional distortion that would make others dizzy into a level map for dummies.

Five minutes later, when Kou Tong was standing behind a big door that had long fallen out of repair, looking through the blurry glass on top of it at the teenager with his back to them, his figure blown askew by the wind, he somewhat suspected that this building was in fact Huang Jinchen’s backyard.

Huang Jinchen proudly made a gesture towards him—Well, aren’t I awesome?

Kou Tong had no attention to spare for him. He was closely watching the teenager’s back.

It wasn’t a problem now of one person wanting to kill himself. If he jumped, it was likely that this whole building would collapse, or even this whole area might be impacted by this conscious subject. No one knew whether there was some mystical connection between the seven people who had accidentally been drawn in.

I don’t want to see her die again… Even up to now, for the whole evening, Kou Tong had still been unsuccessful in saying “mom.”

Kou Tong made a “stand there and don’t move” gesture at Huang Jinchen. Then he quickly opened the lousy door in front of him and charged directly towards…a stack of waste cardboard boxes five meters away from the teenager who wanted to jump.

Huang Jinchen: “…”

The teenager was startled. Half a beat slow, he turned his head to look at this strange man.

He found that this person was wearing only a bathrobe with a jacket over it that obviously didn’t really fit him. He hurriedly opened the door and came out. There was still a trace of sweat at his temples. He cut a bizarre and sorry figure.

This was an eccentric, but what did that have to do with him? the teenager thought numbly.—After today, once he had accomplished his parting from the whole world, no one would have anything to do with him.

The teenager opened his mouth, wanting to warn the man to mind his own business, but he found that the man didn’t so much as look at him. He was squatting irritably on the ground, picking up a pile of waste cardboard boxes in the corner, raising them and looking, as though searching for something. After rummaging for a long time, he didn’t turn anything up. Then he hit each of the railing’s bars one by one.

The man’s expression was extremely agitated, so much so that the teenager’s gaze was involuntarily drawn by him for a moment. In that moment, the man had already arrived in front of him.

Kou Tong tilted his ear and knocked on the railing bars one by one, as if determining something based on the echo inside. Then at last he raised his head and looked at the teenager. He said to him, “Excuse me, can you come down? I can’t hear clearly with you sitting there.”

The teenager frowned, simply not quite able to believe his own ears—he was about to jump from here, and someone had come along openly telling him to get down. He looked at Kou Tong in disbelief for a while, then coldly said, “You can wait another five minutes. I’m about to jump from here. You can knock all you want then.”

But this person unreasonably clutched his already messy hair and very impatiently said, “Why are you in such a hurry to jump? Wait a little, then jump. I have urgent business!”

The teenager felt that he had been insulted. Though he had made up his mind to end his own life, this ought to have been a solemn and moving action after having come to the extreme of great confusion and despair. When this scoundrel who had come from who knew where said it, the holy act of “suicide” seemed like waiting in line to use a public toilet!

“I want to jump!”

“I want to knock!”

The observing Huang Jinchen quickly covered his mouth, afraid that he would slip up and laugh during the performance.

The teenager furiously cursed: “Where did you come from, lunatic?!”

Kou Tong cursed back: “You’re the lunatic! Only lunatics jump off buildings! You’re polluting the environment!”

The teenager said, “You…”

Kou Tong grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down from midair, making Huang Jinchen jump with nerves as he watched. The teenager was sixteen or seventeen. While he was fairly skinny, he was still a person, not a featherless little chick.

His brain was like his surname[10]; Master Huang’s mind, full of all kinds of bizarre colors, turned up some fantastic little notions—he thought, This guy looks pretty skinny, but he’s actually quite strong. His body must be impressive.

Huang Jinchen looked out through the crack in the open door and saw that at some point the quaking ground and collapsing buildings had calmed down. The teenager was in a towering rage, his anger towards the line jumper already covering up his fully brewed desire to jump.

But Kou Tong didn’t so much as look at him. He was wholly absorbed in knocking on the railing with his ear tilted, nearly sticking to the ice-cold metal bars, his expression as serious as if he was receiving a TV news station from outer space.

The teenager coldly watched him knock all the way around, then slowly turn his back to the railing and sit on the ground.

Kou Tong lit a cigarette and glanced at the teenager with an indifferent expression. He pointed with his chin. “All right, go ahead and jump.”

The teenager was beside himself with fury.

Kou Tong’s slightly wide sleeves dropped a little, revealing forearms covered in scars.

Huang Jinchen stopped laughing. Leaning in a corner against the light, he carefully observed Kou Tong. His vision was excellent. From this angle, he could see the scars clearly, one after another, very jumbled. But however you looked at it, they all seemed to have been done by himself.

He remembered how Kou Tong had reacted as if electrocuted when he had run across them earlier, but now he was bringing them out as props without a care.

Huang Jinchen rubbed his chin. He kept thinking that Kou Tong was in two completely different states at work and in private. It couldn’t be seen on the surface, but in the details it was like so-called multiple personality disorder.

Living up to expectations, the teenager’s gaze fell on his arms. Puffing away, Kou Tong said, “What are you looking at? Oh…this? This won’t kill you. You have to aim at a major artery for it to work, and even if you do aim at a major artery, it would still take you a fairly long time to die. The rate of success isn’t very high. If you want to die, I think that the idea of jumping off a building is pretty good, more reliable than sleeping pills or slitting your wrists.”

The teenager hesitated, then sat down next to him. “How did it happen?”

Kou Tong glanced at him. “I went to the forest park and got scratched up by a big black bear.”

The teenager snorted. “Liar.”

Kou Tong indifferently ignored him. After a while, the teenager spoke himself. “I have scars like that, too.”

Then he rolled up his own sleeves. On his smooth skin, there were even scars that hadn’t fully healed yet. They were mottled with blood. The two of them sitting there together looked like two cellmates from a prison hole discussing their torture experiences.

“What’s your name?” Kou Tong asked.

“He Xiaozhi,” the teenager said.

“I see.” Kou Tong nodded. He paused, then slowly said, “The person I loved most in this life, she abandoned me.”

He Xiaozhi turned his head to look at him. He said, “What?”

Huang Jinchen also craned his neck and looked. He thought, What?

Kou Tong’s face was a little blurred under the starlight, even a little weary. This almost made him not look like a young man, giving him an indescribable air of having lived through many changes…

Kou Tong continued, “Before she left, she said she left me some things, here on this rooftop, but I can’t seem to find them.”

He Xiaozhi asked, “So why were you knocking on the bars?”

Kou Tong said, “She knocked on the railing at this tempo. I come here every year on this day to knock. But I’ve never been able to find the things.”

“Oh.” He Xiaozhi paused for a while. He couldn’t especially understand this behavior. He still thought he was a little crazy. So he said in consolation, “Don’t think about it anymore. It’s not your fault if others abandon you.”

Kou Tong asked, “So why are you doing this?”

“I think…that there’s no point in living.” He Xiaozhi’s expression blurred for a while. Then he put his chin on his knees and slowly said, “What can I do if I’m alive? I can’t think of an answer, so it’s better to die.

“Living…is too painful.” His voice became quieter and quieter, slower and slower. The anger he had felt at the beginning because his suicide had been interrupted by Kou Tong had quickly left him, like an easily consumed good.

Kou Tong frowned. He knew that his crisis intervention had succeeded, but this teenager named He Xiaozhi must have a serious problem. It couldn’t be resolved with a couple of days of talking. He thought about it, then tentatively asked, “You’re so young. What pain do you have?”

The corners of He Xiaozhi’s mouth curved as if he wanted to smile, but the smile didn’t take shape. It quickly disappeared. He didn’t seem to want to explain anymore. After a long time, he quietly said to Kou Tong, “I think that if I was gone, many people’s lives would be a little better. You wouldn’t understand.”

In this, he was wrong—Kou Tong’s brows moved suddenly, and a thought flashed through his mind. He didn’t continue the subject concerning the meaning of “living.” He pinched out his cigarette end and dropped it off the building. With a mocking laugh, he said, “You want to die? I think you’re being too slow about it. Have you noticed that?”

He Xiaozhi raised his head and looked at him half a beat slow. His expression was blank.

Kou Tong lifted him by the collar, lifting him off the ground. He pulled him to the railing. Pointing to the disorder, he said, “Come over here and look.”

The look in He Xiaozhi’s eyes was a little empty, as if he was a little out of it, like he had retreated into his own world. But all the same, after looking down for a long time, he still noticed that something was off. He couldn’t resist pointing in the distance and saying, “That…isn’t that a movie theater? Why has it turned into an office building? And the vegetable market over there is gone, and there’s no supermarket…”

“Even if you jumped off, you wouldn’t die.” Kou Tong let him go. Pointing to the surroundings, he said, “Do you know what I mean by saying I come to knock on the railing every year?”

He Xiaozhi frowned.

The strong wind on top of the building ruffled the messy hair in front of Kou Tong’s forehead. With a slightly ridiculing smile, he said, “Because this isn’t the real world, time and place here are disordered and illogical. My timeline and hers have broken into two halves. They connect here. So at this joining point, I might be able to find the things she hid during that time… Oh, fine, you don’t understand. Have you heard of the Projector?”

“A lantern slide projector?”

Kou Tong spat. “It’s frightening how children don’t study and are so uncultured—the Projector is a new supplementary instrument for psychological treatment. Its full name is the multidimensional frequency-changing projection installation. We had an accident during an experiment, leading to many people’s consciousnesses being drawn into the altered space. Do you understand that?”

He Xiaozhi stared blankly and shook his head.

“You still don’t understand? Then just watch.” Kou Tong held him by the collar and pressed his head down. “Do you see the broken windows and chaotic streets? That’s all because of you.”

He Xiaozhi’s eyes opened wide.

Kou Tong pressed him: “I’ve just now determined that you’re one of the conscious subjects of this space.”

“…Me?”

“If you had succeeded in killing yourself just now, the space that’s under the influence of your consciousness would all have collapsed, and these people would all have died.”

He Xiaozhi’s eyes opened wide, but Kou Tong laughed coldly. “But the only person who wouldn’t have died is you. Your consciousness would have entered the installation’s cache, and then it would have been set free. This is because when the projection installation was planned, for the sake of safety, some limiting value principles were set.”

Huang Jinchen silently thought, Didn’t you just say the Projector’s limits were gone?

Which version was cooked up?

Then he heard Kou Tong sharply say, “That wouldn’t be murder anymore. It would be a massacre.”

20

WATCHED

“MASSACRE” was a word that was truly too easy to associate with historical events. Ordinarily speaking, apart from super villains in movies and TV shows, if ordinary people wanted to commit this crime, it actually wouldn’t be so easy. This label falling on him out of the sky immediately struck the little boy dumb. He stared blankly at Kou Tong for a long time, then made a single sound like a feeble-minded child: “Ah?”

Kou Tong decided to add to the flames. He turned his head and yelled, “Da Huang!”

While the teenager who had failed to kill himself stared blankly, Da Huang, who had been hidden behind the scenes the whole time, obediently ran over. “Here!”

Kou Tong extended a hand. “Binoculars!”

Huang Jinchen clutched his chest in deep alarm. “What? I don’t have binoculars! I’m not a perverted peeping Tom!”

That’s right, you boldly climb right through the window to peep—Kou Tong looked at him critically—Is now the time? Don’t talk nonsense, hurry up and cooperate!

Huang Jinchen pursed his lips. “OK…” He felt around in his pants pocket and turned up a thumb-sized pair of binoculars.

Kou Tong picked up the binoculars and took a look, then gave them to the teenager He Xiaozhi. He pointed to a taxi in the street that had been crushed by a tree and said, “Look at that.”

The teenager’s lips were turning pale. His hand shook a little as he held the binoculars.

An ambulance quickly arrived by the side of the road. There were many people gathered in the street seeking refuge from the strange earthquake. They were stopped by the road. Some were on their phones, calling their friends and family to confirm their safety; some were slowly crowding around, going to help out.

The crane couldn’t get through at first. An elderly person who must have been somewhat renowned voluntarily stood up to serve as conductor. Some men dressed in pajamas worked together to move the tree lying on the car. He Xiaozhi saw a person lifted out of the car, probably the taxi driver who had stopped the car by the road to wait for passengers or perhaps only to rest for a moment. In the end, he had unluckily encountered this big tree falling out of the sky.

It was unclear whether he was alive or dead. At any rate, until he had been lifted, covered in blood, into the ambulance by the medical personnel, he hadn’t moved a muscle. The ambulance barged away, wailing. The binoculars in He Xiaozhi’s hand dropped and were snatched up by Huang Jinchen, who, recovering from the shock, said, “These are the only ones I brought in, be careful!”

He Xiaozhi pointed into the distance and asked Kou Tong, “That’s…because of me?”

Kou Tong carefully observed his expression and reactions while he unfeelingly said, “What do you think?”

He Xiaozhi hesitated for a moment, then shook his head forcefully. “It can’t be? How could it be? This can’t happen in the world, I don’t believe it!”

Kou Tong’s answer was to rudely push him off the railing. He Xiaozhi hung suspended in the air. The intense feeling of weightlessness made his heart skip a beat. Though he had just decided to jump, he had been prepared then and had known what he was going to do ahead of time. Now that he had simply been pushed off, like all living beings, he automatically screamed and struggled—he even kicked off his shoes.

Huang Jinchen watched and worried, afraid that Dr. Kou would become a murderer. He had to help hold He Xiaozhi. During the teenager’s fierce terror and screams, the previously unstable space once again began a new round of collapse. The cars stopped in the street began to honk in chorus again, and the road once more began to tremble.

Deathly pale, He Xiaozhi looked down. His feet suddenly touched solid ground. He raised his head and found that the scumbag doctor Kou Tong had pulled him back.

“Did you see that?” Kou Tong said.

Concerning what was happening before his eyes, He Xiaozhi felt that his own intellect was short-circuiting a little.

Kou Tong patted him on the head. “Come with me, and we’ll think of a way to get out together. When we get out, you can jump off a building or slit your wrists, just as you please.”

He Xiaozhi hesitated for half a minute, then at last decided that he was at his wit’s end. So he silently followed them downstairs.

This was how the stray child was abducted.

Walking down the dim, narrow stairs, He Xiaozhi went in front in a trance, and Huang Jinchen and Kou Tong walked behind. Suddenly, Huang Jinchen suddenly turned his head, all his muscles tensing, giving off the air of a big carnivore. Then a clatter came from a corner of the roof. There was a small rat there that he had startled into bumping into a wall.

“A rat?” Huang Jinchen raised his eyebrows. Then he cautiously looked around, withdrew the hostility he had released, and caught up with Kou Tong in two quick steps.

He hesitated a moment, then tapped Kou Tong on the forearm and asked, “This… How did it happen?”

In the dark stairwell, Kou Tong turned his head to look at him. There was only weak light reflected in his eyes. The car lights shining through the windows flashed, and Huang Jinchen suddenly had the impression that his eyes were full of a rich display of light and color.

Kou Tong said, “Some hotheaded patients aren’t very easy to deal with.”

Imitating He Xiaozhi’s tone, Huang Jinchen said, “Liar.”

Kou Tong didn’t answer, tacitly acknowledging the word “liar.”

Huang Jinchen went two steps forward, walking shoulder to shoulder with him in the narrow space. His movements unusually gentle, he took Kou Tong by the arm and slowly rolled up his sleeve. This time, Kou Tong didn’t dodge. He had clearly already prepared himself psychologically.

Huang Jinchen’s palms and fingertips were both quite rough, covered in calluses. They slipped over Kou Tong’s bare skin, the movements extremely careful, as if he wasn’t holding a person’s arm but a rare treasure.

Kou Tong’s heart skipped a beat. He felt that it would be dangerous for this to go on, so he pulled his arm out of his hands.

Huang Jinchen’s voice was very low. He sighed. There was no need to look at his expression to know how regretful he must look now.

“Too bad,” Huang Jinchen said. “Old scars, huh? They look like they’ve been there a while. Did you get them when you were little?”

Kou Tong didn’t answer. Huang Jinchen, nearly glued to his ear, quietly repeated, “Too bad. I didn’t know you back then.”

He Xiaozhi was standing in the ruined street now, blankly looking at everything that he may have brought about himself. Kou Tong threw Huang Jinchen off and stepped up to pat him on the shoulder. “Come, walk over here.”

Huang Jinchen stuck a hand into his pocket and followed them at a middle distance.

When they went around a corner, Kou Tong finally turned his head to look at Huang Jinchen. He saw the man with his head slightly lowered, seeming to be looking at the ground a little absent-mindedly. Compared to the chaotic street, he looked so carefree that he didn’t especially fit his background. He was still wearing wide pants with rolled up cuffs, revealing a pair of gaudy knockoff sneakers under them.

The words Huang Jinchen had said just now seemed to give his listener the feeling of being a cherished treasure; anyone who was human and not stone would be shaken for a moment by hearing them.

But Kou Tong knew—each time he saw Huang Jinchen walking down the street like this, he had the feeling—that there was a deep-rooted indifference about this retired sniper. Kou Tong could see it in his eyes. It was as if he was in the habit of “objectifying” everything; in his eyes, all people were like things.

Some were garbage, some were precious stones, and some were beautiful works of art.

Whether he liked or didn’t like a “thing,” they were after all only “things,” not “human lives.” Or they were only cold strings of numbers, some with parentheses, and some that had already changed to brackets.

Even he himself didn’t seem to be a person.

He was this country’s most terrifying gun.

Kou Tong returned home. Before he could go inside, he ran into his mother and Yao Shuo, who had been affected by the earthquake and were temporarily taking refuge outside. Kou Tong’s mom ran up from a distance and sent Kou Tong rocking back two steps with a fierce bear hug. Then, right out in the open, she firmly raised her hand and hit him on the butt with all her might. Kou Tong’s eyes opened wide. For a moment, he suddenly didn’t know what to do.

Tearfully, she said, “Where did you go? Don’t you know your mom is worried? Why are you so disobedient? Do you want to worry me to death?”

Just as if her son wasn’t a grown man but a little boy on vacation from school who had run off to play and not come home.

…Of course, when she had left the world of the living, her son really had been a little boy of that age.

Time had come to a standstill for her long, long ago. Kou Tong suddenly felt his heart sting.

There are people who long desperately to get something, then, after a very long time, so long that they no longer want it, can finally realize their already obsolete wish—for example, when he was four years old, he had very much wanted a little train. Each day on his way home from nursery school, he would press himself to the outside of the shop window for a long time. At night he longed for it so much he couldn’t sleep. It had been very expensive. But over twenty years later, though he was well-off, he no longer stopped outside the toy store.

For example, when he was ten years old, he had very much wanted a warm and fragrant embrace, even if she berated him, even if she cursed him in the street, uncompromisingly poured an unpleasant cup of milk down his throat every night…

These were things that he had once thought he would give everything in exchange for, even his own life and soul, but when they were suddenly forced on him over a decade later, Kou Tong found that he felt awkward.

It was probably because time had changed things, or for some other reason.

He slowly raised his arms and hugged the woman who was just slightly taller than his chin… Was she really so short? Then he lowered his head and buried his face in her sweetly fruit-scented soft hair. A little indistinctly, he said, “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry. He closed his eyes, thinking, But…you’re already dead.

Not fifty meters away from them, a rat opened its little eyes and looked on from a distance. It was probably an animal’s instincts that made it fear Huang Jinchen somewhat. It didn’t especially dare to draw closer. It looked for a while, then made a very human gesture—it extended its front paw, scratched an incomprehensible sign on the wall, then ran away.

It ran past the ordinary houses, ran past the trash cans in the alley, and came to another street—this street was like another world; it was the one in front of the coffee shop—with a road as colorful and soft as gelatin, lampposts made of chocolate, and streetlights of luminescent candy.

The rat went along the road and squeezed into a little hole. Another rat was waiting by the door. They drew together as though discussing some information, then simultaneously ran downhill.

There was a bridge at the end of the street, connecting the coast of the continent to a little island. The island was all lit up, like something out of a fairytale. Looking closely, there was actually a castle on it.

The two rats crossed the bridge, rushing right towards the castle.

This was a world where…anything could happen, and rules no longer applied. The whole city was enshrouded by a pair of eyes, and the people being spied on still weren’t on their guard.

21

ILLUSION

THAT NIGHT, countless people slept out in the street. Despite all the fuss, the electricity hadn’t cut out—this didn’t conform with common sense, of course, but sadly the corpse of “common sense” was already cold. The streetlights were all lit up; it looked like a large-scale nighttime campground. Many people had their families with them. There was also a little girl wearing cotton pajamas and hugging a toy rabbit with a lewd expression, a lollipop in her mouth, standing next to Kou Tong with her limpid eyes open wide.

The three people in the know…four, counting Yao Shuo, all understood that the earthquake wouldn’t happen again, as the epicenter was in a stable state of downcast emotions.

But no matter how they reasoned, Kou Tong’s mom wouldn’t go upstairs, insisting on sleeping out in the street, even running a risk “to life and limb” to go up and bring down the whole pile of sleeping bags, pillows, towels, quilts, and such articles lying in a corner covered in dust. Then she occupied a space in satisfaction and uncompromisingly pulled on Kou Tong’s neck and kissed his face, leaving it covered in saliva.

“Good night, darling. If you’re scared, you can come sleep with mom.”

Kou Tong woodenly wiped the saliva off his face.

Kou Tong’s mom sighed, feeling that her son had grown up. She was disappointed. Then she took a pack of playing cards out of her pocket and trotted off to find people to play with.

Huang Jinchen gave a long drawn-out sigh. “A mother’s love!”

Kou Tong turned his head to look at him. He suddenly raised his voice: “Mom! Da Huang says he wants a goodnight kiss, too!”

Kou Tong’s mom instantly turned her head and looked at him almost disbelievingly. Her face looked a little pale in the night. Her hair, which was normally gathered on top of her head, was down, making her face look a little smaller. She looked younger, almost identical to the young, beautiful woman in Kou Tong’s memories.

She dropped the playing card in her hand. In a slightly trembling voice, she said, “Tongtong, what…did you call me?”

Kou Tong frowned. As though nothing had happened, he said, “What’s wrong?”

Kou Tong’s mom was so moved she was babbling. “You just called me, say it again, let me hear you.”

Tears flashed in her eyes, glittering in the night wind, set off by the city lights, extremely beautiful. She quickly reached up to wipe her eyes. “I don’t know why, but I feel like it’s been a lifetime since you called me that.”

Kou Tong looked at her, then at last shoddily fabricated, “That’s just how you feel. Enough, mom, it’s fine. Go play.”

Then, as though avoiding something, he lowered his head and looked at the little girl who starting recently had been standing unmoving at the curb with her head raised, staring at him. “Whose child is this? Why is she running around on her own? Where are her parents?”

Not saying a word, the little girl cracked her lollipop with her teeth.

Kou Tong said, “Whose child…”

“You’re being watched,” the little girl said suddenly.

Kou Tong patted her on the head. “Good girl. You can watch more cartoons tomorrow. It’s time to sleep.—Whose child is this? It’s so late, why hasn’t anyone come for her?”

“The rats are watching you,” the little girl added.

Kou Tong squatted down and very patiently asked, “The rats driving a tank, or the rats flying a plane?”

The little girl’s almost crystal clear big eyes looked at him. Her eyes were truly too clean, like mirrors. Kou Tong saw himself clearly reflected in them.

The little girl’s expression was very calm, as though whether people believed her or not, how they treated her, had nothing to do with her. She only expressionlessly spat out the plastic stick from the lollipop, then said, “I’m telling the truth.”

Kou Tong immediately froze—this kid looked eight or nine years old, small and skinny. He was blocking her, so others couldn’t see her clearly—but Kou Tong, while crouching, had noticed with extreme clarity that the little girl didn’t open her mouth when she spoke!

“What’s your name?”

“Manman.”

Kou Tong considered, then leaned down and picked the little girl up. To the others, he said, “I’ll take her to find her family.”

Then he walked far away carrying her and quietly said, “Tell uncle, what’s going on?”

“…If you buy me a lollipop.”

It was as if she sent brainwaves directly to people’s minds. Kou Tong even had the false impression that Manman used her eyes to speak.

Kou Tong realized that this kid was likely one of the seven conscious subjects, so he carried her to a nearby small supermarket that was still doing business. In front of the little lollipop stand, he put Manman down and had her choose for herself.

Manman picked up one and put down another, picking and choosing, looking at her young age like a little woman prudently comparing products—at any rate, Kou Tong couldn’t see what the difference was among the lollipops she was gesturing at.

Finally, he simply pushed the whole little rack in front of the cashier and said, “Count up for me how much this is. I’ll take all of it.”

Manman looked up at him. She thought for two seconds, then came to a conclusion. She said, “Uncle, do you have more money than brains?”

Kou Tong: “…”

The cashier heard this and snorted a laugh.

Kou Tong held down her little head. “Nonsense.”

The cashier had finished settling up and passed over the rack stuffed with lollipops. Manman immediately accepted it with both hands, her little face pulled taut, her expression almost pious. Then she gravely said to her footman with “more money than brains,” “Let’s go.”

Kou Tong could only follow.

“I’m eight this year.” Manman sat on the curb and calmly set aside her newly arrived property. She peeled a lollipop and put it in her mouth, hugging her old doll. “One day, I was sitting at home reading, when suddenly the sky went dark. Then I was dropped in here. There were five lollipops in my pocket in all. Now I’ve eaten them all.”

Kou Tong asked, “Do you know what happened before you got dropped in?”

Manman thought about it, then shook her head.

Kou Tong crouched beside her, frowning.

But Manman suddenly said, “This is that multidimensional frequency-changing projection installation, isn’t it?”

Kou Tong was immediately horrified. He blurted out, “How do you know?”

Manman said, “I read about it in a book.”

“Which one?”

“There was an article about it in the sixteenth 2041 issue of The Great Era of Psychology.”

Of course Kou Tong knew about this magazine. He had written the article himself. So he continued looking at her in horror. “You understood it? No…do you attend school? What grade are you in?”

“Second grade. When school starts again, I’ll be in third grade,” Manman said. She shrugged and very calmly said, “In the book, it says that the Projector has a certain working range, normally fifty to a hundred meters. I was home at the time, and there was no instrument within fifty or a hundred meters, so your machine must be damaged.”

Kou Tong choked. “I’m sorry. Uncle will get you out soon.”

“It’s all right.” Manman patted him on the shoulder. “Machines aren’t very reliable. Anyway, it’s actually pretty nice here. People can understand me when I talk.”

Kou Tong asked, “You can’t talk outside?”

“I can,” Manman said, “but I can’t use my mouth to talk. I can talk like this. But none of them can hear me, and they say I’m stupid. The teacher suggested that my mom take me to the special education class, so she got hysterical and beat me, then locked me in the house every day and ignored me.”

Kou Tong’s heart tightened.

“They took me to see a doctor before. That old man in white said I was ‘autistic’,” Manman continued calmly. “But I’m not autistic. I’m not that sensitive. My ears can filter out noise, and my attention doesn’t wander easily—at any rate, not any easier than my classmates.”

She even knew what ‘autistic’ meant… Kou Tong had already determined that whether this little girl was autistic or not, her intelligence was definitely above average. “And…you read all of that in books?”

“Yeah.” Manman nodded and bit into her lollipop, cracking it. “I lived next to the city library when I was little. When no one was paying attention to me, I went in to read.”

Kou Tong silently stroked her head. “Come and stay at my house for now.”

“All right.” Manman nodded.

“Oh, right, what were you saying about the rats before?”

Manman turned her head. “You’re being watched by rats. I understand their speech. Their master isn’t very friendly.”

This time Kou Tong didn’t laugh, because for a conscious subject, anything could happen. She used some means other than voice to communicate with others. It wasn’t impossible for her to also understand the speech of rats.

From another point of view, in an altered space, everything could be the projection of some consciousness. Even gravity could fail, let alone the attributes of living things.

“I don’t know whether the rat heard what you were saying. Anyway, I heard it talking to its companion. They said that you’re intruders.” Manman coldly judged, “I think it sounds like they want to do away with you.”

“Who wants to do away with us?” Huang Jinchen had appeared from somewhere, standing behind the two of them. He frowned, looking at the pile of candy wrappers Manman had piled up on the ground. “Little girl, you’ll get cavities if you eat that much candy. Little worms will nibble away all your teeth.”

Manman looked up at him expressionlessly, then flatly said, “You don’t get cavities from worms growing in your teeth. They’re caused by a reaction between the bacteria in plaque and the sugars in food. It generates acid, breaking down tooth enamel.”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Manman chewed, making crunch-crunch noises. After looking down upon this tall and strapping uncle’s IQ, she added, “It says so in books.”

Huang Jinchen said, “Hell, this little whelp is definitely going to become an Abbess Miejue in the future.”

Manman responded, “No, I won’t. I think Zhou Zhiruo and Zhang Wuji are pretty good together[11].”

Huang Jinchen simpered: “Chief Tongtong…”

Kou Tong waved a hand and continued to question Manman: “Where is the master of the rats you’re talking about?”

Rats? Huang Jinchen’s brow suddenly furrowed.

“Over there.” Manman pointed.

Kou Tong propped his chin in his hand thoughtfully—“intruders”? How could that be? Could this program itself have some conscious subject?

22

HUG

PROGRAM restoration failed….

Retrieval failed…

Try again.

Restoring again, preparing…

“I told you it wouldn’t work.” Outside the big boiler, the ST Base’s technicians were scrambling. Even the RZ Unit’s Chang Dou had been dragged in. As his attempt to repair the system suffered a setback, Wu Xiangxiang gloomily spoke behind him.

Chang Dou turned his head, his whole face scrunched into a frown, thinking, How can this person be so annoying? He really wanted to shave off his damn beard.

Wu Xiangxiang stroked his goatee, looking at him calmly, and, asking for a beating, said, “Even if you scrunch your face up like SpongeBob SquarePants, it still won’t change the fact that your features have determined your low IQ.”

Then he floated away.

Chang Dou followed decisively. He saw Wu Xiangxiang pull out a control panel, access administrative mode through the internal network, then explain to Chang Dou, “I think that you probably don’t understand. All of our high-grade equipment here can be accessed through administrative mode by means of emergency mode.”

Chang Dou thought, Such a basic method of resolution definitely won’t be any use.

As if guiding a feeble-minded child, Wu Xiangxiang said, “During an emergency, administrative mode can locate a conscious subject with one small command—I’ll input the order slowly. If you’d like, you can take notes.”

Chang Dou thought, Hmph!

Then the screen said: Searching…

Chang Dou silently recited, Don’t find anything, don’t find anything…

After a while, a dialogue box popped up on the screen. There was a big X on it: Search failed!

Wu Xiangxiang: “…”

Chang Dou thought, Oh, yeah!

Wu Xiangxiang pushed up his glasses. His goatee trembled. He seemed a little out of sorts. Chang Dou deliberately said, “Looks like it won’t work. How about I keep inspecting and repairing the instrument’s faults?”

Wu Xiangxiang looked at him, then turned and left. In his eyes, Chang Dou had read one word: Hmph!

So he tossed his head in satisfaction and nearly pranced back to his own station. He also turned his head and excitedly waved to Fang Xiu, who was looking his way from not far off.

Fang Xiu sighed and glared at him—Shit, this good-for-nothing, he’s out being a disgrace again.

Chang Dou persisted in waving. It was as if he was a great hero who had just won a battle and wouldn’t give up until the “beauty” had acknowledged him. Fang Xiu at last could do nothing else. He feebly pulled up the corners of his mouth, giving him a false grin.

Only then was Chang Dou satisfied and eagerly went to work.

The RZ Unit’s Su Qing was just chatting with General Zhong to get an understanding of the situation. When the conversation reached Huang Jinchen, Su Qing, not quite catching up, said, “Who is Huang Jinchen?”

General Zhong gave a dry laugh. “The planted agent I placed in Utopia, a very famous sniper with the code name 11235. Since retiring, he’s held a nominal position at our base.”

A complicated look of misery appeared on Su Qing’s face.

General Zhong could only say, “You know, Jinchen’s position was special at the time. In fact, he didn’t target you deliberately. He needed to have the other side’s trust, and that’s why he had a few clashes with you…”

Su Qing forced himself to say, “Yeah, I understand. Now this sniper is in there with Dr. Kou?”

General Zhong nodded. “I heard the technicians say that their consciousnesses were drawn in together, and they became compulsory conscious subjects.”

Su Qing rubbed the center of his brow. “How monstrous must that space be if that psycho sniper is in there, too? Will Dr. Kou survive?”

General Zhong was silent. The two of them looked at each other in dismay, both rendered speechless.

Kou Tong had picked up the missing teenager He Xiaozhi, and now he had also picked up the genius girl Manman. He was picking them up all over the place like a scrap collector.

They soon ran out of guest rooms. After the crisis of the earthquake had passed, He Xiaozhi had to sleep in the living room. As for Manman, she received the treatment of sharing a room with the lady of the house.

Kou Tong’s mom quickly discovered Manman’s peculiarity, but she accepted it virtually without obstacle.

In her own words, the more people, the better; it would be best to fill up every room in the house. Kou Tong couldn’t resist opening his big mouth and asking, “Aren’t there too many people? I can take them somewhere else to stay.”

But Kou Tong’s mom smilingly said, “It’s fine, it’s fine, I like bustle.”

After a while, she added, “It’s probably because you never come home that I keep having the feeling that I’ve been alone my whole life.”

This sentence hit Dr. Kou right in the heart. His health points fell to negative numbers. He was utterly defeated.

The first night passed in considerable turmoil. The next day, they could finally return indoors to sleep, but there was still turmoil.

Kou Tong bought rat poison and spread it in every corner, enough to make his mom very bewildered. “Are there rats in our house?”

“Just in case,” Kou Tong said. He seemed to have suddenly become a germaphobe, turning the whole house upside down. Even in the corridor, he cleaned out and swept every nook.

Huang Jinchen, stroking Manman’s head, insolently said, “Take a good look, little girl. That’s rat poison, not candy. You can’t go picking it up. If you eat it, you’ll drop dead.”

Manman raised her head to look at him, and the old rabbit doll with the lascivious expression that she was holding also raised its head. This gave Huang Jinchen a false impression—it seemed that he was an idiot being observed by the masses.

Manman said, “I know that it’s rat poison. It’s composed mainly of Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine. If you eat it, you’ll be like this.”

Saying this, she started to walk crookedly, stuck out her tongue, and contorted her face, twitching irregularly.

Huang Jinchen: “…”

This unpleasant feeling like having a fishbone caught in the throat truly ought not to be mentioned to outsiders. So he asked, “Why are you so interested in rat poison?”

Manman said, “In case someone who doesn’t know accidentally eats it and gets like this…” As she spoke, she began to stick her tongue out.

Huang Jinchen took two deep breaths, thinking, Why does this annoying little whelp keep looking at me when she talks?

Kou Tong came over and quietly asked Manman, “Apart from the rats, is there anything else?”

Manman thought about it, then precisely said, “I haven’t found anything for the time being.”

“OK.” Kou Tong thought for a moment and nodded. When his mom had gone to the kitchen to cook, he quietly said, “Everyone, I currently don’t have sufficient basis to judge what our position is. A multi-person overlapping consciousness space is very dangerous. All kinds of incredible things may happen. And according to Manman, we may also have some hidden enemy… So I request that none of you act on your own at random.”

“Watch out for rats,” Manman added in pretend earnestness.

Huang Jinchen patted the back of her head. “Enough, child, this is none of your business. Go watch some cartoons.”

Manman said, “OK.”

Then she obediently sat down in front of the TV, stared at the screen for a while, then raised her head and said to Kou Tong, “Uncle, does your TV have an instruction manual?”

Kou Tong turned the TV on and picked up the remote. “The little genius doesn’t know how to turn on a TV?”

“I can’t watch TV at home.” Manman was sitting on the couch. The couch in Kou Tong’s house was a little high. In order to lean back against in, her two short little legs were hanging in the air. The kid very calmly said, “My mom has a neurosis. I can’t make noise, or she’ll beat me.”

Kou Tong’s hands stopped moving. He silently patted her on the head and used the remote to find her a channel showing cartoons. He put the remote next to her and asked, “Did you see how I did that just now? Have you learned it?”

As was to be expected, Manman nodded. Without any of the curiosity and clumsiness of touching a new thing, she took the remote and familiarly changed from one channel to another.

Yao Shuo looked at them, nodded to Kou Tong, then returned to his guest room.

Since calming down from his initial amazement, he no longer took part in group activities, and he normally didn’t especially communicate with the others. He only stayed in the guest room in Kou Tong’s home. When it wasn’t mealtime, he basically wouldn’t be seen. During occasional encounters, when he was forced to talk to others, he still didn’t seem as overbearing as he had been when he had first shown up.

If forced to describe it, Yao Shuo was like a kid who had just made it through the high pressure of a university entrance exam. The heavy burden he had carried for a long time was suddenly gone; all the things that had been pressing on his shoulders were gone. This seemed to make him so relaxed that he didn’t quite know what to do. Every day he seemed to be sleepwalking; even the look in his eyes was blank.

He Xiaozhi was simpler. He was like a wandering soul, his condition sometimes good, sometimes bad. When it was good, he could be like an ordinary person, thought his reactions were a little slow, and he didn’t seem very energetic. When it was bad, he was miserable; though they had told her ahead of time, Kou Tong’s mom was still seriously frightened by this teenager’s periodic sudden emotional explosions.

He could be talking and talking and suddenly flare up, then refuse to speak anymore, or simply lock himself in the bathroom as though bearing some colossal suffering. From inside would come intermittent crying and the sound of him using his nails to pick desperately at the wallpaper.

His crying was truly too wretched. Kou Tong’s mom could hear it even through the roar of the range hood. A little anxious, she stuck her head out of the kitchen and looked in the direction of the bathroom. She quietly asked Kou Tong, “Is the child all right?”

Kou Tong’s excuse to her had been that this was a patient whom he had temporarily brought home to stay for a couple days to assist in his treatment. He dropped the bag of rat poison, washed his hands, and stuck up an index finger towards her, making a shushing gesture. Then he knocked on the bathroom door. He quietly said, “Xiao Zhi, open up, it’s me.”

A tearful, hysterical voice came from inside: “Go away!”

Kou Tong put a hand on the bathroom door and found that it was locked from inside, so he simply sat down leaning against the wall. He couldn’t be seen through the frosted glass door. Looking out, you could only see the shadow of a person sitting outside waiting.

Kou Tong, not making a sound, listened to the bitter weeping coming from inside. He lit a cigarette and patiently waited at the door.

Huang Jinchen raised his head and looked at the living room’s ceiling light. Rather helplessly, he said, “Your house really does seem like a shelter for mental patients.”

Manman’s gaze shifted from the TV. The TV was playing an old cartoon. The quality of the art and animation weren’t very good. For some reason, looking into her big eyes made Huang Jinchen feel a little uncomfortable. Probably all things that were too pure would make people feel discomfort.

Manman asked, “Uncle, are you also a mental patient?”

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then said, “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Manman said. “I don’t think I am, either.”

“Then why don’t you use your mouth to speak?” Huang Jinchen asked.

Manman thought about it, then very profoundly told him, “The real is the rational[12].”

Huang Jinchen: “…” He had at last determined that this little devil had read all the books.

A long time passed, and He Xiaozhi finally wore himself out. He came out of the bathroom and found Kou Tong sitting on the ground with his back to him with a small ashtray at his feet and some thin cigarette butts in it. Hearing a sound, he raised his head and softly said, “Calmer now?”

He Xiaozhi was so exhausted he could hardly speak. He nodded lightly.

Kou Tong stood up. Suddenly, he opened his arms and put them around He Xiaozhi’s shoulders. The teenager’s head just reached his nose. He gently held the back of He Xiaozhi’s head with one hand, pressing the teenager’s face to his shoulder, hugging him like one would hug a small child.

His embrace had a particularly pleasant fragrance, as if scented with some wood, like sandalwood, but softer and lighter than sandalwood. Inhaling it deeply, there also seemed to be some sweetness in it.

He Xiaozhi closed his eyes. He heard Kou Tong say, “It will pass.”

What could deal the human heart a sudden blow sometimes wasn’t a sentence but a temperature, a smell, or the form that seemed to be waiting by the edge of the precipice at the end of the line to pull you up.

Without warning, He Xiaozhi began to cry again. This time he didn’t shout; even his sobs were almost inaudible. But when his tears fell lightly, they had the warmth of life.

Huang Jinchen looked on objectively. Suddenly, there was a gentle tug at his clothes. Manman, holding her doll with one hand, demanded: “Hug.”

Huang Jinchen was silent.

“I want a hug, too,” Manman persisted.

Huang Jinchen looked down on her from on high. The cynical smile faded from his face, revealing the deep indifference that seemed to be carved into his bones and soul.

“You can line up over there,” he advised Manman. “Dr. Kou the savior will hug each of you in turn.

“I don’t like holding things if it’s not for the purpose of movement, especially not people.” Then Huang Jinchen stroked Manman’s head, turned, and went into the bedroom.

23

SEED

AGGRIEVED, Manman watched his retreating figure. Then her small mouth pursed, and she let out an earth-shattering wail.

She couldn’t use her mouth to speak, but she could use it to cry. The doubled crying sounds added together sounded unusually demonic and ear-piercing. Kou Tong’s mom quickly dropped her spatula and ran out of the kitchen to pick Manman up, gently patting her on the back.

But the little girl only looked past her shoulder at Huang Jinchen, standing at the door of the bedroom with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

There was no expression on the man’s face. The place where he was standing seemed to set him apart from everyone. He watched Manman with no concern, as if she weren’t a little girl he had made cry but a little sparrow hopping to and fro.

Manman’s eyes were on him, but her body was curling up in Kou Tong’s mom’s arms. Like a little mobile hard disk, she could classify and store everything, but she was particularly sensitive towards others’ indifference.

Even Yao Shuo was disturbed. He opened the door and frowned, looking at Huang Jinchen. “Why are you lowering yourself to argue with a child?”

Huang Jinchen glanced at him. Not making a sound, he went back into the room and closed the door. When Manman couldn’t see him, her cries slowly quieted. In the end, she whimpered to a stop.

In a whole apartment full of grown-ups, there was only this one little girl. They all treated her like a little treasure. Even He Xiaozhi did everything in his power to squeeze out a rather grim-looking smile and pressed down on Manman’s soft hair.

Huang Jinchen got the gun he had brought with him out from under the bed, picked up a glasses cloth from the glasses case Kou Tong had put on the table, and absent-mindedly began to wipe.

Sounds from the living room came through the wooden door. Many people were talking. It was very lively. Kou Tong must have said something funny; there was some very lively laughter—Dr. Kou could always easily adjust people’s moods in the direction he wanted.

This home that had just seemed like a mental asylum seemed to have become warm and happy in an instant.

Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist letting his attention be drawn by these voices. He was like the little girl standing in the snow on Christmas Eve, looking through the windows at fireplaces and turkeys in people’s homes.

Sadly, he didn’t sell matches; he sold lives.

He remembered a long, long time ago, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when he had killed a man under orders.

That day, he lay on top of a tall building, looking through the telescopic sight at his target’s home. There was a strong warm spell that Mid-Autumn Festival; the temperature was still high. The family had the windows open, all of them sitting in the living room watching TV with fruit and mooncakes on the table.

There was a little boy in the house, the same age as Manman, who insisted on opening up every mooncake to see what filling it had. He sat in the lap of his father, who was about to have his head blown up. There was also a dachshund that could only stumble around, running to and fro.

In fact, there was no moonlight that night, only a cloudy sky, but the whole family was together and still very happy.

On the rooftop, Huang Jinchen smoked three cigarettes, looking through a bloody telescopic sight, like an ill-intentioned peeping Tom.

In fact, in that moment, he also very much wanted to open a door and walk into a home. It didn’t matter who was inside, as long as they had a place for him, a room. In the evening everyone would have dinner together, ridicule the never-ending news broadcast on TV, have a war over the evening dramas and sports matches, then finally return in a huff to their rooms to watch videos online.

Cool in summer, warm in winter, getting together to do some simple but interesting commemorative activity for every holiday, frowning and eating things they clearly didn’t like for the sake of the occasion—for example mooncakes, for example zongzi, or gluey and hard to digest tangyuan.

But before he could awaken from his beautiful dream, the ice-cold order to fire had come over his earpiece.

So he had to raise his ice-cold gun, which he had nevertheless depended on for survival for many years. When the little boy jumped off his father’s lap and went to chase the little dog, turning his back to him, he pulled the trigger, not even looking at his own achievement. He shut the telescopic sight, turned, and left.

…And what was still better, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled along the floor with a knife and fork in its breast, right over to the little girl.

Then the match went out, and she could see only the thick, cold wall.

All his life, there had been nothing for him in the world but a thick, cold wall.

When he was very little, he had been taken to a secret base to be trained; there had been no door in this vast country that he could open. Every day there was only ice-cold equipment and strict training. He became more and more skilled, and less and less like a person.

Later, he received one assignment after another, starting to become all-conquering in the nonstop career of killing. He lived behind a telescopic sight, making his world henceforth infinitely great, and also infinitesimally small.

All that met his eye were shabby rooftops or empty old houses, a gun, and other people’s lives, other people’s endless comings and goings.

But now, when he finally had such a door, which he could open to hear the conversations, celebrations, and sorrows he had imagined, he found that it was still hard for these things to touch him.

Outside, they were crying and laughing. In front of him, there was still only a wall.

When the little girl had opened her skinny arms and demanded a hug from him, for a moment, Huang Jinchen had even been angry.

A weak person didn’t have the right to survive, even if she was only a child.

What do you have to feel wronged over? What do any of you have to feel wronged over? he thought. All over the world, there are so many unfortunate people. Every second, there are countless people who won’t hear the next second’s tick of the clock. Clutching your insignificant pain, what reason do you have to demand hugs so hysterically?

Twenty minutes later, Kou Tong opened the door and came in. He silently pulled up a chair in front of Huang Jinchen and sat down.

Neither took any notice of the other. Kou Tong was looking Huang Jinchen up and down, and Huang Jinchen was wiping his gun. After a long time, Huang Jinchen, with his head down, finally asked, “Dr. Kou, have you suddenly noticed that I’m very handsome and become interested in me?”

Kou Tong laughed, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, put one in his mouth, gave another to Huang Jinchen, and drew close to light it for him.

Neither of these two had good living habits. Points they had somewhat in common were a lack of moral integrity and a serious cigarette habit.

Faint tobacco scent floated up from the flame. Kou Tong’s shadow fell over Huang Jinchen’s gun. The mouth of the gun coincidentally touched his underbelly, but he lit Huang Jinchen’s cigarette without any scruples, then sat back into his original position.

Huang Jinchen suddenly raised his head and looked at him. His gaze was sharp. He narrowed his eyes. “Dr. Kou, why is there a smell of gun smoke about you?”

Kou Tong said, “Hm?”

Huang Jinchen’s expression became solemn. He looked Kou Tong up and down, paused for a moment, then said, “Why do you call General Zhong…instructor?”

Kou Tong smiled, gave an “ah,” crossed one leg over the other, and leaned back in his chair in a very relaxed posture. “You may have noticed that in the campaign where we suppressed Utopia, General Zhong temporarily lost control of the base. At that time, I had the highest authority.”

Huang Jinchen waited for him to keep talking.

Kou Tong’s words paused for a moment, as though he didn’t know how to continue. He lowered his eyes, thought for a long time, then suddenly asked, “Actually, what you want to ask me about is the Seed Project, right?”

Huang Jinchen, indolently leaning against the head of the bed, suddenly sat up straight. He was like a bow that had been pulled, seeming to hold an arrow on the verge of being shot. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands holding the gun.

He lowered his voice and urgently asked, “What did you say?”

Kou Tong hesitated, twisted cigarette ash into an ashtray on the table, and walked two circles around the room. “This isn’t a good time. Our emotions are unstable. Perhaps we can discuss this question tomorrow.”

“You…” Huang Jinchen seemed to want to say something, but after a while, he strangely held back. He relaxed his spine once more and leaned back. “That makes sense. We can find a time to go out and talk about it.”

Kou Tong looked at him appreciatively. What a sniper lacked for least was always perfect psychological quality and patience. Then he leaned down and picked up his pillow, turned, and left the bedroom, leaving behind the sentence, “Rest up, I’m going to the study to arrange my notes.”

Kou Tong spent that night in the study, leaving his bedroom to Huang Jinchen while he himself cozied up to a stack of old, yellowed documents.

He pushed two chairs together, and that still wasn’t long enough. He had to lay the table in the middle as well. While the result was uneven, he could manage to lie on it.

By the middle of the night, Kou Tong had finally made some progress arranging the messy notes. When he had just lain down, someone knocked gently on the study door. He had to get up amidst the ping-pong collisions of table and chairs, smooth down his wild hair, and open the door. He looked and found his mom standing there.

“Why aren’t you sleeping yet?”  Kou Tong asked in a low voice.

“I saw that the light in your study was still on. I thought you must have been doing some urgent work.” Kou Tong’s mom looked inside and brought over a small plate of fruit. “You have to hydrate when you’re staying up late. Can you sleep in here? Why don’t you come sleep in my room?”

Kou Tong had put an apple segment in his mouth and nearly spat it up. He frowned and looked disbelievingly at her. Like when she had wanted to go to sleep hugging him when he was little, he blurted out, “How could I? You’re a woman!”

Kou Tong’s mom was speechless. “Hey, brother, you really are a true man.”

Kou Tong rolled his eyes at her, and she laughed. She quietly took a quilt from a cabinet and laid it over his unusually simple bed, then reached out to smooth it. She still didn’t think it was soft enough. “Will this do?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, don’t fuss. You’ll wake everyone up.” There was a stack of documents no one else could see under Kou Tong’s pillow. Though he knew that she wouldn’t understand them, he still couldn’t resist being a little flustered. He hastily pushed her out. “Go on, mom, you’ll get wrinkles if you go to sleep too late.”

Forced out by him, Kou Tong’s mom took a swipe at his nose. “Traitor.”

Kou Tong turned and leaned on the doorframe, silently eating a plate full of fruit. Then he lay back down on his temporary bed, but suddenly he didn’t feel like sleeping. The warm quilt was real, and the fruit he had eaten was also real. The elderly Smurfs poster stuck to the wall of the study was also real.

Since he had called out “mom,” Kou Tong had suddenly had the feeling that he had integrated into this space and could live out his life here.

Unconsciously, Kou Tong took out the document pouch under his pillow. The notes he had spent half the night arranging were inside. As if another person were controlling his body, Kou Tong thought, Why do I have to get out?

This space was like a place where your dreams came true. All the things he had revered but hadn’t dared to hope for in his wildest dreams could be had here. A person’s life and struggles, weren’t they for the sake of making a better life? Here, all hidden, true wishes could be realized. What was bad about it?

If he didn’t get out, if he grew old here, died here, then…

By the time he came back to himself, he had nearly torn the papers in half. Kou Tong immediately sat up. Chair legs scraped the floor, letting out a teeth-aching screech. Kou Tong quickly took tape out from the bottom of the bookcase, sat on the ground with the coverlet draped over him, and stuck the torn notes back together.

Deep night always made people lose the vigilance they ought to have. Kou Tong lowered his eyes. There was only one dim desk lamp that had temporarily been moved onto the floor in the study; in the light, his features looked like a carved relief hanging on a wall, cold and deep, with an undetectable dejection.

His slightly rolled up sleeve revealed a few deep scars. Looking at it for a long time almost gave you a false impression—as if these weren’t scars, but a human face, features forever twisted, looking at him from close up, following him like a shadow, reminding him at every moment of the things he had tried every means to forget.

Kou Tong finished sticking the notes together and curled up, hugging his long legs, one hand tightly clasping his forearm. He had never thought that he could one day be this weak, unable even to tell reality from illusion, trapped in an enormous dilemma created by the machine he had personally planned and taken part in making.

He sat unmoving in the shadows. From the dimness of starlight he sat until pale ashen white like a fish’s belly rose over the horizon. Then the first glimmer of dawn lit the first shout of the morning, and the street once again became full of people coming and going. The endless night had passed.

What was reality? What was illusion?

Kou Tong heard someone outside tiptoe out and guessed that it was probably his mother, still alive in this space, planning to go buy breakfast “for the whole family.”

He raised his stiff arms, rubbed his face, and thought, It would be better if Lao Ji were also here.

Then he picked up a slightly weatherbeaten mirror from the bookcase, looked at his own pale, weary face for a while, closed his eyes for a long moment, and then, without any alteration, put on a smile identical to his usual one, ready to appear on the scene full of spring sunshine.

24

LITTLE LOLI VS. CREEPY UNCLE

“WE HAVE to go out today.” After breakfast, Kou Tong picked Manman up and quietly said to her, “Can you come with me? I’ll buy you chocolate.”

Manman didn’t hesitate for a second before nodding.

Huang Jinchen said, “I’m going, too.”

Manman said, “Hmph!”

Kou Tong thought about it, weighing it up. Probably thinking that the little loli was more important, he firmly refused her hated creepy uncle. Smiling, he said, “Manman says no. You can look after the house, guard against rats.”

Huang Jinchen said, “…It’s not like I’m tetramine.”

Kou Tong was entirely unmoved.

Huang Jinchen was still thinking about the Seed Project that Kou Tong had mentioned the night before. These two words had nearly kept him up all night. When he got up first thing in the morning, they were still going around and around in his head, about to exhaust his patience. He seemed to be experiencing this kind of urgent mood for practically the first time. He was regretful. If he had known he would feel this way, he would have forced Kou Tong to keep talking last night; for whose benefit was he pretending to be calm?

So he clutched his hair and bent down, bringing his line of sight level with Manman’s. “Beautiful little lady…”

Manman looked at him hatefully. Huang Jinchen cried inwardly, thinking, All I did was refuse to hug her, what kind of child needs to be hugged at seven or eight? Hasn’t she finished kindergarten?

So he put on a vulgar smile like the Big Bad Wolf abducting Little Red Riding Hood, rubbed his hands together, and fawningly said, “Look, you’re already eight, an eight-year-old is a big kid who needs to learn to be independent, how can you still need people to hug you? That’s wrong. Uncle is developing your independence. It’s for your own good!”

This move might have deceived other little lolis, but it was absolutely no good for deceiving a genius little loli like Manman.

She pouted and kept glaring at him without saying a word.

Huang Jinchen thought, Shit, how annoying, why do people insist on having kids?

Well, they could have kids if they wanted to! But when they were having them, couldn’t they be a little more careful? They should wear UV-protection clothing, go online less, stay away from unknown radiation! Otherwise, what were they going to do when they gave birth to a little freak like this?

As if she had read something in his eyes, Manman suddenly burst into tears. She turned, tugged on Kou Tong’s clothes, and burrowed into his arms. Huang Jinchen, facing the condemning gazes of many observers who didn’t know the truth of the matter, instantly felt that he was under great pressure.

Manman said, “I hate him! He’s a bad guy!”

Kou Tong immediately nodded to express approval. “Yeah!”

Huang Jinchen sorrowfully tilted his head back forty-five degrees to look at the ceiling and glumly said, “Even bad guys have self-respect. Do you two masters have to say it in front of my face?”

Manman said, “We’re not taking him with us!”

Kou Tong abandoned his former comrade-in-arms without any hesitation. He nodded firmly and said, “Yeah!”

Huang Jinchen pathetically said, “Chief Kou…”

Kou Tong pretended not to see him. But Manman raised her head from his embrace, a crack appearing in her small hands covering her eyes, showing a pair of eyes with not a trace of moisture.

Shit, it’s been hardly any time at all, she’s just found a reliable backer she can throw tantrums for, and this little whelp who can only chew lollipops has already learned to fake crying!

It was true that good things took three years to learn while bad things took three days.

Huang Jinchen took a deep breath and decisively said, “I was wrong. How about we go to the supermarket today and buy anything you like? I’ll pay. Is that all right?”

Manman turned her head and looked at him with her pure, innocent eyes. Two seconds later, she nodded and very profoundly said, “OK, deal. Keep the cops out of it. We’ll meet at the docks and swap the money for the goods!”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Kou Tong: “…”

“Who did you learn that from?” Kou Tong asked.

“I saw it on TV,” Manman responded.

In the war between the creepy uncle and the little loli, the creepy uncle was completely defeated.

Soon, the two adults and one child were walking in the street. People in the street came and went hurriedly. Breakfast stands were doing brisk trade. White steam and the fragrance of food floated around. It seemed identical to “outside,” but it was still different. Huang Jinchen looked at the two people beside him and had a subtle feeling of disharmony that made him feel bewildered.

He was going with another person to take a demanding little devil to the supermarket to buy snacks—when this thought appeared in his brain, Huang Jinchen, like a feeble-minded child who had just learned to form sentences, repeated it over and over to himself, seeming still unable to understand what meaning it held.

And when he remembered that he was living with these people, that he had just gotten up from the same breakfast table as them, he felt even more incredulous.

He was like a child trying candy for the first time, cautiously tasting the novel flavor, tongue numb from sucking but still unwilling to give up.

Kou Tong was watching the people in the street. Along the way, he bought a map at a newsstand and put it in his pocket—this seemed to be their main assignment in leaving the house.

Seven conscious subjects. If you counted him and Huang Jinchen, then added Lao Yao, He Xiaozhi, and Manman, it made five people in all. There were still two other conscious subjects. Where would they be?

After a sleepless night, Kou Tong at last slightly understood the mechanism of this erroneous program. He had previously envisaged this as a place for automatic treatment—automatically supplying each person who entered with a character and a role; but as for how the character was to be inserted, and what role the character would play, Kou Tong hadn’t gotten that far.

Now, owing to a programming error, it seemed that the half-completed program had automatically added a second half to itself—the conscious subjects who were inserted could fulfill their hearts’ desires.

Like him seeing his long dead mother, Manman suddenly being able to communicate with others, and Lao Yao’s family—his source of stress—being gone.

Though He Xiaozhi’s circumstances weren’t clear yet. But that was also easy to understand; according to the length of time it took to parse out each conscious subject, the speed of the program’s analysis would differ somewhat, so the time it would take them to encounter the needed “scene” would also be different. Manman was a child; his and Lao Yao’s consciousnesses had previously entered the Projector, so presumably the speed of analysis would be a little faster.

But putting it like this, Huang Jinchen’s consciousness should also have been recorded by the instrument. What was his situation now?

Kou Tong looked searchingly at Huang Jinchen. The two of them were following Manman around the supermarket. Manman was pushing a cart hardly shorter than she was, putting Huang Jinchen’s “buy anything you like” fully into effect: cookies, chocolate, all kinds of candy, all kinds of pie, ice cream, jelly, and a squinting teddy bear as tall as a person.

Huang Jinchen’s expression looked a little pained.

Suddenly, Manman, who had been joyously putting things in the cart, stopped in her tracks. The child’s inorganically pure eyes turned—there was a little rat in a corner.

The rat’s expression was very humanoid, like a voyeur caught in the act, so startled it froze on the spot, its little eyes rolling around and around, paws quivering again and again.

Next, it suddenly scurried under a shelf of products. Manman said, “It’s going to get…”

Before she could say “away,” she saw a lollipop that had been in her cart go flying and hit the rat in the head like a bullet, making quite a lot of noise. Manman blinked and turned to look at Huang Jinchen, who had done all of this.

Huang Jinchen’s gaze shifted from the dead rat. He said to the little loli, “Not bad, rat radar.”

Manman considered, then said to the creepy uncle, “Not bad, rat killer.”

The three of them returned from the supermarket practically in a rush, looking out for rats following them the whole way. After they came home, Kou Tong put Manman and her big bag of loot from the supermarket on the couch together. She turned the TV on for herself with familiar ease.

Dr. Kou quietly said to Huang Jinchen, “Come with me.”

The two of them went into the study.

Huang Jinchen watched him hang up the map and raised his eyebrows—it wasn’t the map of any country or area he had ever seen. It was only a small continent with a little island next to it. The rest of the map hadn’t been drawn. Judging from the limited space, this was probably limitless ocean.

Kou Tong opened his notes to a certain page with a hand-drawn map on it, astonishingly similar to the printed one hanging on the wall.

“What is this?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“A map, or…as far as the space’s generating program is concerned, a coordinate grid.” Kou Tong said. “There’s a very complex calculation method. I’m planning to provisionally use the personal computer in my study to simulate it. This way, we can get a better grasp on our surroundings.”

He frowned. “I’m not very sure right now what it means that Manman said ‘intruders.’ Reasonably speaking, the Projector has the highest degree of compatibility. Everything in the space has been created according to the conscious subjects’ projections. The instrument itself won’t have any hostility towards any of the subjects. Unless it’s a virus, then probably…”

“What?”

“The person those rats are loyal to is one of those seven people.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t especially understand. He silently watched Kou Tong lean over and scribble on a paper. In fact, he currently very much wanted to roughly interrupt Kou Tong and ask him the question that had been troubling him all this time. All he could do was control the rate of his breathing while leaning on the wall as if he didn’t exist, unmoving—this was one of the basic skills he had been trained in many years ago.

Kou Tong also seemed to have forgotten he existed. His expression grave, he analyzed the map, occasionally stopping to perform calculations on the paper.

Huang Jinchen’s gaze was directed at the map along with his. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide. His even breath caught, and his spine, half-leaning against the wall, straightened. Pointing at the shape of the map’s main road, he said, “That’s…”

The map was very detailed. One on side, it had a traffic map of railroads and highways. On the other, it had a diagram of the natural features that looked very colorful. All of these had disrupted Huang Jinchen’s line of sight, so he hadn’t recognized the familiar outlines of that figure right away.

It was a figure of a seed, and the little island next to it was its leaf.

This figure had enshrouded his whole youth. This was…

“Yes, it’s the Seed.” Kou Tong paused, stood up off the ground, and looked at the map with an even more complicated expression than Huang Jinchen’s.

25

WHO AM I?

“I SAW that symbol in the place I was when I was little.” Huang Jinchen reached over from behind Kou Tong, his finger lightly tracing the outline of the map. “The coach told me that it was a seed.”

His extremely gentle breath brushed past Kou Tong’s ear. The two of them were very close, but for some reason, there was nothing suggestive about it.

“The coach was like a nanny, responsible for raising us little kids, teaching us how to talk and other basic skills little kids need.” As he said this, Huang Jinchen’s expression wasn’t angry, wasn’t downcast, wasn’t even longing, but it was a touch bewildered. “I remember there were many children around then. Each of us had a single room. We were normally very closely watched, and our daily schedules were strictly limited. Everyone frequently changed living quarters. There was practically no opportunity to have much contact with the people around.

“Later, when I was a little older, I didn’t see that coach anymore. I was taken to a strange place and entered closed-door training. The training was done via an elimination system. The people around me changed nonstop.” Huang Jinchen leaned back against Kou Tong’s desk and knocked over an old pen container on it. A big pile of odds and ends came clattering out; apart from pens, it contained everything possible.

Huang Jinchen raised his eyebrows and carelessly flipped through the things. He found that inside were not only the collector’s cards found in all kinds of instant noodles and snacks, there was also a letter that at a glance was clearly a love letter written by a little girl.

Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist laughing silently. This made his somewhat willful eyes and brows look considerably softer. Kou Tong indifferently said, “Don’t laugh. This was written by my first love.”

Huang Jinchen looked at him wide-eyed. “Dr. Kou, as a pure and honest medical professional, could you have a less rich romantic history?”

Kou Tong said, “Even medical professionals have a period of budding youth.”

Huang Jinchen sighed and wrung his hands. “Well, shit, I really do fucking regret not having met you earlier, or I could have plucked that bud out of its cradle. Now it’s turned into a skirt-chaser.”

Kou Tong continued, “I still remember her name. She was called X103. She had two dimples when she smiled and a long braid. Every time I saw her, I couldn’t resist pulling it.”

Huang Jinchen stared.

Kou Tong said, “I told you, didn’t I, that my mom passed away fifteen years ago. Since I obviously couldn’t live on my own then and had no guardian, and none of my relatives could be contacted quickly, I was taken to the community orphanage. Then I was inexplicably picked out, went through a series of incomprehensible tests, then got taken away by a group of people.”

Huang Jinchen softly asked, “Then what?”

Kou Tong hesitated for a moment. “I can’t tell you the exact course of events. I was still young then, and my emotions weren’t especially stable. I must have added in many of the memories myself later. They’re probably not actual events.”

Huang Jinchen nodded. When Kou Tong spoke in a certain especially objective manner, he had a strange attractive power and sense of dependability that made people involuntarily trust him.

“I also had a coach, and a group of kids my age who lived in different compartments.” Kou Tong turned his head and looked into Huang Jinchen’s eyes. In that instant, there seemed to be something identical in their eyes, as if in their completely different bodies flowed the same cold and mysterious blood.

“But I wasn’t like you,” Kou Tong said. “I was older when I went in. Reasonably speaking, I didn’t really need a coach to teach me to eat, get dressed, talk, or write. I only stayed in the little Seed room for just over a month.”

Huang Jinchen at last couldn’t resist cutting in: “Just one month, and you found yourself a little girlfriend.”

Kou Tong said, “Brother, how about we discuss serious matters first?”

Huang Jinchen nodded quickly. “Yes, yes, go on, sir, go on.”

Kou Tong picked up: “Yes, your first little sister-in-law was someone I met during that month. The kids around me were like you, very strictly watched and often changing neighbors, so they rarely voluntarily spoke to others. Though none of that could hold back my young boy’s heart when it saw beauty.”

Huang Jinchen instantly felt speechless—since meeting this man named Kou Tong, who was respectable on the surface but in reality extremely slutty, he had regularly found his glib tongue rendered speechless; this really could be called meeting his match.

The slut Kou Tong, in deadly earnest, said, “The first time, when no one was looking, I short-circuited the room’s electric circuit, but because of the surge protector, the fuse burned out, and it automatically tripped. Nothing at all happened, and I was nearly caught. So the second time I learned my lesson and made a second attempt.”

Huang Jinchen felt that when he was little, Dr. Kou must have been even more of a scalp-numbing terrorist than Manman.

“I took the resistor out of an electric kettle, plugged it in, and dropped it onto a stack of books on a wooden table. And soon after, the smoke started.”

Huang Jinchen looked at him in admiration.

Kou Tong smiled. “The smoke filled the whole corridor. The fire alarm began to scream. A team of firefighters quickly came in. All the children living in the compartments scattered in the dark. I finally had a chance to chat up X103.”

Then the smile on his face slowly disappeared, his expression becoming graver. “It’s from her that I heard about the Seed and later deduced quite a few things—when we were little, we would periodically go through a series of many tests. I found that after each round, some children would move out.”

Huang Jinchen thought carefully. “That’s how it was. Then what?”

“I deduced that it must be some kind of screening process,” Kou Tong said. “So X103 and I settled on a strategy. We lived close together. The windows were all locked, but luckily, to make the children grow up healthy, that place didn’t seal the windows. They looked like they were still clear glass. We calculated the angle. When we couldn’t see each other, we would use a little mirror and a pre-arranged code to pass on information.”

Huang Jinchen crossed his arms over his chest, listening seriously, feeling that the child Kou Tong was a bit of a demon. He had had great potential as a spy since he was little.

“This led to a long period when we were constantly moving locations. As expected, I was always with X103, but we didn’t leave the Seed base. We were constantly entering another series of tests.”

Huang Jinchen frowned. “Why didn’t I move?”

“Maybe your distinguishing traits were very obvious,” Kou Tong said. “According to your description, you must have left the Seed very young to be trained. My guess is, the Seed was a place specially for cultivating people with certain aspects, like a secret base, selecting children without guardians who had different latent abilities, going through many tests to finally fix on the optimal development plan for them, changing them into people with certain special qualities.”

Huang Jinchen was silent. Then he opened the “love letter” X103 had written to Kou Tong, looked at the incomprehensible childish words for a long time, then asked, “What’s written here?”

“It’s a code.” Kou Tong took the letter. A trace of yearning appeared on his face. “Encoded with different Morse code using each sentence’s character count.”

Huang Jinchen was already calm now. With a high degree of acceptance, he nodded. “Oh, child spy tactics.—What did she say?”

“That we’d been discovered,” Kou Tong said. “This is the last message she sent me. The next day, the two of us were separated. I woke up one morning and was taken out of the Seed base to be trained. General Zhong was my instructor. As for X103, I never saw her again.”

Huang Jinchen considered. “Given this young lady’s natural endowments, she’s likely a beautiful spy in some foreign country now.”

After a long time, Kou Tong at last quietly said, “Who knows? Perhaps.”

The two of them fell silent simultaneously. After a moment, Kou Tong suddenly took off his shirt. On his shoulder blade, Huang Jinchen saw the figure of a seed. He couldn’t resist pressing on his own back—he had once had one there as well. Because his assignment as planted agent in Utopia was special, it had been concealed.

“It wasn’t until long after that I learned the truth about the Seed,” Kou Tong said. “I had the highest authority at the ST Base then. I could consult a lot of material I hadn’t been able to look at before.”

“What was it?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“Genetic implants.”

Huang Jinchen frowned. Kou Tong carefully explained: “You know that that era was the era when humans learned of the discussion concerning ‘the countless possibilities of human evolution.’ It created some wild products—for example, Utopia, which has now been called a terrorist organization. Genetic implants, meanwhile, were another idea of the time, the idea that a child, according to some qualities they displayed, could be implanted with a segment of genes that historically had made up the body of some very famous individual—would that tap into a person’s latent abilities to a greater extent, make them surpass ordinary people by countless times and in a certain respect make them ‘a superhuman’?”

Huang Jinchen felt a chill rise in his stomach. This made the precious hands of this former sniper of inhumanly excellent psychological quality start to tremble.

What Kou Tong said next was like a cold sentence being pronounced, hitting him fiercely. Kou Tong said, “Yes, the Seed was a very important experiment in the genetic implant project, but it doesn’t seem to have been very successful. The precision of the human body was something the people of the time didn’t expect. Many children displayed genetic transplant rejection. When a man-made nonconforming part appears in a living body, the living body will automatically get rid of it. When it couldn’t be gotten rid of, many people developed all kinds of personality disorders, brain damage, and other problems. There were vanishingly few successful cases—even though, before the genetic implants, the base had performed all kinds of very careful analyses and tests on the children who were turned into experiments.

“The experimental materials are highly classified to this day. I only came into contact with a portion of them when a chance came my way and I found the edge of a bit of the truth after years of research and verification.” Kou Tong looked at Huang Jinchen. “But there’s no need to worry. You’re free now. Starting from the day the Projector began normal operations, I was free. The things I had done were seen as living up to the segment of genes in my body. As for you, after Utopia, the fact that they let you come freeload at the ST Base in the special expert group must signify tacit consent to your request to retire…”

“Free?” Huang Jinchen suddenly interrupted him. His voice was a little sharp, giving off a touch of extreme danger. Then he laughed quietly, like some ominous bird haunting the night. “You’re saying I’m…free?”

I’ve lived all these years and still haven’t even been able to figure out who I am. How can I be free?

What distinguishes a person from other humans? His body? His organs? His thoughts? Or his DNA? If even your genes are different, what else is there…that can prove that you existed?

Kou Tong silently turned his head, looking at the form of that map.

Suddenly, Huang Jinchen threw himself forward and hugged him tightly, like a drowning child grabbing the last piece of driftwood. Fingers wrung his shirt into wrinkles as though trying to dig into his flesh. He held on so tightly, his whole body trembling, desperately drawing on Kou Tong’s last bit of warmth, not letting the cold in his heart rise to engulf his head.

The whole world beneath his feet seemed to have gone far away from him. There was only this one person. They had the same mark and experiences, the same memories and the same suffering. It was as if he was the only one he could depend on for survival.

Who am I? Huang Jinchen asked himself silently. Who am I really?

26

THE MAGICIAN

KOU TONG hesitated, sighed, then gently raised his hands and put them on Huang Jinchen’s back.

In this place of mingled reality and illusion, in this place where everyone is lost in their own mind, Kou Tong asked himself, who is willing to wake from the beautiful dream? Who is willing to open their eyes and face a whole world of icy cold that has nothing to do with them? When everyone is sleepwalking, why must I be wide awake?

But…there was nothing to be done about this.

Kou Tong took a deep breath, rather self-mockingly thinking, here there was a troublesome handsome man voluntarily throwing himself into his arms, a not elderly beautiful woman “offering her bed,” a little thing like a human computer to regularly cause some strife, but…

Knowing full well that it was an illusion, how could a person still lose himself in nothingness?

If a person couldn’t face his own true past, what difference was there between that and rejecting himself?

If even your genes had other people’s things mixed into them, if you then also denied your memories, even denied your soul, denied your whole world of past experiences, then what difference was there between that and an ostrich sticking its butt into the air and burying its head in the sand?

If, when the darkness revealed a pair of grim eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth, the main character could give a cry and cover himself with a blanket from head to foot, pretend not to see it, turn a blind eye, then day could still dawn and everyone could live as normal—then what the hell was the point of those horror movies that did everything they could to scare people?

Kou Tong’s fingers stroked comfortingly again and again over Huang Jinchen’s spine, as if petting the fur of some big wounded animal—they were only borrowing each other’s warmth, licking shockingly similar wounds; soon it would be all right.

Faced with this rotten world, you could only survive by being more rotten than the world, on the strength of the invincibility of baseness. Both of them understood this reasoning very well.

Just then, all of a sudden, there was a crackle. The lamp on Kou Tong’s desk flickered and went out.

The faint sounds of the TV coming from the living room also vanished. There was a light knock on the study door. The person knocking wasn’t very strong. It was like a little cat scratching at the door. Kou Tong slightly pushed Huang Jinchen away and opened the door to find Manman standing there hugging her new flame, the little bear. With her head tipped back she said, “The power’s out.”

Kou Tong put a hand on her little head. “Oh, the fuse may have burned out. I’ll go take a look.”

Manman nodded obediently. Then her gaze shifted to Huang Jinchen behind him. The perplexed expression hadn’t yet left Huang Jinchen’s face. The rims of his eyes were slightly red. Manman looked him over, then suddenly very calmly said, “Hey, in life, the most important thing is to be happy.”

Kou Tong tripped over a little stool on the ground, nearly prostrating himself.

Huang Jinchen’s expression became increasingly complex, almost contorted. He held back for a long time, then said, “If I’m unhappy, are you telling me you’re going to make me a bowl of noodles?”

Manman happily ran over, took a package of instant noodles from a cabinet, and held it up high in front of Huang Jinchen.

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Kou Tong looked at the apartment’s electrical circuit and found that the fuse appeared to be doing fine and the circuit hadn’t tripped. He wanted to go out to ask the neighbors, see if the power was out in the whole neighborhood, then found that there was a shadow covering the whole sky.

Kou Tong tilted his head and carefully looked outwards. He found that flying by weren’t ordinary dark clouds but an enormous black curtain. Looking closely, what was making the sky go dark turned out to be countless densely-packed crows.

Kou Tong didn’t announce this. He silently went to the window, stuck a hand in his pocket, and observed, frowning.

He saw the city lights light up bit by bit. For a moment, the lights of the human world blanketed the whole earth, as if night had come. Then the lights went out one by one, like frail sparks that could be put out with a twist of the fingers.

What followed was boundless darkness.

And the frightening thing was that as these birds flew by, covering the sky and blocking out the sun, they didn’t make a single bird call.

“What’s wrong?” Huang Jinchen came from behind him, leading Manman by the hand.

“Shh.” Kou Tong lifted his finger and gestured, still looking out the window. “Don’t alert the others—look.”

He pointed. Traffic was still moving in the street, everyone going their own way. The stoplights were off, and many cars were stuck on the road. People cursed each other, got angry, made phone calls, or simply went to the side of the road to buy something to eat. It was all very normal, as if they hadn’t noticed at all that there was something unusual in the sky.

“The crows?” Huang Jinchen raised his eyebrows.

“Only certain people can see the crows,” Kou Tong said softly.

Just then, the door of Yao Shuo’s room opened. The middle-aged man walked out looking grave. “What’s going on? What are those things outside?”

He Xiaozhi also came out—though he was still listless, not saying a word.

“It’s the magician,” Manman said.

“Enough, child. Starting today, don’t watch any more TV shows or cartoons.” Huang Jinchen sighed. “Watch the news and weather forecast every day, and the only newspaper you can read is the People’s Daily, for the sake of protecting the purity of your easily polluted little heart.”

“The dark magician who can control the crows and rats,” Manman said. In a room full of grown-ups, she always had to look up when she spoke. Perhaps because of the lighting, there seemed to be some mist over her eyes, making it seem a little as though she was in a reverie. “He comes from over there, the nameless island.”

She pointed in a direction.

Kou Tong squatted down. “How do you know it’s nameless?”

“It’s written on the map,” Manman said. “I looked at the map when you bought it.”

“Where did you hear about the magician?” Kou Tong asked.

“I saw him,” Manman said quietly. “A man in a robe who looks like he came out of a piece of paper, with a China rose embroidered on his clothes, holding a very sweet-scented white flower in his hand.”

“How did you see him?”

“I don’t know.” Manman tilted her head and thought about it. Then she turned to look at Huang Jinchen and said, “I can also see him crying. He’s changed into a child about the same age as me, holding a round…”

“OK, I’ve got it.” Kou Tong was afraid that she would say the word “seed,” and Master Huang would kill the witness.

Yao Shuo gave Huang Jinchen a strange look. Huang Jinchen stared sharply at Manman, seeming as if he really did somewhat want to kill the witness.

Then, without a word, he went around Manman and returned to his own room. After a moment, he came out with a bag over his shoulder—given the thing’s length, Kou Tong judged that it held a weapon that could burst a person’s head.

“Come on,” Huang Jinchen said to Kou Tong without turning his head, with the air of a bandit. “We’re going to take that flower-covered guy down, show him that romantics need to have principles, too.”

Kou Tong remembered that birds had a very bad habit—they liked to shit everywhere. He raised his head to look at the sky, saw the black, densely crowded army of crows, like workers rushing to the cities to get jobs, and felt his scalp itch. Huang Jinchen stood nearby and looked at him with a ferocious gaze that meant—What are you still dawdling for? Hurry up!

Kou Tong had to fish up car keys from the living room. “Mom, I’m taking your car out.”

Kou Tong’s mom, fearless in her ignorance, said, “Oh, then get some groceries. Get another three pounds of ground meat. We’ll have dumplings for lunch.”

Kou Tong: “…”

Kou Tong’s mom remembered something and added, “Oh, right, I’m out of cleansing lotion. Bring me back a tube.”

Kou Tong looked at her eternally young, abnormal face and very feebly said, “Do you also need a package of sanitary napkins?”

Without any hesitation, Kou Tong’s mom said, “Yes!”

Kou Tong dejectedly picked up the car keys and left.

The two of them drove in the direction of the nameless island. Kou Tong detoured skillfully through the streets and alleys, avoiding the deadlocked main roads. Huang Jinchen sat in the passenger’s seat with the map he had grabbed from the study on his knees. All of a sudden, he pointed to a spot on it and said, “Go to that TV tower.”

Kou Tong turned his head to give him a look.

Huang Jinchen said, “This is the highest point near the nameless island. I like heights. It’ll make it easier to judge where the person putting on the show is.”

Kou Tong asked, “And if that person also likes heights?”

Huang Jinchen licked his lips and laughed softly. “There can only be one tiger on the mountain.”

Kou Tong nodded. “Very good. I’ll be responsible for taking you to the TV tower. When you’re done, you can call me to come pick you up.”

Huang Jinchen turned his head to look at him. “Partner, though you aren’t female, I still wouldn’t mind you being on my mountain.”

Kou Tong calmly said, “Very good, together through thick and thin—though I need to go buy sanitary napkins for my lady mother.”

Huang Jinchen was silent for a while. “Your lady mother is defying the natural order. You’ll be taken for a pervert, handsome.”

“Don’t worry,” Kou Tong said, finding joy in sorrow, “those things actually make good insoles—they’re soft and absorb sweat.”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Suddenly, Kou Tong turned the steering wheel, dodging a crow coming towards the front windshield like an artillery shell. The animal whizzed by. Kou Tong seemed to hear the wind of its flapping wings.

“Crap. How did they spot us?” Kou Tong said. Then, in accordance with his words, three suicidal avian bodies in a row rushed towards them. The air raid had begun.

A pile of bird corpses, feathers, and unknown liquids immediately appeared on the front windshield. The windshield wipers were broken. In the blink of an eye, signs of damage appeared on the glass; soon there were cracks like a spider’s web on it. Huang Jinchen took a small handgun from his pocket.

The moment the glass shattered, Kou Tong ducked. Huang Jinchen quickly pulled the trigger. A crow took a bullet and fell dead onto the ground, where it turned into a small piece of black paper.

“I hate these remnants of feudal society.” Huang Jinchen dropped the handgun, took a machine gun from his big bag and rolled down the window on his side. He braced the gun against his shoulder and fired out the window.

“Fuck! Huang Er-Pang[13]! We’re in the city! No one else can see the crows, can you be a little quieter with your massacre?!” Kou Tong’s shouts mixed with the sound of gunfire. “How do you expect me to explain this to the police? Tell them someone stuck a string of firecrackers into the exhaust pipe?!”

Huang Jinchen laughed loudly. “Expert Kou, the most enchanting thing about you is that when the going gets tough, you can still come up with endless original ideas!”

Kou Tong reached up and wrung the neck of a crow barging into the car. After it turned into a piece of paper, he cursed quietly, then took a lighter from his pocket. “What’s the point of shooting them down? Follow along!”

He slammed on the gas pedal, then spun the steering wheel, throwing aside a pile of birds. Then he raised his hand and tossed the lighter out through the windshield that had been broken to pieces.

Huang Jinchen understood at once, shooting it dead on. Kou Tong drove at a horrifying speed, getting out from underneath before the flames had completely erupted. After the small explosion, a big fire began to burn—because the advancing waves of paper birds had all become fuel.

But for some reason, they still threw themselves forward like moths, down from overhead, turning into a smoking, flaming black tornado.

27

MOVEMENT OF THE HEART

COUGH-COUGH-COUGH-COUGH… These were Dr. Kou and Master Huang, dismally climbing out of the car.

Dr. Kou said, “I feel like I’ve crawled out of a crematorium.”

Huang Jinchen’s face was covered in ash, but he didn’t even try to wipe it. He clearly no longer wanted to show his face. He said adoringly to his temporary superior, “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been entwined in the same funerary casket?”

Kou Tong said, “You fucking…”

Huang Jinchen showed two teeth in a crass, monkey-like grin.

Kou Tong continued, “In life, the real estate market has forced me to live in an apartment like a little chicken coop. Am I supposed to sleep in a bunk bed when I’m dead, too?”

Huang Jinchen’s face, which had been gloomy at home, now showed a smile as the haze dispersed. Kou Tong turned his head and looked in anguish at the wrecked car. He thought that it had to be fully insured, or else how would he dare to go home having done this to the car? Wouldn’t he have to sleep out in the street from then on?

These crows made of paper seemed to be of a mind to speed the flames. Though the two people they had launched a sneak attack on were standing not far away, they took no notice of them, throwing themselves screaming into the towering flames and turning into pile after pile of ash, fluttering like black butterflies. Not far away, fire alarms sounded. Kou Tong frowned and pulled Huang Jinchen into the broken-down car.

The car started. Huang Jinchen, finally remembering, said, “Oh, right, what did you just call me?”

Kou Tong answered candidly: “Huang Er-Pang.”

Huang Jinchen frowned, pinched his own firmly-muscled arm, and said with a sigh, “That’s the first time anyone’s called me that—why am I Huang Er-Pang?”

Kou Tong turned his head, gaze making a circle of his waist, and commented: “Your waist is too thick. A hand estimate exceeds thirty inches.”

“It’s muscle!” Huang Jinchen protested. “You can’t ask a man with an eight-pack to have a tiny waist! What have you been fucking?”

Kou Tong said, “I like slender beautiful boys and big-chested, long-legged ladies—stop squabbling, your style doesn’t suit the era’s aesthetic tastes. If you’re really so jealous, hurry up and lose weight.”

“I’m not fat! I’m solid!”

“All right, all right. I know you’re not fat, you’re just big-boned…”

They quickly left this troubled place. Huang Jinchen said, “So if what we see are crows, and what other people see are clouds, how do you explain that scene just now? Do you think that person the little girl said is putting on a show is nearby?”

Kou Tong thought about it, drove the car into an alley, stopped it by the roadside, took two moist towelettes from the car’s CD storage compartment, and gave one to Huang Jinchen. “Wipe the ash off your face. We’ll think of a way to go back and check.”

Huang Jinchen frowned, sniffing. “It’s perfumed, too? It really is a woman’s car.”

“Enough, be happy with what you have. Stop making trouble.” Kou Tong swiped at his face, took his glasses out of his pocket, and put them on, taking on his beast in human clothing look. “I didn’t get this treatment when I was little.”

Huang Jinchen looked at him curiously. Kou Tong mimed spitting at the wrinkled towelette in his hand. “Then she’d grip me by my youthful neck and use the tissue dripping with saliva to rub my face. For two weeks afterwards, I’d get flashbacks whenever I saw a towel while washing my face.”

This time, it wasn’t a haze dispersing; Huang Jinchen rocked back and forth.

Kou Tong shook his head and got out of the car. His bitter expression quickly vanished. The eyes hidden behind his glasses curved slightly, a not very visible smile appearing.

This is how it should be, Dr. Kou thought. Whose benefit am I looking gloomy for? What will I do if I scare the kids?

The two of them quickly went down the alley and passed through a row of houses. Kou Tong grabbed the roof of an old-fashioned garage and nimbly flipped up, but Huang Jinchen hesitated, only clinging to the wall to follow in his footsteps—Kou Tong was deliberately standing in a place where he was exposed, the better to lure that “person” out, while all Huang Jinchen had to do was stand hidden in the shadows.

They didn’t exchange a single surplus sentence, but they were unusually well-coordinated.

Huang Jinchen calmed down and glanced at Kou Tong’s figure out of the corner of his eye. He suddenly thought, Was he deliberately cheering me up just now?

When this thought flew by, Huang Jinchen’s eyes flashed. He turned his head away somewhat unnaturally, not looking at Kou Tong again. He suddenly thought, a little helplessly, This person… How can he be like this?

A man like this, calmly evaluated, was like an antique from a distant era, serene and significant, costly in a low-key way, but he didn’t have that kind of superior coldness. Even in the darkest places, he could still calmly survive, letting off a light that cheered others.

This was a man who, even facing the abyss, would still go barefoot, cross one leg over the other, and make some weird joke.

It wasn’t that suffering couldn’t touch him; it was just that he could always handle heavy matters with ease.

Huang Jinchen thought, Isn’t he afraid…that people will become infatuated with him?

The firefighting team had come, but the expanse of crows was gone. They were circling in the air, still blotting out the sky, moving from time to time. The ground was covered in black ashes where the fire had been, blackening half the wall nearby. With no more kindling, the intensity of the fire was quickly controlled by the firefighters.

But Kou Tong’s footsteps suddenly stopped—he raised his head and saw a man standing on a nearby rooftop.

Having seen this person, Kou Tong at last understood what Manman had meant by “looks like he came out of a piece of paper.” This person seemed to have traveled from a two-dimensional world. He was completely at odds with his surroundings. Though his feet weren’t floating over the ground, you could still see it at a glance.

The man was wearing a very complicated robe. The hem, like Manman had said, had big flowers embroidered on it—though they weren’t homely China roses; they were big, flaming red roses, and he was holding a bouquet of lilies in his hands. There was also a playing card in his collar.

He really seemed like…he had escape from a mental asylum.

Huang Jinchen’s voice came from Kou Tong’s feet. He asked, “What did the little girl say he does? Magic tricks?”

Kou Tong’s eyes were fixed on the man unblinkingly. He gave an affirmative. Huang Jinchen thought about it. “Why does he seem like a shaman to me?”

Black mist rose from beneath the shaman’s feet. Crows gradually flew out of the black mist, slowly winding around him. This made him look like a walking smoke bomb. The crows flew higher and higher, until finally they rose over his neck, leaving only his face revealed.

The man’s lips nervily turned up, squeezing out a smile, signaling to Kou Tong from afar as if inviting him to follow.

Kou Tong hesitated for three seconds, then decisively followed.

At the foot of the wall beneath his feet, there wasn’t a trace of Huang Jinchen.

Kou Tong followed the strange man, neither fast nor slow. He found that the man must have intended to invite him—as soon as his footsteps slowed, the man would correspondingly wait for him. He has heading precisely in the direction of the “nameless island” Manman had spoken of.

What did this person actually represent?

Was this the appearance some person had fantasized for himself, or was “he” himself the product of a fantasy?

The ordinary person, under ordinary circumstances, has a fairly accurate self-image. In everyday terms, they recognize the person in the mirror. Even if they don’t like their appearance all that much, they still psychologically accept indicators like male or female, tall or short, fat or thin.

Consequently, though Manman was still a child and He Xiaozhi, in his confusion, had had attention to spare for nothing but despair and hadn’t even noticed that the world he was in had changed to another dimension, both of them had still maintained their original appearances.

But in terms of common sense, the ordinary person wouldn’t believe that rats could talk, that paper crows could become a type of biological weapon. So apart from Manman, the others who were grown up didn’t accept these absurd facts due to their unconscious minds, so unlike the child, they had been unable to detect the rats’ observation, and it was hard for them to “hear” what they were discussing.

In summary, the people and things that appeared in this space were connected to the conscious subjects and must be “assigning the ideal living conditions, within the scope of acceptability” to a conscious subject.

If there really was another conscious subject on the nameless island, then how unusual must this person’s “common sense” be to make these products from the 2.5th dimension?

Or perhaps…the conscious subject had some kind of cognitive impairment?

Kou Tong’s heart sank.

After walking this way for a long time, they reached the pier. The “magician” suspended in the air like a big kite at last found his airport and landed. Another character from the 2.5th dimension followed him. It was unclear if this was a man or a woman. They wore a very exaggerated headdress on their head, like a citizen of some remote ethnic minority on the mainland, carrying a walking stick over their shoulder, holding a little stray dog of no distinguishable breed.

The little dog said, “Woof!”

Kou Tong’s footsteps paused. He frowned as he looked at the cruise ship behind the two of them—this thing really was dazzling. This cruise ship didn’t have an ordinary rubber life buoy hanging from it like ordinary ships. Instead, it had a wheel made of unknown metal with all kinds of complicated things drawn on them—animals and plants, as well as people and imps.

The person holding the dog and the “magician” stood one on each side, making inviting gestures towards Kou Tong like greeters—if they had had lines now, they probably would have been “Welcome, welcome, our warmest welcome.”

Kou Tong tentatively asked, “Where does this ship go?”

He hadn’t expected that the person holding the dog really would answer—Kou Tong had thought that neither of them could speak at all. This person said, “It goes to our country of dreams.”

When they spoke, there was a strange cadence in their voice like singing.

“It takes visitors from far away in time and space for an audience with our master,” the “magician” said. Wave after wave of fragrance came from the lilies he was holding—Kou Tong took a deliberate glance at these flowers and found that they didn’t need to be watered; they were still extremely fresh.

The little dog added: “Woof!”

Huang Jinchen had long ago gone off somewhere. They currently didn’t have communication tools to be used in the course of carrying out an assignment, but Kou Tong wasn’t especially worried about him—if even 11235 couldn’t be depended upon, then there was no one dependable on earth.

He decided to go himself and have a look at what problem this “conscious subject” had. So he cheerfully walked onto that huge and mysterious cruise ship.

The wheel on it began to turn strangely, making Kou Tong remember an incomprehensible cartoon he had seen when he was very little. There was a bizarre teenage girl in it who was always harping on about how “the wheel of fortune has started to turn”—from beginning to end, she had said it countless times, as though the wheel of fortune were a ferris wheel that sold tickets twenty-four hours a day; therefore, his impression of it was especially deep.

He quickly raised his head, feeling that he seemed to have seen these two people from the 2.5th dimension somewhere before.

28

THE NAMELESS ISLAND

THIS HAPPENS to people sometimes—for example, when they run into the hardest question while taking a test, they know perfectly well that they’ve seen it before, remember where and when and in what posture they saw it, but they’ve forgotten the contents of what they saw.

Kou Tong sat on the cruise ship with the other two people of unknown origin beside him. No one spoke. The three of them sat around a small round table, one person to a chair. There was also a very curious little dog; its moist eyes were fixed on Kou Tong and seemed to hold some wariness.

There was a bouquet of flowers on the table and a small teacup in front of each person. Kou Tong suddenly felt that he had entered Alice’s Wonderland, and the two people next to him were alternate versions of the March Hare and Mad Hatter.

He took a glance. The “magician” had at some point exchanged the lilies in his hands for roses, and the roses embroidered on his clothes had changed to lilies. Kou Tong hadn’t noticed the mystical moment when this had occurred—it was as if it had always been like that. The flowers seemed to have grown on him, so natural that it made people take no notice of them.

“What are they?” Kou Tong broke the silence.

The magician explained, “These flowers are a philosophy. Roses are red, symbolizing fiery life. Lilies are white, symbolizing the other extreme—death. Or rather, they are all flowing, ice-cold things. Life and death are constantly trading places. They don’t stand still for a moment. They change at every moment. This symbolizes the innateness of death and new beginnings. They both happen in an instant.”

Kou Tong thought that philosophy was a very pretentious thing, but he didn’t laugh now, and he didn’t nod—because after hearing it, he thought that what this man said actually had some merit.

The magician continued: “This is natural. Creation must be followed by destruction. They accompany and produce each other. Humans have a symbol to express this meaning—it is ‘∞’. Eternal exchange between the two ends—that’s infinity.”

Kou Tong frowned, becoming increasingly unable to evaluable whether this man was after all a conscious subject or the product of some conscious subject’s projection.

So he asked, “You mean that there’s nothing we can keep?”

The magician said, “Even we ourselves are constantly dying and being reborn, walking on a never-ending timeline. How can we keep other things?”

Something in Kou Tong’s heart moved faintly. He asked, “If you change yourself, are you still yourself?”

The magician didn’t respond, but the person wearing the hat laughed and asked, “Why must you know this answer?”

Before Kou Tong could speak, the person wearing the hat lowered their head, making their face appear under the hat, revealing a somewhat melancholy expression.

“If you yourself acknowledge it, then you are yourself. If you don’t acknowledge it, then you aren’t yourself. That’s no bad thing. But whether you acknowledge it or not, it’s still your fate.” In a slightly callous tone, they said, “Look at us, for example. Each of us holds a portion of this world’s secrets, but we must implement our master’s orders to the letter. That’s fate.”

Kou Tong noticed the word they had used. “‘Us’?”

The person wearing the hat extended a finger and looked straight at Kou Tong with their always melancholy eyes. They said, “Shh—”

Kou Tong was speechless, feeling that this scene was very familiar. It was a little like Old Man Ji mystifying to trick people out of their money.

The atmosphere among the three of them once again became strangely silent. Kou Tong was examining the other two. He found that the two of them were like programs; when they were left untouched, they sat there unmoving; even the rate at which they drank tea was very fixed.

It seemed that they had to be some conscious subject’s products, Kou Tong thought. Furthermore, they didn’t seem like projections of people in real life; they must correspond to some object in their own space.

A cartoon?

No… Kou Tong quickly rejected this idea. That wouldn’t be it.

He often had adolescents in need of counseling, so for ease of communication, he had skimmed through their hobbies for understanding, full of sports stars, entertainment stars, and all kinds of cartoon characters, and he didn’t remember any cartoon with people like this in it.

So what was it…?

There was an inescapable sort of mysticism about them. Their clothes and ornaments were complex. Some of it was symbolism with very obvious semiotic meaning, while some was veiled hints. This wasn’t Kou Tong’s line of expertise, so he couldn’t understand it very clearly.

Were they the props of occultism, or items related to some religion?

The ship’s speed suddenly slackened. The little dog that had been staring at Kou Tong all along abruptly raised its front paws and said, “Woof!”

The person wearing the hat let go, letting it jump out of their arms. Kou Tong turned his head and saw a little island already in front of him. The island was full of white mist, its vegetation and hills faintly discernible. Only when the wind blew did some traces appear.

Amid the clouds and mist appeared a huge white stone. It overlooked the sea, like a steadfast guard. Behind it were two enormous pillars, one black and one white, like an unfinished arch.

There was a woman standing there, wearing a robe and a strange tall hat. Her arms were open, but there was no expression on her face. Looking from far away, Kou Tong thought she was a statue.

Only when he came close did he find that she was a living person.

Whatever the woman’s ancestry was, the color of her eyes was extremely pale. In the light weirdly twisted by the mist, they actually seemed to be a little transparent.

The magician and the person wearing the hat stood on the ship, watching Kou Tong disembark and walk towards the two stone pillars. They didn’t show any sign of accompanying him.

Only when Kou Tong walked up to the woman did her eyes turn slowly, as though there was a program in her body that had been activated. She looked profoundly at Kou Tong and said, “Please come this way with me.”

Hearing her voice made Dr. Kou with his unusually strong mind and unusually coarse nerves become lost in thought—if forced to describe it, this was a voice that came from Heaven; a mortal couldn’t explain the mystery and beauty contained in it. The woman in the robe was constantly surrounded by mist. No matter how close he was to her, he still couldn’t see her whole body. Even the mist seemed alive.

Seven conscious subjects had been pulled into the unusual program’s space, but never mind Kou Tong and the other two, who had landed in the same place—even Manman and He Xiaozhi, who had been added later, hadn’t displayed any particular consciousness area. They had instead by some strange and harmonious means mixed in with the conscious projections of the others.

But this person was different. He or she seemed to have occupied the whole nameless island, far from the mainland and entirely different.

Kou Tong couldn’t resist remembering the description Manman had passed on—“intruders.” Only a person who thought they were the master of some place would use this term.

He turned to look and found that the way he had come was invisible. Like surplus cotton, the mist snugly covered the whole island. In that moment, a thought suddenly crossed Kou Tong’s mind—how was Huang Jinchen going to follow?

After following the woman for a long time, Kou Tong at last came to a castle—it was really a castle. For some reason, this thing gave him a very strange feeling. It seemed out of place among the air of mysticism covering the whole nameless island. It stood there toweringly, as if it had come from the profane world, like a banner to pay tribute to the theological domain.

The castle doors opened before Kou Tong. The woman’s footsteps paused. She seemed ready to reenter her NPC state. Kou Tong quickly seized the opportunity to ask a question: “Should I keep going in?”

The woman’s inorganic eyes turned and fell on his face. She nodded in silence.

Kou Tong frowned. Improvising, he said, “Lovely lady, your special hat looks a little familiar to me. Have we met before?”

Though the woman in the tall hat was an intelligent NPC, there were still things outside the scope of her programming.

She only looked speechlessly at Kou Tong for a while, not reacting with any anger towards these words that were practically flirtatious. She stood there silently meeting Kou Tong’s eyes.

Kou Tong sighed, thinking, She still won’t talk. It seems that this NPC isn’t as intelligent as the two before. Then he turned and went into the gloomy castle.

Behind him, the castle doors slowly shut on their own. Just then, the woman, who was nearly cut off from him by the doors spoke. Still using that miraculous floating voice, she said, “Because we are everywhere.”

Kou Tong quickly turned his head and saw a familiar melancholy on the woman’s face, like some god whose wings had been broken, imprisoned in some place. She was beautiful and mysterious, but she didn’t make you uneasy. There was a maternal warmth about her. Her fingers were clasped in front of her chest and her eyes lowered, as if she was speaking a blessing no one could hear.

Like some sacred high priestess…

When this thought appeared, it was as if Kou Tong had been struck by lightning—a magician, a high priestess, a man with a tall hat who was like a wandering sage, the wheel of fortune symbolizing strange fates…signs full of symbolism, a strong tint of mysticism—these were tarot cards!

These were playing cards that originated in 15th-century Renaissance Italy. Strictly speaking, they were a medium for conveying a certain type Western mystical philosophy; you could also say they were the product of the popularity of Neoplatonism. There were different editions, and the different editions had different images on the cards; and as for the interpretation of tarot, opinions could also be said to vary.

Later they had been used as a kind of psychological guidance tool for enlightenment…and still later, they had somehow become a fortune-telling prop enjoyed by adolescents.

They included the Major Arcana, composed of twenty-one numbered cards and one joker.

There was the Magician, the High Priestess, the Hierophant, and so on—thinking about it now, the “Mad Hatter” with the dog perhaps represented the Major Arcana’s Fool.

Each tarot card image had been projected. Each card had an intrinsic meaning. Supposedly they were also inextricably linked to Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. They embodied the philosophical viewpoint of some other culture’s ancient paganism. This viewpoint wasn’t the conscious subject’s own ideas; it was something they had passively accepted through “common sense.”

Kou Tong quickly passed through the castle and at last stopped in front of a door.

Before he could move, the door opened automatically. There was an enormous arch inside, with that super-motor-powered wheel of fortune like a perpetual motion machine carved on it. Beneath it were rolled up curtains. There was hardly any light. On a tall chair sat a short, thin figure wrapped in a black robe.

Kou Tong saw that this was probably a girl.

She raised her head and looked at Kou Tong with a bone-chilling gaze. Then she softly said, “Dr. Kou, it’s been a long time. Do you still remember?”

This form of address made Kou Tong think that this was likely a patient he had handled before, or a patient’s relative. But at first, he couldn’t remember who she was. He looked her over and gestured. “Could you…move that thing covering your face?”

She laughed, still staring at him with that almost scorching gaze. She slowly rolled up her veil and softly explained, “This is only for the purity of the divination. You’ve seen my servants?”

Kou Tong’s eyes suddenly opened wide. He blurted out, “You’re…Qin Qin!”

As soon as he said this, Kou Tong regretted it—because he saw the expression on Qin Qin’s face change to radiant delight as though lit up.

This girl wasn’t a patient he had handled. When he had seen her, the Projector had been in its trial stage, and Kou Tong had gone to one of his professors to collect parameters. In that professor’s waiting room, he had seen this special patient.

This had been…roughly five or six years ago. The person in front of him had been a little girl of fourteen or fifteen. Adolescent hormones had made her rapidly develop; her figure had appeared a little round and plump. When he saw her, she was sitting alone on the couch. There was also a veil covering her face. She was toying with a deck of tarot cards.

Her mother was saying something to the professor outside. Kou Tong had come rushing back because of some materials he had left behind. He saw her there all on her own, playing with her stuff like a overaged sufferer of autism, so he had naturally said hello and poured a cup of water for her.

Then he found his stuff and got ready to leave but turned his head to find the little girl looking straight at him.

“Mom says I’m crazy,” Kou Tong remembered the little girl saying.

Kou Tong’s footsteps paused. He leaned down and asked her in a soft voice, “Why?”

The girl callously said, “Because she’s the one who’s crazy. She won’t believe what I say. No matter what I do, she screams and gets scared about everything.”

This sort of parent wasn’t without precedent. Though Kou Tong didn’t especially believe it, he nodded understandingly and tentatively asked, “Is it because you’re always wearing a veil? Some grown-ups can’t deal with the fashionable ways you young people dress up.”

The girl softly explained, “This is only for the purity of the divination.”

Kou Tong hadn’t discussed anything much with her before the professor came rushing over. What had made an unusually strong impression on him was that after he had gone a few steps, he had unconsciously turned his head and met the girl’s eyes through the glass window. The look in the girl’s eyes was like a starving person staring at a steak. It was a little bone-chilling.

Only long after, in a casual remark, did the professor tell him that this girl named Qin Qin had delusional disorder.

And now, after all this time, she could still precisely recognize him, and that look of a hungry ghost staring at a steak hadn’t changed…

Kou Tong suddenly had a bad feeling.

29

RESCUE

A DREAMY SMILE appeared on Qin Qin’s face. This made her really resemble some eternally wandering fortune-telling maiden who communicated with evil spirits. Then she suddenly grabbed Kou Tong by the hand. Her palm was icy cold, as if it belonged to some cold-blooded animal, so cold that Kou Tong shivered.

Don’t make physical contact with her—this was Kou Tong’s first reaction. This made his fingers subconsciously twist in a dodging gesture. Then Dr. Kou noticed in despair that it seemed to be too late.

Ordinarily, sufferers of delusional disorder had an underlying paranoid personality disorder. Everything they saw made a very deep impression on them. There could be many types of delusions; all kinds of novelties were possible. Details of everyday life that ordinary people wouldn’t notice could become carriers of intense hidden meaning for a sufferer of delusional disorder.

There were systematic delusions and nonsystematic delusions. The latter would usually be fairly confused, and their duration fairly limited.

Most unfortunately, this Miss Qin Qin’s delusional disorder was a typical case of systematic delusions, and they were rather deep-rooted ones.

As Kou Tong was led along by her like a dear sweetheart, he recalled—the professor had said a few words about her illness at the time. He hadn’t said much, only that this girl’s situation was very complex. She perhaps had many types of delusions. Apart from the fairly obvious “delusion of reference,” she also showed signs of a “delusion of love.”

Having traveled through the nameless island, Kou Tong was deeply aware of the complexity of this young lady’s circumstances.

“This is my castle.” As his mind wandered, Qin Qin’s voice sounded. She was a head shorter than Kou Tong. Holding his hand, she could perfectly snuggle up to him. In high spirits, she explained, “My servants and I all live here. Everything on this island is under my control.”

Kou Tong had a thought and asked, “The rats and crows, too?”

“The crows are the Magician’s props,” Qin Qin said without any hesitation. “The rats are our country’s means of communication. They’re very well-behaved children. At first they told me that they had found an intruder. I didn’t know then that it was you.”

A sweet smile that chilled Kou Tong to the bone appeared on her face.

“It’s pretty good, right?” Qin Qin said. “The scenery is also beautiful. There’s a little hill behind the castle, covered in wildflowers. My servants use magic so the flowers won’t wilt no matter what the season. Behind the hill is the sea, the boundless ocean at a glance…”

Kou Tong frowned. Why was her degree of control over this space so high? Was it because of her paranoia?

“Do you like it here?” Qin Qin shook Kou Tong’s arm. Then, seeing the somewhat grave expression on Kou Tong’s face, the smile at the corners of her mouth disappeared. “You don’t like it?”

“Qin Qin, do you know what this place is?” Kou Tong pulled his arm out of her grasp, pulled up a chair, and sat down. He looked at her very seriously—in fact, he had absolutely no idea where he stood. There were too many things on this island that went beyond the scope of his knowledge. How far out of control had the program gone?

Qin Qin froze, her expression a little doubtful, then nodded. “This is the nameless island.”

Kou Tong said, “No, I’m not talking about this place, I’m talking about the whole dimension this world is in. Haven’t you noticed that the dimension we’re in now isn’t the dimension of the real world?”

Kou Tong tilted her head. This made her face, still half-covered with the strange black veil, look somewhat cute and clever. She asked, “What are you talking about?”

“All right.” Kou Tong shrugged and changed to an explanation that was comparatively easy to accept. “I was in the Projector, recording a patient’s circumstances—not the ordinary type of slide show projector, a special supplementary instrument for psychological treatment. It can project people’s consciousnesses into a space in a different dimension. But suddenly, there was a bit of an accident… I apologize. Because of a malfunction in the instrument, my principal privilege settings were stripped away, and now I’m unable to make contact with people outside, and I don’t know what the malfunction in the Projector was. At any rate, you, me, and five other people have been drawn together into this unknown program…”

Before he could finish, Qin Qin suddenly reached out a hand and put it on his forehead. This body language needed no explanation—Dr. Kou, are you running a fever?

Kou Tong immediately shut his mouth.

Qin Qin considerately asked, “Dr. Kou, have you been very tired lately? With me, you won’t need to work anymore.”

“You don’t believe me?” Kou Tong asked.

As though afraid of displeasing him, Qin Qin quickly nodded. “I believe you, I believe anything you say. But this different dimension or whatever you’re talking about…that’s no big deal. I’ve always lived here.”

Kou Tong knew that this was the worst outcome—the whole nameless island had previously appeared in Qin Qin’s delusions, and now the delusions had been turned into reality by the Projector.

What the hell was the Projector? For the first time, Kou Tong questioned the invention he was proudest of.

He felt his head ache a little. Qin Qin took the opportunity to gently draw near and rub his temples. Female body odor came from her. There was nowhere for Kou Tong to go. He could only fall backwards, avoiding her fingers.

The smile on Qin Qin’s face froze. Her expression cooled. She asked, “What’s wrong, Dr. Kou? Why does it seem like you’re giving me the cold shoulder?”

Kou Tong stood up. With a natural expression, he said, “No, you’ve misunderstood. I’ve had a lot of worries lately.”

Qin Qin looked at him with an intensely doubtful gaze. “Worries? You mean what you were just talking about?”

“That’s right. Because a program I once jotted down has drawn everyone in here, strictly speaking, it’s my fault,” Kou Tong explained as sincerely and patiently as possible. “So I have to think of a way to repair the program and return everyone to their original places—you’ll help me, won’t you?”

Qin Qin’s expression warmed slightly, but it still seemed very dubious. Kou Tong knew that his avoidance just now had been a signal for this girl, holding some meaning others didn’t know about. The problem was, he didn’t know how she had interpreted this simple gesture.

Each time handling a patient with a cognitive impairment that required extreme care in communication was a major challenge to a psychologist’s physiology and psychology.

Patient and doctor would mutually probe each other with caution, expending a great deal of thought and effort. That especially went for the complicated situation before him. This made Kou Tong more and more nervous—this wasn’t a girl in front of him but a ticking time bomb, and he was the hard-pressed bomb clearer without an instruction manual.

Qin Qin hesitated for a moment. As soon as the warm, likable smile left her face, it appeared morbidly sly and callous. Kou Tong’s palms were about to start sweating when Qin Qin finally spoke: “I think you should rest here with me for a few days. You’ve come a long way today. You must be tired.”

“I…”

Qin Qin clapped lightly. A row of knights all covered in armor with not even their faces showing came running in unison, giving off an unfriendly “you’re under arrest” atmosphere, surrounding Kou Tong.

Qin Qin uncompromisingly instructed: “Take Dr. Kou to rest.”

Kou Tong hesitated for three seconds, then abandoned resistance—who knew what other weird powers there were in this girl’s territory? She really might call down a bolt of lightning to drive him into the earth, and he might drop dead.

He decided that the great physician could adapt as circumstances required and obediently followed these “knights” who had him surrounded like an Arab lady. Just as he was about to leave the hall, Kou Tong paused in his steps. He knew that Qin Qin was behind him, watching him.

He currently had no way to determine the circuit of Qin Qin’s complex delusions, which part linked to which other. There was only one thing he was sure of—that in her impression, he, a person who had only spoken to her briefly in a single chance encounter, had changed into her mutually devoted lover, whom she hadn’t seen for many years.

Kou Tong didn’t want to use this. After three seconds of tug-of-war with his morals, his morals, something always abandoned in a crisis, were trampled.

Resting a hand on the ancient castle’s stone pillar, Kou Tong made a looking back gesture. It was an extremely natural movement, as if he was parting from the person he was closest to and was subconsciously looking back to determine that person’s location in search of a sense of security.

Qin Qin had already pulled up her veil, making her face look somewhat gloomy. But the moment she met Kou Tong’s eyes when he looked back, Kou Tong clearly saw her expression relax.

A person…especially a delusional disorder sufferer like this, who was unusually sensitive towards hints, in fact had a sensitivity towards gestures that was no less than their sensitivity towards language. It was even easier to receive information from body language.

No matter what, first he would plant the seeds. For the rest…he would think of something later.

Kou Tong was taken in countless circles through this maze-like castle, then tossed into a room. The door was closed behind him. Kou Tong heard the sound of it being locked.

He plopped down onto the bed. Finding joy in sorrow, he muttered, “So this is how Brother Tripitaka felt when the Queen of Women’s Country forced him into a marriage. It really is an indescribable feeling.”

Then he splayed out on his back on the bed. The bed was very soft. Kou Tong sank into it. Then he rolled around, covered his face, and said to himself, “Fuck, what do you like about me? Can’t I change it?”

An encounter with a beautiful woman…truly was a sweet burden.

Kou Tong rolled to the left. “Royal brother[14], I’ll never say you’re a male public enemy again.”

From some other time and space, the royal brother probably reached out to stroke Dr. Kou’s head, smiling wordlessly.

Then, like a dead fish, Kou Tong straightened out and rolled to the right, howling, “Wukong, come save me now…”

But Wukong wasn’t a creature to be summoned. He obviously didn’t receive resentful brainwaves.

However, while Wukong didn’t come, someone else did. There was a sudden slight movement outside the window. Kou Tong quickly sat up and looked wide-eyed out the window. He saw Huang Jinchen holding the window lattice with one hand, giving him a radiant grin like a Colgate advertisement.

Kou Tong immediately jumped off the bed and opened the window, sneakily letting Huang Jinchen in.

Master Huang nimbly leapt inside and looked back to make sure he hadn’t been discovered. “Well?”

“Negotiations have broken down,” Kou Tong said. “This conscious subject suffers from delusional disorder, and she wants me to be her kept man.”

Huang Jinchen put on an expression of feigned horror.

“Hurry up and get me the hell out of here. I’ve even sunk to selling sex appeal today,” Kou Tong said.

“OK!” But while he said this, Huang Jinchen took Kou Tong’s hand and skillfully kissed it with one hand in front of his chest. In an affected tone, he said, “Beautiful princess, your great knight has come to rescue you!”

Kou Tong rolled his eyes. “Could you hurry it up, sir? Ideally before I shout myself hoarse.”

Huang Jinchen blinked. Before he could speak, there came clustered footsteps. Both their expressions turned serious simultaneously. Next, the door locking Kou Tong in was suddenly opened, and the black-veiled lady Qin Qin furiously appeared at the door with a crowd of sparkling armored knights behind her.

“You betrayed me!” she said, gnashing her teeth.

Kou Tong hopelessly thought that he really had betrayed her to a certain point—so he poked Huang Jinchen in the chest with his elbow. “Er-Pang, are you doing all right? You’ve been found out so quickly.”

Huang Jinchen said, “Bullshit. The witch must have a crystal ball. She was planning to watch you bathe and go to bed, so she accidentally discovered me.”

Then the two of them glared at each other and simultaneously acted in concert.

Huang Jinchen raised his gun and went forward, pulling the trigger without hesitation. Kou Tong went back and smashed the window. Amidst his busy affairs, he yelled, “Don’t kill the ‘real person’!”

“I know what to do and not to do!” Huang Jinchen said.

The window shattered. Kou Tong nimbly squeezed out. “Jump!”

Huang Jinchen brought down a big chandelier with one shot. It fell right in front of a group of knights coming towards him. He followed Kou Tong like a cheetah.

30

A SECOND TIME AXIS

A RACKET of voices suddenly rose on the still little island. Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen, two people who had been branded with the Seed, at last used the abilities they had gained through harsh training on this enormous seed.

Huang Jinchen had already amply understood the frightfulness of animals. An owl standing on the tip of a branch with its eyes flashing, a rat running through the underbrush, the crows that came from nowhere, even the seabirds by the sea could ignite the omnidirectional murderousness shining off him like X-rays.

Dr. Kou was also amply aware of Master Huang’s ability to fire in bursts, each shot a hit. As they ran, all birds and beasts fell. Only close up could the sound of the silenced gun rubbing through the air be heard. From his tensed back and sides, Kou Tong could see that Huang Jinchen was currently in some very keyed up state of mind.

It was this same gun that had once sent the RZ Unit’s most agile Su Qing fleeing through the streets and alleys. Now he had become a destructive killing device in this little island’s ecological environment. No one knew which of these creatures flying through the air or running over the ground were ordinary animals shot while innocent and which were made of paper and belonged to the “Burrowing Little Spy Alliance,” whispering into each others’ ears.

They heard massed footsteps. Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen turned and ducked into the trees. A team of armored knights came their way in the moonlight. Huang Jinchen silently raised his gun, but Kou Tong frowned and raised a hand to press the muzzle of his gun down.

“What’s wrong?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“I suspect that these aren’t people. They can’t be killed,” Kou Tong said quietly. “Wait, let them pass. Don’t alert the enemy. We’ll test it if we meet a solitary one.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t answer. He stood there unmoving, holding his gun. For a moment, Kou Tong practically couldn’t hear the sound of his breathing, as if he had merged with the surrounding forest scenery.

Finding a solitary knight was very difficult. Kou Tong had just noticed that each group of knights had ten people to a group. They were very uniform. They were not only the same height, even the height to which they raised their arms as they walked was absolutely identical.

Kou Tong thought that if these were real people, if they were all put together, even their own mothers wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

When a crowd of knights had gone by, Huang Jinchen quietly squeezed out a sentence: “Do they team up even to go to the toilet?”

Kou Tong looked up at the soft branches hanging down from the big willow tree next to him.

Huang Jinchen continued: “One person calls time. One, two three—everyone pulls down their pants together. One-two-three, everyone gets out their dicks together. Then, on your marks, get set, and—piss!”

“Do you mind, brother?!” Kou Tong carefully pulled down a willow branch and used a pocket knife he was carrying to cut it off.

“What are you doing?”

“Anti-cavalry measures. Done it before?” Kou Tong said in an almost inaudible whisper. “I’ve noticed that the height they raise their legs to when they walk is all identical. I think we can use this to make them stand ‘at ease.’ It would be best if we could knock down these creatures that travel in lines and take our chance to run away.”

Huang Jinchen watched him proficiently cut willow branches, then tie the pliant branches together with unusually beautiful technique. At a glance, it was clear he was a practiced hand. Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist asking, “You even know how to do this?”

Kou Tong put on a smirk.

Huang Jinchen watched a while longer, then commented: “It’s clear to see, doctor, that though you look respectable in your white coat, in fact you must have been a naughty, pilfering, wretched child who would stop at nothing.”

“…Help out already!”

“OK…”

The two of them quickly finished fastening the simple “anti-cavalry measure” and shrank back to lie in wait, awaiting a windfall.

Soon, not having found their targets, the team of pursuing “knights” turned around and came back. Kou Tong waited for the first one to come close and patted Huang Jinchen on the back. Huang Jinchen, like a stupid dog incited to make trouble by a mischievous cat, with a stupid smile on his face that made you want to slap him, gave an excited tug…

The first knight fell. Because their team was too closely crowded together, the second was quickly tripped by the first, the third kicked the leg of the person in front and also went sprawling…and so the whole line fell. The last one was the most unfortunate; even his head fell off. Huang Jinchen and Kou Tong looked that way, wide-eyed—there was absolutely nothing under that armor, only air.

The strangest thing was that these empty armor shells turned their heads in unison to look at the two of them.

Huang Jinchen said, “Ah!”

Kou Tong patted Huang Jinchen on the back. “Enough ‘ah’-ing, let’s run!”

Huang Jinchen put his gun over his shoulder and jumped up. The two of them bored into the woods.

Just then, all of a sudden, came the roar of a wild beast that seemed to emanate from the depths of some cave. It shook the ground of the whole little island.

Kou Tong abruptly raised his head and saw the body of a beast on the castle, faintly visible by the white moonlight… No, it was two beasts. The other one was too dark; it could be overlooked as part of the background.

Huang Jinchen muttered, “How come it looks like the Sphinx has a twin? Anyway, didn’t it get its nose knocked off by Napoleon?”

“It’s not the statue of the Sphinx. It’s an actual sphinx,” Kou Tong corrected.

Then a rumble came from afar following the beast’s roaring. An enormous chariot came towards them. A man whose upper body was human and who lower body was made of stone was stuck in the middle of the chariot, traveling forward relentlessly in disregard of traffic regulations. Wherever the chariot passed, all plants were crushed.

“The Chariot…” Kou Tong said quietly.

“That thing’s more badass than a tank!” Huang Jinchen said, sighing with emotion. Then he wailed mournfully, “That’s not fair, why do they have so many props?! I only have a pile of guns.”

Kou Tong casually said, “Clearly your imagination is insufficiently rich.”

Huang Jinchen turned his head to look at Kou Tong. “And you don’t have anything.”

Dr. Kou said, “My imagination was eaten by a dog.”

As he said this, his expression was unusually anguished, and his footsteps paused. Huang Jinchen looked in the direction he was looking and immediately felt a pang in his stomach as well.

Right in front of them, millions upon millions of crows were beating their wings against the wind as though holding a meeting under the moonlight, soaring into the sky in orderly fashion. The Magician didn’t walk a normal path; his often suspended form appeared in a place with the light at his back.

To the left, an enormous wing slowly lifted off the ground. An animal with a figure like a little dinosaur slowly raised its goat-like face. It had a long tail, but beneath its body were uncoordinated birdlike skinny little legs. It held a torch in its hand and made a gesture like a lucky cat raising its hand, standing guard like a small mountain.

The worst of it was to the right. The fashionable young girl Qin Qin who was planning to make Dr. Kou her kept man, leading her empty shell underlings, was fearlessly and actively drawing close.

Huang Jinchen said, “Comrade, we’re surrounded.”

Kou Tong said, “I’ve noticed.—What should we do, surrender?”

“Crap!” Huang Jinchen looked disdainfully at him. “How can you come to terms with imperialism so easily? I’ve truly misjudged you!”

Dr. Kou asked, “Do you have an idea, Martyr Huang?”

“Communicate first,” Huang Jinchen said.

Kou Tong nodded. “And then what?”

“Then see whether we should surrender.”

Kou Tong: “…”

Qin Qin’s steps stopped. Huang Jinchen and Kou Tong stood back to back, one holding a gun, the other holding a fruit knife. Compared to the other side’s gorgeous battle array, they seemed a little tragically destitute.

Kou Tong sighed. “Qin Qin, I told you, I have urgent business. What do you even want?”

“I want to lock you up!” Qin Qin said furiously. “You actually dared to betray me!”

“He’s a nasty piece of work, enough unhappy love affairs to make a compost heap,” Huang Jinchen said. “Miss, hear me out, there are so many fish in the sea, why do you have to pine for this one?”

Kou Tong thought, You little…

Qin Qin extended a finger and pointed at Huang Jinchen and coldly said, “Kill him first.”

As soon as she spoke, the ground at Huang Jinchen’s feet suddenly fell away. The two of them simultaneously jumped to either side. A chain had reached out of the ground. It was wrapped around the winged monster’s foot as though living, writhing and trying to choke Huang Jinchen.

Huang Jinchen frowned, kicked the chain away, then shot at the monster’s forehead.

The monster cried out. It seemed that the injury was limited. The chain began to writhe even more wildly.

Next, Huang Jinchen shot at its eye. The enormous eye burst like a lightbulb. The chain reared up high, then came pelting down at Huang Jinchen.

Huang Jinchen’s attack had come off smoothly, so he was planning to follow up with another like it. But before he could shoot, he was surrounded by countless eye-catching volunteer crows.

Kou Tong didn’t have another lighter, and Huang Jinchen had gone out in a hurry—he had forgotten to bring one!

The chain brushed past him and fell to the ground, making a hole over a meter deep. The monster was furious.

As Huang Jinchen was bitching and moaning and Kou Tong’s dialogue with Qin Qin had come to nothing, all of a sudden, a mirror took shape between the two of them. It gave off a powerful light. All the crows scattered when the light touched them.

Huang Jinchen turned his head to look. “He Xiaozhi?!”

He Xiaozhi was standing in front of the mirror. For a second, he stared blankly. Then he saw the abundant scenery on the other side of the mirror. His fearful gaze fell on the big monster. He quickly extended a hand towards Huang Jinchen, reaching out of the mirror. The teenager’s voice seemed to be cut off by something. Somewhat indistinctly, he yelled, “Come quickly!”

Huang Jinchen, who had just complained of not having props, was delighted. “Kou Tong! An Anywhere Door!”

Kou Tong was amazed. “How could… How did he do it? Warping time? That’s impossible. Within the same dimension, the equations ought to be…”

“We can calculate it at home, stop babbling!” Huang Jinchen grabbed Kou Tong with one hand and reached for He Xiaozhi’s extended hand with the other. The moment the two of them entered the mirror, there was a loud, clear sound. Kou Tong managed to look back and found that the mirror had been hit by the monster’s chain. Its whole surface shattered.

He Xiaozhi screamed briefly. The three of them simultaneously fell into darkness.

They fell down and down. After a long time, they finally saw a faint light. Then their feet touched the ground. He Xiaozhi’s legs went weak, and he fell over. Kou Tong held him up while looking around—this was a small country manor, endless open fields surrounding a small log cabin with dewy roses poking up from the fence. In the yard was a tree with fruit that glowed.

“We’ve crossed over again? No way,” Huang Jinchen said.

Kou Tong knew that he wasn’t just talking nonsense—the feeling of “landing” really was too much like their experience of the spatial dimension changing.

31

ALL ONE’S LIFE LAND

“WHAT’S THE SITUATION?” Huang Jinchen switched out his empty clip. “Dr. Kou, report.”

Kou Tong was looking at the whole field in a daze; he hadn’t heard him at all. He was entirely sunk into a frenzied academic state. Huang Jinchen watched him for a while. He thought that if you pressed Control-Alt-Delete on Dr. Kou right now, you would certainly find that Dr. Kou’s CPU usage was 100%—about to freeze.

So Master Huang switched targets. He turned to the blank He Xiaozhi. “Kid, how did you pull that off just now?”

He Xiaozhi shook his head in confusion.

“Think about it. You’re our ultimate cheat code right now.”

“I was alone…in the living room. There’s a dressing mirror in Dr. Kou’s living room. I was sitting there.”

He Xiaozhi spoke very slowly. Ordinarily, he had two states. One was gloomy and fairly slow to respond, like now, but with his psyche relatively calm. Sadly, these calm but downcast moods didn’t last long. He often collapsed. During his collapses, his temper would be rather bad. It was evident he was controlling himself with all his might, but when all of a patient’s unusual hormonal secretions were causing an unstable mood, it couldn’t be resolved only with control. Sometimes he would stand in a corner, crying wordlessly. Sometimes he would scream, even self-harm. Ordinarily, at times like these, Dr. Kou, the professional, had to be relied on to provide appropriate medication.

“At first the mirror was reflecting me, but I zoned out for a few minutes. When I came back to myself, I saw the two of you in the mirror, and also that…” He frowned, not quite knowing how to describe that winged, chain-wielding goat. “That monster the size of a dinosaur was screaming. I thought you might be in danger, so I reached out my hand without thinking. I didn’t expect it to pass through the mirror.”

Kou Tong turned his head and asked, “What were you thinking about when you zoned out?”

He Xiaozhi froze.

Kou Tong walked up to him and bent down a little, bringing his gaze level with He Xiaozhi’s. In a very soft voice, he said, “It’s all right. I told you, you can tell me anything. Remember?”

He Xiaozhi stared into his eyes for a while. As if he had found some source of strength, he nodded, then said, “I was looking at myself in the mirror, thinking…that I’m a waste of space who can only be a burden on others—that’s what my mom said. I can’t do anything. I couldn’t even manage to die. If I died, I would cause trouble for many people. I’ve been watching you all running around every day, and there’s nothing I can do to help…”

“Who says so?” Kou Tong interrupted him. He had roughly worked it out. The mirror must have been He Xiaozhi’s projection in this space. For particular reasons, his reactions were rather slow, and the system’s analysis time had been fairly long. It could only be discovered through stimulus. To make his words more persuasive, Kou Tong pointed to Huang Jinchen and said, “You saved our lives. If you hadn’t reached your hand out of the mirror, that guy would have been flattened by that big winged goat.”

These weren’t the facts—because while the crows were annoying, they weren’t fatal. Actually, if he had had a bit more space and time, this magical sniper might very well have taken that monster down via its eyes, never mind that there had also been Kou Tong to assist.

But while Huang Jinchen was rather cold, he wasn’t a moron; he didn’t want to spoil Kou Tong’s act over an irrelevant trifle, so he said, “And whose sake was I stuck there for, your highness the femme fatale princess?”

Kou Tong said, “You can bring yourself to say that? Who was so careless that he got found out right away?—If you hadn’t come, I still would have been able to escape.”

Huang Jinchen asked, “Escape? I think it would have been more practical for you to escape your clothes and go seduce that little witch.”

The pure youth He Xiaozhi felt deeply stressed. Hearing the two of them trading filth back and forth, he lowered his head and followed the two men like a little lady, walking up a lane through the field towards the little log cabin.

But Huang Jinchen turned his head and said earnestly to He Xiaozhi, “This moral tells hot-blooded teenagers that before you hold yourself out as a knight, you need to find the right target. There are differences among princesses.”

Perhaps because of the spacious view in the field, or perhaps because the fragrance of the plants carried the characteristic calming smell of the great outdoors, He Xiaozhi’s normally low and unstable mood for once turned somewhat for the better. He looked at Huang Jinchen a little doubtfully and asked, “Why?”

“Princesses are divided into many types.” Expert Huang pulled a blade of grass from the ground and bit it. Unhurriedly, he said, “There are princesses whose beauty is pleasant, princesses whose beauty is moving, princesses whose beauty is enchanting, and also…”

He pointed at Kou Tong’s back. With a sorrowful expression, he said, “Those whose beauty is entrapping.”

Kou Tong turned his head and gloomily said, “Er-Pang, there aren’t any grudges between us, are there?”

Huang Jinchen asked, “To show that you aren’t entrapping, can you think of a way to get us out of here?”

Kou Tong thought about it, then said, “This program really does seem like a black box. When each person enters, they match up to an extremely complicated equation. Reasonably speaking, that’s how this is implemented. Consequently, when I saw that mirror, I was incredulous, because when the Projector was designed, it used only one time axis, and a unidirectional one. If the space is stable, then its dimension is fixed. Therefore, the phenomena of space folding or time travel are practically impossible.”

He Xiaozhi: “…”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Huang Jinchen rubbed his forehead. “Can we use human language?”

“The application of many mathematical physics equations introduces an axis of time, in the great majority of circumstances unidirectional and irreversible. It’s the same way you, a single person, can’t simultaneously be at two spatial coordinate points within the same space and time,” Kou Tong said. “Space being unable to fold means that the distance from the island to my house is whatever the distance is. In the same space-time dimension, there can’t be a shortcut or door that can let us defy that length and go home directly from the island.”

“But if the mirror hadn’t been broken just now, we really would have been pulled back home through it by the kid.” Huang Jinchen considered. “And he really was at home, and did reach his hand out to us on the island.”

“So I have just determined that there are two time axes in this space,” Kou Tong said. “And the other one…”

Before he could finish this sentence, the door of the little log cabin suddenly opened, and a bouncing and lively puppy hopped out, followed by a white-haired old man.

Kou Tong, who had never expected there to be a person here, froze and forgot what the rest of his sentence was going to be. The old man also froze; he also seemed very surprised.

The puppy made a few circles around them, its curious eyes wide. It sniffed, then instinctively stayed away from Huang Jinchen, squatting at Kou Tong’s feet, shaking its head and sticking out its tongue, looking at him in a friendly way.

Kou Tong stroked the puppy’s head, and the little dog licked his palm.

The old man laughed and beckoned to the puppy. “Huanhuan, we have guests!”

The puppy called Huanhuan barked and ran back to its owner. Kou Tong and the others went over. The old man quickly welcomed them inside.

This was a very ordinary little house that made a person feel extremely warm.

The skin on the old man’s hands was very loose, the backs of his hands full of age spots. He seemed unusually skinny. His health must have been poor. But for some reason, each of his movements gave you a sense that this person lived elegantly.

They sat at an unusual wooden table. There was a vase of fresh flowers on the table. Water was just boiling in the little tea kettle next to the table.

“My surname is Tian,” the old man said. “I don’t know what’s happened to me. I opened my eyes, and here I was with a puppy I had when I was young.”

Then Kou Tong knew that this Lao Tian was the final conscious subject. He ruefully thought that this twitchy Projector really was random. There was a full complement of male and female, young and old. Kou Tong had to explain the business of the Projector losing control once more. He hadn’t thought that the old man wouldn’t be in the least surprised. He only used the boiled water to brew tea, brought each of them a cup, and, sighing with emotion, said, “So that’s what happened. This world really is magical. Something changes every day.”

Then Lao Tian held up the little teacup and smelled the aroma through the dense steam. Then he said, “At first, I thought I was dead—I have bone cancer, late stage. My family had already been notified that I was in critical condition before I came here. I was in severe pain every day, then unconscious when the pain was gone. The cancer cells had spread. Many of my organs were failing.

“Right here,” Lao Tian said, pointing to a spot on his neck, “they made a cut and stuck in a tube, and every day I relied on that tube to survive. Later, one day, I was suddenly wide awake. I felt that I hadn’t been so wide awake in a long time. And I could sit up and move. So I realized that this was a last burst of strength before death. My children weren’t with me. They’re busy. I thought it was a bit of a pity not to be able to say a last word to them. I was going to call a nurse in to pass along some final words, but in that instant, I came to this little yard.”

Kou Tong at once felt awkward, not knowing what to say. To all the others who had been drawn in by the instrument’s malfunction, he could say that he would certainly find a way to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and send everyone home. But this… What should he say?

Never mind how cruel a thing it was to trap a person on the border between life and death; in the future, when everyone left, what would happen to him? The strange equilibrium that seven people had formed in the same consciousness projection was like a big house of cards. It could lose control at the slightest jar. Everyone had to leave at the same time. They couldn’t leave one person behind in the Projector.

Even if they really could do it, without reciprocal responses, Lao Tian’s projection equation would have to change as well. If this strange additional timeline disappeared, were they supposed to let him die in a space like this, separated from all the world by an impassable dimension?

He Xiaozhi blankly held his teacup. Even Huang Jinchen was speechless.

“I’m sorry…” After stalling for a long time, Kou Tong at last spat this out. “I don’t know how to… I’m sorry.”

But Lao Tian smiled. “What is there to be sorry about? If not for your accident, I would have been buried in the ground by now. To be able to live in health for a few more days, who wouldn’t want that?

“Come.” Lao Tian stood up and called. The puppy Huanhuan jumped up after him. Lao Tian opened the door. On the little fence grew unknown flowers, seeming to still hold the first morning dew, so tender, so beautiful. “I’ve noticed that these flowers are the same every day. Sometimes a couple of petals fall off, and after a while, I look again, and they’ve the same as before. Young man, can you explain that?”

Kou Tong hesitated for a moment. In a slightly hoarse voice, he said, “This additional time axis has been altered by the space. It isn’t a line; it’s turned into a loop. Only a loop is eternal. It’s like when a plane is closed, the people living on it can never ‘walk off’ it. This time axis is a looped time axis. It’s constantly repeating a short period of time. That’s why you can…”

Live in a last moment of dying glory.

“I see.” Suddenly seeing the light, Lao Tian said, smiling, “The person who designed this thing really was a genius.”

Kou Tong’s heart sank. He didn’t think he was a genius at all.

But Lao Tian patted him on the shoulder. “A time axis for others is a whole life time for me. Isn’t that magical? I’m planning to name this yard, call it All One’s Life. But this machine of yours still ought to be repaired. When it’s been repaired, tell me, and I can pass along some last words. If you can tell me ahead of time so I won’t be in a hurry, take my time to say them, that would be for the best.”

Huang Jinchen suddenly cut in. He looked at the old man as though he had seen something amazing. He asked, “You aren’t afraid of death?”

“I don’t want to die,” Lao Tian said after thinking about it, “but people have to die. No one can do anything about that. Live well and die when it’s your time. Since time immemorial up to now, hasn’t it always been like that?”

Huang Jinchen stared blankly, as if he was dumbfounded.

In spring, a mountain full of flowers will grow tiny buds; a fragrance transformed of water and earth will spread far away, attracting bees and butterflies. In summer, the plants will become matchlessly large, growing branches and leaves that can blot out the sun, so green they could drip oil. The heavens will also be unusually clear, the Milky Way like a length of satin. In autumn, the green leaves will turn yellow, the branches will grow fruit. The rivers will be clearer and clearer, planning to reach the boundless sea before the frost.

And in winter, heavy snow will fall, and all life will return to silence. The vastness of heaven and earth will all be washed clean, burying the dead, awaiting the coming year’s new life.

These are the rules of the world, like a person’s life and death.

The dying old man was caught in an unlimited time loop in a crack between life and death. Holding a little teacup, he turned his head and stood with his back against the light drawing his shadow out long. The puppy next to him chewed on the plants that would be restored after a time.

Kou Tong suddenly had the feeling that he wanted, like He Xiaozhi, to shed silent tears.

32

BASE CAMP

THERE WAS a mirror in Lao Tian’s house, a little dirty. Kou Tong carefully wiped it clean with his sleeve, then put it in front of He Xiaozhi. “Try this.”

Lao Tian sat in a wooden chair holding Huanhuan, observing with great interest.

He Xiaozhi stared. “How…am I supposed to do this?”

Kou Tong extended a finger, pinching out a line in midair. “Suppose that this is the spatial dimension we’re located in. Because of the time axis… Er, if you don’t understand that, you can imagine it as an iron wire held up here. Then in the same coordinate system, each coordinate point is fixed.”

Kou Tong squeezed his other hand into a fist and put it under his raised hand. “This is Grandpa Tian’s limitless loop world. It’s like a mirror. Xiao Zhi was able to use the mirror to bring two spaces into contact because of a reflection off of this ‘fixed’ point in time reaching us on the island. And when the mirror was broken in the process, we landed ‘midway’ and fell here.”

Apart from a face-saving gasp of admiration from Lao Tian, Huanhuan was already asleep, He Xiaozhi was still perplexed, and Huang Jinchen asked with a difficult expression, “How about you just tell us what we need to do to leave?”

“That will need planning.” Kou Tong waved a hand, ran outside, and brought back a twig. He squatted academically in the yard, scribbling. When he squatted, Huanhuan woke up and thought that he had picked up the stick to play with it. It immediately jumped out of Lao Tian’s arms and happily bit the stick in Kou Tong’s hand, starting to play tug-of-war with him.

Huang Jinchen sighed, his shoulders drooping. He stroked He Xiaozhi’s head. “What did I say? You can’t rely on beauty. Let’s think of a way to provide for ourselves.—Going with Kou Tong’s explanation, the space will act according to your wishes, adjusting…adjusting something or other, but anyway, it makes people’s wishes all come true. So it gave you a kind of superpower.”

“Brother Huanhuan, please remove your paws! Don’t erase what I’ve just written! I haven’t finished calculating yet!” Kou Tong’s voice came through the door. “And then there’s Er-Pang. Please don’t lead the youth astray. This isn’t a superpower, it’s only a simple spacetime reflection…”

Huang Jinchen turned He Xiaozhi’s head back towards himself. “Don’t listen to him. He can’t even handle a dog. Let’s continue along our line of thinking just now. Supposing that you wanted to be useful to others, wanted to find some kind of…feeling of being needed?”

He looked a little uncertainly at He Xiaozhi. Given that “Dr.” Huang was a professional snake oil salesman concealed in a team of medical professionals, he absolutely couldn’t understand why someone would need others to need them. He could only regurgitate what he had heard.

He Xiaozhi hesitated for a while, then nodded.

“OK, so that’s right.” Huang Jinchen leaned forward. Pointing to the mirror, he said, “We really need you right now to open this path for us. A female lunatic has us in her sights, and we need to go back at once, or I’m afraid all the dependents at home won’t be safe for long.”

Then, Huang Jinchen remembered Kou Tong’s gesture. He lay a hand on He Xiaozhi’s shoulder, slowed his speech, and, making himself seem as sincere as possible, said, “We’re relying on you.”

Perhaps this revolutionary comrade’s faith was too moving. He Xiaozhi looked at the mirror for a while. Then the things that had been reflected in the mirror disappeared, and the furnishing of Kou Tong’s living room appeared in it. There was even someone standing facing the mirror—Manman, hugging her little bear doll.

Manman’s big eyes, which took up nearly half her face, were staring straight at the mirror, as though she wasn’t afraid at all of the figures suddenly appearing in it. She pointed to Huang Jinchen, standing right in front of her, and said, “Ah, you’ve appeared.”

Kou Tong stopped what he was doing. The gloom on his face was undisguised. “How can this be?! Does this prove that idealism surpasses materialism? Can mere imagination surpass logical reasoning?!”

“Look, what did I say?” Huang Jinchen said to He Xiaozhi, shaking his head. “Being cultured is truly frightening.”

Kou Tong looked up at the sky, but the ancient sages who had passed away could give him no answer. He could only cast the little stick far away. Huanhuan, at last getting exactly what it wanted, like a round artillery shell, took off from the ground with all four feet like a demonstration of doggy paddle-style qinggong, dashing far off.

The first joint of Manman’s pudgy finger passed through the mirror. Lao Tian’s eyes opened wide, like a child seeing a new toy. He said in astonishment, “There’s a little girl, too!”

Huang Jinchen knocked Manman’s hand away and chided her, “How rude. You have to say hello to grandpa.”

When Manman finished rolling her eyes at him, she raised her head and seriously looked at Lao Tian. She said, “Hello, grandpa.”

Lao Tian tentatively reached out a hand but didn’t dare to pass it through the mirror. He only gently shook Manman’s little outstretched hand next to the mirror. Smiling, he said, “I have a little granddaughter the same age as her.—Here, grandpa will give you a present.”

He took one of the flowers that would never wilt from the vase and put it into the little girl’s hand. Manman took it. Her simple movement took the flower onto another time axis. Then a strange thing happened. The fresh petals lost their splendor at a speed visible to the naked eye. The flower wilted.

The smile on Lao Tian’s face faded slightly. He sighed. “Even the flowers I grow are like me, buried up to the neck in earth.”

He Xiaozhi was standing by the edge of the mirror. Hearing these words, he looked back at Lao Tian a little hesitantly.

“We’ll come back,” Kou Tong said. “You can’t come to us, but we’ll come to see you again.”

Lao Tian waved a hand. “Go on, go on. What’s the use of hanging out here with me? Your business is getting your broken machine fixed up. Before you use it next time, test it some more. Don’t be so slipshod. Keep the customers from lodging complaints against you.”

Huanhuan, panting, came back with the little stick Kou Tong had thrown in its mouth, its tail wagging like an electric fan. Lao Tian picked up the stick and threw it again. The simple animal that only had one little stick in the whole world once again launched itself away with fervor.

Kou Tong silently followed He Xiaozhi through the mirror. But Huang Jinchen looked back at Lao Tian, and he at last knew why the two people in front of him had been unwilling to look back as they left—the old man was standing alone in the empty little cabin with the teacups they had just been drinking from still laid on the table. The light and shadow were sparse. He was the only person here, watching on his own as these rare visitors left as hurriedly as they had come.

The ravines of the wrinkles on his face were clear. Because he was smiling, they were curved in very kindly lines. He seemed accustomed to this movement of stopping to see people off. His footsteps couldn’t keep up with others’ footsteps anymore. He could only use his gaze to see them off.

All of a sudden, something unfamiliar surged up in Huang Jinchen’s heart, as if a hand had gripped it. This made him speed up his steps and expressionlessly follow Kou Tong through the mirror. In the blink of an eye, he was back in Kou Tong’s house.

Kou Tong’s mother came towards them like an avalanche. Facing the two grown men who had abruptly appeared in the living room, still in her forward-moving posture, she stood staring, dumbfounded.

Kou Tong had no time to pay attention to her. In an unusually cautious movement, he approached the window, turned, stuck himself to the wall, and looked outside.

“Well?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“Nothing at the moment, but I think…”

“What?” Yao Shuo came out of his room. He was an experienced soldier, after all. Though he had fallen to the level of being investigated by the RZ Unit’s crowd of little bastards, he still had that upright and composed bearing.

Kou Tong briefly explained the situation with the element of social unrest Qin Qin. “She’s going to be trouble. A patient with persistent delusional disorder and paranoid personality disorder is a bomb that may go off at any moment to start with. Now, due to her delusions, she’s been granted some kind of power, so she’s an even greater threat.”

Lao Yao frowned and glanced at Huang Jinchen. “Though the rules are bizarre, this still isn’t a game. The outcomes affect real people. We can’t harm her in any way.”

“But the reverse isn’t true.” Huang Jinchen rubbed the barrel of his gun and lowered his voice slightly. “Even if she kills us all, at most she’ll be taken to a mental hospital. She won’t be convicted of a crime.”

Kou Tong’s mom looked from one to the next. In great astonishment, she said, “What…are you all talking about?”

“Mom,” Kou Tong said, looking miserable, “a young lady who’s a little mentally unwell has taken a fancy to your son.”

Kou Tong’s mom indignantly opened her eyes wide. “What?!”

Kou Tong continued to invent: “There are important people in her family…you understand, right? Anyway, that’s how it is. So she’s hired a crowd of monsters and demons to compel me into marriage.”

Kou Tong’s mom’s expression softened a little. “What does her dad do?”

Kou Tong choked. “…I can’t talk about it in too much detail.”

Kou Tong’s mom’s eyes began to shine. “Does her family have a house? A car? How many members?”

Kou Tong’s expression darkened. Huang Jinchen cheerfully chipped in: “Not only do they have a house, they also have a small island.”

Kou Tong’s mom was invigorated. “What? A small island? That young lady must be dependable. Pretty good! Hey, Tongtong, don’t be so picky. It’s normal for girls to be a little sensitive, a little nervy, a little emotional or something.”

Kou Tong said, “Enough, mom, you must have things to do. It’s time to cook.”

Then he uncompromisingly pushed her out.

Huang Jinchen, just dying to make trouble, said behind him, “Your highness the princess, I think the empress dowager wants to collude with the enemy.”

Princess Kou rolled his eyes at him. He was too busy to take heed of his scoundrel knight. He hastily barged into the study, got out a big stack of notes, opened to a certain page, skimmed it at inhuman speed, then grabbed a ballpoint pen and began to scribble on a paper. “Ignore her. Er-Pang, go out and buy a pile of mirrors in bulk. I think that crazy girl is searching for our location right now. Take care not to be noticed.”

“What did you find?”

“You’re asking me?” Kou Tong looked up at him.

“OK.” Huang Jinchen laughed. “I get it. We’ll get rid of all of them except that girl.”

“What are you going to do?” Yao Shuo asked.

“We discovered another time axis. Xiao Zhi has the ability to connect to this time axis. This way, he can fold space within a certain range. I believe I can use this to construct a relatively safe base camp,” Kou Tong said as he calculated. “I now somewhat understand the structure of this dimension.”

Huang Jinchen gave an affirmative and went out. Everyone got busy at Kou Tong’s orders, measuring and calculating…

Four hours later, the whole house was piled full of mirrors. Starting from the front door, Kou Tong used mirrors of different size to seal up the whole apartment. Each bit needed He Xiaozhi to use his special “crossing” ability. When he had crossed through once, they marked a number on the back of each mirror. Kou Tong said this was something to do with “group theory.” According to the numbering, he imitated a generated cyclic group.

Everyone looked at him with the expression of people hastening on mosquito-repelling incense.

Kou Tong said, “Let’s experiment. Er-Pang, go on.”

Huang Jinchen glanced at him. “All you can do is order me around. You’re bullying me for liking you, huh? Even for a beauty, pride is still wrong.”

“How could that be?” Kou Tong said. “It’s because you’re the most skilled. If it can pass your test, then all mystical powers and superhuman fuckers will be knocked flat.”

Huang Jinchen was over the moon at this praise and obediently ran out.

As soon as he walked out, he realized something was off… It was very hard to say just what was off. It was just intuition, the intuition he had developed through countless times on the border between life and death.

Then Huang Jinchen turned his head and opened the door to go back inside, but he found that there was nothing there. The whole apartment was empty. There were no people, and also no furniture, as if no one had ever lived there.

He froze.

33

THE CONFESSION

HUANG JINCHEN reached out to touch the wall. He looked at the floor and determined that there were no traces of renovation. He knew that however great Kou Tong’s magic powers were, he still couldn’t move everything out of the apartment in the time it took to turn your head.

Huang Jinchen circled the apartment a few times, thinking that Kou Tong must be behind some mirror, watching him, no doubt with a vulgar smile of schadenfreude on his face. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and sat down in a corner. He raised his head to look at the ceiling and found that he had been a little befuddled by beauty. His IQ was falling lower and lower. He had actually let himself be thrown out so obediently.

Huang Jinchen sat quietly for a while, visualizing—would he grab Kou Tong and spank him, or peel off his clothes and tie him to the bed?

After fantasizing this and that for a while, he figured that if he went on like this, he would get a nosebleed. At last he felt that his mind was a little more balanced, so Huang Jinchen said to himself, OK, I can begin objective consideration.

At first glance, this seemed like Kou Tong moving the spatial dimension.

In the final war with the scientific terrorist organization Utopia, Huang Jinchen himself, the ultimate planted agent, had been a vital figure. Of course he knew what the evil genius had been thinking at the time—he had wanted to move the whole space humanity lived in to another dimension and remake all the rules.

But right now, he could basically eliminate moving spaces, because Kou Tong, the Projector’s planner, had said that in a stable projection, there could only be one spatial frequency, or else it would be very unstable and easily collapse.

So the problem had definitely come in from the unexpected additional time axis.

Kou Tong had used some complex calculation to use the mirrors to stuff in the whole apartment. Of course it wasn’t the mirrors that were effective; what was effective was the little bastard He Xiaozhi, who didn’t want to live. He could by some means link the two time axes and thus thread the needle to fold space.

Huang Jinchen folded his hands together and silently recited, “Thread the needle…”

Kou Tong had mentioned “groups.” This is fairly elementary mathematical concept. In ordinary terms, it means a set and a binary operation that compose a particular thing, such that the elements in the set maintain an association according to the operation. Furthermore, each element can be used to find a position corresponding to it through an identity element. Using a definition operation will turn up this magical identity element.

Simply put, if you said the “group” was a special space, using an identity element and a mathematical operation, you could use each point in it to find a corresponding point; they would fit together seamlessly, no more and no less.

Huang Jinchen didn’t know this simple but beautiful concept. He only used his intuition to understand what Kou Tong had just done.

He thought that Kou Tong had used He Xiaozhi as a “thread” to “sew” the little space of the apartment into a closed loop after folding the time axes. So, for someone on the outside, Kou Tong’s house was hidden.

Extrapolating in accordance with this logic, Huang Jinchen knew that, using He Xiaozhi, two time axes, and a pair of mirrors, could only “sew up.” It would be hard to make something that, like a human heart valve, only opened in one direction—and furthermore, Kou Tong couldn’t keep everyone locked in the house.

In other words, since he had been able to get out just now, then there must be an invisible door he could use to “go back.”

Huang Jinchen dusted off his butt and stood up—for him, there was no one in the world who couldn’t be killed, and thus no place he couldn’t infiltrate—never mind that this was a place he had just walked out of and even helped arrange. This lowered the difficulty level several points.

Huang Jinchen began to pace the apartment. If Kou Tong could by some means see him, he would have found that each step Huang Jinchen took followed the sequence in which he had positioned the mirrors. Just now, under Kou Tong’s orders, they had placed dozens of mirrors in a chaotic bustle of activity. During this, there had been a dozen times when after arranging a mirror, Kou Tong had changed the positions. But Huang Jinchen remembered it all without any error.

He slowly followed the sequence of mirrors to the last one—in the bathroom. The bathroom had had a mirror to start with. Kou Tong had adjusted its angle. Huang Jinchen tilted his head and examined the wall where there ought to have been a mirror. Then he raised a hand and pressed it to the wall, slowly turning the angle, his gaze looking in the direction his palm was facing.

His gaze fell on a tap—there ought to have been a sink there. Huang Jinchen breathed a sigh of relief and said to himself, “It’s a good thing you aren’t crude to the highest degree, darling. You haven’t made me flush myself down the toilet.”

He turned on the tap above the sink. The water flowed, making a small puddle on the floor. Huang Jinchen put his hand under the tap, then took it out, but his palm wasn’t wet at all.

The puddle slowly grew, reflecting him. Huang Jinchen considered, then stepped in. He stepped into emptiness—he knew he had figured right.

His vision went dark, then light. In the moment before his pupils adjusted, Huang Jinchen instinctively stuck to the wall, his spine tense, like a wild animal that could pounce at any moment, showing its fangs. The hand that seemed mystical when holding a gun reached half into his pocket. Then he heard clapping and a child’s laughter and finally relaxed.

Kou Tong was leaning on the bathroom door. Smiling at the timer on his phone, he said, “Six minutes, thirty-five seconds. Master Huang, I’ll be your diehard fan from now on!”

Huang Jinchen bared his teeth at him in a false smile, thinking, Very good—never mind using me as an experiment and making me go in circles around the apartment, you also time me, and you’re smiling like spring on earth—very good.

With no sense of danger, Kou Tong said, “I’d heard that Expert Huang was always elusive, able to get into and out of any place. It seems that I’ve done my ‘concealing’ pretty well. When you had seen the process of setting it up, it could still hinder you for over six minutes…”

“Four and a half,” Huang Jinchen interrupted him.

Kou Tong blinked.

Huang Jinchen suddenly stepped forward, came up in front of him, lowered his voice, and said, “I used nearly two minutes of time to think about…”

His voice became lower and lower until it was nearly a whisper—because he had seen Kou Tong’s mom standing amid a series of fixed mirrors, saying in astonishment, “Why have you put so many mirrors up on the walls?”

Before Kou Tong could turn his head and spin his mom some lies, Huang Jinchen hugged him around the waist. Kou Tong’s scalp bristled. He instinctively noticed that this bastard had been brought to fever pitch; he was going to make a major play.

As expected, Kou Tong’s mom’s eyes opened as wide as apricot stones, looking at Huang Jinchen as though watching a panda disco dancing.

While Huang Jinchen wasn’t really an “er-pang,” he regularly carried a gun over his shoulder, and they were considerably wider than Scholar Kou’s. In this posture, he seemed to have wrapped Kou Tong’s whole form in his embrace. He looked past Kou Tong’s shoulder, using a profound and suffering gaze to meet Kou Tong’s mom’s eyes. As he stealthily competed to suppress Kou Tong’s resistance, he maintained perfect lead actor posture.

“Auntie,” Huang Jinchen said with deep feeling, “I’m sorry. You’re young and beautiful, but I can’t call you big sister.”

Kou Tong’s mom opened her mouth, found that it was very hard for her to make an appropriate reaction, then closed it again.

Kou Tong’s struggles were unsuccessful. He stamped on Huang Jinchen’s heel. “Mom, he’s being hysterical. Ignore him!”

“I’m perfectly clear-headed!” Huang Jinchen transformed into a shouting romantic male lead, using lines out of a novel to put on a melodramatic show.

“Auntie, I’m sorry. I love him. I’ve restrained myself for a long time and haven’t said anything, but just now, when we were apart for six and a half minutes, I felt that I hadn’t seen him for a lifetime. That feeling, which nearly drove me mad, told me that I had to say it aloud, even if I couldn’t get your approval!”

Kou Tong’s mom was buffeted by wild winds, like an innocent bystander who had walked into the wrong room and been mistakenly struck by lightning. She said, “…Huh?”

“I can’t let anyone else have him, because each time he looks at me, he takes a piece of my soul.” Master Huang’s performance was worthy of a subway folk artist. Line after line came out of his mouth. Kou Tong twisted his heel into the back of Huang Jinchen’s leg, making Master Huang’s expression of suffering even more real. “Over time, I’ve felt that it’s become harder and harder to keep my soul in my body. If I don’t see him, there will be nothing left of me but a walking corpse.”

Kou Tong at last pushed him away. Flying into a rage, he said, “Huang Jinchen! Don’t be…”

He was going to say, Don’t be like that! It’s just a joke, and you’re announcing it to my mom!

Instead of which, Huang Jinchen quickly put a hand over his mouth and clapped the other hand to his bosom. “No… Tongtong, don’t say it, I know you can’t accept me now, I know that you…love only freedom and fun, but can you give me time? Let me take care of you, let me follow you… Even if you love someone else, I…I won’t interfere with your freedom again. If you go out with someone else, I won’t secretly tag along again or suddenly kick down your hotel room door… But let me explain! That time, I really couldn’t control myself…”

This time, Kou Tong’s mom reacted quickly. She frowned thunderously. “Wait, what hotel are you talking about? Who was he going out with?”

Kou Tong, looking hard-pressed, glared at Huang Jinchen. He thought, Fine, Er-Pang, now it’s on.

Huang Jinchen lowered his head, seeming deeply grieved. In reality, where no one could see, he was grinning evilly. He thought, Kou Darling, it serves you right.

Then he adjusted his mental state and raised his head again, once again profoundly emotional and pained. He shook his head and bitterly said, “Auntie, don’t worry, it’s fine. I love him, I love him with my whole soul. For the sake of my soul, I can wait, I can endure. No matter how far he wants to go, it’s all right. Just as long as he remembers me, leaves me a small spot in his heart, and in the future…comes back when he’s tired of playing.”

Manman ran over and shook Kou Tong’s mom by the arm. Using the wrong generational address, she said, “Auntie, auntie, this is the story of a heartless man and an infatuated woman, isn’t it?”

Kou Tong blankly said, “Manman, starting today, you can only watch news broadcasts and read the People’s Daily. All cartoons and TV dramas are forbidden. Thank you.”

Kou Tong’s mom looked at Kou Tong. She took one look at Huang Jinchen and thought that it wouldn’t be right for her not to say something, but her mind was a blank. She didn’t know what to say. So she lowered her head and met Manman’s eyes for a while. At last she turned her head and said, “OK, well, I’ll see whether the congee in the pot is ready.”

She walked two steps, then retreated. Pointing to Kou Tong, she said, “You, come here. What’s all this about the hotel?”

34

HOLDING BACK

THAT DAY, Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen fought until nightfall, positioned to battle it out to the end.

The means of battle were as follows—countless times, Kou Tong perfected the concealing method, and countless times he kicked Huang Jinchen out to be a lab rat. Huang Er-Pang, meanwhile, like a lost dog that knew where its home was, succeeded again and again in finding his way back, and he got faster and faster at it.

When he crawled out for the last time, everyone had already been tormented to prostration by the slightly perfectionist Dr. Kou. Only Master Huang still put on a smile showing eight flashing teeth like a toothpaste advertisement. He opened his arms. “Beloved princess, your knight has returned. Come and give me a hug!”

Kou Tong pushed up his glasses and said with reserve, “OK, it’s time to eat.”

Just as if he was trying to prove to his lady mother that he wasn’t easy.

“This is a key,” Kou Tong said, pointing to the strangely shaped pendant in Huang Jinchen’s hand. This thing was about the size of a thumbnail, made of several noodles stuck together with Manman’s polymer clay, with a small piece of mirror stuck to the outside. “Each person takes one when they leave. You point the sharp end to reflect in the mirror in the corner, then turn on the tap. That will activate the ‘door.’ Otherwise, real water will flow from it.”

Huang Jinchen lifted his pant leg and displayed to everyone how wet he was.

“What do we do if someone knows about this method and finds a way to steal a key?” Yao Shuo asked.

“The passage will only permit one person to go through,” Huang Jinchen said. Then he mimed a gun with his thumb and forefinger. “What, old general, you don’t believe you can handle one person?”

“What if none of us are home?” Yao Shuo asked. “If only the child is here, or someone who has no ability to protect themselves, what then?”

“They’ll follow the time axis path to Uncle Tian’s place. If it’s Xiao Zhi, he can freely activate the path and go hide with Uncle Tian. As for Manman, at least one of us will stay at home with the child.”

Kou Tong’s mom was also standing by, listening to Kou Tong carefully explaining the means by which their “home” was hidden, and the means of opening the door. For some reason, Huang Jinchen thought that, perhaps because “she” had appeared due to Kou Tong’s wish, even the storage in her brain was shared with him. No matter what bizarre thing she saw, she could still keep calm—even her own son receiving a heartfelt confession from a man.

Kou Tong analyzed the threat of this delusional disorder sufferer from the perspective of a professional. Then, after Kou Tong’s mom went off early to get her beauty sleep, they furtively called a little meeting in the living room.

Kou Tong said, “She sees this as her own world, and us as intruders. She’s sure to stop at nothing to wipe us out.”

Yao Shuo cut in: “Is there no reason for it?”

“There is,” Kou Tong said, “but her logic isn’t the same as ours. We have no way to understand the reason.”

The person who had worked hardest that day was He Xiaozhi, but he didn’t complain at all. Moreover, his mental state seemed much better than usual. Kou Tong brought over water and medication for him to take, and He Xiaozhi actually smiled and thanked him. He said, “The medication Dr. Kou prescribes is very effective. Today I feel better than I have in ages.”

As if speaking casually, Kou Tong said, “Continue taking your medication. We’re all relying on you.”

These words were a stimulant to He Xiaozhi, more useful than any antidepressant. His eyes instantly lit up.

Kou Tong’s hand made brief contact with his body, touching He Xiaozhi’s shoulder, like the intimacy between companions fighting shoulder to shoulder. The others may not have even noticed this gesture of his, but He Xiaozhi suddenly had a sense of belonging.

For a long time, it was as if something had been missing in his heart. He Xiaozhi had felt that that feeling was going to drive him mad, because he didn’t know what the missing thing was, but without it, he felt that life was more and more hollow. In the end, that emotion had been about to drown him, and he had nearly jumped off a building.

Now, he at last understood—it was the feeling of being needed, of being protected by others while at the same time being needed by others, of belonging to something, whether a household, a group of friends, or a team.

After days of running around, though Kou Tong was forged in iron, he was still tired in the end. He didn’t go to the study to stay up all night. Instead, he went to his bedroom. When Huang Jinchen returned to the bedroom after watching a replay of Star Wars with Manman, he found that the owner of the bedroom whose space he had appropriated for days, had simply gone to sleep without even removing his clothes or shoes, his legs hanging halfway off the bed.

Huang Jinchen went over and took off his crooked glasses. Kou Tong instantly woke up, blinked hard, then ruffled his hair and sat up. He stared into space for a while. In a slightly hoarse voice, he said, “OK, I’ll go shower.”

Huang Jinchen sat down and watched him stand up, swaying. Suddenly, he asked, “Aren’t you…still holding something back?”

Kou Tong looked back. Probably because he had just been woken up, there was a bit of red at the corners of Kou Tong’s eyes, as if they couldn’t quite open. Glancing sidelong at someone, there was a flirtatious air to them. Huang Jinchen’s heart itched a little. He thought, if people were a kind of collectible item, collecting this person would give you a great deal of status.

“What am I holding back?” Kou Tong asked.

“Just now, you said out there that that girl will treat us as intruders and attack without distinction. I don’t think that’s very true,” Huang Jinchen said. “The two of us are the only ones who have seen her, so don’t avoid the subject.”

Kou Tong woke up a little. He was silent for a while, then asked, “What do you mean?”

“Yao Shuo is an old shut-in. I’ve found that for whatever reason he doesn’t seem to like communicating with others very much. Probably he knows that he can’t say anything nice, so he sits in his room all day going online and reading, lazing around.” Huang Jinchen looked steadily at him. “He Xiaozhi is a young shut-in. I’ve never seen him say more than half a sentence to anyone but you, especially when he’s having an attack. He practically can’t go out and see people. Before coming to your house, he’d never gone anywhere. And forget about Manman. She’s a little couch potato. The little devil may make trouble, but at any rate she does what she’s told. She won’t go running around outside.”

Kou Tong lowered his eyes expressionlessly.

Huang Jinchen observed him fervently. “In sum, it’s actually enough for us to hide in the house. If we’re not on that weird island, we aren’t in that little girl’s territory. She can’t really do a house-to-house inspection—even if she does, you can still hide. There’s no reason to hide the apartment.”

Kou Tong, unable to deny it, nodded.

Huang Jinchen continued his analysis: “Unless you want to do something.—My guess is that you want to start looking for the controller.”

Kou Tong hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

Huang Jinchen relaxed his body and leaned against the head of Kou Tong’s bed. Kou Tong’s bedroom wasn’t very big. With two long-limbed men in it, it seemed a little cramped. Huang Jinchen said, “OK, I get it. You and that girl have a fundamental philosophical contradiction. Apart from your other scuffle, she also refuses to return to the outside world—she takes it for an illusion. But in fact, unconsciously, she knows that what you’re saying isn’t sheer nonsense. The two of you couldn’t get past this problem. So she automatically thought that you had betrayed her.”

Kou Tong gave a mocking laugh, took out a cigarette, and lit it. He crossed one leg over the other and leaned over, propping his elbows on his knees. Holding the cigarette between his finger, he pushed aside the hair fallen over his forehead. “Expert, I see you’re more of an expert than I am.”

Huang Jinchen said, “Sit up straight, don’t tempt me.”

Kou Tong rolled his eyes. “Wake up. Don’t devote yourself to a one-sided attraction.”

Huang Jinchen smiled. Then, lowering his voice, he said, “What, are you afraid that they’ll be like that…Qin Qin?”

“After all, not everyone is like Lao Tian.” Kou Tong sighed, looking exhausted. For others, small movements were done unconsciously and words spoken were easy or chatty. But for Kou Tong, both his speech and body language were often a kind of technique.

It was the same way a person could spend a whole afternoon speaking in their mother tongue and only feel that their throat was dry, but if they were speaking a foreign language instead, the same length of time would make them very tired.

“Qin Qin has fulfilled her desire for control here. He Xiaozhi has found the sense of being needed here. Lao Yao has lost the stress of his family and work and completely relaxed. Manman can communicate with others.” Quietly, Kou Tong said, “What do you think? If they knew the whole truth, would they stand with the nameless island, or with me?”

“So what about you and me?” Huang Jinchen asked. “If I also don’t want to leave here, do you think I’ll be a major impediment? “

Kou Tong laughed bitterly. “Then I’d really have to put up a brave fight on my own.”

Huang Jinchen was silent for a while. Then, all of a sudden, he said seriously, “It won’t happen. What this program has given me isn’t the same as what it’s given them.”

“What do you mean?” Kou Tong asked.

Huang Jinchen’s grave, earnest face broke into a salacious smile. “Because what I’ve gotten is a great treasure that I like.”

Kou Tong once again remembered what had happened during the day. He threw himself forward and seized him by the collar. Gnashing his teeth, he said, “You damned professional tattletale!”

Huang Jinchen cooperatively stuck out his tongue. “Murdering your own husband!”

Kou Tong grinned nastily. “Huang Er-Pang, you want to get fucked raw?”

Huang Jinchen caught Kou Tong by the waist and tossed him aside. Then he cast an amorous glance at him. “Darling, you really are too bold. You’re making me uncomfortable.”

So their bedtime activities reverted to the level of preschoolers, pinching and slapping. But after rolling around for a bit, Huang Jinchen suddenly froze. Kou Tong raised a hand to push him, then felt his knee lightly brush against something…that had become hard. His expression also became a little peculiar. Huang Jinchen quickly jumped off the bed. Not the least embarrassed, he said, “It’s an accident.”

Then he dashed into the bathroom without a backwards look.

Kou Tong pulled his crooked collar straight, shook his head, and laughed in spite of himself.

The next day, Kou Tong went out first thing in the morning. The lost-and-found notice was published in that day’s evening paper—the seven conscious subjects had all been found; he could begin to search for the controller.

35

BEWILDERED

AT FOUR in the morning, Manman scratched at the door like a little cat.

Kou Tong must have been sound asleep. He rolled over, buried his head in his pillow, and didn’t budge. But Huang Jinchen opened a pair of flashing eyes, just as if he had only been resting all night and hadn’t gone entirely to sleep.

He turned his head to look at Kou Tong, who had his back to him, then quietly got up and opened the door. Manman was hugging a big doll with one leg dragging on the ground, wearing fluffy pajamas, her face deathly pale in the dim light. Added to her faint expression, it was a little eerie.

Huang Jinchen closed the door behind him and squatted down. “What’s wrong?”

Manman rubbed her eyes and said, “I think someone’s coming.”

Huang Jinchen raised his eyebrows. He knew that this girl was a super radar, so he softly asked, “From which direction?”

“Over there?” Manman raised her hand and pointed.

Huang Jinchen glanced up in the direction she was pointing, then roughly stroked her hair. “Got it. Good girl, go to sleep.”

Manman said, “OK.”

But her feet didn’t move. Huang Jinchen asked, “What now?”

Manman earnestly asked him, “Was your confession successful?”

Huang Jinchen eyebrows went up, feeling that she was once again about to say something shocking. Indeed, Manman said, “So did you two rumple the bedding?”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

Manman’s line of sight lowered slightly, pausing strangely on Huang Jinchen’s underbelly. Then she said, “But isn’t rumpling the bedding for making babies?”

Huang Jinchen felt that he was a mere mortal trembling before the mighty imagination of the divine Manman. He quickly picked up her arm, then half-pulled, half-pushed her to Kou Tong’s mom’s bedroom, pulling her little braid, already rubbed into a mess by her pillow, into a chicken coop. Imploringly, he said, “Enough, little treasure. Wanting a man to have a waist as thin as a willow bough is one thing, but you’ve simply turned it into two men having a child. Your tastes are even more hardcore than that big treasure’s. Go right to sleep, I’m begging you.”

Manman clung to the doorframe. Not letting him off to the end, she said consolingly, “Though in books it says that a baby grows in its mom’s uterus. You don’t have one, do you?”

Huang Jinchen looked into her eyes full of the thirst for knowledge and bitterly said, “No, I don’t.”

“I see.” Manman nodded. Then she tilted her head and considered. She said, “It also says in books that if you can’t have babies, you get ‘set aside.’ So are you going to get ‘set aside’ after this?”

Huang Jinchen covered her little head with one hand and shoved her through the crack in the door into Kou Tong’s mom’s bedroom. Then he closed the door and said to himself, “Little whelp…”

The little whelp was truly too frightening. It would be better to be set aside than to raise something like this.

Then Huang Jinchen shuddered, catching up.

But why should I be “set aside?” he thought. Fuck…

He silently put his gun on his back and went out, passing through the whole city at a speed and trajectory unimaginable to the deeply sleeping people, like a ghost wandering the human world in the darkest hours before dawn.

He came to a comparatively tall rooftop and through his telescopic sight looked from a distance in the direction Manman had pointed. This was precisely the direction of the nameless island. There was a big bridge linking it to the mainland, but for some reason, the bridge had suddenly collapsed. There were many cars surrounding it, probably workers investigating the incident. In the ruins of the bridge, a tower had gone up out of nowhere.

There was a gigantic crown on top of the tower, hanging there ready to fall. There was a small piece of cloud over it, as if coordinating with it; it only took notice of the small space where the tower was, constantly throwing down lighting. Each time, it hit the tip of the tower, turning it into a pillar supporting the sky, like a high quality incense stick.

The strangest thing was that there were also two people on top of it, a man and a woman, brightly dressed and standing on the “incense stick.” At first glance they seemed like dummies, but Huang Jinchen adjusted his telescopic sight slightly and found that they were actually two moving, living people.

“Shit,” Huang Jinchen said, “this isn’t an illusion, is it?”

He remembered the position, planning to go back. But just as he was getting ready to get up, the two people standing on the tower suddenly jumped together from the tip of the tower surrounded by flashing lightning and rolling thunder. The surface of the sea was black, like a huge snare.

The next day, the morning news reported on the tower that had miraculously arisen. This thing had disappeared before daybreak, and the bridge also seemed intact. The experts on TV asserted that this was a rare mirage appearing in a coastal city.

The experts were worthy of being experts—in a nutshell, who knew how the repair workers who had raised a hue and cry at the seaside were going to explain the broken bridge they had seen.

“What you saw last night was the Tower,” said Yao Shuo, examining the data. “This card is supposed to indicate a sudden unexpected event, a drastic change, likely something bad. It makes people uneasy.”

From next door came Kou Tong’s voice put through a voice changer. After the “reward offering” ad had been published, people had started to call him one after another. Sometimes there seemed to be some merit in what they said, and sometimes it sounded like total nonsense. Kou Tong seemed to have suddenly taken up police work. Each day, he and Huang Jinchen split up and went out several times to verify the information, though up to this point they had come up empty-handed.

“So…what kind of change does this represent?” He Xiaozhi asked carefully.

“It may be a signal.” Yao Shuo analyzed, “For example, that girl Kou Tong mentioned might be up to something. According to how they have appeared, we can come to two conclusions now. First, the imagined cards have their own natures. Second, they can’t violate this conscious subject’s orders. Judging from the natures of the cards that spoke to Kou Tong, they may be passive. In other words, they’re likely not of one mind with their master. This is probably a hint the tarot cards are giving us.”

“You mean that that little girl may be preparing to attack us?” Huang Jinchen asked.

Yao Shuo took off his reading glasses and nodded. “Right. As for that, soon I’ll be able to give an analysis of the other side’s possible battle strategy according to the information we currently have.”

“Fine, old chief. Thank you for your hard work.” Kou Tong, having hung up the phone, came in. He picked up his tossed aside jacket and said, “I’m going out. Someone just called and said he’d seen the thing I want to find.”

Concerning the controller, the explanation Kou Tong had given was that he needed to find a positioning control device that came with the system, with which they could analyze the portion of influence each conscious subject had over the space, then find a way to control the little terrorist girl’s unusual powers.

He Xiaozhi stuttered, “D-dr. Kou, be careful.”

Kou Tong smiled at him, then turned and left.

“I’m also going out,” Huang Jinchen suddenly said to He Xiaozhi after a while had passed. “Send me to see the old man.”

Though he was always smiling, for some reason, He Xiaozhi was always a little afraid of him. He quickly agreed and uncovered a mirror nailed to the wall with a curtain over it. He closed his eyes and gently touched the edge of the mirror. After a while, Lao Tian’s agritouristy little yard appeared in front of them.

Since learning that he had this useful point, He Xiaozhi had been practically like a teenager who had found a secret book of martial arts. Earnest people were the most undefeatable. Apart from the basic necessities of life and occasional attacks of hysteria, he spent the rest of his time practicing with mirrors. In only a few days, he had already honed his skills to perfection. Like a real Anywhere Door, he could take people all kinds of places on demand.

Kou Tong had said, and he probably understood for himself, that this was a path to save himself. As long as a person’s biological instincts hadn’t died out, before the conscious mind could notice, they would unconsciously clutch at that last straw.

As soon as Huang Jinchen set foot in Lao Tian’s static time axis, the puppy Huanhuan happily came running towards him. It didn’t put on the brakes and bumped into his shin. It yelled “Awoo!” Its front paws left the ground, and it sat back on its butt.

Huang Jinchen looked at the white-furred puppy and stroked his chin, thinking that while it perhaps wasn’t purebred, it definitely had some Samoyed blood, or else it couldn’t have been so stupid.

Lao Tian, carrying a big pair of pruning shears over his shoulder, came over. “You’re here? Sit down inside.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t know how many moments their “several days” had been for him. Or perhaps Lao Tian had forgotten about time. In this eternal crevice, the flow of time had become something meaningless.

After only a single chance meeting, Huang Jinchen felt as though he and Lao Tian were ordinary neighbors, the sort of neighbors who were very well acquainted, going back and forth to borrow oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar all day, coming to sit with each other for a bit when they had time, amiable and natural.

Perhaps it was because he was peaceful… Thinking this, Huang Jinchen silently followed Lao Tian into his little log cabin. An instructor had told him once that when a person’s heart truly became peaceful, nothing in the outside world could make his state of mind sway or easily make him feel astonished.

If a sniper could reach that level of training, he would become a god.

In legend, 11235 was just such a god, but Huang Jinchen knew that he wasn’t; Lao Tian was.

When he felt himself spurred on by Lao Tian’s behavior to relax along with him, he knew that he had been influenced by him.

“Come, sit here.—Huanhuan, don’t bite our visitor’s pant leg.” Lao Tian gently moved Huanhuan’s tail with the tip of his foot, and Huanhuan behaved. It went in a few circles chasing its tail, then settled down at the old man’s feet. “What made you think of coming to see me today?”

“Well…” Huang Jinchen thought for a long time. He also wasn’t very clear on what had suddenly possessed him to ask He Xiaozhi to send him here. After a while, he said all of a sudden, “Well, I wanted to ask you something. Are you on good terms with your wife?”

Lao Tian stared. His smile faded a little. Then he softly said, “She passed on before me. She’s waiting for me over there.

“Back then, while we weren’t in an arranged marriage, it wasn’t like young people these days, going all over to meet up. Most people were introduced by family elders or at work,” Lao Tian said. “And there was no question of any particular attachment. When people got married, they didn’t understand anything. Before, when a man was with a woman, they wouldn’t say much to each other. They were rather shy, and there was no question of finding anything out. Then they’d muddle along together, clashing and squabbling every day. As time went on, it was like two stones shoved together, wearing away until you were about the same shape.”

Huang Jinchen listened seriously.

Lao Tian smiled. “It was different from how it is for you now. At the time, we were particular about ‘settling down and having a family.’ When we got to a certain age, we would find a wife. Everyone did it. You young people, you have more freedom. If you meet someone to your liking, you get married, and if it doesn’t work out, you divorce. If you don’t want to have a household, then you can just not get married, and no one will think it’s anything out of the ordinary.”

Huang Jinchen put in, “Being tied to another person for your whole life, the cost of breaking in would be pretty high. People value efficiency now.”

Lao Tian considered it, then nodded and said, “That’s the reasoning. But, in fact, there are also things to regret.”

Huang Jinchen turned his head to look at him. Lao Tian said, “In fact, it’s like this. No matter how much you like a person, you still have to spend a period of time getting used to each other. No matter how pleasing a person’s looks are, you have to spend time together, share in all of life’s daily necessities—you like your food salty, I like my food bland, so we argue it out a few times before slowly settling down. Spending your lives together, many young people think it restricts them. But in fact, no one knows without having done it. And even if you have, if you haven’t done it to the end, there are still those who don’t know.”

He extended an emaciated finger and wiped a water droplet off the wooden table. He said, “Two people have to be together, through wind and rain, through ups and down, even through separations and reunions, for fifty or sixty years. When one person is already in a coffin waiting, you’ll remember, and it’ll seem like your whole life, no matter where you went, during the good and the bad, this old great-grandmother was always mixed up in it. At that point, you’ll understand whether spending your life with her was worth it or not.”

Having him everywhere for my whole life—Huang Jinchen repeated this to himself, ignoring the words “old great-grandmother.” Then he suddenly said, somewhat at a loss, “Oh, yes, actually, I actually wanted to ask you, is there a person who, when he touches you, makes you feel like your scalp is bristling?”

Lao Tian blinked.

Huang Jinchen said, “Not that kind of…going through the motions with a lover, resolving physiological problems sort of thing… All right, I’m sure you haven’t gone through the motions with a lover, but you’re a man, you still must have had some urges sometimes, right? But it’s a little different from physiological stimulation. Of course I know that it’s also an adrenaline rush… It’s just that that rush is split into two stages. The first is an ordinary physiological reaction, and the second is when you realize who the person in front of you is, then you suddenly…”

36

MEMORY CHIP

LAO TIAN was looking at Huang Jinchen with a very peculiar expression. Huanhuan jumped onto a chair and put its two front paws on the table, stuck out its tongue, and also looked at Huang Jinchen with its big, clueless eyes.

The gazes of the man and the dog pulled Huang Jinchen back from his confusion, and he at last realized that he had done something stupid.

Then Lao Tian laughed. Huang Jinchen quickly said, “Uncle, just treat it like I was raving in my sleep.”

Lao Tian stroked Huanhuan’s head and said, “My younger son once asked me the same question as you, though that was when he was still an adolescent.”

The corners of Huang Jinchen’s mouth twitched. He wanted to explain that he actually wasn’t a youth, but then he thought that this would be too stupid to say and make it seem like he was trying to cover up being a virgin, so he held back and said nothing, abandoning himself to hearing this elder’s enlightening remarks.

Lao Tian said, “There’s an expression from Yuan dynasty theater that I think has some merit. You can hear it out.”

Huang Jinchen, his face paralyzed, said, “I’m done for. I won’t understand it. I only know ‘Moonlight in front of my bed, two pairs of shoes on the floor.’[15]”

“All your life you did not yearn; beginning to yearn, you yearn desperately[16].”  Lao Tian ignored him, slowly reciting while watching the puppy lose interest in the lost overaged youth Huang Jinchen and start to chew on the tablecloth. “Sometimes, a person will go his whole life without understanding what these words mean. Whether it’s little girls who spend every day longing for romance and love, or people like you who think you’re wise guys because you’ve had experience and don’t believe in the speeches in plays anymore, none of you actually understand what kind of feeling that is.”

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then said, “I’m not a wise guy. That’s Kou Tong.”

“I mean that when it comes time to say something, there are people who will never believe that there’s such a thing as one’s heart missing a beat, and there are people who think that there’s such a thing as love at first sight between people. In fact, right and wrong are reversed. If you believe it, but you never meet such a person in your life, then you’ve believed the wrong thing. But if you don’t believe it, and one day there really is a person who makes you feel that you don’t know what to do with yourself, then you’ll understand the meaning of ‘beginning to yearn, you yearn desperately.’” Lao Tian said, “There are some things in this world that are very mysterious. They can’t be explained with your theories, and they’re hard to grasp. You have to taste them yourself to know their flavor. You’ve tasted it now, haven’t you?”

Huang Jinchen thought that the expression “the old are immoral” had something in it. At least he felt that Lao Tian had hit the nail on the head with him. So he asked, “How do you think this thing happens?”

“Who knows?” Lao Tian was amused. “Young man, let me ask you. In this life, people have so many medicines and so many health preserving methods to take precaution against all kinds of maladies. There are so many safety measures to take precaution against all kinds of accidents. Why is it that when we cling to life so strictly, are so cautious, there still comes a day when every person dies?”

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then answered, “All animals have set lifespans, and any machine will also be scrapped after a hundred eighty years.”

“You can change the parts,” Lao Tian said. “At least, that’s what I used to think. Science and technology are so developed now. I’ve heard that even genes can be casually transplanted, so how much trouble can an organ be? It used to be that organs were transplanted from living bodies, and now there are even man-made ones. Why can’t you just fix whatever’s broken? Couldn’t a person live forever, then?”

The words “even genes can be casually transplanted” made the smile suddenly vanish from Huang Jinchen’s face. His expression dimmed. The puppy chewing the tablecloth on the other side of the table seemed to sense something. It shivered and gave Huang Jinchen a slightly fearful and probing look, then cried “woo-woo” and jumped into Lao Tian’s arms, not playing anymore.

“That’s right,” he said in an unusually flat tone, “even genes can be casually transplanted…”

“But it won’t do. People can’t live forever without growing old.” Lao Tian seemed not to have noticed anything unusual. He continued, “Think about it. Why can the element of carbon compose coal or diamonds, and also compose flesh and blood? Assuming there’s a scientific explanation for that, then why, as luck would have it, can it compose an animal like a human being? There are so many elements in a human body. The elements turn into molecules, then into cells of so many types, and if anything goes wrong, it won’t work. Where did such a big engineering project come from? Even if you knew these things, if someone gave you the same materials, you still couldn’t change them into a person. At most you could build a body, but it wouldn’t be a person…”

“Dr. Kou says that psychology is actually a branch of physiology. You can discuss this question with him,” Huang Jinchen casually interrupted him, a little impatient.

Lao Tian took no notice of his rudeness, only looked at him with an expression of near perfect understanding and said, “Psychologists aren’t all-powerful. No expert is all-powerful—because life itself is a miracle.

“You shouldn’t wonder ‘Where did this come from?’ for the same reason you shouldn’t wonder about questions like ‘How did humans evolve?’, ‘Why am I me and not some other person?’, ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’” Finally, Lao Tian concluded, “There’s no meaning in them, because even if there are two time axes, a person can still never find his way back. You’re only the you that you are now.”

Huang Jinchen’s gaze fixed on Lao Tian. His brows were a little coarse, like thick brush strokes. His gaze seemed to have weight, with a peculiar forcefulness in it that made it hard to raise your head. Huanhuan straightened its neck, the nervous tip of its tail quivering. It gave an out of tune “arf!” But Lao Tian met his eyes with a calm expression—as if he had attained the peak of spiritual cultivation and had nothing to doubt and nothing to dread.

After a while, Huang Jinchen at last nodded slowly and said, “It does sound reasonable.”

Then he laughed. “But why do I feel like you’re using a big pile of circular reasoning to put one over on me?”

Huanhuan tilted its head and looked at his smile, slowly calming down. Its tail stopped quivering, too. Its expression was a little doubtful. Huang Jinchen reached out his arm and patted it on the head. It carefully drew close and sniffed him all over with the tip of its nose, as if deciding whether this was someone it knew.

When Huang Jinchen got back, he found that Kou Tong was already home. He felt he hadn’t spent much time sitting with the old man, and over here it was already dark. As expected, it was easy to cross in time a little when bouncing back and forth between the two time axes. Kou Tong was just in the study alone, fooling around with a little black box.

The others didn’t recognize this thing, but Huang Jinchen saw at a glance that this was just like the thing Kou Tong had dug up from under the tree the first time he had entered the big boiler. It was this place’s control box.

But looking at Kou Tong’s grave expression, he knew that things weren’t going to be so easy.

“What is it?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“I don’t know.” Kou Tong opened the lid of the control box and examined it closely. “I found this with an old man who sells second-hand furnishings. I don’t know what’s going on. It seems it was given to him as an old household appliance, but there seems to be something missing… Jinchen, give me a screwdriver.”

Huang Jinchen gave an affirmative, performed a visual evaluation of the type of screw, picked up a screwdriver from the open toolbox next to him, and passed it over. Kou Tong took it without looking up. He misjudged the distance and grabbed Huang Jinchen’s hand, then groped around for the screwdriver. He pulled twice but couldn’t pull it out of Huang Jinchen’s grasp, so he gave him a doubtful look.

“Ah… Oh, here.” Huang Jinchen recovered and quickly let go. When Kou Tong wasn’t paying attention, he looked at the place he had accidentally grabbed with a very complicated expression.

It really is different, Huang Jinchen thought seriously. How can the place he touched feel so different?

Kou Tong unscrewed the lid of the control box. Inside were wires overlapping with coils and coils linked to microchips. Kou Tong poked around a little and started to frown. “The core memory chip is gone.”

“Ah. What?” Huang Jinchen was still immersed in that inexplicable problem. His IQ had fallen off. He hadn’t heard anything Kou Tong had said.

Luckily, Kou Tong was facing a grave problem and didn’t notice Master Huang’s short-circuit. He very carefully took the blueprints from the enciphered strongbox and compared the control box’s components bit by bit. He investigated once more. Then he twirled the screwdriver in his fingers and dropped it onto the table with a clatter.

Huang Jinchen sat across from him. Kou Tong pushed aside the topmost wire. “Look, this is the central processor. There are six microchips in all, and the most important one is the core memory chip. It stores all the equations the projection space is generated from. Without that, we have no way of knowing the route we got here by, and we can’t establish contact with outside machinery… Why would it be this piece that’s lost? What the hell.”

Huang Jinchen forced his attention to focus on this crucial box. “…It probably couldn’t have been taken by someone on purpose. Supposing there was such a person, if they wanted to prevent you from getting the control box, they could have taken the whole thing. It’s not big. There’s no inconvenience in carrying it around.”

Kou Tong sighed in irritation and leaned back in his chair. He made a fist, and his knuckles cracked—without the core memory chip, even if he was a celestial being, he still wouldn’t be able to calculate the complex formula that had shaped this world, never mind making contact with the outside. He might as well not have the control box.

If it really was as Huang Jinchen had said, and someone had inadvertently carried the chip off, wouldn’t such a small and fragile thing have been lost? Wouldn’t it have been damaged? Perhaps the person who had taken it was only a very curious youth who had taken it to put into some electric-powered little automobile, then discovered that it gave no reaction and thrown it away. Perhaps…

“Is there a backup?” Huang Jinchen asked.

Kou Tong shook his head and feebly said, “This is the backup. The real control box was damaged because I lost my privileges when I was pulled in as a conscious subject.”

Huang Jinchen also didn’t know what to do—he wasn’t a tech genius, and right now, all of his attention was focused on “something else.” In fact, he wasn’t very worried about whether he could get out or not.

Kou Tong sat there for a long time thinking it over without being able to come up with any idea. So he took a deep breath and leapt out of his chair. Sweeping away his dejection, he energetically said, “It’s fine, this will sort itself out. At any rate, General Zhong and the others will find out the problem with the Projector sooner or later, and the base’s technicians don’t get paid to sit around doing nothing. I’ll think of something else…”

He opened the study door and yelled towards the kitchen, “I’m starving! Mom, what’s for dinner?”

Kou Tong had just been biting his own finger, Huang Jinchen thought silently, watching his figure. After a long period of observation, Huang Jinchen had found that Kou Tong in fact didn’t have any fidgety little gestures. Perhaps because of his area of expertise, his control over his own body language had always been much greater than that of others, until just now.

The moment Kou Tong had thrown himself back in his chair, Huang Jinchen had seen irrepressible worry on his face. This worry had made him bite his own fingertip until it bled without even noticing. But less than five minutes later, he was once again skipping and jumping.

Totally heartless, with an extremely high tolerance for attacks… Huang Jinchen sat there copying Kou Tong’s movements just now, gently biting his thumb. He thought in infatuation, Yeah, I like that.

37

SCAN

THE RZ UNIT couldn’t hang out at the ST Base forever, because General Zhong was a miser and certainly didn’t have the budget to let so many people hang around eating for free. So after Chang Dou and the crowd of elites had struggled for a couple days without being able to get Kou Tong and those other unlucky bastards out, Captain Hu decided to return home and get back to work.

As soon as Chang Dou heard this, he wilted. He hadn’t yet reached an outcome in his battle with the annoying Wu Xiangxiang. So the technician decided to work through the night. He had to think of a way find the traces of this ghostly program Dr. Kou had made.

General Zhong looked at him, wanting to speak but holding back. Captain Hu followed his gaze to look at Chang Dou as well, and very cooperatively said, “Lately we haven’t had any urgent assignments requiring his cooperation. Technician Chang can remain at the base for now and aid you in getting Yao Shuo and the others back.”

Wu Xiangxiang’s eyes flashed like ghost lights, resentfully staring at Chang Dou’s back. Chang Dou was just about to feel satisfied when he caught up with what Captain Hu had said and wilted even more. He weakly asked, “So…Captain Hu, do you mean you’re leaving me here on my own?”

Receiving confirmation, Chang Dou, like an abandoned puppy, shuffled towards Fang Xiu, his eyes emitting resentful light through his thick glasses. Particularly emphasizing the words “on my own,” he repeated, “You’re going to leave me on my own.”

Fang Xiu was scrolling through a webpage on his phone. This was a fishing website where you had to constantly pay attention to the movement on the screen. He hadn’t clearly heard what Chang Dou had said, so he absent-mindedly nodded. “Yeah.”

Chang Dou waited a while, found that he had no other reaction, then disappointedly said, “Oh.”

Finding that he was so unimportant, he suffered a shock. He retreated and curled up in a corner of the couch like an eggplant stricken by the frost, pathetically hugging his laptop, staring with a blank expression at the program automatically operating on the screen. The flames of battle seemed to have suddenly been extinguished. Even Wu Xiangxiang’s provocative gaze and beard-stroking gesture could hardly attract his attention.

Su Qing stamped on the back of Fang Xiu’s foot, kicking him out of the complex information-gathering work. Then he looked up at the ceiling and gave a dry cough. Fang Xiu finally turned his head and noticed Chang Dou with a dark cloud hanging over his head, about to turn into a little mushroom.

Fang Xiu’s expression became conflicted. The sole of Su Qing’s shoe, still planted on his foot, moved around and twisted into his heel.

So Fang Xiu could only sigh and pat Chang Dou on his bird’s nest-like hair. “You’re the only one who can do this at the moment. Stay here for now, and when the assignment is complete, we’ll come pick you up.”

Wu Xiangxiang’s hateful gaze turned on Fang Xiu. Sadly, this was a tough field agent; Wu Xiangxiang’s gamma ray gaze couldn’t pass through Fang Xiu’s skin.

Chang Dou looked up at him. “You’ll come pick me up?”

…Captain Hu and Su Qing exchanged a look, finding that they had become the overlooked part of that “we.”

Fang Xiu was conflicted again for a while, then reluctantly nodded and said, “Yeah.”

Chang Dou was instantly full of enthusiasm once again, happily holding his computer. As if his chicken’s claws had suddenly turned into Omega Supreme’s fingers, he tapped on the keyboard with a ping-pong sound.

Wu Xiangxiang sourly said, “Hmph, homo.”

Without looking up, Chang Dou retorted, “Hmph, goat.”

Wu Xiangxiang said, “Four-eyed mushroom.”

Chang Dou said, “Sharp-footed enoki.”

Wu Xiangxiang said, “The keyboard isn’t a Rubik’s cube. Even if you chip off every key, you still won’t find a satisfactory solution.”

Chang Dou said, “With your IQ, that’s definitely what you would do… Wait!”

He had hardly said this when he suddenly leapt off the couch. Pointing to Wu Xiangxiang, he said, “I have an idea!”

Wu Xiangxiang stared. Chang Dou spoke as rapidly as popping beans: “A Rubik’s cube is a space containing limited variations with rules of motion. Every space, no matter how many dimensions it has, has its own rules of motion, just like a matrix in a linear space defined in higher algebra!”

Wu Xiangxiang snorted. “Of course I know that. The correspondence between motion and the rule transformation equation is one of the basic principles of the existence of the projection space.”

“This supposed ghost program that we can’t find is in essence also a type of space, except that its rules have been deliberately or inadvertently tampered with by Dr. Kou himself.” Chang Dou extremely quickly said things that the vast majority of people on Earth would find hard to understand. His eyes were as bright as a lightbulb lit with a hundred thousand volts. “A plane scan, we can use a plane scan!”

Wu Xiangxiang’s eyes opened wide. “You’re saying we perform a dimension reduction on all the levels in the Projector, then scan all of them without distinction?”

Chang Dou said, “Right!”

Wu Xiangxiang yelled: “You really are a barbarian! Ever since Archimedes, people have known to use a lever, and you just want to deadlift?”

Chang Dou also yelled: “Excuse me, Dr. Wu, can you tell me whether your fulcrum is in the same universe as us?”

Then he ignored Wu Xiangxiang and charged out hugging his laptop.

Wu Xiangxiang followed him out in hot pursuit. “So do you know what’s going to happen when you’ve finished scanning? Each time you reduce the dimension, you’ll have an indeterminate constant term. Do you know how to deal with that? Do you know…”

General Zhong looked blankly at Captain Hu, thinking that when these technicians who needed only a bit of sunlight to shine got going, it was truly a frightening thing.

Fang Xiu smiled, lowered his head, and continued to scroll the webpage, feeling that sometimes Chang Dou was like a plant that was easy to look after. If you ignored him, he would wilt, but then, when you suddenly watered him a little, he would instantly be full of vitality again. There was never any need to take too much trouble. He didn’t have any particular presence, but watching him bounce around, it was like replenishing your chlorophyl and sugar; it put you in a good mood.

Kou Tong was thinking of a way to use the crude equipment in his study to read all the memory-containing components of the control box. The volume of information was very large, and he seemed to have returned in one day to before the Liberation, manually analyzing bit by bit. He felt that he was going to have to work through the night again.

Then, at some point, he lay down on the desk and fell asleep. In his daze, he seemed to have a dream. Ordinarily, Kou Tong didn’t especially remember his dreams. Only when he was exhausted or unwell would he have the kind of consciously active, deep and intense dream that he would still be able to retell clearly the next day after being startled awake.

And this dream was generally the same one.

Perhaps the posture of lying on the desk was constricting. Kou Tong felt that something was binding him and knew that he was asleep, but he couldn’t wake up. Then the familiar mirror appeared in front of him. Inside it was a cold-faced self surrounded by darkness.

Kou Tong sat cross-legged on the floor, but the person in the mirror was still sitting in a chair in a very upright posture, regular and precise as a robot. The two of them were face to face through the mirror, their lines of sight at the same height.

“I’m still alive,” he said to the person in the mirror. “I believe in miracles. This thing can’t trap me.”

Perhaps this had some ability to strengthen willpower. When he said it, the cold fog around him suddenly warmed up and wrapped him inside it, making his tense nerves slowly calm down. Kou Tong laughed, but the person in the mirror didn’t.

“Even that child He Xiaozhi is managing to find a way to live and get better. Can’t I find one?” He stood up, raised a chair that had appeared beside him at some point, weighed it in his hands, then, just like countless times before, he suddenly smashed it into the mirror, as if hitting himself right over the head.

“Don’t come again.”

The mirror shattered, but it made a beep like something receiving a signal.

Where was the signal coming from? Kou Tong felt his consciousness blur.

Then, as if someone had splashed a pot of cold water over his head, he suddenly woke up.

As soon as he sat up, Kou Tong found that a coat had been draped over him at some point. Next to him, apart from the machines and the blueprints, there was also a person—Huang Jinchen was sitting under the not very bright desk lamp with his chin propped in one hand, looking directly at him.

Kou Tong felt that he still hadn’t woken from his dream. He was confused for two seconds, looking blankly at Huang Jinchen. “What are you doing?”

“Watching you sleep,” Huang Jinchen said.

Kou Tong frowned, feeling that he wasn’t very normal, but probably because he still wasn’t very clear-headed, he thoughtlessly said, “What did you see?”

“You’re good-looking.” An idiotic smile with a bit of a dreamlike tint appeared on Huang Jinchen’s face.

Kou Tong gave a start and woke up. He was dumbfounded for a while, then carefully asked, “The rat poison in the house that hasn’t been cleaned up… You didn’t accidentally eat it, did you?”

This time, Huang Jinchen didn’t speak, only looked at him with a gaze like a sleepwalker’s, the look making a chill run up Kou Tong’s back.

The control box on the desk beeped again, finally attracting Kou Tong’s notice. He leaned down and looked at it carefully. He found that an undulating signal like a sine wave had appeared on the screen.

A control box without a core memory chip was like a phone without a SIM card. It could be turned on, but it couldn’t make calls. So where was this signal coming from?

Kou Tong thought about it, saying to himself, “Have General Zhong and the others found this place?”

They sat looking at each other blankly for a while and found that there was no other reaction from the control box. It only periodically received this signal.

“No… They must not have been able to locate us, so they’re using some means to scan indiscriminately.” Kou Tong stood up and said to Huang Jinchen, “Come on, let’s go out. The cyclical appearance of this signal is likely because I’ve sealed this space into a closed loop using the time axes. We’ll go out and see whether we can pick up something else.”

Huang Jinchen obediently stood up after him, following him like a lackey.

Kou Tong at last felt that something was off about him and turned back to test the temperature of his forehead with the back of his hand. “You aren’t really running a fever, are you?”

But Huang Jinchen grabbed his hand, squeezing tightly, suddenly stopping in his tracks.

Kou Tong blinked.

Huang Jinchen looked at him with that chilling gaze and announced, “I’ve made a decision.”

Kou Tong nodded, indicating that he was ready to listen attentively to Master Huang’s brilliant policy decision.

Huang Jinchen said, “In this life, it’s better to act than to feel. No matter what, you can’t rely only on imagination. Only when you’ve really put your hand to it will you know how deep the water is.”

Kou Tong hesitated, then nodded again, feeling that from the standpoint of reason, there was nothing wrong in this.

Huang Jinchen gave a “yeah,” then earnestly said, “So starting now, I’m planning to pursue you.”

38

FOLLOW-UP TO THE CONFESSION

KOU TONG’S EXPRESSION short-circuited. He looked at Huang Jinchen, not catching up for a long moment. Huang Jinchen, meanwhile, looked at him with a burning gaze, a heartthrob ready to deliver a couple of Romeo-like lines at any time.

“…Oh?” Kou Tong asked.

Huang Jinchen nodded slowly and firmly.

“There’s no need to pursue.” Kou Tong considered, picked up the control box periodically making noise, changed his shoes, and headed out. “Anything there is to discuss, we’ll consider it in bed.”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

He felt that his profound emotions had been profoundly squandered, so he silently followed Kou Tong with his head lowered, wearing a pitiful look of wounded affections.

Kou Tong was already used to Master Huang going off on a wild tangent from time to time and completely ignored him. All of his attention was on the control box in his hands. One after the other, they left the house that had been closed off and hidden from the space and went up onto the roof. When Kou Tong thought that Huang Jinchen was going to behave, Master Huang glumly asked, “That time in the hotel, didn’t you say that you had a strong principle? The rabbit doesn’t eat next to its warren?”

Kou Tong said, “Oh. Being flexible is actually another one of my principles.”

Huang Jinchen grabbed his hair, almost a little perplexed. “Aren’t you supposed to be shocked, then either be shy or awkwardly slam the door and leave? Then shouldn’t I lay on the sweet talk every day, bother you every day, give you gifts every day, send lots of text messages every day asking you whether you’re having a good morning, afternoon, and evening, constantly checking up on what you’ve been eating and drinking, whether you have diarrhea or constipation? Then you’ll slowly be moved, and finally, there’ll be one final push, we’ll be separated by fate, and then have a happy ending, right?”

For some reason, when they came to the roof, the signal actually became weaker. The originally periodic signal became intermittent, as though the wavebands of many frequencies were mixed together and only came through countless superimposed layers. Kou Tong immediately realized that this tallied with his guess, so he quickly started to record all the signals being received.

…Of course, as he busied himself, he still took a moment to look at Huang Jinchen with a disbelieving expression and react sincerely to what he had said just now: “Excuse me, are your balls…in good condition?”

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then frankly said, “They’re all right.”

Kou Tong, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, asked, “Where did you read that?”

“In books,” Huang Jinchen said. “Your mom gave them to me.”

Kou Tong was just setting down the laptop linked to the control box to automatically record the signal. Hearing this, his hand shook, and he nearly dropped the laptop.

Then he turned his head, looked at Huang Jinchen, considered his diction, then said, “Don’t listen to her. My mom is a divinity. Humanity can no longer restrain her.”

Huang Jinchen laughed foolishly and drew close, standing next to the crouching Kou Tong and rubbing against him with his shin. He said, “Then can I have a hug?”

Kou Tong looked at him, opened his arms, and boldly said, “Come on.”

Huang Jinchen threw himself into his embrace, pleasurably experiencing that feeling like an electric shock, as though his hormones had gone severely out of balance. Then he buried his face against Kou Tong’s neck and inhaled deeply. In a muffled voice, he said, “Yeah, that tingles.”

After hugging for a while, Huang Jinchen was once again unsatisfied. He raised his head and, taking a mile when given an inch, asked, “Then…can I also have a kiss?”

This time Kou Tong hesitated for a moment, then pushed him away. He said, “Let’s wait on that. I have work to do first. Otherwise we might go too far.”

Huang Jinchen was very reasonable. He immediately indicated that he understood and accordingly didn’t bother him again. He found a place next to him to sit down. Blown by the cool night breeze, he quietly watched Kou Tong. Suddenly, an indescribable feeling arose in his heart; perhaps the legendary feeling of “the calm of passing time” was like this.

Then, perhaps the length of the “calm” went on too long and became a little boring. After a while, Huang Jinchen got up to his tricks again. He said, “But I think that a relationship shouldn’t start with going to bed. First we should get a mutual understanding of each other.”

Kou Tong said, “What is there that you still don’t understand?”

Huang Jinchen paused, considered, and thought that this was fair. So he said, “Then I’ll tell you about myself…”

When he finished saying this, he suddenly didn’t know how to continue. Huang Jinchen found that his personal record really wasn’t anything especially complicated. He could skip over the part with the Seed, they both knew about it. After that… it seemed that the decade and more of his life after that could be summed up with the two phrases “following orders” and “killing people.” There really was nothing to say about it.

He turned it over in his mind. Finally, faced with a lack of words, he forced out, “I like spicy food and don’t like bitter food.”

“OK.” Kou Tong nodded to show he understood. “My mom’s cooking is fairly bland. Tomorrow I’ll tell her to add a bit of chili sauce.”

Then the two of them stopped simultaneously. After that, each of them began to laugh with a bit of self-mockery.

Huang Jinchen at last recovered from the feeble-minded child state. Pointing to the control box receiving the signal on the ground, he said, “How are you planning to settle this?”

“It’s not very practical to look for the core memory chip,” Kou Tong said. “This signal comes to us through complex overlapping spaces with different penetration frequencies to become the tangled and complicated thing it is here. I can analyze it through the reception, reverse engineer the locus program recorded on the memory chip, and reassemble the control box.”

Huang Jinchen frowned. “It sounds pretty complicated. How much do you have to go on?”

Kou Tong shrugged. “I’ve never done such a thing. I’m planning to make a model first. It may be possible, or it may not be.”

“What if it isn’t possible?”

“We’ll try something else,” Kou Tong said lightly. “Don’t worry. With me here, this thing won’t keep us trapped.”

There was a powerful self-confidence about him. This sustained him no matter what the occasion, letting him quickly adjust his emotional state back to normal. It was almost like the kind of unbelievable nerve that would let a person in the spotlight, with everyone’s eyes on them, sit on the ground and pick his nose.

Huang Jinchen paused. “Actually, apart from that girl, I don’t think there’s anything bad about being here. If we really are planning to never leave, I can get rid of her…”

“This space is an equilibrium of seven conscious subjects. If one of the conscious subjects dies, even I don’t know what will happen,” Kou Tong immediately interrupted him.

Huang Jinchen smiled. “That’s about the only shortcoming this place has—so why are you in such a hurry to get out?”

Kou Tong fell silent. The stars were invisible in the city. There was only reflected light occasionally flitting across his lean face, sweeping over those features that were so likable when assembled together. After a long time, he said, “It must be…because I’m human, too?”

If there was such a place where you could always have your heart’s desire, where the dead could live again, where you could have powers that were unthinkable in real life, where as long as you believed it, you could ascend to the heavens or burrow into the earth, where even power over time and space could be realized…

Except it wasn’t real.

Every person could be weak. Everyone could indulge in comfort and safety. There would always come a day when they would be eroded by beautiful things that struck right to the heart. They would think, I’m only indulging for a moment, enjoying it for a moment, compromising for a moment—day in and day out…over and over, until they were deceived and swallowed up.

Kou Tong didn’t say the rest of it aloud, but Huang Jinchen miraculously understood—while he was still clear-headed, he would use this method that was almost like stabbing himself to struggle through every day; before he sank, he had to find a way to leave.

Huang Jinchen suddenly remembered that small but warm home. After Kou Tong had used He Xiaozhi’s particular methods to “sew up” the space, that “home” increasingly gave a person a sense of security, like sealed swaddling clothes.

There was an annoying but very comical little girl, an ill-natured but steady old codger, a magical teenager, and a mother who could cook, and he could crowd into a bed with Kou Tong and fool around every day…

If they left, perhaps…that “home” would be gone.

The “match” would go out.

He involuntarily stuck his hand into his pants pocket. There was a little miniature handgun there. As long as he had a gun, he could shoot that frail box. Huang Jinchen didn’t quite understand what Kou Tong was struggling against. For this experienced quasi-intellectual, life was like dream; wasn’t it a dream no matter where you dreamed it? Why was it necessary to seek hysterically for reality? Wasn’t it enough to be happy?

Living…was in fact only performing basic bodily functions.

But he saw Kou Tong’s expression and in the end took his finger off the trigger. About this, Huang Jinchen very regretfully thought—Forget it, I won’t make it worse for him.

Then, practically at the same time, he had a very subtle feeling—in all the years Huang Jinchen had lived, there had been no one he couldn’t kill if he wanted to kill them. He had always lived practically without restraint. No one had dared to comment…even if perhaps they secretly thought that he was a bit of a moron.

He was very willful, but as long as he accomplished his assignments, no one would dare to manage how he lived. It had always been eat when he was hungry, drink when he was thirsty, do whatever he wanted.

But he suddenly found that he would actually change for the sake of another person…that he would rather not have his own way so much.

Even though he knew that the moment he let go of the gun, he had been full of regret and displeasure, he had still thought that it was the right thing to do.

Huang Jinchen found that it turned out that “forbearance” was never innate. A person who was worth it had to show up before you could learn it. Those with parents who loved them would learn it comparatively early, but someone like him probably had to rely on luck.

Now, luck had come to him.

Just then, there was a shriek in the night. Huang Jinchen narrowed his eyes and looked in the direction the sound had come from. A vast expanse of black shadow rose from that direction. Then, as seen from above, the city lights went out one by one.

“It seems to be the crows.” Kou Tong stood up. In a low voice, he said, “Is it that Magician again?”

“There’s something else, too.” Huang Jinchen’s vision was better than his. Pointing to the shadow, he said, “There’s also that monster I blinded in one eye… The crows over there are tearing up the power lines.”

Kou Tong frowned. “What is Qin Qin trying to do?”

“Launching a war for the sake of a beauty? Ah, you lovely calamity…” Huang Jinchen blurted out a cheap joke, then turned his head and looked at Kou Tong, at last remembering. “Huh? No, that’s wrong, she wants to steal my man… Shit, it’s like I’m a girl in her bridal sedan. It’s all so new, I don’t know which of them to kill first!”

39

SNEAK ATTACK

“WHAT ARE they doing? Destroying the city’s power grid?” Kou Tong held the small pair of binoculars from Huang Jinchen’s pocket, narrowing his eyes and looking into the distance. “It seems to be that little girl…riding that Godzilla? Is she putting on a monster invading the city story?”

Huang Jinchen didn’t answer, slowly changing the direction of the muzzle of his gun.

Kou Tong looked at him and suddenly felt a slight chill instinctively go up his spine. He felt that when this person was holding a gun, he seemed to change into a man-shaped killing device.

This…“person” had such frightening abilities and lacked anything that could restrain him. Was it really a good thing that the Seed had produced a man-shaped weapon like this? If he was left to his own devices, would he become some kind of anti-social element?

But just then, Huang Jinchen turned his head and grinned at the thoughtful Kou Tong, a standard grin that showed teeth and no eyes, with the soundtrack “heh-heh.”

Kou Tong: “…”

So he found that stupidity was a virtue, seemingly with some indescribable connection to constraining a person’s violent actions… This truly was a whole new field of study.

Police sirens were already starting to wail in the streets. Many armed policemen ran out and started dispersing the nightlife still blocking the streets, rushing around in all directions. Luckily it was night.

Many people were alerted and opened their windows one after another. Those who still had power turned on their lights. Many people crowded at windows and on balconies, craning their necks to watch the peep show.

“This has really got people fired up.” After Huang Jinchen said this, he squeezed the trigger, so fast that Kou Tong hardly had time to say anything. For a moment, he felt worry, afraid that Master Huang’s bullet would send Miss Qin Qin to the Western Paradise. Then he heard a heartrending roar.

Kou Tong quickly picked up the binoculars and looked over there. He saw that the monster’s already blinded eye had been shot once again. This time, it seemed to have caused it great harm. It struggled fiercely, knocking down the electricity poles and trees around it, crashing into a building.

Qin Qin fell straight off its back, then was propped up by a group of crows and suspended in midair.

The Magician’s glance came their way.

Huang Jinchen, neither fast nor slow, hefted his gun with one hand and picked up the control box and computer Kou Tong had put on the ground with the other. He quietly said, “Come on. One shot, and we switch places.”

Kou Tong asked in surprise, “Why was the hit so powerful this time?”

“Look.” Huang Jinchen took a bullet from his pocket. It sparkled in the light. It was actually a legendary silver bullet. “Looks like watching some TV shows and cartoons isn’t completely useless. Our little monster gave me an introduction.”

Kou Tong incredulously asked, “Silver bullets? Manman? She got you an arms procurer?”

Huang Jinchen looked at him and thought for a while. “I don’t want to shock you, darling, but according to your theory, this takes a certain degree of imagination—of course it’s not from the black market. I bought these at the supermarket.”

Kou Tong was blank for a moment. “What kind of supermarket?”

Huang Jinchen shrugged. “She drew me a map. Actually, it’s that sticky street all made of candy that we passed through when we got here. Supposedly the supermarket on that street doesn’t sell items that Earthlings use, but if you have a special request, you can stroll around. I got the silver bullets from there. There were also gold ones next to them, ones with chili pepper mixed in, ones filled with syrup… I think Manman’s keeping those last ones to shoot herself with.”

While fleeing, Kou Tong took a moment to glance at the monster again and saw that it was gone. He couldn’t resist patting Huang Jinchen’s sturdy shoulder. “That’s dependable! According to normal logic, since that thing came out of a playing card, if it’s killed, it ought to turn back into a playing card. If that thing had gone down just now, such a big heap couldn’t have disappeared all of a sudden. It probably turned back into a card.”

Huang Jinchen shook his tail. “Aren’t I awesome?”

Kou Tong said unstintingly, “So awesome I’m feeling a little fucking worshipful!”

Huang Jinchen instantly felt like he was floating. “Then will you kiss me as praise?”

A big crowd of crows flew over, charging right at the two of them. Kou Tong pulled Huang Jinchen aside by the arm. The two of them went one after the other into the little passage on the roof and closed the door behind them. Slamming noises instantly came from the metal door. The narrow passage squeezed the two of them together. Kou Tong caught Huang Jinchen around the neck and kissed him, adding in a line of dialogue: “Darling, you’re amazing!”

Then Kou Tong took his laptop and went along the narrow passage. The whole building was already without power. He was planning to return the two important items to a safe area.

Huang Jinchen leaned against the wall, reveling for three seconds. After thinking back repeatedly, he found that something was a bit…off—why did what Kou Tong had said sound so familiar?

Kou Tong darted back home. All the members of the household were awake. Manman was standing at the entrance. In deadly earnest, she asked, “Is there an enemy attack?”

Among his many pressing affairs, Kou Tong gave an affirmative and stroked her little head. Then he saved several copies of the signal he had carefully received, turned off the laptop and the control box, and locked them into a strongbox—in the interests of saving electricity.

He heard Manman say in a childish voice to the others in the living room: “Everyone prepare yourselves. This is not a drill. I repeat once again, this is not…”

Huang Jinchen came in through the entrance, interrupting Manman’s robotic toneless speech. “Enough, little monster, I know you’re a future Oscar winner, there’s no need to keep demonstrating.”

Manman asked, “I can act? What can I act as?”

Huang Jinchen lowered his head and looked her. “For example, how about all those moronic supercomputers in sci-fi movies?”

Manman considered it for a while. In her fluffy slippers, she trotted over to Kou Tong’s study. Hugging her big doll, she said pitifully to Kou Tong, “Uncle, don’t marry him! He doesn’t have wifely virtues, and he can’t have babies!”

Huang Jinchen bristled. Kou Tong’s mom quickly came to the rescue, picking up Manman the troublemaking little nuisance. Standing on tiptoe, she still couldn’t reach the top of Huang Jinchen’s head. She could only settle for second best, patting the back of his head in consolation. “Be good.”

The mother-in-law had appeared… Huang Jinchen was conflicted for three seconds, then decided to abandon self-respect on this point and be good.

“Look there!” He Xiaozhi suddenly said. Everyone’s gazes moved to the window. They found that the sky full of crows had surrounded the whole building. They couldn’t even see the street and sky.

“What is her goal?” Yao Shuo quietly asked Kou Tong.

Kou Tong crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “It’s likely that destruction is only a means of venting her emotions. She may be rational or she may be irrational, but there’s no way for you to determine when she’s being rational.”

Yao Shuo frowned.

Kou Tong said, “There was a delusional disorder sufferer who was betrayed by his imaginary ‘lover,’ and that very day broke into that person’s house, killed them, and took their head back as a keepsake.”

Yao Shuo nodded, considered for a moment, then said, “Then look at this. Can’t we act on the basis of these cards? I think that these cards have their original attributes. They haven’t entirely come out of that girl’s fantasies.”

Kou Tong turned his head to look at him. The power was off, and they couldn’t turn on the lights. Through the cracks in the encirclement of crows, weak light shone through the windows onto Lao Yao’s face. The middle-aged man’s features were sharp and inflexible, like a slightly rusted knife that still showed its skill.

“The tarot cards themselves have an inherent logic, and she has her own delusional logic. If these two clash in the end, what will happen?” Yao Shuo asked slowly.

Kou Tong leaned by the window, finding in this old man a trace of the daring and calm ease that he ought to have had or had once had before. He followed along with his words. “For example?”

“For example, I’ve researched for a few days and found that much of the time these tarot cards have a kind of balance within themselves. For example, in the Magician card, the roses and lilies are a balance, representing two extremes. I personally think that it’s a little like the idea of yin and yang,” Yao Shuo said. “But this little girl is a little lunatic to start with. In your words, she’s paranoid. A paranoid person has a hard time reconciling with the word ‘balance.’ I think that these cards will one day leave her…if that logic still holds water in this space.”

Kou Tong nodded and remembered the High Priestess sighing and seeming on the point of saying something but holding back.

“I can’t help with the rest, but I can help think through these things, see whether there are any good ideas,” Yao Shuo said, turning his head towards him.

Kou Tong was silent for a while, then suddenly said, “Actually, that document has nothing to do with you, right?”

Yao Shuo was jolted. Almost at the same time, a chill full of wariness appeared on his face. “What, you still haven’t forgotten about investigating me?”

Kou Tong stood leaning by the window, his expression very calm, though beside him the crows were constantly slamming against the window—they all knew that the space was hidden. Even if the crows really did break the windows, they still wouldn’t be able to fly inside. But there were still the visual effects. Even though these birds were made of paper, they still felt extremely oppressive.

“I have no ill will,” Kou Tong said, his tone not changing at all.

Yao Shuo looked at him silently, like an enraged bull. After a long time, he slowly calmed down. Not saying a word, he turned and went back to his room and closed the door, cutting off everyone’s lines of sight.

Kou Tong laughed in spite of himself and shook his head, feeling that this man’s self-respect was so powerful that he was simply like a hedgehog. If he one day had to choose between survival and dignity, he would certainly choose the latter without hesitation.

A sense of justice, a sense of responsibility, a sense of ethics, dignity, and a desire for control—these were his shackles. One after another, they kept him locked up, making this once venerable man turn into an unreasonable monster who would harm others and himself.

40

BEGINNING

“DID YOU offend him?” Huang Jinchen heard the door and walked over to the window to question Kou Tong.

“I only suddenly remembered something.” Kou Tong shrugged, looking out the window, speaking in an extremely quiet voice as though he didn’t want to startle the other people in the house. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one for himself, and gave another to Huang Jinchen. They listened to the whispers of Kou Tong’s mom and He Xiaozhi coming from the living room. After a while, he finally said, “Sometimes living is tiring for a person because the harness he has put on himself is too tight.”

“Oh?”

“Yao Shuo, for example. Do you think he doesn’t love his wife and child? That’s impossible. Seeing how he called them when we first got here, it was obvious that he didn’t get those phone numbers out of his address book…but he still couldn’t avoid wishing from the heart that they didn’t exist.”

Huang Jinchen was a bachelor who absolutely didn’t understand the sweet burden of a wife, a child, and a warm home. He thought about it, could issue no commentary, and only listened.

“Lao Yao’s wife is a full time lady of the house. There are some women who didn’t receive high education when they were young and don’t have a profession of their own. When they get older, there’s no place in society for them to work—if the woman herself has a fairly dependent, comparatively weak nature, she naturally becomes a housewife.” Kou Tong spoke amid a cloud of smoke in a very quiet voice, as relaxed as though he were chatting; it seemed to scratch at his listener’s ear.

—Huang Jinchen couldn’t resist gently scratching his own ear, feeling that listening to that voice made his heart itch a great deal.

“Then, the pressure of the whole household falls on the husband alone. And as time goes on, in his eyes, she becomes someone who needs to be protected and taken care of. If the husband happens to be like Lao Yao, a man with very high self-respect who always occupies a position or guidance or giving orders, when he encounters some difficulty or unfavorable circumstance, he certainly won’t communicate it to his wife.”

Huang Jinchen nodded. “If I had a wife like that old man, I also wouldn’t say anything to her.”

Then he furtively looked Kou Tong up and down, thinking, But what if I had a wife like this? Two seconds later, Huang Jinchen came up with a conclusion: If he had a wife like this, he certainly wouldn’t have Yao Shuo’s stress, though he would have the stress of worrying that he might be cuckolded at any moment.

“When a person passes middle age, his physiological condition slowly begins to go downhill, and his potential to rise in his career isn’t as expansive as a young man’s anymore. Reasonably speaking, this should be a time when a person’s career reaches its summit, but this society has a pyramid structure. The closer to the tip, the harder it gets. The majority of middle-aged men come to this age and suffer setbacks in their careers, but for both their wives and their children just reaching young adulthood, it’s hard to understand this kind of stress,” Kou Tong said. “This is the so-called ‘male menopause.’ A feeling of loss, frustration, confusion, confinement, and intense unwillingness to be reconciled. If he is unable all along to accept his own powerlessness, unable all along to find a way to release his stress, he’ll become the way Yao Shuo is.

“A father…isn’t all-powerful.” At this point, Kou Tong suddenly gave a quiet laugh. This laugh was brief, too brief for Huang jinchen to analyze it. But after hearing that term, he suddenly remembered that family portrait in the living with its uneven composition.

Why wasn’t Kou Tong’s dad in it?

Why was it that his forms of address were different for his parents, one the causally intimate “mom,” the other the cold and detached “father?”

Huang Jinchen resisted for a long time, but at last he couldn’t resist asking, “Oh, right, I’ve actually meant to ask all along, why isn’t your dad around?”

Huang Jinchen was very sensitive to people’s movements. For a moment, he noticed that all of Kou Tong’s movements stopped—including his breathing. The man’s head was slightly lowered, his eyes deeply cast down, making it hard even for someone very close to him to see his expression clearly. After a long time, Kou Tong at last tapped his cigarette ash into an ashtray and lightly said, “He’s dead.”

Then, before Huang Jinchen could ask a second question, he pointed to the crows outside the window and said, “We need to think of a way to get rid of these things. They’ll attack people without distinction, and it seems they won’t disperse even when day breaks. Qin Qin has entered into a dispute with us. If this goes on, there will be no way to repair the city’s power grid. The laptop’s battery life is limited. I can’t analyze the signal.”

Then he turned and went into the living room. Huang Jinchen followed him. He said, “The crows are made by the Magician. Wouldn’t it work to get rid of him?”

He took a silver bullet from his pocket, tossed it, then caught it again. “Like I shot the damn monster.”

“That wasn’t a monster, that was the Devil card,” corrected Manman, sitting next to Kou Tong’s mom.

Huang Jinchen didn’t dare to offend this little ancestor. He could only obligingly say, “Fine, it’s the Devil card, all right?”

“Silver bullets can kill the Devil, but they can’t kill the Magician,” Manman said confidently.

“Why?” asked Huang Jinchen, who lacked imagination and 2D common sense.

“No reason,” Manman said.

Huang Jinchen asked, “How do you know?”

Manman wrinkled her nose. “I just know.”

“Tongtong, do you see how annoying she is?!” Huang Jinchen clutched the edge of Kou Tong’s clothes, attempting to gain sympathy by being cute.

Kou Tong, reaching his limit, shuddered and smoothed the goosebumps on his arm. He said, “Eunuch Huang, that’s enough…”

Huang Jinchen said, “Just now in the corridor you kissed me and called me darling, how have I changed from a consort to a eunuch? That’s loving and leaving me!”

After he said this, he deliberately glanced out of the corner of his eye at Kou Tong’s mom, who was always dizzy from this sort of stunning illicit love affair.

As expected, Kou Tong’s mom laughed dryly, a slightly conflicted expression appearing on her face.

In a spot hidden by the table, Kou Tong poked Huang Jinchen under the ribs with his elbow.

Huang Jinchen clasped his bosom, his head drooping like a little lady’s, looking like a lovesick goddess faced with a scumbag.

Pressured by the censure of morals, Kou Tong’s mom could only glare directly at her son. Kou Tong lowered his head, pretending not to see. “Right, let’s continue talking about this Magician. Manman, do you know what special traits the Magician has? Silver bullets won’t work, so what will?”

Manman shook her head.

Huang Jinchen seized his chance: “Tut—”

Just then, a voice cut in: “From the creation of the tarot cards, the earliest version of the Magician represented peddlers and artisans who conflicted with the Christian church, or roadside performers.”

A very brilliant smile immediately appeared on Kou Tong’s face. He turned his head and saw Yao Shuo holding a laptop relying on its battery, leaning against the door of his room as he spoke.

His gaze swept over Kou Tong, having no reaction to that smile that made Huang Jinchen’s heart go soft. He flatly continued: “At the same time, he’s the first person the traveling Fool encounters. Due to the conflict between the Magician and the church, this card represents certain crafty, evil things. But apart from that, he also has other meanings—for example, the beginning of everything, natural rights, and creative power. He can also symbolize artists and the alchemists in legend. They aren’t the same as ordinary people. They have powers that others can’t understand.”

“The first key to open the whole world, representing inexhaustible creative power and hope.” Kou Tong thought about it and said to Huang Jinchen, “Manman is right. You can use a silver bullet to kill an unclean thing, but you can’t use it to kill hope.”

Huang Jinchen at last thought that they had reached the stage of talking nonsense. He felt that his own logic was a little disordered, caught between 2D and 3D, unable to go up or down. So he earnestly asked Kou Tong, “So, princess, can you tell your stupid and fat knight what kind of bullet can kill an abstract thing like hope?”

The princess shrugged, indicating that he was only an expert at landing people in trouble. Apart from that, he was powerless.

Huang Jinchen touched his face, saying with gloom and deep feeling, “Then be good and stop talking philosophy and history. We can get back to the cultural attainments in a while. First let’s resolve the practical question.”

“Actually, I have an idea,” Yao Shuo said all of a sudden after a pause. “The Magician’s power comes from inexhaustible creativity. He is the ‘beginning,’ and he is endless possibilities. There’s a place that can suppress these things…”

“Lao Tian’s time crevice?” Kou Tong asked at once.

Yao Shuo nodded. So the next second, everyone’s gazes immediately focused on He Xiaozhi. He Xiaozhi trembled and looked all around in a panic. “What…what can I do? I can’t do it.”

“That’s easy to handle. The Magician must have seen us just now. I can go out and act as bait.” Huang Jinchen ignored him completely, continuing, “Then we’ll need a mirror.”

“And we’ll need a way to lure him into the mirror,” Yao Shuo added.

Finding that no one paid attention to his protest, He Xiaozhi simply couldn’t sit still. He weakly waved a hand, then said, “I…”

But Kou Tong reached out and grabbed his wrist, spreading out his fingers, which were nervily picking at each other. Dr. Kou’s hand was long and slender and warm, with a strength that strangely made a person calm down.

He Xiaozhi stared at him blankly, feeling that it was as if there was an ocean in this man’s eyes, but it wasn’t frightening; instead, it made you wallow in it, as if you had found the place where life began.

“I think you can do it,” Kou Tong said.

He Xiaozhi miraculously calmed down. Kou Tong added, “I believe that you can help us do this.”

Huang Jinchen looked at his hand holding He Xiaozhi and said nothing. He looked closely in that direction with a profound and hateful gaze, like a cat whose territory had been encroached upon.

This brat really was an annoying presence… Huang Jinchen narrowed his eyes and silently ground his teeth.

That’s mine! That’s all mine!—The stupid and fat knight was displeased.

41

THE DEATH OF HOPE (PART 1)

IN THAT INSTANT, you could hear the sound of Expert Huang’s teeth grinding from three meters away. But Dr. Kou’s nerves were truly too crude. He probably wouldn’t have turned his head even if an iron bar were being filed down to an embroidery needle.

He Xiaozhi, however, gave an inexplicable shudder. The invigoration Dr. Kou had just filled him with nearly drained away. He hesitantly pulled his arm out of Kou Tong’s hand and said in a voice like a mosquito’s hum, “I’ll…I’ll try my best.”

Yao Shuo looked at Kou Tong and rudely said, “So your goal now is to find some way to get that so-called ‘Magician’ into a mirror, but even if he sees you pass through a mirror and vanish with his own eyes, I think that even with only a brain made of paper, he still won’t obediently come near the mirror.”

Kou Tong pleasantly explained, “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a mirror. It can be anything reflective, for example a puddle…”

Before he could finish, Yao Shuo once again rudely interrupted him. “So how can you guarantee that you’ll trap him on the second time axis? Last time, the mirror broke the instant you went in. How are you going to ‘break’ a puddle?”

His tone was very aggressive. Even if used to scold his son, this kind of scolding would be about enough to produce a teenager with adolescent problems.

Hearing it made Huang Jinchen feel very unhappy. Without even thinking, he returned, “If we can’t break it, can’t we use mud to smear it? The elderly shouldn’t let their thinking become too rigid.”

Kou Tong’s initial intent had been to let Yao Shuo’s remark pass with a smile, but midway someone had come forward to “stick up” for him, so he could only maintain a not quite smiling expression, inhale deeply, pretend he hadn’t heard anything, and change the subject. “Mom, why don’t you take Manman to bed? It’s not good for a child to stay up late.”

How wise and kind, Huang Jinchen thought, moved.

Manman was very sleepy. Kou Tong’s mom picked her up and looked at Kou Tong, wanting to speak but holding back. She always seemed to faintly sense something. Sometimes Huang Jinchen thought that she didn’t seem like a person but a part of Kou Tong, placed in the outer form of a woman he missed.

The dead couldn’t live again. This was common sense that every ordinary person understood.

Half-pulling, half-supporting, Kou Tong pushed her towards the bedroom and quietly said, “There are so many men here, there’s no need for you to worry. Go to bed early, or else you’ll get wrinkles. Never mind that a few crows won’t bring the sky falling down, if it really does fall down, I’ll be here to hold it up.”

Kou Tong’s mom suddenly stopped in the doorway and quickly looked at Kou Tong. Unexpectedly, there was wetness shining in the eyes of the mother and son who astonishingly found themselves facing each other. Kou Tong froze. A sharp stinging pain suddenly came from his forearm. He automatically covered it, watching his mom put Manman down. The door in front of him closed gently.

“No one understands better than the subject himself what the truth is, so after the conscious subject has been in the Projector for a certain length of time, he will understand more clearly than anyone else what deep meaning these seemingly bizarre things represent.”

This was a sentence he himself had written on the title page when the big boiler had been in planning.

…Concerning those things you thought you didn’t know but in fact knew.

Kou Tong’s shoulder was suddenly patted. He quickly returned to himself and looked at Huang Jinchen standing there with a smile that showed a mouthful of small white teeth, saying, “Dar…”

He had only said half a word when his expression suddenly changed. He took Kou Tong by the shoulder, quickly glanced down, then a little stiffly pulled him into the study. “Come over here.”

Just as he finished speaking, he rudely slammed the door right in front of Yao Shuo and He Xiaozhi’s faces.

Huang Jinchen’s expression was so grave it was a little frightening, but his movements were very light as he unclasped Kou Tong’s hand from his forearm.

“Let go,” he said in a tone that was almost an order. Kou Tong sucked in a small breath and slowly let go, revealing his whole arm. The blood had nearly leaked through the cracks between his fingers. It was soaking the sleeve of his shirt.

Huang Jinchen leaned down, rolled up his sleeve with extreme caution, then frowned fiercely.

For some reason, the old scars on Kou Tong’s forearm had all opened, as though someone had gone over them once more with a knife… No, it was as if time had run backwards to the moment his skin had just been cut and the scars had been wounds. The reek of human blood came off of them. The contrast made the skin of his wrist look almost ghostly pale. It was appalling.

“Don’t move.” As though dealing with a major incident, Huang Jinchen didn’t take the time to ask why these wounds had mysteriously appeared. He pressed Kou Tong into a chair. “Shh, let me look—is there a first-aid kit for treating wounds?”

“In the drawer under the desk,” Kou Tong said.

Huang Jinchen deftly pulled out the first-aid kit. With familiar ease, he stopped the bleeding for him and treated the wounds. He was unusually nimble. This time, he didn’t deliberately lighten his movements, because while Kou Tong could handle a bit of pain, he couldn’t handle it if the blood kept flowing.

When the bleeding had stopped, he bandaged his arm. Then Huang Jinchen finally asked, “Does it hurt?”

Kou Tong shrugged. “Within the bounds of endurance.”

Huang Jinchen thought back to the appearance of those wounds and suddenly felt that they rather hurt him. So he quickly changed his focus. He asked him, “What’s going on? When did it happen?”

“Just now,” Kou Tong said quietly after a long silence. “Ordinarily, the space won’t take the initiative to harm a conscious subject, unless…”

“Well?”

“Unless, for some reason, the conscious subject is on the verge of collapse.”

When Kou Tong said this, he was unusually calm, so calm that it took Huang Jinchen a moment to catch up with what he meant. Then he half-crouched at Kou Tong’s feet and put a hand over Kou Tong’s forehead, gently brushing aside the hair in front of it. “What’s wrong? Will you tell me?”

Kou Tong was silent again, as if making a slow and difficult choice. After a while, he shook his head gently but firmly. “No, I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Huang Jinchen sighed. The expression on his face wasn’t as open as usual. He lowered his gaze slightly, stared at Kou Tong’s forearm seemingly unconsciously for a long while, then slowly stood up off the ground. Then he sighed.

Kou Tong raised his head to look at him. Huang Jinchen pulled out a tissue and very naturally pulled over Kou Tong’s other hand, slowly wiping away the bloodstains between his fingers.

“I’m a little hurt,” he said.

Kou Tong laughed softly. His lips were pale, making his smile seem a little weak. But Huang Jinchen didn’t look at him. He only said with his eyes lowered, “Really, I’m a little hurt. It’s like I was showing my love for you and came eagerly trotting over, and you said, Where the hell did he come from, why won’t he fuck off and mind his own business? and kicked me away.”

Kou Tong said, “I didn’t. I accepted.”

Huang Jinchen languidly raised his eyelids and looked at him, immediately putting a stop to everything Kou Tong was going to say next.

Then he turned and headed out. In that moment, Kou Tong actually read a bit of loneliness from his figure. He was like a big dog, obviously very sturdy, that still whimpered and tucked its tail between its legs at a gentle kick from its owner. For no clear reason, he suddenly felt a little sorry.

Kou Tong lowered his head, then raised it. He said, “I can’t say.”

Huang Jinchen’s steps paused.

“If a person is aware that he’s a little psychologically unbalanced and can actively face it and seek a means to resolve it, we usually believe that he’s healthy.” With some effort, Kou Tong moved the arm Huang Jinchen had wrapped up tightly. “So apart from some pathological changes to physiology, many psychological problems begin with a fact we are unwilling to face.

“Being unwilling to face something is an instinctive means of self-protection, because we subconsciously believe we can’t handle this problem and will endure great harm. This is also why some people, when forced to touch the truth they have avoided, will collapse.”

His tone was very flat, so flat he hardly seemed to be talking about himself. “Therefore, at times like these, we’ll ordinarily stop the operation of the Projector. It’s only responsible for ‘finding the problem.’ Resolving the problem needs to happen in the real world. But now I can’t get out, and I can’t collapse. This seven-person collective consciousness projection is very balanced, and also very fragile. If that balance breaks, I’m concerned that something I can’t control will happen.”

Huang Jinchen was silent for a long moment, then nodded. “All right.”

Then he pointed outside. “I have an idea we can discuss with them about how to deal with that Magician.”

—This amounted to accepting his explanation, agreeing and being reconciled.

“He is the beginning of everything, possessing unparalleled creative force. From a certain point of view, he has some attack capabilities. This is perhaps the reason why the little girl uses him to spearhead her attacks.”

Huang Jinchen had changed the bullets in his gun to a different type—according to his own assertion, these were “ghost fire bullets.” When each bullet was fired, it exploded whatever target it touched first, lighting up a string of flame, and the flame-hastening crows gave up their lives serving as fuel for the fire.

The fire sent thick smoke up into the night sky. And the person doing the shooting didn’t stick around for a single second, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

“The crows hastening the flames are like ultimate darkness and ultimate light. The two have a fierce mutual attraction for each other and mix together. And when the fire overpowers the crows, these paper things won’t extinguish the flames but instead make them burn more and more fiercely. This will become a closed loop, one side defeating the other. This is what the Magician doesn’t want but has no way to prevent. If the balance is broken and mutual dependency is impossible, mutual destruction becomes inevitable.”

The Magician’s form suddenly appeared in the night sky that would soon see the break of day. A woman’s scream came from far away: “Kill him! Kill him!”

But Huang Jinchen’s form disappeared once more—no one knew where he came from, nor how he hid himself.

The Magician’s body was suspended in the air. All of a sudden, he “floated” in a certain direction. Countless crows followed him.

“His original form is a craftsman, peddler, or performer, so his means of attack aren’t face to face. He must be skilled at deception and enjoy deliberate mystification.”

Countless crows suddenly brushed past a big tree, actually slicing off the crown of the tree. The man’s agile form was revealed. As soon as Huang Jinchen was exposed, he jumped almost at once from the tree and quickly rolled aside and shot at the Magician.

A hit.

When the ghost fire bullet touched its target, it began to burn, but the Magician stood unmoving at a distance of less than ten meters from him, allowing the tongues of flame to encircle his body.

42

THE DEATH OF HOPE (PART 2)

“HE OPENS THE way for the cycle from birth to death, neither foul nor clean. He represents the beginning of a circle. All his power comes from the unknown, so neither blazing fire nor icy water can kill him. He likes all new and strange things. At the same time, the earliest form of the Magician represents a skilled performer. In his bones is a desire to show off. You could also say that he’s a crowdpleaser. The moment the curtain goes up, he begins to desire others’ gazes. Each of his gestures has a hint of a certain fierce longing for others’ applause.”

Huang Jinchen hit with one shot. As usual, he ducked into the shrubbery without even a look back, quickly withdrawing.

He never needed to check whether he had hit his mark. Each trajectory was in his mind. He didn’t need to look, in the same way that a person didn’t need to turn on the lights and look in the mirror to avoid putting food up his nose. This was a part of his body.

There were no exceptions, no missed targets.

The flames blossomed into the form of a flower on the Magician, as if he had gotten shot on purpose and Huang Jinchen, who had fired the gun, was only an assistant who had caught him off guard.

But however beautiful his performance, there was still no audience. The sole audience member’s curiosity was truly limited. He didn’t bestow a single glance on him. The Magician was like a clown who had done his makeup and adjusted his expression, but when the curtain had suddenly gone, there had been no one there to see him. He stood all alone amid the blossoming fire flower.

The flame-hastening crows quickly encircled him, but the next moment, they turned into completely lifeless scraps of paper, falling off of him pile by pile, blown away by the wind along with the ashes.

The Magician chased instinctively.

“He’s only a card, no matter how powerful he seems. All the projections originate from the girl’s own understanding of the cards and from unconditional obedience to this special conscious subject. They don’t have the complicated emotions of a human being. His mind only contains simple logic. He can’t really feel anger or fear. If he has feelings, they’re probably only curiosity and the desire to show off.”

Huang Jinchen was a magical person, no matter what aspect you considered him from.

The Seed Project was already buried deep underground. No one knew where the genes carried by those people who had undergone cruel experimentation and could still live like normal people had come from, or whether…they actually came from human beings.

Much of the time, Huang Jinchen seemed easily able to surpass humans in terms of physiology and psychology. Though the Magician could float through the air, could fly, could move extremely fast, even had a big stack of paper turned into claws and beaks to lead the way for him, he still couldn’t catch Huang Jinchen. But each time he thought that he had lost him and stopped, Huang Jinchen’s figure would flit by in some corner, let off a cold bullet, and hit him or the big group of crows.

“Out of instinct, he will hate cramped places and won’t go into dead end alleys. But what we need is precisely a space that is to a certain degree sealed off. So we need a bit of an inducement.”

Huang Jinchen stood firm at the mouth of a little street. He turned. The Magician stopped along with him, only three meters away.

The two of them stood opposed in silence for a while. Qin Qin’s order began to suppress the Magician’s instincts—kill the person in front of him.

All the roses on him began to wilt and turn into lilies.—“The white flowers represent the concluding end of the spectrum, but the character of the Magician is always a performer, an opener, a guide. He doesn’t kill. This will make this card very sad—this is the conflict between the paranoid master of the tarot cards and the card itself.”

Three meters was a close enough distance for Huang Jinchen to see clearly that the pupils of the oddly-dressed man in front of him seemed to have contracted some strange disease. They rapidly changed color, now red, now back to blue. Then the Magician suddenly extended a hand. The wilted rose vines tangled around his forearm. Black flowers opened on it. The little thorns on the vine were as sharp as brambles, pouncing on Huang Jinchen like a wild beast. Huang Jinchen ducked into the alley without hesitation and stuck himself to the wall, dodging. The vine came up empty. The second time it came at him head on, Huang Jinchen shot methodically. Flames soared through the air, quickly swallowing the whole vine.

Then, like a precise calculating machine, he grabbed the top of the wall and heaved himself up with his strong arms. He bent his back, unerringly dodging the flames, extremely agile, not letting the fire burn a single hair. There was a whistle in the distance.

The crows madly drawn by the firelight blocked his line of sight. The Magician had no attention to spare, and Huang Jinchen once again disappeared from his field of vision.

Just then, the sound of clapping suddenly came from the depths of the alley. Kou Tong walked out from there step by step. There was no hurry in his steps, as though he was only casually walking by. With his head slightly lowered, he took a pair of white gloves from his pocket and put them on, neither fast nor slow. The hem of his long trench coat dragged beside him. His hair lay on the bridge of his nose. He lilted his head slightly, and the strand of hair fell at the corner of his eye. It was the same color as his eyes—black as night.

He walked through the boundary between dawn and first light. He seemed to be wrapped in mist.

The Magician looked at him and automatically implemented his master Qin Qin’s second order, “capture Kou Tong.” So he gave up on chasing Huang Jinchen. Like the first time, maintaining a very inhuman posture, he floated three feet up into the air, gave an elegant bow, and made a gesture of invitation. He turned to go back.

“This card isn’t skilled at violence. You could say that he also has some attack capabilities, but in fact, what he is more skilled at is deception and temptation. Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses. The best user may not necessarily be able to do anything, but at least they will understand how to use everything for its proper purpose, how to use their tools to complement each other, bring out each other’s strengths and make up for each other’s weaknesses. Obviously, for a woman absorbed in delusions who hasn’t received a great deal of education, this is a rather high degree of difficulty.”

The Magician walked for a time but found that Kou Tong wasn’t following. He looked back and saw the man quietly standing in the depths of the alley, with a seeming trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth, watching the Magician go without a care.

The Magician became uncertain. He turned hesitantly and took a step forward. But probably because he instinctively disliked the little lane behind Kou Tong with its invisible end, he only approached it by a small step. He softly said, “Our master invites you to return, sir.”

Kou Tong didn’t speak. He kept his eyes fixed on the Magician with an enigmatic smile.

The crows were influenced by the will of their master. They settled one by one on top of the wall, looking at Kou Tong with their bright red eyes. They seemed a little frightening, but Kou Tong took no notice. Even when a crow landed on his shoulder, he actually stroked the crow’s head. Sadly, the moment his fingers touched the crow, it turned back into paper.

Kou Tong caught the piece of black paper cut into the form of a crow and casually folded it, rolling up the edges of the paper and turning it into the shape of a flower. The Magician could no longer control his curiosity and took another step forward, looking carefully at Kou Tong’s long, slender, agile fingers.

The back of Kou Tong’s hand suddenly rose, blocking the Magician’s view, then quickly moved away once more—the paper flower in his hand was gone, having turned into a real flower that seemed to still have dew on it.

The Magician stared—though this was only a little magic trick, he still felt that he had been challenged.

Just then, the lilies and roses on him, as though vying for territory, bloomed, waned, and changed, stretch after stretch, faster and faster.

He imitated Kou Tong’s movements, grabbing a crow turning it into paper. Then he pinched out a flower in his hand. He shook it, and the fake flower had turned into a real flower. Raising the flower, the Magician looked up at Kou Tong, but Kou Tong shook his head, smiling, then turned and walked into the little alley.

Rejected by his audience!

The Magician followed without hesitation, making a sudden turn after Kou Tong. A blinding light came from the corner. The Magician felt his eyes dazzled by something—a mirror!

He was startled and retreated, but just then, a bucket of water suddenly splashed over his head. The Magician gave a start. Someone cried out, “He Xiaozhi!”

Before he could work out what this meant, the ground suddenly vanished from beneath the Magician’s feet, and he fell straight down.

Huang Jinchen immediately spilled the prepared bucket of grit, perfectly turning the water into mud. The briefly-appearing “mirror” was thus broken, and time jammed perfectly.

Kou Tong stuck out his head and gave a thumbs up in the direction of a mirror in a corner. “Well done, young man!”

He Xiaozhi only then shyly walked out. “I…I don’t know. Is he gone?”

“Take a look.” Kou Tong pointed into the sky.

The crows filling the whole sky above the city and blocking out the sun had all turned into papers that were slowly floating down. From the ground, they looked like a thick, black snowfall—but before they could reach the ground, they all turned into ash and were scattered by the wind.

“The mirror is still there. We can go have a look.” As Kou Tong spoke, he stroked the back of He Xiaozhi’s head and led him in the direction where the mirror was standing.

“Wait!” The neglected Huang Jinchen suddenly called him to a stop, looking at Kou Tong with a grievance. He pointed at the tip of his own nose. “What about me? You haven’t praised me yet!”

“Well done, Da Huang!” Kou Tong extended a hand. He had planned to make the same thumbs up gesture, but looking at Huang Jinchen’s smug expression, he switched fingers at the last moment, changing to his middle finger.

“I’ve never bungled an assignment.” Huang Jinchen sat on top of the wall, swinging his legs, looking down at Kou Tong from on high. “Though I know you want to offer your services in bed, you still shouldn’t be so direct, darling.”

Then he quickly jumped off the wall and happily followed Kou Tong. The moment he went into the mirror, he put an arm around his shoulders and entered Lao Tian’s country estate leaning on him.

The Magician had turned into a card, lying quietly in the field at the other end of the mirror.

Kou Tong picked up the card and tore it to shreds. Then he quietly said to the other two, “Let’s go back. We won’t bother Lao Tian.”

Without the crows, the power could be repaired when it was daylight. He could take the opportunity to sleep. When the power had been restored, he could begin analyzing the signal received by the control box.

The familiar feeling of crossing over came, and the three of them carefully returned home.

He Xiaozhi suddenly asked, “Actually…I don’t really understand. Why did he change into a card when he got there?”

“Because according to Lao Yao’s analysis, the Magician’s power comes from the unknown, and the second time axis just happens to be a place that kills ‘the unknown.’ There is no life there. Everything is perpetual,” Kou Tong said.

“But Lao Tian and Huanhuan, and the flowers…aren’t they life?”

“Life is impermanence.” Kou Tong patted him on the shoulder. “Perpetual things can never be called life.”

43

LOVE

KOU TONG was startled awake by the lights suddenly turning on after the power was restored.

Without power, he had nothing to do, so he had fallen headfirst into bed and fast asleep in a corpselike position.

Out of instinct, Huang Jinchen took a high degree of care for the safety of anything like a “base camp” where he was hidden. In one night, they had destroyed two of Qin Qin’s cards. Perhaps this young lady with unusual mental wiring would become furious out of humiliation—though as far as Huang Jinchen could tell, this young lady spent her life in a state of humiliated fury—so he very carefully patrolled in the vicinity of Kou Tong’s house. He didn’t find any strange rats, or anything stranger than rats. Everything seemed very normal. Then he silently walked against the flow of the morning rush of people and returned home by the special channel.

Then he found that Kou Tong was already fast asleep. Even Huang Jinchen sitting on the edge of the bed looking at him for a long time couldn’t make Dr. Kou wake from his deep slumber.

Huang Jinchen watched him with great interest—for a sniper, being able to sleep like this under someone’s watchful gaze with no awareness simply made a person a god. Didn’t he feel another person’s breath? Didn’t he feel that his territory had been invaded?

Huang Jinchen tried widening his eyes and changing the rate of his breathing, trying hard to make himself seem to have more presence by putting on an imposing manner—at last, when his eyes were twitching from being open wide, Kou Tong rolled over. Probably he had accidentally pressed down on his arm and felt the pain. He frowned uncomfortably, shuffled around on the bed, shifted his arm…and continued to sleep.

There’s even blood seeping through… Huang Jinchen grimaced, as though he was the one who was in pain. Then he lightly took out cotton swabs, picked up Kou Tong’s arm in both hands, undid the bandages, and wiped the blood that had seeped through clean bit by bit. He reapplied medicine and wrapped it up.

During this time, Dr. Kou, who was extremely astute when awake, slept like a pig; thunder wouldn’t have shaken him. Long ago, Huang Jinchen had heard that for a mental worker, sleep was more important than food. At last he had personal knowledge of this.

He half knelt at the side of the bed, carefully wiping the shocking wounds on Kou Tong’s arm, from time to time raising his head to observe his expression. Seeing that he was still sleeping fairly steadily, he relaxed. Halfway through, Huang Jinchen suddenly stopped. For some reason, into his mind came the image of a wife in ancient days washing her sleeping husband’s feet. Then he was horrified for a moment because of his visualization, but in his heart he strangely felt a peculiar softness.

He was like a robot who had just learned to have emotions, tasting these feelings extremely attentively with a kind of curiosity. This was different from that intense feeling like the tingle of being electrocuted. It was as if some strange medicine had been poured into him. There was an inexplicable anticipation in his heart. This anticipation made his manner unusually gentle and his patience unusually good.

And it was all because of one person.

An unfamiliar word emerged in Huang Jinchen’s mind—love.

Due to certain strange junctures, he had developed a longing towards a person separate from the desire of the body. This person wasn’t a thing. He couldn’t be taken apart or substituted. It had to be him, whole and entire. And this longing adjusted the levels of certain hormones in the body to cause an abnormal state of happiness.

“It is a finer thing to love than to be loved.” Long ago, Huang Jinchen had read these words in a book of bathroom reading material. He had ignored them at the time—because logically speaking, the party actively investing love would usually invest more things in the other person; therefore he had thought this was nonsense without merit.

But in this moment, Huang Jinchen suddenly understood.

Though this man was a bit of a scoundrel and very careless, particularly unreliable, often doing things that would make a person writhe in anger—though tender words from this man’s mouth were usually preludes to dishonorable intentions, and he was also a chain smoker with irregular living habits, a bit of a slob, who slept like a pig, snatched blankets and kicked when he couldn’t win…

Despite this, Huang Jinchen still felt willing and happy to do things for him…even if his only reward was a stuck up middle finger. It would still satisfy him for half a day.

There were some things that probably only people who had experienced them knew about. Perhaps they had formerly thought they were dull and foolish, had scoffed at them, but one day, their ideas suddenly changed entirely. He was like a child who had found another hidden door in the world and quietly snuck in to find that this place was unlike what he had imagined.

Formerly, his world had contained only assignments and the dead. Whether he was being backup or a planted agent, he needed to be on constant high alert, maintain an emotional distance from others. As time went on, all people were the same to him—“to be used for this” and “to be used for that.”

“Belonging to a group,” and “having the same past as some person, having the same memories, he knows me and I know him” were both strange feelings to him, and they also touched his heart so directly… It really was a wonderful thing.

When Kou Tong was startled awake by the lights suddenly flipping on, he saw Huang Jinchen sitting to one side, looking out the window at the sky gradually heading towards evening, his expression unusually peaceful. Kou Tong froze, his pupils contracting, adjusting to the light. He felt that he had never seen such a calm expression on Huang Jinchen’s face—he was either pulling a face and making all kinds of jokes, or so indifferent he seemed like a robot who had nothing to do with what was taking place.

The lamplight fell on his profile, softening the edges. It was even as if there was a thin layer of light cast on his eyes.

Then Huang Jinchen’s eyes turned, and he raised his eyebrows. But he didn’t turn his head, maintaining the posture was though his head was raised to watch the sky. In a very cultured tone, he said, “Are you suddenly thinking that I’m very handsome?”

Kou Tong thought for two seconds, sat up in bed, reached out a hand to touch his face, and candidly said, “Very handsome.”

After a while, he added, “But not quite as handsome as me.”

Then Kou Tong carelessly glanced at his own arm and found that the bandages had obviously been changed. He looked at the conspicuously smiling Huang Jinchen. Rather moved, he said, “Thank you.”

Huang Jinchen used three fingers to perform a movement like tipping his cap. “My pleasure to serve you.”

Kou Tong laughed. “I’m going to wash my face and get ready to begin work.”

“Careful not to get it wet,” Huang Jinchen instructed. Then he paused and added, “Also…”

Kou Tong was sitting on the edge of the bed putting on his shoes. Hearing this, he raised his head. Huang Jinchen leaned down and quickly kissed him on the forehead. Looking closely into his eyes, he quietly said, “I love you.”

Modern people were accustomed to more ambivalent suggestions, used more mocking means to express their feelings, as though this way they wouldn’t seem so earnest and also wouldn’t be so easily hurt. This had made the status of these three words become embarrassing, and they had slowly faded from people’s lives. Yet at the same time, they appeared in all kinds of movies and TV shows, ads and novels, making them strange but familiar, awkward but frequently repeated.

Kou Tong froze on the spot. He hadn’t expected these three words to suddenly come out of Huang Jinchen’s mouth in absolute earnest.

He wasn’t joking, wasn’t deliberately making trouble in front of his mom, wasn’t play-acting. There had been no indications; it had come out of nowhere.

Huang Jinchen waited for a long time and found that Kou Tong didn’t react. His system seemed to have crashed. So he decided not to wait anymore. He lifted Kou Tong’s chin and kissed him—anyway, he had said yesterday that he could, after the proper business was done.

His kiss was unusually skillful. Probably because of the unprecedented tenderness he felt, he had more patience than any other time before, and was more lingering than any other time before.

Kou Tong always yielded to his senses; he instinctively responded.

Then, just as Dr. Kou had foretold—the originally sweet, sacred kisses…went out of control.

There was nothing to blame but the zipper on Dr. Kou’s pants truly being too loose. As they kissed and kissed, his uninjured paw habitually reached into the other person’s shirt. Huang Jinchen was of course extremely willing to be touched by him and directly straddled him, arms winding around his waist, pressing down.

Then…

“Ow, fuck, my ribs, my ribs!” Dr. Kou’s sudden cry broke all the atmosphere. He bumped Huang Jinchen aside with his elbow in order to liberate his little ribcage, caught between the bed and a certain person’s hard chest and unable to bear the burden.

Huang Jinchen gloomily climbed off of him. With his clothes in disarray, he said, “Darling, you really are like the princess and the pea.”

Kou Tong looked at his broad chest and the solid muscles under his half-open shirt. He bitterly said, “Partner, you truly have too ample a bosom and too fat a butt. I’m feeling the unbearable lightness of being.”

—When a man accustomed to taking the initiative found that his partner’s waistline exceeded the measure of his own arm, and his weight exceeded the limits of what he could pick up, that the degree of intensity meant he could no longer entirely keep control of the tempo, he would probably just about understand Dr. Kou’s gloom in this moment.

Huang Jinchen plastered himself to him and said, aggrieved, “Then I won’t press on you. We can try it riding—I’ll be very careful.”

Kou Tong considered for a moment and found that he and his partner had some different views. Then he glanced again at Huang Jinchen’s figure and thought that his partner’s views…in fact had some merit.

So Kou Tong was conflicted for a while, fixed his clothing, sat up, and gave a dry cough. “We can discuss this problem later. I’ll go wash my face now.”

He dashed into the bathroom next door.

When he had finished cleaning his face and was ready to fill an endless night with a large dose of data analysis, he heard a slightly strange noise coming from the room.

Kou Tong returned to the room and watched dumbfounded as Huang Jinchen sat flagrantly on the bed, self-sufficiently performing an inharmonious action. Worst of all was that his gaze was fixed on a photograph of Kou Tong, crying out as if on purpose, “Ah…darling… You’re amazing, darling… Tongtong, you’re really too much!”

What the hell was his face made of? Kou Tong thought in admiration.

Then Huang Jinchen found that the real person had come in, so he abandoned the photograph and began to stare decisively at the real person, brazenly showing him—you are the subject of my sexual fantasies.

Kou Tong couldn’t go in, but he also couldn’t not go in. He automatically closed the door and stood there staring at Huang Jinchen in dismay. After a while, he at last covered his face as though giving up. He sighed. “Er-Pang, what can I do, your baseness is so original…”

44

UNTITLED

HUANG JINCHEN, very unsatisfied, yelled, “I can look but not eat, and you won’t let me jerk off either?!”

This cry seemed to have been practiced. It was in no way impacted by his present physical condition. He had plenty of breath and pronounced every word correctly. Kou Tong had been feeling guilty. Now he immediately pounced to put his hand over Huang Jinchen’s mouth. Lowering his voice, he said, “You prick, this is a private residence! Do you understand what a private residence is? The sound insulation isn’t so good!”

Huang Jinchen, with his mouth covered in a comical pose, met his eyes helplessly. Just then, there was a knock at the bedroom door. Kou Tong’s mom’s voice came doubtfully: “Tongtong, are you awake? Who was yelling just now? Just talk it out if you need to, don’t argue.”

Cold sweat rolled off Kou Tong. He gave a dry cough. “Oh, it’s fine, mom, we’re not arguing. I just got water in my ear while I was washing my face, so I can’t hear very clearly…”

Then these words came to a very unnatural sudden stop, because Huang Jinchen had taken the opportunity to yank on Kou Tong’s belt.

This Huang Er-Pang definitely liked to show off in front of an audience!

Kou Tong was angered, silently struggling with him, fighting over his own belt. But as soon as he released his hand covering Huang Jinchen’s mouth, this guy took a deep breath from the diaphragm as though ready to utter a cry that would be heard for hundreds of miles around, like a loudspeaker broadcast to let the whole house know what inharmonious things the two of them had been experiencing in this room.

The world was so beautiful, but scoundrels were so skilled; Dr. Kou, unflinching in the face of death, nearly bristled. In this emergency, he bent his head and covered Huang Jinchen’s lips, blocking his voice.

Huang Jinchen giddily thought, Hey, that’s exactly what I wanted. An unexpected windfall. So he stopped fighting over his belt, grabbing Kou Tong’s waist with one hand, holding the back of his head with the other, pressing him to himself.

Kou Tong’s mom hesitantly muttered something outside the door. The general idea was something like “you can even get water in your ear while washing your face, you’re really getting more and more talented the older you get.” Then she asked, “What do you want for dinner?”

Kou Tong gasped, spared no effort to throw Huang Jinchen off, and in the midst of his many pressing affairs took one second to respond to his own mother: “Whatever!”

Kou Tong’s mom particularly hated it when people said “whatever,” so she gloomily said, “How annoying. I’ll just make your least favorite food, then.”

At last, she left.

Kou Tong obviously breathed out in relief, his tense body relaxing.

Huang Jinchen buried his face against his chest, laughing hard enough to pull a muscle.

Kou Tong wished he could face the heavens and heave a huge sigh of relief, but instead he had to keep his voice low. “Tell me the truth, what did you eat growing up?”

Huang Jinchen held him in his lap, rubbing indiscriminately. Kou Tong grabbed him by the neck and shook him. “My mom’s going to call us to dinner in a while. Do you want to challenge the lady’s endurance?”

Aggrieved, Huang Jinchen said, “You were the one who stoked the fire in the first place. You unfaithful lover, are you planning to love me and leave me?”

Kou Tong’s face was grim, but as he thought about it carefully, this really did seem to be the case. So he rather awkwardly gave a dry cough and quibbled: “Nonsense, you were the one…”

Huang Jinchen said, “I’m a gentleman who uses his mouth but not his hands. You were the one who started groping!”

Kou Tong: “…”

Huang Jinchen took his hand and put it on his own lower body. Insolently, he said, “Help me out, and I’ll be quiet. That’ll do, right?”

Kou Tong looked at him. “Don’t make a sound.”

Huang Jinchen nodded, making a zipping gesture over his mouth.

This was a threat! Extortion! Kou Tong, looking displeased, began to help him find relief. Huang Jinchen at last behaved. He quietly closed his eyes and laid a hand on Kou Tong’s back. Though Dr. Kou’s performance was very lacking in dedication, rather hasty and perfunctory, he still felt…that it was better than any other time.

“Kou Tong…” He quietly called Kou Tong’s name, but he wasn’t deliberately making trouble. His voice was very low, slightly hoarse, with an indescribable texture. Amid his rapid breaths, it seemed to be blurted out into Kou Tong’s ear, lingering. Huang Jinchen’s hand laying on Kou Tong’s back suddenly clutched his shirt, his fingertips pressing against Kou Tong’s back through the thin cloth.

Like an unconscious murmur on returning from a dream in the middle of the night, coming from the depths of the heart and reaching another person’s soul.

The outcome was that by the time they were finished clinging, a long time had passed.

The two of them lay side by side on the bed, like intimately lying temple to temple. Huang Jinchen was still holding Kou Tong, unwilling to let go. But Kou Tong was thinking. All of a sudden, he said, “In all these years…have you ever met another person from the Seed?”

Huang Jinchen paused. “Apart from those companions I saw a few times who later got taken away when I was little, in all these years, you’re the only one I’ve met.”

“It’s because of genetic rejection,” Kou Tong said. “It’s very hard for a genetically modified child to grow up normally and survive.”

“Yeah,” Huang Jinchen agreed.

“But it doesn’t mean that we aren’t people.” Kou Tong turned his head and looked into Huang Jinchen’s eyes. He reached out to brush hair away from his forehead. “It also doesn’t mean we’re a different species from other people.”

Huang Jinchen was silent, not saying a word.

Kou Tong said, “There’s nothing about us different from others. You shouldn’t think…that it’s like you and I are the only people in the world who are the same. If you want, you can get close to other people, build different relationships with different people. Then you’ll find that actually every person has some point in common with you, maybe an interest, or maybe temperament or means of dealing with business, some similar experience, or…something else.”

Then Kou Tong sat up and buttoned his shirt, which had been half unbuttoned. He straightened out his messy hair a little, bent down to pick up his fallen UV-protection lenses, and put on his shoes. He said to Huang Jinchen, “You can try, I’m not lying to you…”

But Huang Jinchen suddenly interrupted him: “I’ve already found someone better.”

Kou Tong considered and said, “If you tell a person to pick the biggest apple in an orchard, and he can only go one way, can’t look back, he’ll definitely keep walking all the way through—because there are limitless possibilities up ahead…”

Huang Jinchen laughed. He asked, “Do I seem like that kind of simpleton?

“I only need to judge whether the apple in my hand is big enough and good enough for me.” Sir Er-Pang sat up and casually swept his hair. His indolent appearance was particularly sexy. He caught Kou Tong around the neck and kissed him. “Darling, I’m not an autistic child, and I didn’t grow up in the Land of Peach Blossoms. I know what people are like. I know them in all walks of life. And I know what I’m like.”

Then, full of vitality, he stood up and opened the window, winking at Kou Tong. “Let’s air out the room and not give my mother-in-law a scare.”

Then he walked out humming a tune.

Outside the Projector—the ST Base, working through the night.

“So this is what you’ve come up with?” Wu Xiangxiang asked Chang Dou incredulously. “Scan indiscriminately, then send a probing signal, and then what?”

Chang Dou said, “Continue scanning for forty-eight hours. The frequencies Dr. Kou can receive are fairly high…”

Wu Xiangxiang nodded. “Right, you’re making him think of a way to pull himself out. You’re so full of ideas.”

Chang Dou angrily said, “This is a viable idea! Since they’re trapped inside, Dr. Kou and the others must have lost some kind of control mechanism! He’s the creator of the whole system, but there’s an obstacle to him collecting information. This way, we can help him locate himself inside!”

Wu Xiangxiang commented, “Yes, the mountain won’t go, so you’re making him come?”

Chang Dou looked at him, huffing with rage. “This is a new concept! Lateral thinking! I’d bet that you’ve never thought of it! What do you want to do, take this thing apart?”

Wu Xiangxiang, his goatee quivering, said, “I despise you and your bald chin! I despise all living creatures of low IQ!”

The group of technicians working through the night looked furtively at the two of them, simultaneously thinking: Are these two actually here to work, or are they here to ruin things?

…Dr. Kou probably would have to fend for himself.

45

SUPERMARKET

“I’M GOING shopping, are you coming?” Huang Jinchen didn’t even knock. He simply opened the study door and stuck his head in.

Kou Tong yelled, “What did you say?”

Huang Jinchen was speechless. He went over and turned off the music he had turned up loud enough to shake the earth. He put both hands on his desk and glanced at the little chrysanthemum constantly spinning on his computer. “Didn’t you say that your house’s sound insulation was bad?”

“The study is different,” Kou Tong said. “This isn’t the study from the old apartment where I lived when I was little. It’s in my home from later. The strongboxes and the safe are all here. The walls are thickened, with sound-absorbing material inside. There’s no need to worry when performing any experiments.”

Huang Jinchen thought of some inharmonious things, looked the study over, rubbed his hands together, and gave a “heh-heh.” “Really? The walls are thickened…”

Before he could finish, a four-page analysis result popped up on Kou Tong’s screen. The computer screeched, and the fan spun madly. Huang Jinchen looked. He saw a screen full of ghosts and goblins. Apart from the strange symbols, he basically recognized everything—there were letters and Arabic numerals. But put together, he had absolutely no idea what they said.

He looked reverently at Dr. Kou. The latter was just reading through it quickly without any obstacles.

Huang Jinchen bumped him with his butt. “How many planets’ languages do you know?”

Kou Tong’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. He said, “I’m proficient in Lunar, Martian, and M 78 Nebulan. Of the seven stars of the Big Dipper, I know the languages of four, and I’m a beginner in two of the other three and preparing for a grade four test in the last one.”

Huang Jinchen wrapped an arm around his neck from behind, put the other hand on the edge of the table, and leaned against Kou Tong. Drawing close to his ear, he said, “Bibi—nibabubabu gulutulu bang!”

Kou Tong, smiling, turned his head to glance at him, and very cooperatively said, “Bibi—bulabula bang bulu.”

Huang Jinchen considered, then planted a resounding kiss on the side of his face, returning to a terrestrial manner of speech: “You agreed! It’s settled. Darling, you’re so nice!”

Kou Tong once again had an ominous feeling. “What did I agree to?”

Huang Jinchen said, “I just said, why don’t we have a go in the study tonight, and you can shout as loud as you want to. You said that one go isn’t enough, it won’t scratch the itch if we don’t go all night.”

Kou Tong: “…”

Huang Jinchen smiled smugly.

Kou Tong woodenly shifted his gaze to the screen. “Comrade Er-Pang, since meeting you, I’ve finally understood the saying ‘how can regrets be avoided in life?’”

Huang Jinchen played dumb. “Huh? I don’t understand. How about we keep talking in our native M 78 Nebulan?”

Kou Tong said, “…It’s nothing, I was calling you a genius.”

As he finished speaking, he had already finished reading the analysis report from the computer. He stretched and leaned back, his bones cracking. Since he had broken his leg and experienced a whole series of events, it had been a long time since he had exercised. He felt lacking in calcium.

“How’s the analysis?” Huang Jinchen pressed on Kou Tong’s shoulder with his elbow, making him lie on the desk, then steadily gave him a massage. “This won’t do, Dr. Kou. Such elderly arms and legs at your age?”

Kou Tong gave an “ow.” “That feels good, left, left, yeah… I can’t compare to a beast like you, we aren’t of the same breed. I’m a beast in human clothes.”

Huang Jinchen felt that one of Kou Tong’s greatest advantages was that he knew himself rather well.

Kou Tong closed his eyes and slowly said, “I’ve made twenty-six parameters. I’m just straightening out their relationships to see whether I can calculate the final equation, but I think there shouldn’t be a problem—ah…gentler, gentler…yeah…much better—using already existing methods. I’ll see whether I can set up a coordinate system, link it in, and try one by one. If that works, it’ll simplify matters.”

Huang Jinchen asked, “No pressure this time?”

“There is,” Kou Tong said, “it won’t necessarily work. Then I’ll have to think of some other way.”

“What about the wounds on your arm?”

“They aren’t better or worse,” Kou Tong said. “Hey, that feels so good. Er-Pang, I love you so much.”

Huang Jinchen said, “Then repay me with your body!”

Kou Tong answered, “Fine.”

Huang Jinchen pressed heavily on his back with his elbow and lowered his voice. “I wasn’t joking.”

Kou Tong half-opened his eyes, looked at him for a while, then said, “All right, we can try that, too.”

Huang Jinchen asked, “Didn’t you say the rabbit doesn’t eat next to its warren?”

Kou Tong laughed. “There’s not enough space next to my warren. When I get out, I definitely won’t be able to plant…heavyweight grass like you.”

Huang Jinchen firmly pinched his waist. “You’re just jealous.”

The weak points on Kou Tong’s waist were very obvious. He was of the super ticklish sort who needed a long time to adjust when hugged. He immediately jumped out of the chair. Huang Jinchen looked at him disdainfully. “You’re like this, and you can still manage to top? I guess you can get by relying on your mouth in this day and age, huh?”

Kou Tong was irate. “That’s because Red Bull men who can lift cauldrons one-handed aren’t popular anymore!”

Huang Jinchen was full of self-confidence. Without any stress, he raised his arms and flexed his muscles. Then he looked at Dr. Kou’s long arms and long legs with a provocative gaze and reached out a hand to rub his chin, just asking for it.

Then, before Dr. Kou could erupt, he caught him around the shoulders. “Let’s go, let’s go, you’re about to start growing mushrooms like that little boiler in your strongbox. I need to replenish my munitions, come to the supermarket with me.”

Kou Tong was dragged out. He turned and considered what he had just said, feeling that there was something a little off about it…

Go to the supermarket to replenish munitions, indeed…

When they opened the door, Yao Shuo was just walking out of his room carrying a small notebook. Seeing how cozy the two of them looked, he frowned instinctively. “Among everyone who’s ever been under my command, there was never been anyone as undisciplined as you two.”

Huang Jinchen rolled his eyes and patted Kou Tong on the shoulder. “Come, darling, give me a kiss and show the old chief a peep show.”

Kou Tong covered his face, having a premonition that between these two there would be an irreconcilable conflict between extreme discipline and perfectionism on one side and unruliness and lack of discipline on the other. He turned Huang Jinchen’s approaching face away with his hand. Putting on a mild and proper smile, he said, “We’re just on our way out. Would you like to come along, sir?”

Yao Shuo raised his eyebrows. Two seconds later, he nodded and said, “OK.”

Then he went back into his room to put on his jacket and walked out ahead.

Huang Jinchen pinched Kou Tong’s butt—That’ll teach you to run your mouth.

Kou Tong maintained his slightly stiff smile—In all honesty, I was really just…being polite.

There’s always a third wheel in a threesome—Huang Jinchen, watching Yao Shuo walking ramrod straight in front, ground his teeth, thinking that this was his first time going on a date, strolling through the streets with so-and-so, holding hands, whispering sweet nothings, and then along came this fellow, and even his great treasure Kou Tong, who was like a basket full of nonsense, was silent. This Yao character was worse than a third wheel—he was a tank tread!

The three of them, in an atmosphere heavier than if they had been going to a funeral, arrived at the magical supermarket Huang Jinchen had spoken of—it was at the end of the candy street. There was a very, very narrow passage there that only just allowed a single person to go through turned sideways. It was blocked by the surrounding colorful vegetation made of candy. Without looking carefully, you would have thought it was a dead end.

Kou Tong took a couple of looks. “It really is Manman’s projection.”

Yao Shuo looked back at him. Kou Tong immediately explained, like delivering a report: “The little girl was born strange, at odds with everything around her, just like this bizarre road. When she’s in the outside world, though she doesn’t speak, she must constantly use some method she thinks will work to try to communicate with others, but she’s always been ignored and never understood.”

Yao Shuo’s steps paused. Then he squeezed in.

Kou Tong rubbed his nose and sighed—some people were like Yao Shuo, very good at using their own emotions to hijack those around them, making everyone extremely unhappy. As time went on, if a person had a weak nature, they would always automatically check his reactions, carefully regulate their speech, constantly analyzing his reactions, behaving in accordance with his thoughts.

Based on Yao Shuo’s record and the information he had received from others, Kou Tong knew that Yao Shuo was actually a person who understood techniques of social interaction, so his performance now was most likely deliberate—due to stress, he had perceived his own powerlessness; with his slight tendency towards perfectionism and strong self-respect, he wouldn’t acknowledge this powerlessness and switch to other means to seek control.

Humans…were sometimes truly not very lovable things.

Dr. Kou wasn’t an immortal. However much of an expert he was, associating closely with Lao Yao all day, not fighting back when hit, not talking back when cursed, he would also develop a bit of an unhappy mood; he suppressed it very quickly—but it still existed.

At the end of the little road was a little door—it really was very small, just large enough for a child to pass through. An adult had to bend down to struggle in.

After squeezing in, they did indeed come to a small supermarket. Huang Jinchen was familiar from experience and enjoyed the other two’s dumbfounded expressions—due to the cashier. He…or she or it was a gorilla wearing a suit and tie.

The gorilla was holding a newspaper and wearing glasses on its nose, looking cultured—though the newspaper was held upside down.

Huang Jinchen went in himself to replenish his munitions, and Kou Tong strolled around at random, feeling that he did indeed have no imagination. Like Granny Liu visiting the Grand View Gardens[17], he thought everything he saw was a novelty. The gorilla cashier looked up at him a couple of times. Kou Tong felt that he saw naked disdain in the looks.

He saw Yao Shuo hesitate for a while, then pick up a small water pistol. On the label, a child’s crooked handwriting said: Elephant's Bane.

Kou Tong: “…”

It was completely unintelligible.

Yao Shuo raised the little water pistol, his expression softening a little. After a long time, he said, whether to Kou Tong or to himself, “My son loved one of these things when he was little. He was always messing up the house. Later, his mom threw it out, and the brat cried a face full of snot.”

Kou Tong didn’t speak, listening in silence.

“Later, I bought him one in secret, and he hid it away like a treasure. It was just about like this one…” Yao Shuo seemed to want to smile, but a trace of a smile appeared on his face, then quickly dimmed.

Then he realized something and, as if nothing had happened, put the pistol back in its original place, recovering his solemnity. Changing the topic by force, he said to Kou Tong, “We’ve dealt with two cards now, but I’ve looked at the materials, and never mind the rest, there are twenty-two in the so-called Major Arcana, including the Moon, the Sun, the Stars, Power, unimaginable things like that. What are you planning to do?”

Kou Tong thought about it. “Take whatever measures are called for. I’m completely ignorant about mysticism. We can only depend on you now.”

Yao Shuo for once acted out of character and didn’t pursue an attack against a shirker and good-for-nothing like him. After a while, he finally said, “I’ll try.”

The corners of Kou Tong’s mouth turned up, but he resisted, doing his best to maintain a solemn expression.

Huang Jinchen quickly picked out the things he wanted, filling up a little cart and placing it in front of the gorilla. The gorilla didn’t even look up, grabbing a little basket. Huang Jinchen stuffed money into it. The business process was very solemn—it was as if they both knew how much money needed to be paid!

Then the gorilla found a big sack. With extraordinary strength, it put the whole little cart’s worth of things inside and handed it to Huang Jinchen. The latter, like a hairless gorilla, put the big sack over his shoulder.

Kou Tong witnessed this scene and at last couldn’t resist turning up the corners of his mouth. Using even greater strength, he finally held back and followed Huang Jinchen, who had replenished his munitions, in squeezing out through the little door they can come through.

The moment they turned off the candy street onto a normal street next to it—there was another mishap.

46

THE CHOICE

THE OLD BUILDING Kou Tong lived in, despite being near enough to the city center, was a spot of quiet amid the bustle. To get from the nearest main road to his house, you had to go through several narrow alleys.

The unfortunate thing was that many ghost stories also started like this—on a dark and windy night, a man/woman/old person/small child was walking down a long and narrow alley when the streetlights in the alley broke, flickering overhead. Then, suddenly! the lights went out…there was a scream in the alley, like a dying stray cat…

When it came to Dr. Kou’s always negative moral character, this story became: on a bright and sunny afternoon, three men were walking down a long and narrow alley when the streetlights may or may not have broken, as they weren’t on to begin with…ahem. Then, suddenly! Huang Jinchen, walking in front, put his foot down and heard a noise. He stopped acutely in his tracks and saw that the flagstone under his foot had actually cracked.

The three of them froze simultaneously, looking at each other in dismay.

Kou Tong sighed loudly and patted Huang Jinchen on the shoulder. “Er-Pang, if you don’t lose weight, I’m leaving you. I’m only a poor temporary worker. I don’t have the money to change the floors every day.”

Huang Jinchen protested frantically: “I never should have trusted this city’s infrastructure!”

Yao Shuo chided, “Shh! Don’t talk! Listen.”

A rumble came from underground. The flagstones the little street was paved with cracked along the fissure at Huang Jinchen’s feet. Huang Jinchen’s cheeky expression instantly turned serious. “Watch out!”

None of them were slow to respond. As he spoke, they climbed one after another onto the narrow wall next to them, then looked in astonishment at the big hole that had opened in the ground.

It spread slowly along the ground like something living, forked at its peak, then strangely calmed down.

Huang Jinchen and Yao Shuo simultaneously looked up at Kou Tong and found that Dr. Kou was just squatting on top of the wall in a very vulgar posture, chin in his hand, looking fixedly at the big crack in the ground and pondering.

“A crack in the ground, a fork…” Kou Tong frowned. “What does that represent?”

Huang Jinchen, very uncomprehending, asked, “Why can’t we just talk about things directly? What’s the point of putting together this pile of mysterious, peculiar things? Why do there have to be such things as semiotics and mysticism? Do the people who study these things really have nothing better to do?”

Kou Tong thought about it, then, in a way Huang Jinchen could understand, said, “Because no matter the time and place, there are always some things that can’t be spoken of in too much detail. You get me.”

Huang Jinchen pursed his lips and started going through his big sack. Then he got something like a yo-yo out of it. There was even a label on it, again in a child’s crooked handwriting. It said: “Do Not Fear Ghosts”—that was fairly in keeping with the original conception.

“I’ll try with this thing.”

Huang Jinchen deftly tore open the packaging and tossed the little ball off the wall. The little ball hit the ground and successfully bounced off, just like those toys that were sold for ten yuan a piece on the train. It began to flash on the inside and make beeping sounds. Then a childish voice said, “I’m not scared! Die mad about it! I’m not scared! Die mad about it!”

Yao Shuo looked like this was a scene too tragic to bear. Kou Tong tilted his head up forty-five degrees to look at the sky, pretending that he didn’t know this buffoon.

“Hey, hey, look, the ball is starting to roll,” Huang Jinchen, dying to make trouble, added.

The ball bounded here and there on the ground, as though there was someone behind operating it, dribbling it while walking forward, walking while announcing in a soft voice, “I’m not scared! Die mad about it!” and things like that, resplendently going towards the place where the crack forked. Then it began to bounce nonstop on the fork. A thin sprout suddenly grew out of the ground. Then the thin sprout suddenly expanded and rose, knocking the silly ball aside.

Huang Jinchen quickly reached out to catch it. In his hands, the little ball let out a sobbing voice: “…I’m not scared…”

….It was pretty intelligent.

The little sprout at the forking point grew and lengthened without restraint, turning into a big tree within a minute, as if it wanted to demonstrate the cycle of sprouting, flourishing, waning, and dying in an instant.

There were apples hanging all over the tree. Then a branch curled up, separated into a head and body, eyes and scales, and a quickly flickering tongue—it had turned into a snake. Finally, twelve flashing golden leaves grew on the treetop. Then everything at last returned to stillness, becoming static.

Kou Tong turned his head to look at Yao Shuo. “Ghosts don’t go out in broad daylight. Well, what card is this? Have you recognized it?”

“Apples and a snake… This must be the Tree of Knowledge spoken of in the Bible,” Yao Shuo said. “The twelve leaves probably represent the twelve signs of the zodiac… There’s an edition of tarot cards where these things appear on the Lovers card.”

“Lovers?” Huang Jinchen stared. “That’s also a card?”

“The Lovers represents a choice.” Yao Shuo frowned. “Supposedly, the apples and the snake in the tree respectively symbolize ‘wisdom’ and ‘desire.’ There’s also an interpretation that says that the choice the Lovers card represents is between ‘virtue’ and ‘desire.’ It originates in the Neoplatonic ideological trends of the Middle Ages. There was a trend of escaping the material to attain vitality…”

Huang Jinchen said, “Isn’t that crazy? Without the material, how are you supposed to get vitality? Why do I feel like sounds like that…that what-do-you-call-it, Cheng-Zhu school[18], ‘get rid of human desire, preserve the heavenly principles’?”

Hearing the first half of this, Yao Shuo had wanted to mock this gun-toting fellow’s ignorance, but hearing the latter half, he thought, He knows about that?

Then he heard Master Huang give his own assessment of this ideological trend: “What it means is for people to live with their belts done up tight, not eating enough to get full, not being able to have sex when you want—isn’t that bullshit…”

Yao Shuo felt that continuing to speak to this person would be an insult to his own intelligence. Kou Tong held himself back for a while, then really couldn’t resist expressing his own views. “Master Huang, your ideas truly are…brilliant.”

Huang Jinchen gave two self-satisfied laughs, pointed to the tree at their feet that grew both fruit and snakes, and said, “So what do we do about this?”

Kou Tong thought about it. “How about we try seeing whether we can go around it…”

Before he could finish, he saw two walls “grow” from behind the mortal world’s counterfeit Tree of Knowledge. They became taller and taller, like the Tower of Babel in legend, trying to reach the sky. They were situated at the tail ends of the two forks.

Kou Tong sighed. “I knew it. The answer is, that won’t work.”

“Then let’s choose.” Huang Jinchen jumped down from the wall. Heaving his ridiculous big sack, he loudly said to the Tree of Knowledge, “I choose desire.”

Kou Tong, sitting on the wall, looked at him in astonishment, feeling that this man really was both direct and self-sufficient, completely ignoring mainstream aesthetic concepts, sticking to his own ways, running wild with an “I do what I want, what are you going to do about it?” style.

He had the calm of a person who killed with one shot and also this kind of wanton recklessness. Yet, unexpectedly, they mixed in this man without any contradiction. Kou Tong suddenly thought that he was a little fascinated by this man.

He couldn’t resist asking, “Why not choose knowledge? Isn’t there anything good about being smart?”

One of the standing walls fell. A little snake crawled down from the tree and crawled up ahead as though leading the way. Huang Jinchen looked back and said to Kou Tong, “What’s the use of knowledge? It won’t feed you or keep you warm. Haven’t you heard that ‘stupid children are much happier’?”

That made sense!

Kou Tong was at once convinced. He quickly jumped down from the wall, too, but a heap of little snakes fell out of the tree, blocking his way. As Huang Jinchen stepped over the fallen wall, the hoisted itself up behind him.

Kou Tong said, “I choose desire, too. Can’t I go?”

The crowd of snakes made way. The wall leading to “desire” fell once more, but Huang Jinchen wasn’t there. Kou Tong’s heart instantly sank—this tarot card was using choices to separate them. He looked back to speak to Yao Shuo, but the ground beneath his feet suddenly began to shake fiercely. A tongue of flame rose out of the crack. The rising temperature was scalding, hurting all of Kou Tong’s exposed skin. He had to retreat a few steps.

Then the tongue of flame waned—a wall blocked the way in front of him. Yao Shuo was also cut off on the other side.

Kou Tong turned his head. On one side was a wall, on the other was a deep little alley. He didn’t know which way to go.

He suddenly felt a bit at a loss. He stood there for a while, then finally sighed, felt around in his pocket, and pulled out a water pistol—it was the one labeled Elephant's Bane. After Huang Jinchen had finished paying, he had casually stuffed a handful of one yuan bills into the gorilla’s basket, amounting to “buying” the pistol.

But what could he do with a water pistol?

Dr. Kou felt tearful. He was only a tech nerd a little stronger than the average tech nerd, and he had been sent naked into this instance to do battle without even a weapons pack.

Now, Dr. Kou at last understood what it meant to be “completely unarmed.”

47

THE LOVERS

DR. KOU raised his head to look at the light. He felt that the future was uncertain, but he was still optimistic, because the next moment, he compared himself to Yao Shuo; remembering that the venerable old fellow didn’t even have a water pistol, he felt balanced.

Elephant's Bane—Kou Tong tore the label off, thinking that this name sounded pretty aggressive; if only its capabilities were also aggressive.

Kou Tong walked unhurriedly along the narrow street, like an idle sightseer. Then he came to the end and found another fork in the road—

Kou Tong stopped, his long, slender finger reaching into the water pistol’s trigger. He spun the light water pistol around his finger.

Choice was a magical thing. Not having a choice was painful, and having a choice was also painful. There are some economists who, in order to make this seem easier for humans to understand, have put forward the notion of so-called “opportunity cost.”

The cost of taking one road is abandoning the other road.

Kou Tong thought there was a lot of merit in this. This was indeed the painful aspect of choice—there was no extra credit for choosing right, yet there was a deduction for choosing wrong. No matter what you chose, the future was unknown; there was always a great chance of regret, or…perhaps all roads would lead ultimately to the same end.

Probably one person couldn’t hold too many social resources. According to the ideas of some men, having an imperial harem should be the ultimate dream, but wasn’t the Jiajing Emperor nearly strangled by his palace maids all the same[19]? With an emperor who calls on his harem every night, all sorts of people will suspect him even if he plans to take a break. Thinking about it carefully, there’s really no difference from a male prostitute.

An unpredictable future was confusing, and a manifold future was also confusing, because no one could split themselves into different parts. The most powerful person still couldn’t walk two completely different paths of life.

Kou Tong stood in place, looking left and right, feeling that in either direction, the road ahead was full of danger—to his left was a clean little street with emerald green vines extending from both sides and flowers of unknown type growing on them, like the walkway a newlywed couple would walk in a country wedding; it was very beautiful—of course, the flaw in this beauty was that Qin Qin was standing at the end.

And to his right, as if to demonstrate that “there’s a fine line between heaven and hell,” even the sunlight couldn’t shine in; it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Kou Tong glanced that way and felt a dank wind blowing from there.

Kou Tong drew his foot back and waved in Qin Qin’s direction. He asked, “Can we talk? This isn’t soundproof, is it?”

Qin Qin’s expression looking at him was still like a hungry ghost staring at a steak, with a morbid and crazy perseverance. Her expressionless face had the oppressiveness of the calm before a storm.

“We can talk.” She nodded. “I can hear you.”

Kou Tong tilted his head slightly and asked, “Can you come over here?”

“I can’t,” Qin Qin said, “those are the rules of the Lovers. Only the person standing at the fork in the road can choose which way to go. You can come here, but I can’t go there.”

The rules of the Lovers—according to Lao Yao’s theory, the tarot cards had their own rules. Qin Qin was familiar with them. Her obsession made her accept them with unquestioning belief, so in this consciousness projection space, for the time being, she didn’t have the ability to surmount these rules. But when she became more indignant, she would take no more notice of any morals or rules—even the ones she herself had formulated.

That would also be when she lost control over all the cards.

Kou Tong scratched his chin with his forefinger.

Qin Qin reached out a hand to him. “Come, come here, come to me. I was wrong last time. I won’t lose my temper again, and I don’t blame you for destroying two of my cards. I’ll be very, very good to you. Come with me.”

Kou Tong smiled. Not answering her directly, he asked, “Why don’t you tell me what this card’s rules are?”

“It’s a choice in the depths of your heart,” Qin Qin said. “Each time you pass a fork in the road, you face two difficult choices in your heart. The further on you go, the closer the choices will come to the deepest place in your heart—but don’t worry, I’ll remove the card right away.”

Kou Tong raised his eyebrows. So his choice now was composed of—Qin Qin or suffering?

Obviously, whether in the depths or shallows of his heart, Dr. Kou was 100% sure that he didn’t have such an obnoxious idea. This must be the product of Miss Qin Qin’s unshakable belief imposing her will on the card.

So he raised his head, leaned on a low wall beside the forking point, took out a cigarette, shielded it with his hand from the chill wind coming from the right side, lit it, and was silent for a moment.

This brought a sort of indescribable roguishness to the man’s habitually genteel face. His eyes and brows were faintly lowered, as if restraining some private cynicism.

“Qin Qin.” When he had nearly finished smoking his cigarette, Kou Tong at last spoke. “I’ve always remembered what my profession is. I sympathize with any patient of mine or one of my colleagues. I also know that sometimes, doing unreasonable things isn’t your fault. I’m a doctor. I have a responsibility to accommodate patients.”

The corners of his mouth moved slightly, displaying a fleeting cold smile. Then he stubbed his cigarette butt out against the wall. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m a lump dough to be kneaded as you like, a goddess who pardons mortals without any lower threshold. I’ve experienced many life-and-death stakes in my life. If I let a little girl like you control me, I’ll be too humiliated to live in the future if it gets out.”

Then he unhurriedly stuck his hands in his coat pockets, turned, and went down the other road.

Just at the moment that Kou Tong took the other road, the ground behind him automatically grew a high wall, blocking the other direction—Qin Qin must have forgotten to say that the Lovers had another rule: all sales final, no returns.

The upshot was that after Kou Tong was finished playing cool, he stepped right into a big hole like a swamp. Dr. Kou was silent for two seconds. He bent down to pluck his lower leg out of the mud like a radish. “Motherfucker!”

He stood in place on one leg like a rooster, feeling around for a long time and pulling out his lighter. After he lit it, he shone it up ahead—in front of him was an enormous swamp with bubbles boiling on top from time to time, as though something was about to climb out of it. To the left was the corpse of some unknown animal. There was an eerie gloom over the whole path, like the scene of a haunted house. In the illumination of his small light, a bat flew up into the sky, showing two blood red eyes.

Further up ahead was a thick forest with no visible end, overgrown with brambles. The chill wind traveled through the dangerous foliage, simulating a sound like the howling of some wild beast.

Faced with this scene, Kou Tong was silent for a while, then suddenly turned and desperately scratched at the wall. “I was wrong, I was wrong! Miss, I was being flippant. I didn’t see the difference between a rouged and powdered skeleton and a real skeleton for a time. Let me go back and choose again, I’ll definitely choose you. Let’s talk it over…!”

There was no movement from the cold wall. Dr. Kou wilted. He paused for a while. With the aid of his little lighter and the bubbles rising from the swamp, he admired his own reflection for a while in a high difficulty move, then sighed with emotion. “Beauties suffer unhappy fates.”

In answer, two sinister bubbles boiled up from the swamp.

Kou Tong picked up a big femur from beside him and valiantly knocked on a vine falling beside him. There was a rustling sound. Kou Tong deftly drew back his hand. A shit-brown figure flashed by. A snake stuck its head out of the vines, curled up into a heap, and stretched out its neck, meeting the eyes of the weak nerd Dr. Kou in an attitude like it was preparing to attack.

“What are you looking at…” Kou Tong shuffled half a step to the side. “Never seen a handsome man?”

The big snake had truly never seen a handsome man. It swayed on the tree twice, then quickly pounced towards Kou Tong with a predatory fierceness. Kou Tong’s gaze deepened. He dodged aside extremely quickly. Then the femur in his hand hit the big snake’s heart with incredible accuracy. The nimbly curled animal fell into the swamp. It struggled with and then was swallowed by a black monster.

Kou Tong expressionlessly rolled up his pant legs, pushed aside the vines where the snake had been staying, pulled a long branch from the nearly dead tree behind them, and very familiarly opened a way, walking forward like a traveler honor-bound to follow some road to ruin.

In fact, Kou Tong was a very practiced hand at dealing with dangers in open country. After all, as an itinerant doctor who could never be found when he was wanted, he had rich travel experience that others couldn’t imagine.

He had crossed snowy mountains and had a close personal encounter with a glacier. He had missed his step and fallen into a lake over four thousand feet above sea level. He had crossed a big stretch of deserted terrain on bicycles with a group of youths. He had traversed virgin forest, gotten lost in the Golden Triangle, carelessly found someone to stay the night with, sensed something off in the middle of the night, and finally realized that he was in the home of a drug trafficker.

He knew how high was the sky and how vast was the earth, but he hadn’t felt from this the boundlessness of the universe; instead, he had only become more and more weirdly fearless.

What was to be done? When he was idle, Dr. Kou would think in pretend anxiety, On one hand, things went on like this because he was still single; perhaps one day, he would drop dead and no one would know. He had wondered whether the genes implanted in him by the Seed had destroyed the nerves that governed fear. Later, even using his toe to think, he understood that this was of course impossible.

Then why?

Perhaps he was too curious, Kou Tong thought.

He had experienced many good things and also many bad ones, but he still maintained a high degree of curiosity towards the world, like a squirrel leaving its knothole on the first day after the end of winter, thinking everything it saw was novel, wanting to find out all about it.

Perhaps this uncommon vitality was what the genetic transplant had truly left him with—he felt that he was like the wind, unable to stand still for a moment. If the wind stopped, it would scatter; if he stopped, he would find that he actually wasn’t one bit as omnipotent as he imagined.

He would find that…in fact time had stagnated for him in that late autumn when he was ten years old… As soon as he thought of this, Kou Tong simply cut off his line of thinking in order to avoid doing anything that would be a disgrace to the educated, concentrating single-mindedly on walking this desolate and frightening road like something out of the world of the dead.

Then he began to hum Huang Jinchen’s cellphone ringtone, driving even the bats into going mad and decamping.

48

ELEPHANT'S BANE

ON HIS WAY, he killed three snakes and a blood-sucking bat of unknown type. Not looking underfoot, he created a three-legged frog. He got both of his feet stuck in the mud once; now they seemed symmetrical.

In the middle of this, not managing to dodge in time, he got wrapped up by a plant of unknown man-eating properties. This process was very wonderful. Dr. Kou felt that he had been on a pendulum ride in an amusement park. Sadly, the recreational facilities here didn’t have a high safety coefficient. In the end, if he hadn’t decisively gotten a hold on this big vine, which was only concerned with tossing and not with catching, he might have died from the force of gravity.

Then he found that…after innumerable hardships, there was another fork in the road that presented him with a choice. In that moment, boundless misery rose in Dr. Kou’s heart; it was simply indescribable.

As long as he hadn’t reached the end of the road, there would be endless choices, and he would have to walk on nonstop.

If the power that killed the unknown was a land of hopeless perpetuity, then what the hell would kill choice?

This time, Kou Tong wasn’t in a rush to make a choice. Instead, he plopped down at the fork in the road. He took off his shoes, whose original appearance was no longer visible, and very ungracefully knocked off the mud, rubbing as he knocked.

He thought for a long time and could only think of “all roads lead to the same end.” If he kept following this road, he would encounter countless forks. The choices he had to make would be inexhaustible.

And if the information Qin Qin had given him was true, these choices would slowly penetrate his inner being. Kou Tong had a thief’s conscience; he knew that his inner being wasn’t as bright and powerful as it appeared on the surface. Perhaps this would have been all right when he was in a calm and even temper, but now… He looked down at his forearm, once again leaking blood because of the road just now. He sighed—he felt that before he had thought of something to do, it would be best not to act rashly.

Kou Tong leaned against the wall. Above his head was still the gloomy sky. All kinds of strange sounds came from behind him. He took his pack of cigarettes out again and lit one. Barefoot, he stretched his legs and tossed his shoes aside, making himself relax as much as possible.

Everyone had times of agitation. Kou Tong, on this point, very much resembled Huang Jinchen. Probably having had the experience of the Seed in their youth, they both particularly hated to be bound—concretely, this was expressed in Dr. Kou’s rushing around here and there and Master Huang’s shocking defiance of social norms.

And now, Kou Tong’s feeling was of being trapped in one box after another—the Projector was one layer, and the Lovers card had added yet another layer.

Though this bit of agitation was soon meticulously suppressed by his adjusted breathing and slow movements. In his boredom, Kou Tong began to toy with the only weapon he had—the little water pistol.

Why was this thing called Elephant's Bane? Thinking this, Kou Tong shot into the space across from him. Then a magical thing happened. The stream of water went up and faintly changed into a palm-sized elephant. In the frightening chilly darkness, it began to run around in place merrily.

Kou Tong hadn’t had much hope to begin with. After watching for a while, he couldn’t resist snorting a laugh.

If he got out, he decided that he would have to exchange views with that hidden Brother Gorilla; fine things could always heal.

After shooting out this little thing, a little screen lit up on the water pistol. Some choices popped up on it. There were “mouse,” “pig,” and “rope.”

Kou Tong aimed at the elephant and chose “mouse.” Another stream of water shot out and turned into the shape of a little mouse. The merrily running elephant stopped in its tracks, as if it had suddenly put on the brakes. Then it became so scared that its whole body changed shape. It quickly dashed off in the opposite direction. The little mouse ran very fast. All at once, it burrowed into the elephant’s nose.

The elephant burst in a splash, spraying all over Kou Tong. The elephant and the little mouse were both gone.

Kou Tong suddenly felt an interest in having fun. His spirit of entertainment, with no regard for time and place, again defeated misery, driving Dr. Kou. He began to try out the water pistol’s options one by one.

“Pig” was a sudden water blade that cut off the elephant’s nose, changing the elephant into a pig. When the “rope” option was pressed, the elephant’s nose tied itself into a knot like a rope. Water blobs began to weave together in a hundred ways, making crashing sounds. The final outcome was that they once again burst in a splash.

After happily amusing himself for a while, a thought suddenly flashed through Kou Tong’s mind—a rope and…a knot?

He slowly raised the mouth of the pistol and aimed at the vine over his head, shooting out the “rope” order. Then he watched as it gave a start as if stimulated by something, then slowly tied itself into a knot like the elephant’s nose.

This was dependable!

Kou Tong quickly sat up—according to the rules of the Lovers, after choosing one road, the other road would automatically close. So all he needed to do was to make that road tie itself into a knot like the elephant’s nose, and it would naturally take him back to the previous fork. Because the other road was already closed, the choice would no longer exist.

Kou Tong simply wanted to raise his head to the heavens and laugh aloud. He decided that the first thing he would do after getting back would be to take Manman to eat ice cream and hotpot. He would order two, one to eat there and one to take away!

Whistling, he got up off the ground, stepped into his shoes, casually aimed at the right-hand choice, and shot out the “rope” order.

The sound of shaking came from the ground. Kou Tong happily watched the straight road begin to bend like a rope tied into a knot. Then he stepped in and was gratified to hear the rumbling sound of the high wall rising behind him.

The bleak scene from before was blocked by a wall and turned into a whole other world. There was a bit of light up ahead.

Kou Tong happily walked forward. He knew that the next time he returned to this fork in the road, the rules of the Lovers card would be broken; no matter what choice this road was, there would be just this little segment…

Just then, Kou Tong all of a sudden clearly saw the thing sitting not far away where the bit of light was. He seemed unable to set down his raised foot.

It was a small medicine chest with the lid wide open. Inside there were only empty bottles of suxiao jiuxin pills and nitroglycerin[20].

They were lying there all on their own, like a pair of empty eyes.

In that instant, Kou Tong’s hands and feet turned cold. Every second seemed to stretch out again and again in front of him. He was like a frozen statue.

Suddenly, Kou Tong groaned and clutched the wounds on his arm. The wounds that had begun to heal under Huang Jinchen’s careful attentions seemed to have been sliced with a knife. The wounds abruptly became bone deep, blood quickly seeping between the cracks in his fingers, dripping down to the ground along his clear-knuckled fingers.

“I…need to get out now, right…I need to keep following this road.” These words appeared blankly in his head. Then, like a marionette, he walked forward like a walking corpse.

Leaving a trail of blood behind him.

When the rules of the Lovers card lost effect without warning, Huang Jinchen found that he was standing on the original little road. He had taken hardly any steps forward. He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t know whether one of his two companions had been magical enough to break the rules of the Lovers.

Huang Jinchen lowered the gun in his hand, turned his head, and saw Yao Shuo on his other side, that stupid woman Qin Qin even further away, looking at them hatefully, and Kou Tong leaning back against a wall, standing at the entrance to the road. Huang Jinchen, beaming with joy, threw himself forward at once. “Tongtong Darling, let me tell you, I just saw a whole row of yous doing striptease in front of me, heh, and I dashed over without a second thought, and then…”

His steps suddenly stopped.

The edge of Kou Tong’s coat was soaked with blood, all scarlet.

“Kou Tong?”

Kou Tong raised his head extremely slowly and looked at him, his gaze vague. Then his body swayed, and he suddenly pitched forward.

Huang Jinchen felt his breath and heartbeat stop simultaneously.

When he came around, he had already caught Kou Tong. He instinctively turned the muzzle of his gun, pointing at Qin Qin, who was watching them indifferently from not far away.

Yao Shuo was very startled by the two of them. Without even thinking, he immediately threw himself forward to hold down the muzzle of Huang Jinchen’s gun. Practically at the same time that he turned aside the muzzle of the gun, Huang Jinchen pulled the trigger. With Yao Shuo’s interference, the bullet went wide. It hit the wall next to Qin Qin and, brushing past her, fell to the ground.

Huang Jinchen raised his head and looked at Yao Shuo. That look almost made Yao Shuo’s scalp go numb. He seized Huang Jinchen by the collar and yelled, “You want to commit a murder? You want to go to jail after we get out?”

Huang Jinchen’s cheeks were bitten tight. His murderous intent seemed to congeal into a physical substance, directly hitting the man in front of him.

Yao Shuo’s hand holding his collar loosened uncontrollably. He couldn’t resist taking half a step back. But still, he held out, pale-faced. Pointing at Huang Jinchen, he swore, “Who the fuck are you? Why don’t you think about who you are? Are you a bandit or a drug dealer? Can you kill someone just because you feel like it? Is that ball of meat on your shoulders a chamber pot?!”

A shriek came out of nowhere. A birdlike woman flew down from above, grabbed Qin Qin by the hand, lifted her off the ground, and flew up into the sky.

Yao Shuo acutely noticed Huang Jinchen’s hand holding the gun move. Immediately, by some miraculous good fortune, he yelled into his ear, “The Projector was made by Kou Tong! If something goes wrong, he’s bound to bear joint responsibility! If someone dies inside, do you want to drag him into it?!”

Huang Jinchen was staring in the direction Qin Qin had flown away. From beginning to end, his gaze was calm and steady, looking at her and the bird woman as though looking at inanimate objects, until they disappeared from his line of sight.

Yao Shuo quickly took the opportunity to check what was wrong with that ancestor Kou Tong. He found that apart from the slightly frightening wounds on his arm and the slight scrapes on his ankles revealed under his rolled-up pant legs, there didn’t seem to be any other external injuries. His face looked awful, but his breathing was fairly steady. So he finally slowed his voice and said to Huang Jinchen, “Let’s take him home for now and see whether we need to take him to the hospital, or…”

Before he could finish, Huang Jinchen averted his gaze, nodded to Yao Shuo, and stuck his gun into his belt. He bent down and picked up Kou Tong, carefully adjusted his position, and strode away carrying him.

Yao Shuo looked at the big sack Huang Jinchen had tossed aside and forgotten about. He was conflicted for a moment, then sighed and picked it up himself, put it over his shoulder, and followed.

49

NIGHTMARE

WHEN KOU TONG woke up, he found that he was back home. His whole body was tightly wrapped in blankets. He was a little hot, so he struggled unconsciously and was held down. Next to him, Huang Jinchen quietly said, “You’re running a fever. Stay still. Don’t let the heat escape. I’ll go get you some water.”

The inside of Kou Tong’s head was a ball of paste, so he agreed without any objection and lay back down.

Huang Jinchen went out and said something to someone, then came in carrying a cup of warm water. He first tried a mouthful himself before lifting Kou Tong by the shoulders, letting him lean against himself, and giving him the water to drink. When half the cup was gone, he took a little pill bottle from beside him and quietly said, “Take some medicine, too. Your mom gave you a shot to relieve inflammation.”

Kou Tong was silent for a while, then belatedly said, “…She used to be a nurse.”

“Yeah.” Huang Jinchen watched him take the medicine, then put the cup aside and lightly laid him down. “Go to sleep now.”

Kou Tong frowned. His whole body was sore, like acid coming from the cracks in his bones. Each motion felt off. It had been many years since he had been sick at all.

“Er-Pang,” he said, “I don’t feel well.”

His voice was slightly hoarse, slightly nasal, a little breathless; it actually sounded a little soft. Huang Jinchen laughed softly, put his hands on either side of him, and lowered his head as if wanting to press their foreheads together. He asked, “Are you acting spoiled?”

Kou Tong thought about it for two seconds, then decisively acknowledged, “Yeah.”

Huang Jinchen rolled over and got in bed, squeezing in next to him, embracing him through the quilt. “Fine, then I’ll hug you while you sleep.”

What kind of a lousy idea was this… Completely held by him, quilt and all, unable even to roll over, wouldn’t he be even more uncomfortable? Kou Tong’s eyelids were a little heavy, but he still turned his head to widen his eyes, slightly bloodshot from fever, in an expression of protest.

But Huang Jinchen buried his head against the hollow of his shoulder and didn’t receive this signal. After a while, he said in a muffled voice, “The first time I carried out an assignment, the instructor said I was a natural born sniper. Throughout the whole process of pulling the trigger and confirming that the target was dead, my blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing all remained steady. When he said this, the expression he looked at me with was a little strange. It was praising me, but it was also very grave, as if he thought that me slaughtering my own kind like chopping a radish had some antisocial tendencies.

“Actually, I also think I’m a little antisocial,” Huang Jinchen said. “Of course, normally, I don’t want to blow up government buildings, and I don’t want to wait by the side of the road with a gun, taking down the even numbers and letting the odd ones go…including the years I was a planted agent in Utopia. When I received an order, I would carry it out. I didn’t have any feeling that I was deceiving anyone’s emotions. I didn’t feel nervous, guilty, conflicted, or anything like that. I always thought…that I wasn’t a normal person.”

Kou Tong’s features softened. He wanted to free up a hand to pat him on the head, but Huang Jinchen held it down firmly; he couldn’t remove a single finger.

Huang Jinchen’s arms holding him became tighter and tighter, so even through the thick quilt, Kou Tong had a feeling of being unbearably strapped down. The man’s body even began to tremble faintly. “But just now, you scared me to death… You fucking scared me to death!”

Kou Tong’s heart suddenly gave a fierce twinge. He seemed for the first time in his life to feel this emotion that seemed to have physical substance, blazing yet hidden. It wasn’t playing along, wasn’t suggestive flirting; it was true and genuine…emotion.

Ten thousand carefully prepared honeyed words probably all couldn’t compare to that hysterical low roar of “You scared me to death.”

Kou Tong was dazed from fever and couldn’t clearly say what he was feeling, only that it was a little like the feeling of all kinds of emotions welling up, sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy all mixing together in one pot, pouring heavily into his heart. For a time, he couldn’t clearly describe it. So he didn’t struggle again, only lay in Huang Jinchen’s arms and murkily fell asleep.

This time, his sleep wasn’t very steady, all wild dreams. He didn’t quite know the time of day. He seemed to be awake, but he also seemed unable to wake up no matter what.

Half an hour later, probably because of the heat, Kou Tong began to struggle unconsciously. Huang Jinchen held him tighter, lightly wiping the cold sweat from the corners of his pale forehead. Watching him frown, he felt sudden tenderness.

Huang Jinchen felt that Kou Tong had always been the sort of person who could sleep until the end of the world if you only gave him a bed. He had never seen him frown in his sleep. He gently smoothed the center of Kou Tong’s brow with his fingers and patted his back time after time through the quilt… It turned out that this man who could give you a great sense of security with his voice alone also had such times of weakness.

Only being beside this person gave him a feeling that…he was a real person.

This made him suddenly feel a sense of danger. Huang Jinchen, looking at Kou Tong, couldn’t resist thinking: If you were gone one day, what would I do?

His hands holding the edges of the quilt suddenly tightened. The veins on the backs of his hands stood out. In that moment, the look in Huang Jinchen’s eyes was almost vicious as he looked at the entirely unconscious Kou Tong. He seemed to have turned into a wild beast, ready to pounce and bite through Kou Tong’s neck. But in the end, he only leaned down and kissed Kou Tong on the forehead, then picked up the cup of water and a small cotton swab and lightly wet his lips, dry and cracked from fever.

“Then I’ll kill you,” he announced gently and unfeelingly as he did this.

After a while, perhaps pursued by nightmares, Kou Tong suddenly twitched and curled into a ball, a quiet sob in an altered pitch coming out of his throat. Dizzy from fever, he whispered unknown ravings. Huang Jinchen drew close and listened carefully for a long time, but he couldn’t understand anything. Kou Tong was about to struggle out of the quilt. He gathered up the raised corners of the quilt but felt that Kou Tong seemed to be trembling.

Just then, there was a sudden sound. A localized earthquake seemed to begin around them. The whole apartment was “sewn up” with mirrors; the walls were hung full of them. In order not to frighten people, they were usually all covered up with cloth or wall stickers. Huang Jinchen raised his head and found that a piece of cloth had fallen from the wall. A crack had appeared in the mirror out of nowhere. The water in the cup on the table splashed out, leaving a small water stain.

“Kou Tong…” Huang Jinchen stared fixedly at that crack and reached out to push Kou Tong by the shoulder. “Wake up.”

He felt that he had enough previous examples to know what this was. This was just like the first time the two of them had gone into Lao Yao’s projection space and the space had suddenly collapsed, just like the projected street when He Xiaozhi had wanted to jump off the building…

“Kou Tong!”

Kou Tong didn’t move, but someone pounded on the bedroom door. Huang Jinchen opened the door and found the whole household standing there, nervously asking, “What’s wrong? Is it a sudden earthquake? Isn’t Kou Tong awake yet? What are we going to do?”

Without another word, Huang Jinchen wet a towel with cold water and stuck it to Kou Tong’s face.

Kou Tong gave a start and immediately opened his eyes. At the same time, the moment his pupils began to focus and he woke up, the shaking in the room immediately vanished.

Huang Jinchen put his hands behind his back and lightly waved to him. Kou Tong looked up and saw the cracked mirror in the room. His still vague expression cleared up a little at once. Then, in a heavily nasal voice, he asked as though nothing were the matter, “What’s wrong?”

Huang Jinchen said, “It’s nothing, rest.”

Then he used his glib tongue to talk the whole family into leaving and made them believe that this had only been a small earthquake, magnitude 4 and under.

Kou Tong let out a breath and threw himself back heavily, lying back in bed. He was covered in cold sweat, clammy all over, but his head was much clearer. And waking up this time, he had an ominous premonition that it would be game over soon.

After a while, Huang Jinchen opened the door and came in. He bent down and pressed his forehead to Kou Tong’s. “How are you?”

“Much better. My head still hurts a little.” Kou Tong paused, then said, “I’m all clammy. It’s uncomfortable. Can I go shower?”

Huang Jinchen pulled up a chair, sat down by the bedside, and wiped his face with a towel. “Hold out a little longer. Your mom said you can go shower when the fever is completely down.”

Kou Tong closed his eyes and sighed softly.

“What happened just now?” Huang Jinchen asked. Then he looked at Kou Tong’s expression and added, “Can you talk about it?”

“It must have been a nightmare.” Kou Tong was worn out. His voice was very low. “I can’t quite remember clearly.”

“Or you can’t talk about it?”

Kou Tong considered it. There were some things that, if they were avoided, would be suppressed from the consciousness into the subconscious. When he was awake, he could balance out his own mental state, but in his dreams, there was no way to avoid. This wasn’t reality. In reality, no one cared what he dreamed in the middle of the night. But this was a precariously balanced world built of the accumulation of everyone’s consciousness projections.

There was no way to avoid your own memories and emotions. The things that had happened had happened; this was a fact.

“Go get a bowl of water,” Kou Tong said. “Cold water.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try to resolve this problem,” Kou Tong said. He sat up laboriously. Huang Jinchen deftly shoved a pillow behind him. Kou Tong continued, “There are some things I don’t remember clearly and need to dig up. I definitely won’t be able to remember if I force myself, so I need to think of a way to make myself enter the specific time and circumstances of that period. When there’s an emotional resonance, it will be easier to remember. This normally requires the guidance of a professional and is under the professional’s control.”

He raised his head and looked at Huang Jinchen. “You obviously aren’t a professional.”

Huang Jinchen was unsatisfied. “But I’m still a living creature. I suppose I can do something?”

“Yes, you can,” Kou Tong said. “Go get a bowl of cold water. If an earthquake like the one just now happens again, splash me awake with the water.”

50

MURDER

KOU TONG was about to get out of bed and was held back by Huang Jinchen, who wrapped a blanket around him. “You’ve just managed to sweat it out a little. What are you looking for? I’ll find it for you.”

“Something in the safe,” Kou Tong said. “Take everything out—the switch is on the very top of the cabinet, you’ll find it as soon as you start feeling around.”

The huge bookcase split into two parts, revealing the safe inside. Huang Jinchen looked back at him, and Kou Tong casually said, “The code is BODEBX.”

Huang Jinchen paused. “You’re…just telling me that…”

Kou Tong leaned back against the head of the bed, raised his head, and smiled at him. “There aren’t any state secrets inside, and if there are, they’re of a technical nature. You wouldn’t understand, anyway.”

For some reason, Huang Jinchen’s mood suddenly became very good.

The little cipher box popped out from inside. The yellowed file case, like a display of a secret concealed in a remote space and time, lay there quietly. Huang Jinchen picked it up and suddenly felt a bit of reverent fear, as if what he was holding wasn’t an old file pouch but Kou Tong’s heart and memories.

“Turn off the lights,” Kou Tong said softly. Huang Jinchen turned off the lights. He raised a hand to turn on a dim little bedside lamp.

Huang Jinchen sat by the side of his bed and raised a hand to gather up the blanket draped over Kou Tong. He watched him open the file pouch and pour out some moldy-smelling things. Perhaps because of the light or because he was running a fever, Kou Tong’s face seemed extremely pale. His long, thick lashes weren’t as curled as those of Westerners. Rather, they fell straight down, casting a dark shadow. In that instant, he wasn’t smiling; he was like a spirit trapped in a ruin, forgetting who he was, passing ten years like a single day.

After a long time, Kou Tong, holding a folded admission notice, said, “This was the first gift I received after the Projector entered its experimental phase and I formally ‘retired.’ You could call it compensation for my actions not being free over the years before.”

“From O University?” Though Huang Jinchen was a half-illiterate youth, he had still heard once or twice of this famous educational establishment. “Hey, my wife is really capable.”

When he said this, all of the bedroom’s dim and tranquil atmosphere was broken. The train of thought Kou Tong had just started on unexpectedly cut off. He felt as though a breath was caught in his throat.

After a moment, Kou Tong laughed softly. He didn’t look up, but the shadowy look in his eyes softened considerably, no longer seeming so gloomy. He raised a finger to his lips and “shush”ed softly. “Don’t interrupt.”

Huang Jinchen obediently shut his mouth.

“The first time I went on a long trip.” After a while, Kou Tong folded up the admission notice and picked up the old photographs next to it. “Some are from university, and some are pictures from when I was aimlessly wandering all over Europe.”

Huang Jinchen, imitating the pace of his speech, asked extremely quietly and extremely gently, “Why did you stop taking pictures afterwards?”

“Afterwards I found that I wasn’t actually interested in photography, and I didn’t have any talent,” Kou Tong said, “so I stopped developing photos. At most I’d use a digital camera or my phone to casually snap a few shots, and I didn’t feel like doing anything with them, just kept them on the memory card.”

Huang Jinchen watched him turn over one old photo after another. The person in the photos didn’t seem any different from the present Kou Tong—smiling brilliantly, assuming all kinds of vulgar or deliberately preening poses. They must have been taken just a few years ago. But when he came to the last few photos, he found that there were some older ones.

Huang Jinchen stared.

The little boy in the picture seemed to be less than ten years old. There was no distinction between male and female clothes for small children. This made his features look even more like Kou Tong’s mother’s. But Huang Jinchen looked for a long time before remembering…this little boy might be Kou Tong when he was little.

So he softly asked, “Is this you?”

It was no wonder he hadn’t recognized him at first. It would have been hard for anyone to link the little boy in the picture to the present Kou Tong—the kid’s features were delicate, with the characteristic pure good looks of childhood, but he seemed somewhat deathly.

He was like…a lifeless doll, quietly standing next to the woman, looking out of the image. There was none of a child’s liveliness and wit. Instead, it gave you a sense of indescribable blankness and indifference.

He wasn’t smiling, but the woman next to him was forcing a smile—the corners of her mouth were stiffly turned up, but there wasn’t a trace of laughter lines at the corners of her eyes.

The woman and child took up only half of the photograph, but the other half was empty. Someone had used a bright red pen to draw a big X over it.

Holding this photograph, Kou Tong became motionless. For a moment, Huang Jinchen nearly had the impression that his breathing had vanished.

“It’s me,” Kou Tong said after a long time as though talking in his sleep. “Next to me is my mom. Where the X is should be my…father. But he doesn’t exist in this space, so there’s a blank in all the pictures where he used to be.”

He pinched the photo paper gently with his nails. During this time, neither of them spoke. There was only the rustle of the photo paper. “I remember….he was here.

“It rained hard that day,” Kou Tong said softly, “but he was very happy, because it was their wedding anniversary…”

The faded things in his memories seemed to skim quickly through his brain, like a dust-covered treasure chest being suddenly opened; the things inside were all just as before. There seemed to be the sound of dense rain outside the window; the sky was dark, pressing down on the city, and the air was humid and wet.

“He suddenly opened the door and loudly said, ‘Come on, we’re going out to eat today, and we’ll take a family portrait.’” Kou Tong’s pupils suddenly seemed unfocused. Through the old photograph, they fell on that long ago…lost time. “We went out together, ate, then took many pictures in the photo studio across the street from the restaurant. There’s an enlarged one in the living room.”

“What is it? Was your childhood unhappy?” Huang Jinchen asked quietly.

“When he wasn’t drinking, he was a man who loved to talk and laugh. When he’d been drinking…” Kou Tong paused, then flatly and quietly said, “He wasn’t a person anymore.”

Huang Jinchen tentatively reached out and covered the back of Kou Tong’s hand. He felt him struggle uncontrollably, giving a start. The carefree Dr. Kou had suddenly become extremely sensitive to another’s touch. Huang Jinchen asked, “Was it domestic violence?”

Kou Tong nodded. “He didn’t let my mom talk to other men. He was shiftless when he was young, managed to muddle his way into a few accomplishments, but when he reached middle age, he was even more outrageous. I went through his criminal record afterwards. It seems he also had a record of drug dealing. When he was in a bad mood, he would drink. Then…”

“He hit your mother? What about you?” Huang Jinchen asked. “Did he touch you?”

Kou Tong’s profile was extremely tense, remembering something. After a long moment, he finally gave a cold laugh. His finger tapped the bloody red cross. He didn’t answer Huang Jinchen’s question directly. “I really wanted to kill…him.”

Huang Jinchen had a wild animal’s intuition. Though he didn’t know what the law of memory was, what perception was, what an unstructured diagnosis was, he felt that not answering a question directly was a means of avoidance; though he didn’t want to avoid, instinct still made him skillfully avoid.

So Huang Jinchen’s hand holding him tightened. He pressed, “Answer me, did he hit you?”

“He put his hands around my neck,” Kou Tong finally said with difficulty after a long time. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. His voice was increasingly thin. “Holding me by the neck, he pressed me against the wall. His eyes were all bloodshot. The breath he exhaled was foul and full of the smell of alcohol. He was like a monster.”

Huang Jinchen’s heart tightened.

“My mom screamed and threw herself over. He pushed her aside, threw me down, and hit her over the head with a bottle. He hit her several times… The alcohol and blood mixed together—until she was lying on the ground, not moving.”

“And then what?” Huang Jinchen asked softly. “What happened to her then?”

“Then some of his friends came to our house. They didn’t know anything was wrong. As soon as they saw that there was going to be a death, they finally pulled him away. She was taken to the hospital,” Kou Tong said. “It was like that every time. He got drunk, hit her, then sobered up. It was too late for regrets, so he got on his knees, apologized, swore…”

“It came to that, and she was still willing to stay with him?”

“After she got out of the hospital, she took me home to pack her things and prepare to leave that drunkard.”

A bang, a woman’s scream and a child’s sudden hysterical crying, a man’s furious cursing… These sounds mixed together seemed able to strike directly at a person’s soul. Kou Tong suddenly raised his hands to cover his head. His fingertips turned pale, firmly pressed to his temples. He leaned against the head of the bed, curled into a ball, his shoulders sticking out of the blanket. His shirt was drenched, tightly stuck to his thin, hunched shoulders.

Huang Jinchen put his arms around his shoulders. Taking no notice of Kou Tong’s struggles, he pressed him firmly into his arms.

“Shh…” he said, “it’s all right. Look, there’s no unusual shaking in the space, we still don’t need the cold water. Calm down a little. She didn’t manage to leave?”

Kou Tong was constrained in his arms. His voice even seemed deeper. “…He suddenly threw himself forward and locked the door. He knocked her out, then dragged her along the ground. He kept dragging…as though he were dragging a corpse, glaring at me in the meantime. Then he locked her up.”

“Illegal detention?”

“Yeah.”

“And then what?”

This time, Kou Tong didn’t speak for a long, long time. Finally, somewhat painfully, he closed his eyes. “I…can’t remember.”

Huang Jinchen was silent for a while. But after all, he wasn’t a professional. He faintly guessed that the part he couldn’t remember was the most crucial, but he still didn’t know what to do. He could only hold him, gently patting his back. After a while, he finally found a starting point and asked, “The wounds on your arm. Did you make them yourself?”

Kou Tong shook.

“Did you do it then?”

“…No.” Kou Tong struggled free of him, took a deep breath, and raised his head to look at the shadowed ceiling. “That was later, after she passed away.”

“Why?” Huang Jinchen asked.

Kou Tong closed his eyes. It was clear that he was doing his best to calm himself, but the skin between his brows kept shaking faintly. After a while, he opened his eyes and shook his head a little wearily.

As expected, it wasn’t so easy being a psychiatrist. Huang Jinchen rubbed his chin.

He picked up the photograph with the X drawn over it, looked at it, and commented: “Your mom doesn’t look as well as she does now.”

Kou Tong gave a bitter laugh. “Isn’t that to be expected?”

“Well…” Huang Jinchen looked at her for a while and described, “There’s no blood in her face. She looks wilted. And her lips are all purple. She has a sickly look, all…”

Kou Tong’s eyes suddenly opened wide. He grabbed him by the arm. “What did you say?”

“I said she has a sickly look, all listless,” Huang Jinchen repeated.

“Not that part. You said her lips were purple…”

Huang Jinchen suddenly felt the familiar shaking.

He looked in conflict at the cold water, but with matters coming to a head, he couldn’t bear to splash him with it—a normal person would sneeze a few times, and Kou Tong was feverish to start with. Wouldn’t this be driving him to his death?

“Purple lips…” Suddenly, Kou Tong began to laugh quietly. The expression on his face was defeated; he looked almost like a dead man. “Yes…her lips always looked pale, because she had heart disease. At home…there was a medicine chest. Her suxiao jiuxin pills and nitroglycerin were always prepared.”

His speech became more and more rapid, and the room shook harder and harder. Turmoil began to come from the living room. Once again someone started desperately knocking on the door yelling “earthquake.” Huang Jinchen ignored it. He only felt more and more fearful, faintly sensing what Kou Tong was going to say next.

“She was locked in a little room, living an inhuman life. I tried many different ways. There were always his people in the house, watching… I couldn’t protect her, and I couldn’t save her. If I even got close to her room, someone would quickly cover my eyes and carry me away…” The corners of Kou Tong’s eyes were wet. He was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, but his tears dripped down bit by bit, scalding. “I could only…I could only free her.

“I could only free her. I could only…free her…”

He repeated this again and again, almost demented, as if once again witnessing that powerless, skinny little boy emptying the little pill bottles, sprinkling the life-saving medicine under the couch, then waiting for her to have an attack one day, unable to breathe, her face turning purple, her eyes rolling up, as ugly as all people in their final struggle…

The man, for once showing some intellect, ransacked the house for medicine as if he’d gone insane. All he could find were a few completely empty bottles.

When he was ten years old, a little boy, using his greatest courage and scheming, murdered his mother.

He knew that never again in his life would he love another woman so deeply, or rather…that there would never be another person who loved him like that.

The suspended mirror broke. Huang Jinchen gritted his teeth and held down Kou Tong’s shoulders. He drew close and firmly blocked all his sobs… He had decided to use a more intense method to wake him up.

51

LOOKING BACK

THE WHOLE ROOM gave a fierce shake. A crack opened in the floor. Then all the shaking weirdly stopped. Kou Tong found the strength somewhere to suddenly push Huang Jinchen away. He covered his mouth. His eyes, which had already dried, were once again swimming with tears.

After a while, gasping in a breath, he finally said, “You fucking…”

Huang Jinchen looked innocent.

Kou Tong didn’t remove the hand covering his mouth. “Didn’t I tell you to use cold water? Was that cold water?!”

Huang Jinchen used the tip of his foot to kick the bowl a little further away. “How could I bear to splash you with cold water?”

“…” Kou Tong glare at him fiercely. “But you could bear to bite my tongue? It’s bleeding! Shit!”

“Um…” Huang Jinchen lowered his head and looked guilty. “Well, I just got a little too excited.”

The person pounding on the door obviously changed. They heard Manman’s tender voice call from outside: “Auntie says to tell you two to control yourselves a little. There’s an earthquake, so you can just hold out. As long as the ceiling doesn’t cave in, the sheets and the bedplate will still be here. You can keep rolling around when you get back.”

Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen looked at each other blankly. Kou Tong bumped Huang Jinchen with his knee. “Rock, paper, scissors. Whoever loses goes to calm them down.”

Huang Jinchen looked fixedly at him for a while, then quietly said, “I lose.”

Then he reached out to wipe away the tear stains on Kou Tong’s face and pulled the quilt over him. “Lie down. You just took medicine. Don’t catch a cold.”

He walked out and closed the door. The sound of quiet conversation came from outside.

Kou Tong looked down at his arm and found that all the blood had stopped as if by miracle. The wounds were still there, but they seemed to show signs of healing.

“How humiliating.” Kou Tong gave a bitter laugh, feeling an almost self-abandoning sense of freedom.

Living wasn’t easy. It seemed that you had to go through some hysteria, pain down to your inner being, down to the bone, engraved on the heart, leaving a brand on the soul, had to go through several reincarnations until it could no longer be erased, before you could reach enlightenment.

It was a long time before Huang Jinchen, using some unknown means, finally reassured the people outside. When he came back, he found Kou Tong with his back to the door, lying on his side, slightly curled up, seeming already asleep. So he immediately made his movements lighter, carefully walked over, sat on the bedside, and reached out to feel Kou Tong’s forehead. He felt that the fever seemed to have basically gone down.

Suddenly, Kou Tong grabbed his wrist. Only then did Huang Jinchen find that his eyes were open.

“Er-Pang, do you want to fuck me?” Kou Tong looked at him out of the corner of his eye. His eyelashes still seemed wet. The corners of his eyes were very long, as if outlined by a pen.

Er-Pang resisted the allure of beauty. He nodded uselessly.

Kou Tong asked, “Would the other way around work?”

Er-Pang looked over Dr. Kou’s little body laid out on the bed and was conflicted for two seconds, feeling that there was some difficulty about this.

But before he could answer, Kou Tong rolled over and lay face up on the bed. He smiled and cheerfully said, “Fine. Come on, then.”

Huang Jinchen’s throat bobbed up and down with difficulty. He shuffled towards him. “Oh, well…really?”

Kou Tong dragged out a long nasal hum: “Hm?”

This hum of his made Huang Jinchen’s nose heat up—was this guy human? Was he human? The wretched Er-Pang inwardly cried out and ran around, beat his breast and stamped his feet, let out howl like a wolf’s. The dim green light of a starving wolf shone from his eyes…

But he only shone like a flashlight for a while. He didn’t move.

After a long moment, the tense Huang Jinchen finally lay down beside Kou Tong, hugged him, gently kissed his temple, and reached up to turn off the bedside lamp.

“Don’t fool around. Sleep,” he said. “I don’t take advantage of others’ misfortunes.”

He patted Kou Tong on the back over and over, as if comforting a child, feeling his breath slowly even out… Then Kou Tong suddenly moved in the dark. In deadly earnest, he said, “What, are you having erectile disfunction?”

Two charming little veins popped up on Huang Jinchen’s forehead. He pinched Kou Tong’s waist and fiercely said, “Shut up and sleep!”

Kou Tong laughed silently and closed his increasingly heavy eyelids.

Great floating dreams and preposterous stories in the end came to such a conclusion. It was clear that in this world, the fate of humankind, all the ups and downs of life, came swiftly and changeably. No wonder so many people on earth lived every day as if it were the last and worried about tomorrow when it came.

The next day, as soon as Kou Tong moved, Huang Jinchen woke up. He didn’t open his eyes, only raised the arm lying on him and felt around for Kou Tong’s forehead. He found that his temperature had returned to normal, then finally relaxed and rolled over, indicating that restraining himself all night had been very painful, and he needed to get some more sleep.

When he got out of bed full of vitality, he found that Kou Tong wasn’t in the room, but he had already swapped out the broken mirror, cleaned up the shards on the floor, and scared up a row of small rugs to cover up the crack.

Kou Tong was in the study, testing his model. He was barefoot, his long legs propped on the table, the refined UV-protection lenses of an inhuman mouthpiece on his nose, holding a cigarette in his mouth in a vulgar fashion.

…Though his actions were vulgar, his expression was unusually earnest. He didn’t even notice when the study door was opened.

Huang Jinchen stood at the door looking at him for a while, then quietly closed the door and retreated. The outcome was that as soon as he turned his head, he found Kou Tong’s mom standing behind him peering around surreptitiously, looking probing.

Huang Jinchen said, “Auntie.”

“Ah…haha.” Kou Tong’s mom looked him up and down with a peculiar expression. Her gaze even made an extra circle around his butt. “You’re up? Just now? You’ve been working hard. Are you hungry?”

Huang Jinchen looked at her woodenly—Auntie, are you overthinking things? Or do you have too much confidence in your darling son?

Kou Tong’s mom, faced with his expressionless look, probably felt that she couldn’t withstand it. She complained, “Honestly! The rotten brat got up first thing in the morning to go tinker with his computer. That’s not tender at all. He’ll definitely turn into one of those vulgar shut-ins in the future. I’ll go teach him a lesson!”

Huang Jinchen felt the skin of his face twitching and quickly held her back. “He has urgent business. Auntie…you’d better not disturb him.”

Kou Tong’s mom put on an expression of “this child is so sensible, it’s so gratifying.” Then she turned and boldly went towards the kitchen. “What do you want to eat? Come on, order whatever you want!”

Huang Jinchen rubbed his nose and smiled. But when he remembered that this woman was the female main character of the story Kou Tong had told last night, he couldn’t smile anymore. He looked back at the tightly shut study door and thought that…even if they got out and left in the future, and this world became a pile of junk data, in Kou Tong’s heart, would she remain living like this, so thoughtless and tough?

No happiness like the happiness of a new acquaintance, no grief like the grief of a parting in life.

Huang Jinchen suddenly breathed in from the diaphragm and yelled: “He Xiaozhi!”

The sound of clattering came from He Xiaozhi’s room. Then he hastily stuck his head out. “Huh?”

Huang Jinchen knocked on the surface of a mirror with his knuckles and beckoned to him. “You understand.”

“OK.” He Xiaozhi shifted over slowly, then suddenly said to himself, “Why do I feel like I’ve turned into a travel array?”

Huang Jinchen looked askance at him—lately the kid hadn’t been trying to kill himself, and he had even developed the ability to talk back!

He Xiaozhi quickly swallowed his words and obediently did the proper work of a travel array—sent Huang Jinchen to see Lao Tian.

When he was gone, Kou Tong’s mom stuck her head out, holding a spatula, and beckoned to He Xiaozhi. “Hey, hey.”

He Xiaozhi: “?”

Kou Tong’s mom twisted her fingers and rather awkwardly said, “Why did he run off? Hey, do you think I was too direct? Did I embarrass him?”

He Xiaozhi was silent for a while. “I…don’t…think so?”

…Auntie, you really are overthinking things.

Yao Shuo heard movement but didn’t come out. He only sat upright in place, looking at the little water pistol in front of him—Kou Tong had given it to him. Supposedly it was the ultimate weapon that had eliminated the rules of the Lovers.

Kou Tong had said, “Look, such a little thing, and in fact it also has its use. You should take it, sir. You can take it out to look at when you miss your family. I’ll get everyone out as soon as possible.”

Yao Shuo had taken the water pistol silently, looking at the man who had once again become healthy and active overnight, ready to continue wreaking devastation on the world. He had suddenly thought, hadn’t there always been a type of person in the world that was naturally elite and aloof? A type of person who, before even managing to take care of their own business, in dire straits and covered in blood themselves, always wanted to be a savior to others?

So he had expressionlessly closed the door in Dr. Kou’s lucky cat-like face, but he had gently clasped the seemingly fragile and unbelievably small water pistol, lit a cigarette, and sat silently on his own.

Huang Jinchen familiarly arrived at Lao Tian’s place. Making himself at home, he entered the log cabin and poured himself tea.

Lao Tian said, “You’re here?”

“Yeah,” Huang Jinchen said. “My significant other gave me a scare, so I came over to take a breath and rest a little.”

Lao Tian silently waited for him to continue.

“I saw him cry, and I went all muddleheaded. There was nothing I could do.” Huang Jinchen sighed. “When I saw him today, I didn’t know what to say.”

Lao Tian smiled when he heard this. “Nonsense.”

“How is it nonsense?” Huang Jinchen frowned.

“A person is born crying. That’s because the child is squeezed through the birth canal. Think about it, a baby has such a big skull when it’s born. How much pain must it suffer being born?”

“Who knows?” Huang Jinchen laughed. “We’ve forgotten it, anyway—what does that have to do with it?”

“It’s the same,” Lao Tian said. “You suffer when you’re born and suffer growing up, and after getting old, you still have to suffer. When one day you croak, someone else may suffer.”

Lao Tian looked at Huang Jinchen. “No matter how well you get on with someone in your life, you can never become him, not unless you slice him up and stew him in a pot, cook him and eat him. Otherwise, even if you spend your whole lives together, there are some matters where he’s still him and you’re still you.”

Huang Jinchen drank in silence, perhaps considering the suggestion of slicing up and stewing in a pot.

“If he gets a scrape, looking at it makes your heart hurt, but it’s still only your heart. You can’t feel the pain for him in your flesh,” Lao Tian said lightly. “There are always final partings in life and death. When the time comes, you’ll find that a person’s whole life is in fact very short.”

“And so?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“If you want to understand each and every thing, then you don’t understand anything,” Lao Tian said. “You have to get by however you can. If there’s a pit he can’t get over and you value your emotional tie, you can pull him over or wait beside him, but you can’t jump over it in his place. When he gets over it, there’s also no need for you to look back and keep it in your heart.

“Don’t look back,” Lao Tian said softly. “Until you’re old, don’t look back. You know in your heart that once you look back, old friends and stories will be gone, but you’re still unwilling to believe it. So don’t look. It’s enough to understand. You can’t always be sighing. If you sigh too much, you’ll compromise your own good fortune.”

52

HATRED

QIN QIN felt that she was having a very long dream. In the dream, a cold man wearing a white coat pointed to her and said to the woman next to him, “There’s no hereditary disease in the family… I heard that she had an accident when she was little?”

The woman said, “Yes, the nanny took her eyes off her and the child ran away and got hit by a car.”

The man nodded indifferently. “That’s right. When there isn’t a major hereditary influence, it’s likely to be an injury to the brain that caused damage to her temporal lobe, causing her delusions from then on.”

While he spoke, he was standing very far away. Qin Qin raised her head. Even looking carefully, she couldn’t see the look in his eyes. She only thought that his gaze was very sinister. She was a little scared, feeling that this man could turn into a man-eating monster any time. His mouth was so big. It split up to the roots of his ears. When he spoke, uneven fangs were faintly visible, like many sharp weapons, ready to pierce a person’s heart.

Qin Qin clutched the card in her pocket. This card was Death. On it was her knight of death, holding a banner with a white rose. This card wasn’t as frightening as its name. Behind it lay not an abyss but rebirth, all old things coming to an end, a new journey about to begin.

She had always loved this card and believed that the knight in black armor was protecting her. Though he had only his skeleton left to him, he still held up the dawn and raised the rose banner high.

He must have had a pair of firm and gentle eyes. When he spoke, each word seemed to strike a person’s heart. He was always walking the boundary between life and death alone, casting a shadow like night in the faint light of the morning sun, reaping with one hand and sowing with the other.

The sound of the woman’s crying came to her ears. Qin Qin looked up at her blankly and thought, Stupid mortal.

She had always despised this woman. Qin Qin had once thought that the person who had brought her into the world must be a goddess among mortals; though she had an ordinary human body, she had wisdom, tenderness, beauty. But she had found that she was wrong.

She was only a woman a little stupider even than ordinary people. When the truth was revealed before her, she not only felt no pride or reverence, she wailed interminably, like a scared rat.

The man gave her a sinister look, a hypocritical smile appearing on his face. “Qin Qin, can you wait here a bit? Entertain yourself. I’m going to say some things to your mother.”

Qin Qin only stared at him warily, staring at his eyes, through which red light occasionally flashed, and the sharp, cunning fangs that appeared when he pulled back his lips.

The two of them went out, and Qin Qin sat on the couch alone, tightly holding her knight’s card.

Just then, a young man suddenly opened the door and came in hurriedly, seeming to be looking for something. At her first look at him, Qin Qin froze—he had a pair of gentle, firm eyes. When he inadvertently glanced at her, he wore a smile that was perfectly kind.

Qin Qin’s gaze was glued to him, unwilling to leave him for a moment.

In that instant, she clearly felt the card in her hand heat up. Yes, they had a reaction.

Are you…my death knight of resurrection?

Qin Qin’s heart beat faster and faster. Then the man bent down and poured her a cup of water, curved his eyes in a smile—he was very good-looking when he smiled. Her nose stung; she nearly cried. She had thought that her coming to this world was a mistake, because none of her servants could pass through that clear barrier, leaving her all alone to live in this desolate world, while they had become card after card that could only protect her in silence.

Are you the only one? she thought. Are you the only one who always protects me and follows me?

They only had time to exchange a few hurried sentences. Qin Qin saw tacit understanding in his handsome face. They were the only two people in the world who could understand these words. He must have understood—but the cold man with the fangs quickly came back with the weeping woman, and her knight of death was forced to leave.

For many years after that, he didn’t appear before her again.

Only when the world’s barrier was opened once again were all the cards freed from the paper; but Qin Qin searched for a long time and found that the twenty-two Major Arcana were gathered, and the only one missing was Death, the one she longed for most.

Their chance meetings had always been unexpected. However, there was no need to worry. With mutual love and loyalty, no time or space could separate them…

However… Why were there always so many howevers in the world?

Qin Qin hated the world she had lived in before. It was false, filthy, stupid. Everyone thought so highly of themselves, everyone thought they were right. They were like insects trapped in a narrow world, struggling to their death for the sake of a paltry bit of light or a few crumbs, greedy and ridiculous.

They said she lived in a world of her own, but in fact she was very attentive towards each movement others made. They shut her up in the hospital with white walls all around, then stood outside a huge glass window, pointing at her and judging her.

All of this disgusted Qin Qin.

The things she loved were always forced to leave, and the things she hated lingered forever before her eyes. For her, the whole world was a hell she couldn’t be liberated from, couldn’t escape, couldn’t struggle free of.

Each time she couldn’t stand it and began to scream, people would charge in. They held her down and put syringes in her veins, injecting her with this world’s poisons. Each time, she tensed her muscles, but her weak body still couldn’t resist the invasion of these poisons.

They eroded her brain, sometimes even eroded her consciousness. Under the influence of the drugs, in her daze, she had actually once suspected that all the cards were fake. There was no Magician holding flowers, no Star you could wish on, no Lovers standing under the Tree of Knowledge, no Hanged Man, and also…no knight who had once again grown flesh, whose smile was as bright and pure as night sky at the border of death.

Luckily, she had made it through.

But her knight hadn’t. Before she could recover from the joy of their reunion, she noticed his distant and wavering gaze. She was uneasy and sent other cards to watch at his door. As a result, she suffered the greatest shock of her life—the knight of death betrayed her.

Longing for his smile, she had waited for so long, but what had come was his betrayal. Even in the maze laid down by the Lovers, he still abandoned her without looking back, walking towards a hell full of mud.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. Death was number thirteen among the Major Arcana, the other starting point of the Magician’s little circle. And the betrayal of a starting point card inevitably led to the weakening of all the cards’ abilities. After the Devil card was shot by a silver bullet and returned to its original shape, even the Tower disintegrated.

After the rules of the Lovers collapsed, Qin Qin found that there were only eleven cards left that she could use!

People did not fear the attacks of the enemy, however powerful an enemy it was, however undefeatable it seemed. The most fatal wounds always came from the thing called “hope.”

Qin Qin thought that this must be why the last thing that flew out of Pandora’s Box was hope.

There was nothing more dangerous than hope, and nothing darker than hope.

After the High Priestess brought her back from the dead Lovers, Qin Qin shut herself up in the castle for two days. She seemed to be caught in a vicious circle—did “the dead Lovers” mean something?

Then she came to a decision.

Kou Tong holed himself up in his study, even eating in front of the computer. The computer’s fan screamed in protest and was completely ignored by him without mercy. The first time Huang Jinchen went to see him, he found him with both legs on the desk, sitting improperly. The second time he went to see him, he found that he had put his legs down and was sitting very properly, typing in commands with his fingers flying. The third time he went to see him, he found him with one leg crossed over the other, arms crossed in front of his chest, a pen in his mouth, having ruffled his hair into a bird’s nest.

The fourth time he went to see him, he found that Dr. Kou was imitating the actions of his closely linked partner in livelihood—the gorilla. He was squatting on his chair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he was staring dully at the screen.

This was already…forty-eight hours after he had returned from Lao Tian’s place.

Huang Jinchen at last decided not to endure any longer. He walked right in and patted Kou Tong on the shoulder. Kou Tong only reacted after two seconds, looking up at him woodenly. Huang Jinchen leaned down, put one arm over the backs of his knees and the other around his back, then bent over and simply lifted him over his shoulder like a big sack.

There was a clatter—the glasses sitting loosely on Kou Tong’s nose had fallen. Kou Tong cried out, “My glasses, my glasses…ah! Please take care to raise your feet, don’t step on them, brother!”

Huang Jinchen raised a hand and patted him on the butt. The feeling was pretty good. “Shout again and I’ll carry out the sentence on the spot.”

Kou Tong said, “Fine, fine, fine! No problem! Just save the data for me first! How annoying!”

Huang Jinchen’s steps paused. He turned. As if it took him no effort to carry a grown man over his shoulder, he fumbled his way back in front of the computer and obediently saved.

“Shit, Kou Tong, what is this crappy machine of yours? It’s taking forever.” Huang Jinchen irritably put Kou Tong down. “You got this CPU out of an electronic pet, didn’t you?”

Kou Tong said, “…so dizzy…”

Huang Jinchen narrowed his eyes, simply pushed the computer aside, then put Kou Tong on the desk and earnestly said, “Darling, it’s wrong to tease a starving man.”

The world spun around Kou Tong. He dizzily felt the world go dark in front of his eyes. There was a buzzing in his ears. “Thank you, I’ve noticed…”

Huang Jinchen pounced with a sinister smile. “Uh-huh, your highness the princess, even if you shout yourself hoarse now, it’ll still be no use!”

53

SEA OF GHOSTS

HUANG JINCHEN went into Kou Tong’s study saying he was going to tell him to come out and rest. Then…the two of them didn’t come out.

Kou Tong’s mom thought it was a little strange, but she didn’t go knock on the door. She thought, her son was so grown-up, and he was doing very important work. If she went to knock on the door and ask what was going on over every little trifle, she would definitely become an annoying, nagging old woman to him.

She was immensely pleased with her own open-mindedness and good sense, feeling that there were few such good-natured mothers in the world.

Concerning Huang Jinchen’s unspeakable little gay love affair with her darling son, Kou Tong’s mom was conflicted for a bit, then thought… Well, never mind, let him do what he wants.

For some reason, she couldn’t get into the mood to govern his behavior, even though, to her conventional gaze, this kind of combination wasn’t conventional enough. Even coming to the latter half of the twenty-first century, it still wasn’t a family structure welcomed by the general public. But…she had suddenly thought that there also wasn’t anything bad about it.

If two people suited each other, whether one was a man or woman, old or young, they were still suited.

There were some people who spent their whole lives adhering to rules and norms, and some who spent their whole lives being unconventional. In fact, it was hard to say who was happier.

After a long time, the study door opened from the inside. Kou Tong’s mom had a facial mask stuck to her face and was calmly holding up a fashion magazine to read, just as if she wasn’t disturbed at all.

Huang Jinchen carried Kou Tong out. He acted like a thief…and a successful one, at that, with a peculiar, lascivious smile on his face. He glanced furtively at Kou Tong’s mom, then gently closed the study door with his foot and softly carried Kou Tong, who had his head buried against his shoulder and may or may not have been awake, back to the bedroom.

Only then did Kou Tong’s mom raise her head from the magazine, which she hadn’t turned a page of in a long time, and roll her eyes towards the ceiling. She thought, Kid, you think I won’t see if you sneak around like that? What sharp teeth bit my son’s neck all red like that?

Then she was little displeased, but after considering it for two seconds, she thought that her displeasure wasn’t very reasonable, so she broad-mindedly put it aside, picked up a pen, and continued scribbling on the fashion magazine—these shoes were good, she would buy a pair; this dress was also good…

Kou Tong lay unmoving as a dead fish while Huang Jinchen cleaned him up and put him on the bed. His eyes were half-closed; he seemed ready to fall fast asleep any second.

Looking wasn’t enough, so Huang Jinchen leaned down and resonantly kissed his lips.

Kou Tong said, slightly indistinctly, “Enough… You’re so pleased with yourself your head’s about to start steaming.”

Huang Jinchen whistled, then put a hand over his head and made an S shape.

“Look, it is steaming.”

Looking at his foolish face, Kou Tong was silent for a moment, then indolently drew back his lips and started to laugh.

“Pull me up,” Kou Tong said. “…And next time, don’t pinch my waist so hard. I’m ticklish to begin with. No pinching allowed.”

Huang Jinchen pulled him up and sat at the side of the bed. Kou Tong patted him on the back. “Go get me something to eat.”

Huang Jinchen didn’t move. Looking fixedly at him, he quietly asked, “Do you like me?”

Kou Tong looked at him and asked in turn, “If I say I don’t, are you planning on starving me to death?”

Huang Jinchen, very openly and without conscience, nodded.

“Loving and leaving.” Kou Tong shook his head. With a bitter expression, he said, “Unfaithful and capricious, heartlessly having your way. A modern day Chen Shimei[21]… How did the limited resources of the world produce a scum among men like you?”

Huang Jinchen indifferently expressed, All right, so I’m scum!

Kou Tong laughed. “I like you, all right?”

Huang Jinchen nodded. Then he said, “I think that was a little insincere.”

Kou Tong’s expression conveyed his thoughts: Fuck off!

Huang Jinchen tugged at his sleeve and looked bashful. “Well, I want to hear it sincerely.”

Kou Tong narrowed his eyes and looked at him. “You can have it sincerely when you let me fuck you back.”

“That’s not sincerity, that’s sweet talk and glib words to deceive a stupid chick,” Huang Jinchen said all in one breath.

Kou Tong, holding his head, fell over and rolled around. “Ah! I can’t take it, why are you so meddlesome! As Ma Wencai liked Zhu Yingtai, as Fahai liked Lady White Snake, as Zhao Kuangyin liked Li Houzhu[22], that’s how I like you, you scumbag, all right?!”

Huang Jinchen was satisfied, feeling that this was sincere enough—who knew what CPU he had used to judge that; it had probably been taken out of some calculator…

Then he obediently went to find Kou Tong something to eat.

Though there was unrest in the world and the path ahead was unforeseeable, and there were many, many unhappy past events that they had yet to recall together; though all lives in the world were unable to escape the pain of existence…

Though the night was still approaching, they were together now.

Not before, not later; now.

As if amidst a surging sea and attack of waves that made it impossible to stand firm, a chain had suddenly reached out and tightly locked two people together. They had always been steadfast, and in the future they would be even more steadfast.

The name of this chain was “being together.”

Although in a person’s life, suffering was continuous and happiness was scattered, because of a few scattered points on the boundless line, people still felt full of hope. This had led humans through the grueling primitive society, through the lightless and unjust slave society, through the feudal society in which they struggled forward wearing tight yokes, still walking forward step by step.

Because “expectation” was still alive.

But this wasn’t a quiet night. Kou Tong’s mom took one of the picture books from when Kou Tong was little and told Manman a long-in-the-tooth bedtime story—for the little girl, this was already extreme favor, since her own mother had never treated her like this. Afterwards, she obediently laid down and went to sleep—to the sound of an extremely soft lullaby.

Kou Tong’s mom watched her fall asleep, planning to go drink a cup of water then get her beauty sleep.

Just as she had turned off the lights and was nodding off herself, all of a sudden, Manman’s little leg twitched, as if she had been frightened. Kou Tong’s mom woke and sat up, feeling around in the dark, and patted her little back. But Manman suddenly sat up, paused for a moment, then burst into tears.

Kou Tong’s mom thought she had had a nightmare. She hugged her tightly. Patting her on the back, she said, “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. Auntie is here.”

Manman tightly clutched the cuff of her pajamas. Like a kitten, she said, “Auntie, my mom doesn’t want me.”

Kou Tong’s mom froze. Manman continued: “I’m not a little monster…”

Then, as if not knowing how to defend herself, she said, sobbing, “I didn’t grow up like this on purpose… I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Kou Tong’s mom softly asked, “What do you mean, your mom doesn’t want you?”

“There was a gas leak once,” Manman said, sobbing. “I read in a book that when there’s a gas leak, the people inside get carbon monoxide poisoning and die—I was so scared. I was dizzy and wanted to throw up, but my mom locked me in the house…”

Kou Tong’s mom’s arms tightened around her.

“Then I used a chair to pound on the window. I hit it over and over before I finally broke through. I brought over a stool and climbed onto the windowsill. My hands were covered in blood. I called for help, but no one could hear me talking, because I can’t use my mouth to talk… Then I used the blood to write ‘help me’ on the window, and finally an uncle in the building across the street saw and got the police to come…”

Kou Tong’s mom didn’t know what to say, because she absolutely couldn’t understand how Manman’s mother could have done this, but she also couldn’t crudely explain to a child “your mother is a bad person.” What if the child grew up thinking that all the mothers in the world were bad people?

“Auntie, I just had a dream. In the dream, I couldn’t breathe. It was black all around me. There was no one there. There were many strange things floating around. I couldn’t run away no matter how hard I tried. I yelled, but no one heard. This time, there wasn’t even anywhere to write on to ask for help…”

Kou Tong’s mom froze. She remembered Kou Tong telling her that the child was particularly sensitive towards others’ thoughts. Sometimes she would dream of special things. She shushed her, planning to go talk to Kou Tong about it. She carefully wiped Manman’s tears away. “Don’t cry, don’t cry anymore.”

When she had managed to comfort Manman, it was already ten minutes later.

Seeing little Manman calm down, Kou Tong’s mom quietly got up and went to knock on Kou Tong’s door. “Tongtong, I have something to tell you.”

54

PRELUDE TO THE ABYSS

WHAT IS despair?

Manman was too little and couldn’t understand. She could only cry and say “My mom doesn’t want me.”

If you went and asked Yao Shuo, he would certainly put on an unusually mocking smile, then make some caustic remark about others’ intelligence quotient, emotional quotient, everything quotient. When he was alone, he would silently go out on the balcony and smoke a cigarette, looking outside at the passersby and children, alone with his own emotions.

Despair was—when you couldn’t see any hope.

Life dissipated day by day. Age was consuming all his pride bit by bit, like one country slowly encroaching on another country’s territory. He felt that life was going faster and faster, while he was becoming more and more shriveled. Sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night to find that he had become a worm who had lost his armor and strength, so soft that he could be squeezed to death.

The world was full of anxieties, but he no longer had dauntless strength. When a tree grew an additional annual growth ring, it would expand a layer outward, but a human’s annual growth rings grew on every blood vessel, on every strand of hair; with each additional ring, the future became a little narrower and more flavorless.

But there was nothing to be done about this. A female author has said: Are you young? Don’t worry, in another couple of years you’ll be old.[23]

Looked at from this point of view, life itself was a despairing and unavoidable process. You were forced to be born, struggled to grow up, became stronger bit by bit, forced the world to acknowledge that you had a place in it; then you thought that you had won, but when you got that place, you once again slowly lost it. This truly was a colossal joke.

If you asked He Xiaozhi, he would abstractly tell you that when the “devil” occupying his body left, every moment was paradise, but when he remembered that the devil would return, that it would never be far from him, that peace was only a gap, that was despair.

The most incomprehensible question in the world is “Why me?” Why am I the person suffering? Why do they all seem so happy?

Sufferers of clinical depression seemed to live with the perspective of a dog, the whole world in black, white, and grey, unable to escape no matter how they tried, without even a last straw to clutch at. This was a suffering there was no way to describe in words, no way to defeat with reason, no way to use self-control against; it made you want to jump off a building, want to end this sort of life.

This night, aside from those who were still awake, each person seemed to be influenced by some brainwave link; there seemed to be a dark cloud over the city.

Huang Jinchen sensed something amiss and woke up. He had many years of training and an extremely steady intellect. As soon as he raised his head, he found that Kou Tong had already gotten up and was standing by the window, frowning.

“What is it?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“I don’t know.” Kou Tong opened the curtains, but no moonlight came in. “Whatever’s going on…I keep feeling like something has gone out of control.”

Just then, Kou Tong’s mom knocked on the door and explained the dream Manman had had. When she was gone, Kou Tong sat back down at the head of the bed. “Lao Yao’s light is on. There’s noise coming from He Xiaozhi’s room. They’ve both been affected… Qin Qin must be up to something.”

“What about you?” This was the only question Huang Jinchen was concerned with.

Kou Tong rubbed the center of his brow. “I wasn’t sleeping just now—I don’t know why, but I keep having a bad feeling.”

Huang Jinchen leaned down, lit a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. “Sit quietly, then get in bed and go to sleep.”

He stroked Kou Tong’s hair. The texture wasn’t as soft as it seemed. “If you still can’t sleep, you can go another round with me. I guarantee you’ll sleep soundly until daybreak.”

Kou Tong felt that he had been teased. It was rather novel. So he leaned back against the head of the bed, narrowed his eyes, and looked at him with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. He had the impression that there were two trails of saliva trickling from Er-Pang’s open mouth. He seemed very humorous.

Thinking back, apart from the short period of discomfort after he had learned about the Seed, this man always had a bit of rebellious humor.

Psychology couldn’t surmount physiology. When the problem was grave enough to be an illness, there had to be some accompanying damage to the nervous system.

At least, Kou Tong thought that ruthless physical training would raise a person’s psychological endurance to a great degree—this simple-minded man Huang was a good example.

When Huang Jinchen was once again awoken by his biological clock, he found that the room was still dark. He noticed almost at once that something was wrong and quickly rolled out of bed and looked out the window. Then he pushed Kou Tong by the shoulder. “Hey, wake up, come and look at this.”

Kou Tong had no such thing as a biological clock. As long as it was dark, his physiological functions would determine that he could go on sleeping. When he was pushed awake, he blearily patted Huang Jinchen’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Be good, don’t bother me.”

Huang Jinchen: “…”

It’s all over, he thought in silence, my wife is a pig—of course, he didn’t dare to say it.

So Huang Jinchen calmly reached into the quilt and pinched Kou Tong’s waist. The latter bounced up at once, like an electrocuted dead fish. Squinting, he adjusted for a while, then asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Take a look at the time.”

Kou Tong fished up the alarm clock by the bed, turned on the lighting on the screen, then stared for a moment. “Seven o’clock…in the morning?”

At 7 AM, even on the shortest days at the dead of winter, it still wouldn’t be completely dark outside. Now, it was like midnight outside. There were no stars, no moon, even…no breeze.

Kou Tong’s eyes cleared at once. “Get dressed, don’t disturb the others. Let’s go out.”

The two of them changed deftly and left silently by the living room’s narrow corridor, then went out.

The lights in the hallways of Kou Tong’s building were sound-operated, and very sensitive. Normally, never mind deliberately heavy steps, even the rustling of clothes could turn on the lights upstairs and downstairs. But when the two of them went out, the lights didn’t come on.

Kou Tong clapped. There was still no light.

“The power’s out,” he said softly.

“So your computer…” Huang Jinchen asked.

“It’s all right, the battery can hold out for two hours, and the data is almost fully analyzed.” Then Kou Tong gave Huang Jinchen a significant look. “If you hadn’t come along to disrupt things, we might have gotten out by now.”

“Oh, I was wrong!” Huang Jinchen beat his breast in sorrow. “If I had only resisted, I might already have been moving my luggage into your house!”

It was already too dark to see. Kou Tong tripped and nearly went rolling. He gave a dry cough. “Young lady, slow down. When we get back, even if don’t have the phoenix coronet and embroidered ceremonial cape, at least we’ll need a sedan chair with eight carriers[24]. You really don’t need to be so…starved.”

Huang Jinchen put on an affected voice: “You devil!”

Kou Tong was silent for a moment. “No…no, I…I have a weak waist.”

The two of them left the building one after another. There wasn’t a single light on in the whole city. Even the air was stagnant. There wasn’t a breath of wind.

All sounds were covered up. Occasionally they passed by a car stopped by the side of the road. Kou Tong bent down to lean against a car window and found that the driver’s head had fallen to one side; he seemed to be sleeping.

“Sir? Sir?” Kou Tong knocked on the window. The person inside didn’t react.

All the people in this city were unconscious. All the lights in the city had been removed. In the endless street, apart from their footsteps, there wasn’t any other movement.

It was as if…it had become a deathly still ghost city.

Huang Jinchen was no longer grinning mischievously. The two of them exchanged a look, feeling that Qin Qin’s Cosmo had burned up to a certain point and exploded.

55

THE ABYSS (1)

TOWARDS EVENING, Chang Dou lay sleeping on a table in the ST Base’s lab. All of a sudden, he was roughly pushed awake. He opened his eyes in confusion and felt around all over for his glasses.

“Here.” Wu Xiangxiang shoved the cold glasses into his hand. For once serious, he said, “Come look. Something seems to have gone wrong.”

Chang Dou stared, rubbed his eyes hard, and stood up in a flurry. He even bumped into the table leg. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

“It’s the signal.”

Their research into the big boiler had remained at a bottleneck. They understood the theory of the thing, but despite thorough study, they still couldn’t find where Kou Tong and the others had fallen—without being a roundworm in Dr. Kou’s mind, a program he had improvised was very hard to analyze to find which way he had improvised it.

The Projector’s weak point was at this time revealed without doubt—its internal structure was too complex.

Even Kou Tong, its designer, could be trapped inside, and in over ten days, a group of technicians who had taken part in the maintenance or construction of the Projector had also been able to do nothing about it.

Simply put, the big boiler was a pit they couldn’t see the bottom of. They knew that Kou Tong had fallen into it, but they didn’t know what the structure inside it was. They could only fling a rope around, hoping to bump into Dr. Kou so he could catch the rope himself and climb up.

Chang Dou was afraid that Kou Tong wouldn’t be able to receive the signal because of some accident, so he hadn’t stopped scanning and sending the signal. Just now, the Projector had given an early warning and intervened by force to stop Chang Dou’s signal.

“What happened?” Chang Dou asked.

“There’s been a change in some space. It may be a malfunction or man-made.” Wu Xiangxiang was for once serious. Then his next sentence turned on Chang Dou. “It’s all your fault!”

Chang Dou’s eyes widened.

“There’s no reason for it to change. It must have been your wild scanning. The signal made the program inside spot a malfunction!”

Chang Dou rolled his eyes, not even wanting to pay attention to him. He silently squatted down to investigate the possible cause of the malfunction.

Just then, his phone rang. Chang Dou looked and was immediately excited. It was Fang Xiu calling!

He almost trembled as he picked up. Trembling, he said, “Hello…”

There was a great deal of noise on the other end, as though many people were searching for something. Fang Xiu reported something to the person next to him, then said to him, “Chang Dou, you can come back from the base.”

Chang Dou blinked.

“We busted a Utopia den today and found that document. Captain Hu says we can probably eliminate Yao Shuo from suspicion. Any other problems he may have aren’t our concern. You can withdraw from the base.”

Chang Dou said, “But…”

Wu Xiangxiang had sharp ears and had heard their conversation. His expression said, As expected, this idiot makes a mess then cuts and runs. Chang Dou’s hand holding the phone tightened.

“Yeah?” Fang Xiu asked. “What else is there?”

Chang Dou pursed his lips. “Dr. Kou… What about him?”

“Kou Tong?” Fang Xiu paused. “No need to worry about him. Kou Tong is a calamity. Calamities persist for a thousand years. He won’t die.”

“But…”

Fang Xiu’s patience with him was limited to begin with. He frowned, and his tone became more pressing. “What now?”

Chang Dou thought about it and carefully said, “Can I…stay another couple of days? Just a couple of days. There’s been a malfunction here, but we’re sure to be able to resolve it quickly. I’m sorry, I’m not deliberately making trouble for everyone, just a couple of days. I think we’re just about to touch on the crux of the problem…”

His voice became quieter and quieter. Not hearing Fang Xiu answer, he felt meeker and meeker. This was how Chang Dou was. For some reason, he always felt a bit inferior, always needed lots and lots of encouragement from others. If someone complimented him, he could be happy for half a day, If someone hesitated a little, he could immediately start losing self-confidence.

Fang Xiu didn’t speak, so Chang Dou tearfully thought, This must be very inconvenient. I’m making trouble for others again.

“I’m sorry, why don’t I just…”

“You can stay there temporarily,” Fang Xiu suddenly said.

“Huh?”

“I’ll mention it to Captain Hu. There’s been nothing urgent lately. He can give you a couple of days off.” Fang Xiu stopped for a moment, then added, “Stick up for yourself a little out there. Don’t keep letting that goateed psycho bully you.”

“O…OK!” Chang Dou suddenly felt full of strength—the sort of strength you could only get when you liked a person.

Chang Dou hung up the phone, stood up, straightened his back, and said to Wu Xiangxiang, “I think it isn’t the signal causing the malfunction.”

Wu Xiangxiang laughed sarcastically. “Hmph, you’re quibbling.”

“I’m not quibbling.” Chang Dou frowned. “The signal I sent is a recording signal specially used by the Projector. It has no impact on the gamma fault. It definitely wouldn’t impact the mechanisms composing different dimensions of space. There’s no need to doubt that.”

Wu Xiangxiang said, “You know that…”

“Dr. Kou left this behind. Do you doubt him?” Chang Dou asked imposingly. “You’re not the inventor of the Projector!”

All of Wu Xiangxiang’s features wrinkled up—Dr. Kou was his weak spot. He had always thought that in fact Dr. Kou had had a goatee and had only been forced through some private reasons that couldn’t be mentioned to assume the appearance of an ordinary person.

All right, if Dr. Kou was aware in the boiler, he would definitely be incredibly gratified to have such an unusual worshipper.

“So it must have been caused by a man-made factor,” Chang Dou said. “We all know that the projection space will collapse due to the conscious subject’s collapse, but there’s a kind of shackle mechanism that can fix the space and not let the collapse take place.”

“The shackle mechanism is forbidden, you idiot!” Wu Xiangxiang rolled his eyes and began to yell. “Before, Dr. Kou said that if the consciousness of the conscious subject collapsed and was forced to remain in the space, it would definitely cause that person harm, so he didn’t install such an option!”

“Of course I know that, but there’s been an accident!” Chang Dou also began to yell. “An accident, do you understand? Reasonably speaking, when multiple conscious subjects overlap, there will be some influence among them. And the Projector is unable to entirely distinguish two people’s consciousnesses. They mutually impact each other up to a certain point. Up to this point, this is a technological barrier that is still hard to overcome, so multi-person projections are unstable. But though this thing is of low probability, it still exists.”

“And so what?!” Wu Xiangxiang yelled back even louder, as if greater volume meant greater confidence.

“So when one conscious subject is powerful enough to influence all the conscious subjects who have been drawn in, something in the nature of a shackle mechanism will arise among them, mutually influencing them and fixing the space, not letting it collapse. When a space exists in one dimension, it will drag the whole space into another dimension! Do you understand?”

Wu Xiangxiang: “…”

Chang Dou rolled his eyes towards the heavens. “You idiot. At last I’ve found out that growing a goatee causes irreversible harm to a primate’s intelligence.”

Wu Xiangxiang was utterly crushed.

“In a multi-person consciousness overlapping space, there will be some unavoidable contact between conscious subjects. That’s why Manman can always sense many things ahead of time. And when one particular conscious subject has an overly intense emotion, and this overly intense emotion establishes some kind of resonance with all the conscious subjects who have been drawn in, it will create a so-called shackle mechanism.” In the Projector, Kou Tong was explaining this to Huang Jinchen. “Yes, that’s what’s happening here now.”

“And then what?”

“Then, the overly intense emotion will cause a conscious subject to collapse and create a chain reaction among all the others. The space will be fixed by the shackle mechanism, and something extremely special will happen. With one dimension in existence, all the conscious subjects will be pulled into another dimension.”

Kou Tong’s steps paused. Softly, he said, “In other words, in this world, apart from the conscious subjects who have been drawn in, no one else is awake…because they all belong to another dimension.”

Huang Jinchen noticed that Kou Tong’s fingertips were trembling slightly. Kou Tong took a deep breath. After a long while, he closed his eyes, then opened them again and quietly said, “I should have thought of it before.”

“What do we do now?” Huang Jinchen asked. He had suddenly realized that Kou Tong’s mother…wasn’t a living person. Would she also…remain forever in another dimension? He couldn’t resist lowering his voice, as if afraid that he would scare Kou Tong if he spoke too loudly.

“We’ll…” Kou Tong’s lips were turning pale. The following words caught in his throat. He couldn’t say them.

“We’ll…” he repeated, then softly gave a bitter laugh and closed his eyes once again. He was silent for a very long time. His always straight shoulders bent irresistibly.

“We’ll go back,” he finally finished his sentence. As if it had taken all his strength, he walked heavily in the direction of home.

They opened the door, but the space sewn in by the mirrors was broken—because some of the mirrors had broken. He Xiaozhi was wildly pounding on the mirrors, crying hysterically. Manman, wearing a nightgown, was sitting curled up, hugging her knees. She raised her head and looked up blankly at Kou Tong. She seemed to want to express something, but Kou Tong couldn’t hear it.

—No one could hear it. They had changed dimensions. She could no longer communicate with others through brainwaves.

Following her gaze, Kou Tong looked towards the bedroom. The unaging woman was like a lifeless dummy, lying there motionless, her face pale. Kou Tong felt that lead had been poured into his feet. He walked over step by step and gazed at her for a long time. He gently put his finger under her nostrils. He suddenly felt horribly chilled.

56

THE ABYSS (2)

“KOU TONG, Kou Tong?” All of a sudden, Huang Jinchen patted Kou Tong on the shoulder, making Kou Tong abruptly come back to himself. His face still looked bad. In the faint light shining in from somewhere in the night, it looked increasingly ashen.

“Oh…” Kou Tong stared for a moment, then drew his hand back as if nothing were the matter, retreated a spot, lowered his head, and pressed on his temples. “Sorry, I’m not quite myself.”

Huang Jinchen silently put his hand on Kou Tong’s shoulder. He saw Manman standing pitifully at the door, tears still undried on her face, seeming to want to say something but unable to speak.

Kou Tong beckoned to her. Manman shuffled over in her slippers, clutching the hem of Kou Tong’s jacket with both little hands, burying her head against him.

Kou Tong leaned down and picked her up. He patted her on the back and quietly said, “It’ll be all right. I’ll fix it.”

Manman freed one little hand and pointed to Kou Tong’s mom, lying silently on the bed.

Kou Tong lowered his head and looked where she was pointing. Then he quickly averted his gaze, gently took Manman’s little hand, and carried her into the study. In an unusually soft tone, he said, “She’s…left us temporarily.”

Manman’s little mouth pursed. She began to cry soundlessly.

Kou Tong patted her on the back. The man was delicate-featured and good-looking. He seemed to be hiding some dense sorrow. The sorrow was too dense; it seemed to have soaked his eyes with another color. They seemed unusually gentle. “You’re still young and don’t understand. You always come into life stark naked and leave it stark naked as well. Every person you love or who loves you may not be able to accompany you all the way to the end.” It was unclear whom he was speaking to.

Manman leaned on his shoulder, tears dripping along Kou Tong’s collar onto his neck and quickly cooling against his skin.

“Darling, that’s natural law.” Kou Tong stroked her loose hair. The whole apartment was full of men; there would be no one to arrange the little girl’s hair now. “We all hate it. There are people who say that the trials of life will strengthen you, make you become a better version of yourself, but remember that that’s wrong. The strength that comes from heavy wounds scabbing over is false. I don’t know what the purpose of life investing people with such grief is. But…”

He put Manman on a chair, made sure she was sitting properly, then squatted down and said towards her bright red eyes, “But we have no other choice. We’re human, too insignificant. We have no way to resist the unbearable and senseless misery imposed on us, so we can only become stronger while endlessly walking forward, from generation to generation, endlessly seeking a way to escape this destiny.

“So…” Kou Tong patted her little cheek. “Don’t cry.”

He wasn’t speaking only for Manman to hear. Yao Shuo leaning against the door smoking cigarette after cigarette, He Xiaozhi sitting amidst a pile of glass shards, and the silent Huang Jinchen—all of them heard it.

For a moment, everyone in the apartment was completely still. They were all staring blankly, as if lost for the first time in this great dream.

Yao Shuo remembered his wife and son, whom he seemed not to have seen for a long time, remembered all that tangled business. He Xiaozhi stared blankly at the scars on his hands and body, sitting on a floor littered with mirror fragments. Huang Jinchen, not speaking, looked at the ground; he suddenly found that, apart from Kou Tong, who was forcing himself to hold out, he was the calmest person among them.

But this didn’t mean that he was so great. It was only because his life was the most deficient—each of them had things as important as their lives; each of them had possessed such things. Only he, after thirty years, had had no happiness worth mentioning; his life was barren.

Even a child under ten would be inconsolable with grief for a dead loved one and, with no way to express it, cry aloud. Only he couldn’t.

Huang Jinchen thought, This must be what it means to wish to cry but be unable to?

Kou Tong squatted down and bandaged He Xiaozhi’s wounds. He nodded to Yao Shuo and turned to go out on the balcony. He lit a cigarette. He looked out at the whole deathly still city.

After a while, Huang Jinchen quickly followed him and suddenly put his arms around Kou Tong’s waist from behind—Are you mine? he suddenly thought without confidence. He felt that he was being a little pathetic. But in the end, he didn’t ask it aloud. He wasn’t Manman. He was so grown-up. He didn’t lack for cleverness. He knew what relationships between people were; they couldn’t be defined in such absolute terms. But…

Apart from him, he really couldn’t think of what else he had.

“What is it?” Kou Tong asked.

“Nothing.” Huang Jinchen reached out, took his half-smoked cigarette, and put it into his own mouth. In a voice and tone that sounded very normal, he said, “If Manman can’t speak, doesn’t that also mean that crazy chick can’t control her cards anymore?”

Kou Tong nodded. “That must be right.”

“Then what’s the situation now? How will we resolve it?” Huang Jinchen asked.

“I’m thinking about it,” Kou Tong said softly. After a while, he began attempting to use language to express his train of thought. “The shackle mechanism is very rare. There’s no precedent to refer to. We can only reason based on principle. We’ve hopped into a different spatial dimension. All the rest is easy to understand, but what are the circumstances over there?”

Huang Jinchen thought about it, then suddenly said, “I think there’s something off.”

“Oh?”

“Think about it. At the beginning, when we jumped from Lao Yao’s individual consciousness projection to this spatial dimension, everything changed. Each thing is one person’s projection, including the houses, the streets, the cars, even the people. Reasonably speaking, if we’re now in that, what-do-you-call-it, that shackle, then…right, how should I say this, the whole world should have changed again, and these people wouldn’t exist. They wouldn’t be as quiet as though they were asleep.”

Kou Tong frowned and fell silent.

“Does that make sense?” Huang Jinchen asked.

After a long while, Kou Tong finally nodded slowly. “Yes…it makes sense—I was a little dizzy just now. I didn’t notice that.”

Huang Jinchen quietly sat down and waited for Kou Tong to think it through. He couldn’t do this kind of brain work, but he wasn’t bored. He stood and greedily watched Kou Tong’s profile. Inexplicably, he had thought of what that Lao Tian, who seemed just like a performing mystic, had said, and was planning to find joy in suffering, taste a bit of sweetness amidst the bleak wind and icy rain.

After a long time, Kou Tong said, “I…think I understand it a little.”

“Oh?”

“The place where Lao Tian is fixed isn’t simply a dimension of space. It involves another time axis. He’s one of the conscious subjects, so he ties the two time axes and the space together tightly. Supposing that we had all dropped into another dimension, like a shackle mechanism, then Lao Tian should be with us. But because of time, he’s still tied to the previous space. So that can’t happen.”

Huang Jinchen no longer understood what he was saying. He could only raise his eyebrows and pretend to understand to avoid interfering with Kou Tong’s train of thought.

“So now Lao Tian’s place amounts to a line, tying the spaces of different frequency together, like what Utopia was planning to make. Of course…the fact that we can still touch the things inside the apartment shows that these things lie in the boundary between ordinary substance and C substance…”

“C what in the hell?”

“All the things inside a space are ordinary substance, while C substance refers to things overlapping at the same point from a different space. Like Utopia’s energy tower back then. Even if it was right in front of you, you couldn’t destroy it, because it was in a different space. Though it didn’t seem far away, under ordinary Newtonian laws of motion, you could never reach it.”

Huang Jinchen hesitated for two seconds, then decided that he had better nod and pretend that he understood.

“So the problem now is to find the point of collapse—Qin Qin, in other words—then think of a way to temporarily stop her conscious activity, think of a way to communicate with Lao Tian’s time axis, break off the whole collapsed frequency, then complete the previous signal analysis, restore the information in the control box, then keep thinking when we get out.”

Huang Jinchen asked, “How will we break it off?”

“That’s the second problem I need to consider.” Kou Tong waved a hand, directing Huang Jinchen. “I’ll give the first glorious and arduous mission to you. You absolutely must not kill her. I’m relying on you.”

Huang Jinchen buttoned his coat, turned and went two steps, then, as if remembering something, came back. He put his arms around Kou Tong’s neck and drew close. “Kiss me. Give me a bit of encouragement.”

Without any hesitation, Kou Tong took hold of his chin and kissed him.

After a long while, Huang Jinchen pushed him away, breathing unsteadily. “Enough, enough, we’ll go too far if this goes on.”

Kou Tong smacked him on the butt. “Go on.”

Huang Jinchen winked at him, turned, and left.

He was extremely efficient, and without her mysterious weapons, Qin Qin was an ordinary little girl…well, a little crazier than the average little girl. Adding in that he had been to the nameless island before, it wasn’t long before he returned carrying an unconscious Qin Qin over his shoulder.

Kou Tong was in the study overseeing things. The others were waiting impatiently. Huang Jinchen put down Qin Qin and tied her up with strips of cloth. “Now what?”

Kou Tong didn’t even look up. “Keep an eye on her. If she wakes up, knock her out again. There are tranquilizers and anesthetics at home. If my attempt to restore the space succeeds, inject her.”

Then Kou Tong looked at everyone’s hopeful faces, his spirits sinking.

This showed that they yearned to return to that space where wishes came true and everyone lived well. Only hopping a dimension had made them like this, so what would happen in the future…when they returned to the real world?

57

THE ABYSS (3)

FEAR HAS its origins in an unreachable inner being.

Kou Tong’s train of thought was correct. The control box’s authority could pass through any space in the Projector, as long as it had a memory path.

And this memory path, due to the mapping of substance and the time axis, could be calculated. Others might not be able to do this, but Kou Tong could. As for whether everyone believed this, at any rate…Lao Yao and the rest of that group believed it.

According to the results of his calculations, Kou Tong manually input orders, and a thirty-second countdown appeared on the control box. When the last tick sounded, under everyone’s expectant gazes, the lights in the room at last came on all at once.

Yao Shuo let out a long breath. He Xiaozhi dropped onto the floor. Huang Jinchen didn’t forget his mission. At once, according to what Kou Tong had said, he found the tranquilizer and anesthetic and injected Qin Qin. Manman stood up from beside Kou Tong and pattered to the side of the woman walking out of her room and stretching. Crisply, she said, “Auntie, do my hair.”

Kou Tong’s mom seemed to have just gotten up after sleeping. She stood at the door in some surprise, receiving several complicated gazes. Entirely discomposed, she asked, “It’s not light yet. Why is everyone up?”

Everything had returned to its original point. Everything was restored.

Yes, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, because they had “come back.”

Kou Tong’s mom fussily pointed at Qin Qin tied up in the living room and asked, “What…what’s going on here? What happened?!”

The woman who had been laying there without breath had been restored to vitality as if after a power outage, like the lights suddenly coming on. She was still soft-skinned, still wearing a gentle and pleasant scent. Though she had just gotten out of bed, she didn’t seem in disarray. She gave off a particular sense of being in charge of the household.

Kou Tong, sitting on the floor, looked her over and even thought the there was a bit of pink in her cheeks from just having woken up.

But she still wasn’t a living person.

Now, apart from the child Manman, no one else could regard her as a living person anymore. A living person was alive under any circumstances, not like some battery-powered robot that could have the power source pulled out at any moment and suddenly stop moving.

Kou Tong suddenly stood up and hugged his mother, then lowered his head and kissed her lightly on the forehead. He quietly said into her ear, “Mom, I love you the most.”

Kou Tong’s mom almost froze. Grown-up sons always seem less considerate than daughters; their relationships with their parents slowly become less close. They begin to understand holding back, speaking of the good and not the bad; begin to be embarrassed by the hugs and kisses that were normal in childhood.

Kou Tong looked down and picked up the fallen control box . He turned and went back into the study.

Concerning the signal analysis that would soon be complete, the program would automatically fix it up for him. Kou Tong opened the program that was so large it made his little home laptop with its insufficient specs lag. He crossed one leg over the other, sitting beside the desk, and lit a cigarette.

His eyes were fixed on the screen, but they seemed to go through the screen to a distant place. His brow was faintly furrowed. Probably because he had stayed up late several nights in a row and was a little exhausted, his cheeks were a little sunken in. Half concealed in smoke, he seemed like a child who could neither resign himself nor leave.

The program ran until midday, then finally came up with a path. Kou Tong pressed “save,” then manually entered a long string of complicated commands into the control box. Then, before hitting enter, he used a twenty-some digit code to lock the screen and keyboard, got up, and went out.

Huang Jinchen was in the living room, watching Qin Qin, loyal to his post, in order to prevent against her waking up ahead of time.

Kou Tong passed by and quietly asked, “How much longer until the drugs wear off?”

Huang Jinchen motioned “six” at him, then grinned. There seemed to be a big tail waving behind him. Kou Tong, wise in his success, rewarded him with a pat on the head. “Be good.”

Huang Jinchen was good.

Kou Tong sat next to him and found that the mirrors in the living room had been replaced, so he quietly asked, “Did you do that?”

“No.” Huang Jinchen pointed at He Xiaozhi, holding a computer and browsing the internet. “The kid went out and bought them.”

“Ah…yeah.” He Xiaozhi raised his head and clutched his hair a little apologetically. “Sorry, Dr. Kou, I can never quite control myself when I’m having an attack. I accidentally…”

Kou Tong was silent for a while. He Xiaozhi was in fact a lot better. Having realized his own usefulness to everyone, he had for a long time energetically done everything in his power, controlling his own emotions and avoiding accidentally harming others. When he had returned to this space that made him feel warm and comfortable, it was as if he had regained hope. He was even willing to go out on his own, have contact with those strangers who had previously been so frightening to him, just for the sake of buying some mirrors.

After a long time, Kou Tong said, “Actually…we mostly did it to guard against this person, and now that she’s been knocked out…”

He Xiaozhi waved a hand. “But what if she wakes up? It’ll still be very dangerous. If those monsters under her command find us, and the same scary thing that just happened happens again, you’ll definitely find it very troublesome, Dr. Kou.”

“Yeah.” Kou Tong forced up the corners of his mouth. His smile was a little bitter. After a moment, he said, “That makes sense.—Oh, right, where’s my mom?”

Huang Jinchen pointed to the kitchen and said, “Oh, she’s making lunch.”

Kou Tong stood up without saying anything and went into the kitchen.

Kou Tong’s mom heard footsteps through the rumble of the fume hood. In the midst of many pressing affairs, she turned her head and saw Kou Tong standing silently behind her. In a very good mood, she looked at him and cheerfully said, “Get a look at this son of mine—tall, handsome, and talented, better than anyone else’s son—what did you come in here for?”

Kou Tong’s nose stung. He quickly turned his head away, gave a dry cough, rolled up his sleeves, and asked, “Do you need me to help?”

Kou Tong’s mom looked at him in fright, stood up on tiptoe, and felt his forehead. “Oh, my goodness, is the child running a fever?”

“Your hands are greasy, don’t touch me!” Kou Tong protested.

Then he skillfully went around her, took defrosted meat from the fridge, put it on a cutting board, sliced it, added starch, then took the already washed vegetables out of the little drying basket, diced the ones that needed dicing and slivered the ones that needed to be slivered, very deftly.

Kou Tong’s mom watched and watched, unable to look away. After a long time, she finally sighed. “Well, now… You’ve even learned to cook out there on your own.”

Kou Tong agreed. “Go watch TV. I’ll cook instead.”

His mom’s fingers went to the belt of her apron. She hesitated. “Really?”

“Really!” Kou Tong dried his hands and uncompromisingly pushed her out. “I won’t blow up the kitchen, don’t worry, don’t worry. Women! Why are you so long-winded! Get out!”

I just…want to do something for you, even if I know that the person in front of me is only a shallow projection of you in my mind and can’t feel anything in your place.

Even if I’m only fooling myself and others, even if this is only a long and beautiful dream I’m dreaming.

When the whole family, with gasps of admiration, had eaten the lunch Dr. Kou had personally made, Huang Jinchen pointed to his watch and indicated to Kou Tong that there were still three hours left.

The people who hadn’t cooked undertook to wash the dishes and clear the table while Kou Tong had He Xiaozhi take him to Lao Tian.

The same boundless open fields as before, the same overly lively Huanhuan, the same flowers that were neither living nor dead.

Lao Tian waved to him from far away and laughed happily. “A rare visitor!”

Kou Tong stuck his hands in his pants pockets and slowly walked over.

Lao Tian looked at him, beaming. “It’s always that young lad who likes coming over here. Why have you come today? Is the machine going to be repaired soon?”

Kou Tong looked down at him. After a long time, he nodded as though unwilling.

Lao Tian took him to sit by a ridge between the fields and patted him on the back. He asked, “Did you come to hear my last words?”

Kou Tong raised his head and looked at him. Each time he saw him, he felt intensely guilty.

Lao Tian noticed. The old man stretched enormously and raised his head to look at the vague horizon. Suddenly, he burst into a folk song in thick dialect. His voice was indistinct and hoarse. Kou Tong almost couldn’t hear what he was singing. But the pitch was very high, and it was unusually resonant and unrestrained.

To the puppy’s barking, the song ended with a long “he-yo—”, lingering on for a long time.

When Lao Tian smiled, the wrinkles on his face turned into impassable gullies carved by time. Then he said, “I thought at first that I had a lot of last words, but now that I’ve been here so long, I suddenly have nothing to say.”

Kou Tong frowned, looking at him a little uncertainly.

Lao Tian said, “Just one thing, then. Call it the reason we met.”

He looked at Kou Tong’s eyes, the black and white distinct, always seeming unusually warm and attractive. He said, “Live well. In the future, when you’re old, we’ll be waiting for you over there. Then everyone will reunite. There’s no need to worry.”

Kou Tong was silent for a long time. Then he stood up and nodded respectfully to Lao Tian. “I’ll be going.”

Lao Tian didn’t move. He still sat where he was, with his legs stretched out and his pants rolled up, the puppy nestled against him, half his body dyed golden by the sun. He waved to Kou Tong carelessly. “Go on.”

This could be called…a farewell between life and death.

58

THE ABYSS (4)

THE TV was showing a talent show. The whole family…yes, after all this time, eating together and living together, facing danger together, experiencing all those unbelievable things, fussing and squabbling, they had become a kind of temporary family, living together in a slightly dangerous paradise beyond the world.

Lao Yao brought out his sarcastic nature in full force, doing his utmost to provide a disparaging point by point commentary for each contestant. Kou Tong’s mom rolled around on the couch laughing. He Xiaozhi was sitting on the other end, a relaxed and happy smile for once appearing on his face. Lao Yao seemed to have some sense of achievement from his speech. His always tense cheeks relaxed, and he outperformed himself, as if playing up to his audience… Probably no matter how reclusive, how unfriendly, how hostile towards others, a person would still hope for others to notice him, have all kinds of reactions to his words.

So-called loneliness, in the final analysis, was only everyone being busy with their own lives; a person had words in their heart but found that there was no one to listen, had emotions on their faces with no one to see.

When Kou Tong returned, only Huang Jinchen, who was fighting over fruit mousse with Manman, noticed.

There was a dead leaf on Kou Tong’s shoulder and grass that was no longer fresh after leaving the circle on his pants. Huang Jinchen raised his wrist and looked at his watch. There was about another hour until Qin Qin woke up.

Huang Jinchen reached out and stroked Manman’s head. He used too much strength, messing up the little girl’s neat braid, earning himself the little lady’s glare. Then he cheerfully stood up and followed Kou Tong into the study.

Qin Qin was quietly set aside. However you looked at her, she only looked like a slightly gloomy ordinary young woman. Brushing shoulders with her in the street, no one would give her a second look. Who could know how much trouble her inner world actually contained? Watching Kou Tong take out the control box once more, enter the code, unlock the keyboard and screen, then quickly modify the program he had already written, Huang Jinchen leaned against the wall behind him, arms crossed over his chest, and softly asked, “Should we prepare to leave?”

Kou Tong nodded. “I’ll do my best to make the process seem a little more sudden, but when they notice it, they’ll still feel great fear, and during the fear, their intellects will lose control. I need to be on guard.”

Huang Jinchen was silent for a while, then said, “You’ve thought it through comprehensively.”

A smile quickly appeared on Kou Tong’s face, then quickly disappeared. The UV-protection lenses he was wearing shielded his eyes, making his features look a little cold. Huang Jinchen suddenly thought he looked a little uncomfortable, so he walked over and took Kou Tong by the chin. “Come on, give me another smile first.”

Kou Tong stroked his head. “Be good, I’ll love you when we get home.”

That was all right. At least he seemed a little lively. Huang Jinchen smiled and put both hands on the desk. “Don’t force yourself too much. You don’t want to ascend to immortality.”

Kou Tong shrugged and blurted out, “A man needs to be a little hard on himself.”

As soon as Huang Jinchen heard this, he gripped Kou Tong by the chin and turned his face away from the screen, pulled off his glasses, and seriously said, “Hey, hey, look at me.”

Kou Tong asked, “What?”

Huang Jinchen pointed at the tip of his nose and asked, “Do you know who you are?”

Kou Tong knocked his finger aside. “What’s all this trouble?”

Huang Jinchen turned his finger around and pointed at himself, saying, “From now on, you’re my person. Do you understand? Anyone who wants to be hard on you has to get past your man first, including you. Got it?”

Kou Tong didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

But when he narrowed his eyes and looked at Huang Jinchen’s expression, he found that he wasn’t joking. Instead, he was unusually solemn, even a little menacing. His voice was low and threatening. “You’ve boarded my pirate ship now. It’ll be hard to get off. If you don’t want to take a bullet one day when you’re getting close to some new flame, you had better understand what to do.”

The smile at the corners of Kou Tong’s mouth vanished. He looked into his eyes seriously for a moment, then asked, “Are you threatening me?”

Huang Jinchen put on a fake smile and said, “There are very few people in the world who can hear a threat from me. Most of them go see the kings of hell without knowing anything about it.”

There is a type of man who, when smiling, is more lovable than anyone, easier to bully than anyone. If you want to roll him into a ball, he’ll lie down on the ground and roll up himself; if you want to roll him out flat, he’ll obediently lie flat. But as soon as he stops smiling, he makes you think that it would be frightening to say a single sentence to him.

Unfortunately, these two were both this kind of person.

The space in the study suddenly seemed to become narrow and cramped. The chatty atmosphere from earlier suddenly cooled, as though something was on the verge of breaking out…

For the first time, Huang Jinchen didn’t give way by a single step.

After a moment, at last Kou Tong’s eyes were the first to soften. He laughed. “All right, you’ve threatened me, that shows boldness of vision. I like that.”

Huang Jinchen reached out and softly moved aside a strand of hair long enough to fall over the bridge of his nose. Then he straightened up, counting it as having scored an interim victory. Kou Tong looked at him and suddenly said, “You don’t need to worry that I’ll disappear when we get out. As long as I don’t get trapped in the crack of some space, I’ll definitely still be here.”

Huang Jinchen paused. After a while, his eyes slowly curved, and laughed softly and quietly said, “I know.”

Kou Tong quickly modified the already written program. He wanted to “reinforce” the space. If, in the instant of noticing that they were about to leave this space, someone’s consciousness collapsed, the control box would automatically secure the space and return to the previous program. This wasn’t hard. For Kou Tong, it was a project of only fifteen minutes.

Then he tapped on the enter key with one finger.

The living room lights seeped in through the crack in the door. Kou Tong stared for a moment, then opened the study door a bit. The laughter outside suddenly came in. As if listening to some wonderful music, he listened for a long time, then frowned and asked, “If I activate the program now, would it be too cruel?”

Huang Jinchen looked out in the direction of his gaze. After a while, he softly said, “Supposing that everyone has to die once, I think that dying in your dreams without knowing anything about it is much better than hearing from the hospital that you have a terminal illness and hanging on more dead than alive for a year or more. Anyway, the outcome is still the same.”

That makes sense, Kou Tong thought… But for some reason, he couldn’t press the key.

All of a sudden, he laughed mockingly. “Children have poor self-control. They laugh when happy and cry when unhappy. They want whatever they want. They never control their own desires. Many children, even if you tell them that if they don’t eat the piece of candy in their hand, they can get two pieces of candy, they still won’t be able to resist getting an advance on that bit of happiness. Many people are still like that when they grow up, unable to control the conflict between reason and desire, extremely lacking in self-control, like…”

“Even people who don’t lack self-control can encounter circumstances they can’t control,” Huang Jinchen interrupted him quietly. “If a person was really as invincible as you say, could really not care about anything, could weigh everything with reason, he would suffer a great deal.”

Kou Tong sighed softly. Then, without warning, his finger laying on the keyboard pressed down. There was a long warning sound. His cheeks and lips were so pale there was hardly any color in them. When test data quickly flashed over the control box screen, he gently covered his own chest.

In fact, it wasn’t such an unbearable pain.

In fact…it was only his chest being tightly clutched, then a temporary blank in his mind. Kou Tong couldn’t help standing up and opening the study door. He raised his head and looked at the people watching TV in joyous harmony. Kou Tong’s mom wiped away tears of laughter and carelessly asked, “Tongtong, was there a sound just now?”

“Yes.” Kou Tong narrowed his eyes, screening them with his thick lashes, not letting the tears glimmering there show. “I’m being asked to come back.”

Everyone froze.

Kou Tong slowly walked over, bent down, and hugged her. Quietly, he said, “Mom, I have to go back.”

Kou Tong’s mom seemed to sense something. She put her arms tightly around him, her nails clutching his shirt.

“OK…” she responded after a while. Deep sorrow that others couldn’t understand flashed over her brow. She softly said, “Go on then. Just don’t forget you have a mother when you’re out there.”

Kou Tong closed his eyes and quietly said, “I won’t forget…”

I’ll never forget you, not until I can also pass through life and death and wait for you to meet me.

Yao Shuo seemed to abruptly understand something. His expression stiffened at once. He Xiaozhi, meanwhile, suddenly began to scream, as if faced with enormous fear.

Then the familiar shaking began. The control box was going to take them back to the original…cold, oppressive, imperfect world.

He Xiaozhi wildly attempted to escape, but the control box had secured everything. He was like a caged beast, desperately throwing himself at the walls and mirrors.

Manman sat blankly on the couch. After a long time, she said like a kitten, “I won’t be able to talk again?”

He Xiaozhi’s eyes were blood red. He suddenly grabbed a leftover shard of mirror and pointed it at his own neck. He screamed, “Stop! Stop it! Don’t come near me! Make that thing stop!”

He would rather die in a cosy nest than return to the outside.

Yao Shuo squatted down, covered his head, and curled up amid the sounds of the teenager’s screams and the girl’s crying.

59

THE ABYSS (5)

AN ALARM SOUNDED. The whole room shook fiercely as though there was an earthquake. Kou Tong leaned against the wall, feeling a hole open in the wall behind him. He knew that this was the beginning of a chain collapse. The first layer of lock had activated, causing the collapsing space to return to the original dimension.

He watched the people being tossed this way and that in the shaking space and unsteady frequency. He thought, There is nothing undefeatable in this world.

All things mutually enhance and inhibit each other. For example, bone deep love, which seems so strong, will in fact still lose to time. Time will spoil all things, influence them imperceptibly; and no one knows the mechanism behind this reaction. However, even deeper hatred can always pierce through time, keep the same thing in a person’s heart for decades as though they were a single day; even if it was like a demonic obstacle, it would still never be regretted. But the most deeply carved hatred, meeting tenderness that lingered on to death, would still slowly thaw…

All things—courage, determination, dreams, hatred, grief, misery—seem so powerful, can defeat so many other things, but can also be so easily be defeated by so many other things, like a never-ending game of rock-paper-scissors.

Like the sudden eruption of fear and despair in them, which was one of the few things that could surmount the life instinct, could nonetheless still be suppressed by the even more powerful lock of the space’s rules.

Kou Tong sighed softly. “Xiao Zhi, put down the glass. Have you forgotten? Here, even if you break your head in two, you still won’t die. The program has been activated. No one can stop it.”

He Xiaozhi, duped, stared blankly at him, face covered in tears. Suddenly, he pushed Huang Jinchen aside and charged into the study. He hauled up Qin Qin, who still hadn’t recovered consciousness, and shook her with all his might. “Wake up! You can stop this, can’t you? You have so many cards, you must be able to stop this thing!”

Before, he had felt great consolation because he could save his companions. Though he was scared, though he lacked self-confidence, he still worked very, very hard to protect his companions; yet in the end, he had become his own enemy.

But no one rebuked him, because everyone was blank. Kou Tong’s mom pulled Manman into her embrace—in fact, to her, as far as her real memories of her son went, Kou Tong ought to be a clever, occasionally mischievous little thing like this. But in the blink of an eye, he had grown up so much.

Huang Jinchen sighed, squatted beside Lao Yao, and patted him on the shoulder. “Think of your wife and kid. Without you, how are they going to live?”

Kou Tong kicked him with the tip of his foot, and Huang Jinchen realized that, as a nonprofessional, he had said the wrong thing.

If they weren’t his wife and kid, who would have the leisure to care whether they lived or died? It was precisely because he knew that they couldn’t live without him that, over time, the yoke he was wearing had become so heavy.

Kou Tong looked at his hunched figure and said, “Everyone gets old, just like all children grow up. When you’re truly so old that you can do nothing and can’t protect them, your blood will continue to flow in your son.”

Yao Shuo didn’t move.

But Kou Tong smiled. “In fact, I very much envy your son. Sometimes I think it would be a good thing if I’d had a father like you, a father who secretly bought me water pistols when I was little, who was reticent, but whom I knew I could always phone for help when I was in any difficulty…even if one day I learned that you weren’t so omnipotent.”

Another rapid alarm. A second round of shaking began. They went on to the second level of the chain collapse.

Kou Tong wasn’t worried. A manually analyzed path wasn’t as good as a memory chip; there were five minutes of buffer. Each layer of lock took thirty seconds in all from being set off to cooling and freezing the space. Ten layers of lock were enough to hold until the moment they left. A problem that could be solved with simple arithmetic wasn’t a big problem.

Qin Qin was at last awakened by the disordered spatial frequency and disordered surroundings. She opened her eyes wide and looked at the unfamiliar people and room around her, as well as the frantic He Xiaozhi, sniveling and crying. He Xiaozhi clutched the front of her clothes. “Please, I’m begging you, make it stop. I don’t want to go, I don’t want to leave this place!”

Qin Qin automatically made a grab for the control box, but she came up empty. Her fingers went through the box.

“While the control box is counting down to a space jump, in order to avoid accident, it will turn into C substance,” Kou Tong said softly.

Qin Qin looked at him and bit her lip fiercely. She suddenly reached into her pocket and took out a big stack of cards. “Kou Tong! You traitor! Don’t even think of running!”

Huang Jinchen frowned and stepped to the side, blocking the door. He looked at her coldly. Qin Qin irresistibly retreated a step to the side. All the cards floated in front of her. Huang Jinchen’s hand was already holding a loaded gun. As soon as he thought that this room would soon be full of all kinds of monsters and demons, he felt his head swell and really wanted to shoot this troublemaking woman dead.

But before they could directly cross swords, the floating tarot cards, as though struck by lightning, suddenly crackled, then fell to the floor like ash. Qin Qin’s face went white. She had an impression that originated in imagination that some power had been pulled out of her body.

Huang Jinchen stared blankly. Someone behind him quietly said, “This is what happens when the clash between your own paranoias and the inherent meanings of the cards reaches a certain threshold.”

He looked back in astonishment and found Yao Shuo standing up, supporting himself against the wall. A mirror shard created by the cracking space had drawn a long cut on the back of his hand, but he had no idea.

Though he looked exhausted, he was still desperately straightening his shoulders. He had spent his whole life this way, and if nothing happened to change it, he would continue this way—this was the kind of person he was.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Lao Yao threw Kou Tong off without so much as looking at him and coldly said, “I’m not a little lady sitting weeping, waiting to be comforted by a psychiatrist. I have no use for your nonsense theories and fake kindness.”

…Becoming sarcastic, he was still as unreasonable as before, clutching his self-respect tightly.

He Xiaozhi’s expression was blank, but Qin Qin burst into tears.

Illusion was like her protective shell, and she had now become a turtle without a shell, her original form revealed.

The third alarm sounded—the shaking this time was stronger than any time before, because the control box’s tracing of the path would soon conclude, and this frequency would soon be obliterated.

Like a frail little girl, Qin Qin sobbed piteously. “Dr. Kou…Dr. Kou…”

Kou Tong’s heart suddenly softened.

Each one of them, in this space full of recollections and dreams, had gotten what they wanted and suffered pain like the death of a thousand cuts. It wasn’t only a polite expression of sympathy.

No healer was a machine. Due to nature or experience, he might even be more sensitive than others.

This was a sudden reversal of sentiment…

…But Kou Tong didn’t notice it.

He was silent for a while, walked over, squatted down, and hugged Qin Qin around the shoulders—her shoulders were very narrow. Whenever he hugged a girl, Kou Tong was always extremely careful. He couldn’t imagine why their bones would be so fine, as if they could be measured with two hands, so frail, like…a certain smiling person in his memory.

In his heart, women…always had a sort of nearly deified significance.

Qin Qin dove into his embrace. Huang Jinchen’s brow furrowed tightly, but in the end he thought that it wouldn’t be good to fuss about a little thing like this, so he put his gun away and turned his head, putting it out of sight and out of mind.

Kou Tong, patting her on the back, looked up at the path on the control box—they were almost there.

His emotions complicated, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Kou Tong knew that there was about to be a fierce stripping of the spatial frequency—all the mirrors would shatter. In that instant, the second time axis would crumble entirely, and Lao Tian’s stopped time would once again move forward. Manman wouldn’t be able to speak again.

And she also…

Qin Qin suddenly grabbed Kou Tong’s collar with one hand and raised her head. There was no moisture in her eyes, but they were flickering… Her lips moved. In a strange tone, she said, “Tell me, why did you…”

Just then, Kou Tong’s mom suddenly charged over and pushed her aside. The sharp mirror fragments stabbed her. Droplets of blood and shards flew; then they were suddenly fixed in the air.

Her eyes turned halfway; she didn’t have time to look towards her son to make sure he was safe.

There was only…a mother’s gaze that would always stop on her son.

All the mirrors collapsed at the same moment. They had come to the end of the path. Words popped up on the control box: Retrieval complete, order executed.

There was a sensation of falling. Everyone’s vision went black. Perhaps it was his mistaken impression, but Kou Tong thought that a little girl’s cry, like a kitten’s, came from behind him: “Mom…”

This voice was extremely hoarse, as though it hadn’t been used in years; the pronunciation was even a little indistinct.

Kou Tong closed his eyes. Then he was caught by a pair of arms. There was suddenly light in front of his eyes, stabbing his pupils so they contracted sharply. He nearly cried. His legs folded uncontrollably. He took half a step back. Before he could fall, he was tightly held.

The shouts of a crowd of people came to his ears: “They’re out, they’re out! My goodness…that was so hard!”

60

THE GRAND CONCLUSION

IS SADNESS a kind of physical labor?

At any rate, when Kou Tong came out of the Projector, he stumbled half a step and fell into Huang Jinchen’s arms. Having fallen, he didn’t get up. General Zhong, coming over quickly when he heard what was happening, determined—he had fallen asleep.

Yao Shuo was no better off than him. From beginning to end, he only leaned against the wall, silent, not saying a word. Before General Zhong could finish speaking, his eyes were already closed.

Only Huang Jinchen met the eyes of the General Zhong and a crowd of confused technicians.

General Zhong hesitated for a long moment, then at last managed a question: “Why are you all right?”

Huang Jinchen silently picked Kou Tong up and put him on a camp bed next to them. Very unhappily, he said, “I’m tough, OK?”

It wasn’t that he was tough; it was that his stamina and endurance were so much greater than those of others. Even not sleeping for over a hundred hours in a row, he could get by on only a few pieces of chocolate; lying low for a week was no problem.

Harsh training was one aspect, and another aspect was probably the natural gifts his altered genes had given him.

But he could still be tired. A person’s conscious activity in the big boiler was supposed to be ten times what it was outside. When he got out, Huang Jinchen at last experienced why those scrawny technicians like Kou Tong did nothing all day apart from work except for eating and sleeping.

He was very, very exhausted—though he hadn’t fallen over as humiliatingly as the other two, he still felt about the same. His mind was practically blank; he was even about to forget how to do arithmetic.

He pushed Kou Tong aside and laid right down in the small space next to him. He waved at General Zhong. “We’ll talk when I wake up. Get out.”

Then, under the observation of a crowd of staring eyes, he hugged Kou Tong, rubbed against him, and closed his eyes.

What the hell was wrong with this world…

Only Chang Dou, always half a beat slow, said in satisfaction to the goateed Wu Xiangxiang, “My plan won, huh? As a forfeit, you should shave off your annoying beard!”

Meanwhile, in a palliative care hospital in C City, Lao Tian, who had mysteriously gone missing several days ago, inexplicably returned to his hospital bed. Under the astonished gazes of the medical staff, he got into bed and waved, refusing to be stuck full of tubes once again.

“Have my children been here?” Lao Tian asked.

“They have, they have. You suddenly went missing, sir. It scared them to death. They’re out in the lounge now. I’ll go call them for you…” A young nurse reacted after staring blankly for two seconds. She ran out.

Lao Tian didn’t speak. He lay face up on his pillow, looking at the snow white ceiling, then out the window. It was all verdant greenery out there.

He smiled, his eyes beginning to cloud over, deathly grey spreading over his face. He suddenly reached into emptiness and whispered to himself, “Let’s go. I won’t wait. What were they doing all that time? They didn’t come when I wanted them, so it’s game over. I have a strong card to play, too. Just the two of us, we’ll go…”

A breeze blew by. The curtains moved slightly. Lao Tian’s oldest son barged into the hospital room first. Seeing his father with his back to them, facing out the window, he reached out a trembling hand. Then it suddenly became heavy and fell.

It was as if something had collapsed in his heart. An indescribable ache spread through all his organs. He was quickly pushed aside by his siblings behind him. Then crying erupted inside the small hospital room.

The tree may crave calm, but the wind will not drop; the child may crave support, but the parent won’t wait.

Who’s to say that the old man couldn’t be a tsundere for once?

The first thing Kou Tong did after waking up was to ask General Zhong to investigate the whereabouts of He Xiaozhi, Qin Qin, and Manman. This was already three days later.

Qin Qin was very easy to find. Recently, a mental patient had gone missing in B City, and all the medical staff had been nervous for a long time, but then found that she had returned on her own, still wearing her hospital pajamas. It was said that her mental condition became much worse after her return. At first, she wouldn’t eat no matter what; later she slowly compromised. She became uncommunicative, but her aggression wasn’t so strong anymore.

They might never be able to cure her, but who knew? This was only the beginning.

Manman was local. Her full name was Lu Xiaoman, the same as that famous woman[25]. Sadly, she wasn’t doted on in all ways all her life. General Zhong called in some personal connections, and in the end the local women’s federation intervened and got the child removed. Manman’s single mother was arrested for child abuse. Manman tested very high on an IQ test and was quickly adopted by a couple of intellectuals who couldn’t have children of their own for health reasons.

Kou Tong saw her twice. Though she was making slow progress and still had slight obstacles in communicating, she was slowly learning to speak.

This little lady was like a young but staunch plant. Though malnourished and at death’s door before, it only took a bit of sunlight and water to make her better.

Her adoptive parents were very good to her. Her above average IQ made her little inner world much more complicated than those of her peers. If there were only people who were sincerely good to her, who merited it, she would try her hardest to use means that they could understand to call them “mom and dad.”

But some things weren’t so satisfactory. When they found He Xiaozhi, he had already jumped off the roof of a mental hospital.

When he had ended up in the big boiler, he had been sneaking up to the roof to jump off. When he returned, he was brought back to his original spot.

It was said that he didn’t even hesitate. Traces on the scene attested that as soon as he got there, he cast himself into space without hesitation, yearning for death, arousing the greatest latent strength of his life; even the exhaustion of the fierce operation of his consciousness couldn’t impact his glorious jump.

Sometimes, a sudden turn can’t change a person’s fate. Going around and around through accident after accident, he would still reach the same end by a different road.

Though he had experienced such a beautiful dream, had known love, concern, and all the feelings of being needed and valued, though he himself had desperately wanted to live…

It still wasn’t enough.

There was nothing that was certain to defeat another thing. Dropped into the same mire, some people, with only a piece of driftwood, could climb out themselves, while others, even if everyone tried their hardest to pull them out, would still slip away and sink.

Though everyone hoped for and expected a happy ending, these were the facts.

Kou Tong returned to the base and saw that Yao Shuo’s wife and son had come to meet him. According to General Zhong, though he was freed from suspicion, all his many little problems added together were still enough to get him in trouble and be temporarily relieved of his post to do some soul-searching. But he was a public servant of many years’ standing, and the problems weren’t so big. In a little while, when the wind had calmed, everything would be all right. Though there was no hope of promotion afterward, at least he could still steadily muddle on until retirement.

A helicopter picked the family up from the base. When Yao Shuo boarded the helicopter, he looked back at Kou Tong. Perhaps he wanted to say something. Then he tripped and his son deftly held him up.

The young man had the particular spareness of adolescence and some new pimples on his face, but he was growing fast. Yao Shuo turned to look at him and felt that the brat seemed to have eaten fertilizer; he was even taller than last time…he would soon be taller than he was.

He was suddenly inexpressibly moved. He patted his son on the shoulder and squeezed into the helicopter.

In the remaining half a month, Huang Jinchen shot nearly all the birds in the vicinity of the base. Kou Tong began to lead people in repairing the big boiler’s program. But as for the little program that had created the problem this time, he didn’t completely delete it. Instead, he took a mobile hard disk and secretly backed it up, prepared to put in the real safe in his home.

Huang Jinchen had the luck to glance at the label on the mobile hard disk: Heaven Reserve.

Yes, Kou Tong’s mom was still happily and valiantly living inside. Kou Tong hoped that the scratches on her arm would heal as soon as possible and not impact the taste of her cooking.

And as for the person he had once predicted wouldn’t remain long…

Stomping with fury, General Zhong poked him in the spine and said, “This is an ecological park! An ecological park, do you understand! Do you have any culture! Do you know what environmental protection is! Do you absolutely have to eat roasted birds! Is the base starving you? Are we starving you? Well, are we? Kou Tong! Take that guy and—fuck—off!”

There was no need to instruct Kou Tong. He had already packed his bags. He dejectedly pulled two suitcases as he trotted out, still sporting a head of messy hair, beaming like a lucky cat. On his way, he stuffed a bag into Huang Jinchen’s hands and said to General Zhong, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he’s a disgrace to the family, badly raised. How embarrassing for me. We’ll be going, sorry for bothering you…”

“And don’t come back!” General Zhong flared up.

Huang Jinchen said, “Tut—as if anyone would want to look at your wrinkled old face…”

Kou Tong held down the back of his head, cutting off his words. Before General Zhong could stomp with fury once more, he pulled Huang Er-Pang away…

This movement, a very long time after, trained the strength of Dr. Kou’s inactive arms. Of course, that’s a story for later.

And after—after, the knight and the princess lived a life as unreliable as thoughtlessness and unhappiness…fine, a happy life.

They lived sometimes normally, sometimes teased by literary destiny, earnestly and with boundless idiocy.

The facts bear it out: divinity is insubstantial; idiocy is benevolent governance.

EXTRA

A PERSON’S MODE of living is ordinarily related to his character. When two people are together, it remains to be seen whether the winds of progress will prevail, or whether they’ll encourage each other’s bad habits.

Long ago, General Zhong had felt that Comrade Kou Tong was only a mild headache, seeing that while he wasn’t always before his eyes, when he really needed him, he could find him. But long after, when a bastard by the name of Huang had moved in with Kou Tong, General Zhong could no longer stand it.

The combination of Huang Jinchen and Kou Tong wasn’t as simple as one plus one makes two.

General Zhong sometimes thought that if you gave him the choice again, he would certainly have put Huang and Dr. Kou far, far apart. If you wanted a concrete value, then he hoped they would be ten thousand light years apart.

General Zhong had always hoped for someone who could always be with Kou Tong, so there would be someone to take care of him or give him someone else to take care of. With something to worry about, he wouldn’t run around wildly all the time and spare General Zhong from mistakenly thinking Kou Tong had died out there when there was no news of him.

But in all honesty, General Zhong thought, he had really never thought that Kou Tong would end up with Huang Jinchen—should he say that fated couples will always meet? Or that birds of a feather flock together? Or that flies go after shit…ah!

At any rate, when they were apart, General Zhong could still manage to find where Huang Jinchen was busking, as well as the place where Kou Tong had broken his leg. When they were together, he couldn’t find either of them.

When he couldn’t find them no matter how hard he tried, General Zhong did something very low—he cut off the wages of these two jerks who were nominally employed by his department.

Therefore, Kou Tong, bringing along his family, appeared like a summoned magical beast…

At noon on a bright and sunny day, General Zhong was sitting in his office cautiously playing Minesweeper when his hand holding the mouse suddenly stopped; something hard was pointing at the back of his head. A familiar voice darkly said, “Give back the money, and I won’t kill you—”

“…” General Zhong said, “Huang—Jin—chen! Fuck—you!”

Huang Jinchen said, “Heheheh.”

He removed the gun, went around in front of him, and plopped onto General Zhong’s desk. He leaned close. “What, is the base finally filing for bankruptcy?”

General Zhong took a deep breath. “Absent without leave! Suddenly disappearing! Eating and not working! What the hell are you two up to? Huh? No organization, no discipline! Do you want to quit? Do you have any collective consciousness?!”

“…” Huang Jinchen thought about it and timidly requested instruction. “Since when has the base had an urgent assignment?”

General Zhong: “…”

The two of them stared at each other for a while. Someone suddenly knocked on the office door from outside. General Zhong crossly said, “Get the hell in here!”

Kou Tong walked in with a conspicuous smile. “Hello, instructor.”

General Zhong rolled his eyes. With a fake smile, he said, “Your honeymoon vacation has gone on too long, hasn’t it?”

Huang Jinchen said, “We put the marriage and maternity leave together.”

General Zhong’s eyes flashed. “Who gave birth?”

Huang Jinchen said, “It’s precisely because no one gave birth that we thought it wasn’t official enough and voluntarily changed it to a honeymoon vacation.”

Listen to how much political awareness this comrade had.

General Zhong adjusted his expression, striving to be serious. “Actually, I called you two back because we have some business.”

Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen simultaneously said: “The money first.”

A cheerful little vein popped up on General Zhong’s temple. “I’ll transfer it to your accounts in the afternoon, all right!?”

Kou Tong pulled up a chair and sat across from him. “Go on, sir,” he said urbanely.

“The RZ Unit has requested the assistance of the special expert group.” General Zhong rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They’ll be here soon, about a secret society a Utopia extremist has established at the border. Many ordinary citizens have been pulled in. I don’t know the precise circumstances myself. When they get here…”

Before he could finish, someone spoke from the doorway: “This thing is pretty annoying. They seem to have created their own faith, with all kinds of false reasoning and heresy, and gotten a big bunch of stupid villagers to join up as their ‘congregation.’”

Kou Tong turned his head and saw the RZ Unit’s renowned “imperial diplomat” Su Qing leaning by the door, wrapped in a superbly tailored trench coat that fit him extremely well, one hand in his pocket, black rose-shaped earrings half-revealed in his earlobes. Put him in a shop window and you could use him as a display model.

Still so flashy, General Zhong thought, closing his eyes.

Huang Jinchen rubbed his nose a little awkwardly—after all, the person in front of him was the one he had chased through eight streets with a sniper rifle. Really…it was one thing to be friends in spirit without ever seeing each other, but why insist on meeting? Their friendship might die just as it saw the light of day; that would be pretty awkward for everyone.

Kou Tong’s eyes immediately lit up. “Su Qing!”

Su Qing’s slightly murderous gaze moved away from Huang Jinchen and immediately softened considerably. “Dr. Kou, what a pity I didn’t have a chance to see you last time I came to the base.”

Kou Tong asked, “Where’s Captain Hu?”

“Still in D City. I flew over on my own.”

“Oh…” The corners of Kou Tong’s lips turned up irresistibly. He thought, Great. Then he confidently got up and extended his arms. “Since he’s not here, how about you come over here and give me a reunion hug?”

Su Qing pressed on his temples. At first he thought this wouldn’t be very good, but when he glimpsed Huang Jinchen’s foul expression, he quickly changed his mind and stepped forward to hug the slightly flattered Dr. Kou. He patted him on the back and looked provokingly past Dr. Kou’s shoulder at Huang Jinchen, then took a breath and said, “Of course. The deal didn’t come off, but we’re still friends. It’s those who are destined to meet but not fated to be together who remain a scarlet beauty mark over the heart.”

Murderousness floated over Huang Jinchen’s head.

Su Qing looked at him and, in an excellent mood, said, “Didn’t whoever-it-was say that all people have white roses and red roses? Well, I think there’s something in that. If you’re always looking at one person, day after day, month after month, as time goes on, roses or not, the white starts to look like toilet paper and the red starts to look like sanitary napkins. It’s really so frustrating[26].”

Huang the sanitary napkin took a deep breath, feeling that he was about to start leaking.

Kou Tong only then noticed that he counted as a “family man,” gave two slightly awkward laughs, and let Su Qing go. Huang Jinchen grabbed him by the back of the neck and firmly pulled him behind himself.

“Hey,” said Su Qing, just dying to make trouble, “there’s a shrew in the house.”

“Pretty boy.” Huang Jinchen gnashed his teeth.

“Jealous, are you?” Su Qing glanced at him and disdainfully said, “Dr. Kou, your aesthetic sensibility has suddenly become so twisted. You’ve suddenly turned from smiling beautiful youths to hulking, grimacing big men. Honestly!”

Kou Tong’s expression twisted, because Huang Jinchen had pinched his waist. His gaze fell on General Zhong, who was sitting by and watching. The latter calmly averted his gaze, showing that there was nothing he could do.

Kou Tong could only laugh awkwardly. “Ahaha…a return to nature, a return to nature.”

The facts tell us that taking many wives can really be a sweet burden on a man.

This case was handled without peace—because the special expert team’s so-and-so and the RZ Unit’s so-and-so fought like cats and dogs every day.

Anyway, the only one really doing expert work was Dr. Kou. Huang Jinchen, mooching off the special expert team as a kept man, invested all his limited experience into an unlimited struggle.

At last, after an armed group had broken down a door and caught the head of the terrorists, a man dressed in women’s clothes who was hiding among the village aunties, and the technicians had resolved the bomb threat, Captain Hu, pestered beyond endurance, boiled over.

He picked the increasingly unreasonable Su Qing up…by the belt, put him over his shoulder, and dragged him away like a sack.

…He even nodded calmly to Kou Tong in passing.

Kou Tong: “…”

He subconsciously shook out his shoulders, as though he was the one carrying someone over his shoulder. He raised his head and saw Huang Jinchen standing there with a fake smile. “Haha, come over here, we’ll have a chat about this.”

Kou Tong took a deep breath. After being caught between two fires for over ten days, he thought there was really nothing for him to say; he should, like Captain Hu, simply haul Huang Jinchen by his belt, put him over his shoulder, and drag him away.

So, thinking that it was better to act than to think, he pulled on Huang Jinchen’s belt and fiercely said, “That’s enough, shut up! Aren’t you done yet!”

Huang Jinchen shut his mouth, waiting for his next move with a trace of expectation. Kou Tong pulled forward…and couldn’t budge him. Another pull…and still no movement.

He breathed in from the diaphragm, drew back his hands, rubbed his palms together, and made a movement as though about to lift weights.

Huang Jinchen: “Pfft…”

He truly couldn’t bear to watch Kou Tong go to so much trouble, so he walked a few steps forward and put his arms around Kou Tong’s shoulders, cushioning his chin against the hollow of his shoulder. He leaned… Kou Tong, who hadn’t gotten enough sleep for several days in a row and was physically inadequate, took three steps back and nearly sat on the ground.

Huang Jinchen at last let him go, raised his head, put an arm around Kou Tong’s shoulders, and patted. “Some smiling beautiful youth. That one is plenty shameless. Do you see the benefits of a grimacing Er-Pang now?”

Kou Tong was blank.

“I can keep a situation under control!” Huang Jinchen said with deep meaning and half-crouched. “Need me to carry you on my back?”

Kou Tong pounced without a word of protest, thinking, Anyway, I won’t crush you to death.

Indeed, Huang Jinchen wasn’t crushed to death in the least. He slowly walked away, carrying him on his back… Probably people could never be compared. Kou Tong, suddenly feeling thwarted, thought that he could never seem to become mighty. What could be done?

On Huang Jinchen’s back, he made a decision. He decided not to give this thing meat to eat in the future. He had to thin him out!

So, sunk in this beautiful illusion, Dr. Kou yawned, feeling his eyelids slowly sinking.

EXTRA 2

WHEN CHANG DOU was little, his teacher made the following embarrassing assessment—You know, this child, he’s pretty clever, learns things faster than other children, but…he’s a little…how should I say this? All right, to put it nicely, he’s a little straightforward. Whenever he does anything, he has a one-track mind. To put it less nicely, he’s a little dim-witted.

In first grade, the teacher taught: “Students should behave like this: go to class and sit up straight with both feet on the ground, look at the teacher and listen carefully, raise your hand if you want to speak… Classmate Chang Dou, what is it?”

Little Chang Dou put down his raised hand and said, “Teacher, I’m hungry. When can I go home to eat?”

The teacher: “…”

“You can’t speak about subjects unrelated to the class!”

From then on, these words became little Chang Dou’s golden rule. So one day, when he wanted to pee, Chang Dou held back and held back and held back. When he couldn’t hold back anymore, what was there to do?

He really wanted to go to the bathroom…but the teacher had said that if he wanted to speak, he had to raise his hand, and he couldn’t speak about subjects unrelated to the class.

Ah, he really couldn’t hold back…

The child sharing his table looked curiously at Classmate Chang Dou. He had never dared to speak to Classmate Chang Dou, because he thought he was an alien—the evidence was that Chang Dou’s head was bigger than all the other kids’.

Later… Later, little Chang Dou gloriously peed his pants.

In his first year of middle school, his math teacher once got drunk and showed up in class to ramble. Everyone looked at each other blankly. The teacher, with a flourish of his pen, assigned them a homework problem and said that anyone who solved the problem would get full marks at the end of the term, no need to take the exam.

The teacher was so drunk he wouldn’t have known his own mother. While the children were still learning how to prove congruency in triangles, he wrote down a four-axis mathematical physics equation…in other words, a partial differential equation.

Of course this couldn’t be solved, but everyone knew that while the math teacher was all right, he sometimes got drunk and ran at the mouth. Only little Chang Dou took him seriously.

He thought about it when he was eating, thought about it when he was walking, even thought about it in his dreams. When class ended, he went to the neighborhood library to consult reference materials. When he couldn’t find anything, he begged his dad to take him to the central library. He thought so hard that he became obsessed. In plain sight, he walked into an electricity pole and had a big bump on his forehead for three days.

But in the end, he still couldn’t solve it. Chang Dou was extremely aggrieved, thinking that he was very stupid. He felt too embarrassed even to cry. In the end, he actually got sick from holding himself back.

When his parents went to school to ask for a leave of absence, the math teacher was astonished. The child had been doing fine, how had he gotten sick?—It was clear that in the whole world, only Chang Dou was still hung up on this problem.

In short, he was the sort of person who would bash his head against a wall without looking back—he’d either knock the wall down or break his own head.

Strictly speaking, Chang Dou wasn’t a genius in the traditional sense. He didn’t attend a gifted class, and he hadn’t even been able to solve the problem the teacher had assigned while drunk. At best, he was only a talented individual who had to rely on his own hard work.

Working very, very hard, he tested into a key high school. Working very, very hard again, he tested into a key university. Finally, working very, very hard, he continued his studies and at last joined the legendary RZ Unit, realizing his childhood dream—study hard and be a useful person, like the heroes on TV—taking down bad guys with a “ha!” and “hi-ya!”

Though it strains the understanding to imagine what logical relationship there is between “taking down bad guys with a ‘ha!’ and ‘hi-ya!’” and “study hard”…

Ahem…getting back to the point, after joining the RZ Unit, Chang Dou became a fully qualified technician. He worked extremely hard, and his achievements were excellent. He slowly became important—but he still wasn’t a core member. In the whole technical department, there was only one core member. This was a genuine article genius. Chang Dou had always worshipped the technical department’s core member Dr. Xu, feeling that he could to anything, that he was so amazing, had invented so many things.

Every time he saw the core members fighting shoulder to shoulder like a family, joking and fooling around, Chang Dou was extremely envious, especially of one of the field agents. His name was Fang Xiu. Seeing him, Chang Dou felt that he was seeing his whole life’s ideal—he thought that this was just what a true man should be. He didn’t care about anything; when others were celebrating victory, he would silently open a bottle of beer beside them and put on a cynical smile. Even if he got injured, he could still laugh and jeer. He was so cool.

Chang Dou worked very hard and thought that it would be good if he could one day be like Dr. Xu.

But one day, he really did take Dr. Xu’s place, becoming the technical department’s core member as he had yearned for even in his dreams, but he found that he wasn’t happy at all—because Dr. Xu was dead.

No one accepted him. Though everyone was very nice and very polite to him, Chang Dou still felt excluded—perhaps in their hearts, Dr. Xu was part of their family, while Chang Dou was only an inferior replacement. All he could do was keep working very, very hard, let everyone see his efforts, and hope that at least…he could get a bit of approval from everyone, get the approval of…that person he had always silently watched.

This fool with his bird’s nest hair was once again taking things to heart and starting to bash his head against a wall.

EXTRA 3

LATER, CHANG DOU and his colleagues in the RZ Unit went through many experiences. The RZ Unit nearly broke up. They even became a group of unequipped wanted criminals engaged in guerrilla warfare.

But…no matter what they were called, bad guys were still bad guys.

Though good guys also jaywalked and littered, it wasn’t with the aim of hitting people or causing car crashes. Everyone was ordinary; they wouldn’t do frightening things.

Chang Dou experienced losing his job for the first time and sat at home uneasily reading the newspapers, wanting to know news of everyone, especially wanting to know…news of a certain person. So when he got Su Qing’s call, he couldn’t hold out; he nearly cried and sniveled.

He wanted to ask, Have you found Fang Xiu? Is everyone safe? Are you all right? Is he all right? Sadly, he was then scolded by Captain Hu and didn’t have time to ask.

Captain Hu really was a scary fellow.

Then came nonstop betrayal, probing, and flight. Unbelievable things came one after another—extracting the twenty-one grams of substance that was a human’s most fundamental energy, a C space that could block all attack, Utopia wanting to change all the extant rules of the world, the corpse that was a so-called spatial key, and countless people who united because of this war dying.

But in the end, they still won.

Chang Dou suddenly felt that he had been through major vicissitudes. As a human who lived in the 2.5th dimension, he had suddenly become a hanger-on in a story about saving the world. While he didn’t think he was a major character, he was still mixed up in it.

And everyone finally accepted him.

Except for…that person.

Fang Xiu never seemed to display any praise or friendliness towards him, show any expression conveying any positive emotions. He was always pulling a long face, looking at him as he would look at an imbecile.

But Chang Dou faintly remembered that when the bullets had been flying, a hand had grabbed his collar in the chaos and pulled him aside. The fingers were covered in cracks; blood and dirt had stuck to his collar. Only Chang Dou knew that when he was held down and curled into a ball, pressed against Fang Xiu, even hearing his heartbeat and smelling cigarettes and drying agent on him, in that moment, all of this came together into an uncontrollably racing heartbeat; as the human body’s motor sped up, it all transformed into smoke and floated up faintly from the subpar heat dissipator at the top of his head.

Of course, he was quickly pushed away again, because he really was too much of a hindrance.

The faint stubble on Fang Xiu’s chin, which he had neglected to shave because they were in a time of war, and his eyes, seeming to emit light when fixed on a certain point in the dark, later all transformed into the most discomforting charms in Chang Dou’s nightmares—so easily had Fang Xiu taken the place of Sora Aoi in his heart![27]

As a die-hard fan of Sora Aoi, when he got up the next morning, Chang Dou spent half an hour banging his head against the wall to express his grief and lamentation over his unsteady position and decisive betrayal.

According to his constant one-track mind character, this thing…happened like this.

He began trotting at Fang Xiu’s heels, awaiting the moment that his sincerity would work wonders.

When he had wanted to join the RZ Unit, Chang Dou had applied three times and been eliminated from consideration each time for various reasons. But he hadn’t given up. He had kept thinking that even a loser would one day fly up. So finally, when he had applied for the fourth time, and the examiners had been starting to think that he looked a little familiar, by a fluke, he had passed and become a member of the technical department.

So the slow long march began.

One day after the war ended, when Fang Xiu got mad for no reason at all and rather guiltily apologized to him, faced with his for once softened expression and his unreserved approval for Chang Dou—er, for his work—Chang Dou had acted on impulse, shouting “Requesting to be kept! I can warm your bed!”, though later he had felt that his head must have been full of water. But Fang Xiu’s stunned, shocked expression at the time had at last succeeded in hanging the nerd Chang Dou’s maiden heart by a rope.

Like a coward who didn’t dare to listen to the judge passing sentence, he avoided Fang Xiu for a whole week. At last he got up his courage. He thought, Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. He had already confessed, anyway. Whether Fang Xiu accepted or not, at any rate he had heard. But if he was refused, what would he do?

Chang Dou thought that he would definitely be ten thousand times sadder than when he had been refused by the RZ Unit’s technical department.

But that was all right!

He had applied four times, so he could confess four times!

Classmate Chang Dou, full of fighting spirit, at last appeared once more in public view with the bearing of a rooster. When Fang Xiu’s gaze stopped on his face, he was conflicted for a moment, then at last, without even looking for an opportunity, took advantage of a field assignment to run off.

Chang Dou assumed the post of tech support for the field agents. He could swear that the moment his voice came over the earpiece, Fang Xiu froze.

Chang Dou pumped his fist encouragingly at the poster of some war movie stuck to the wall of his office, indicating that one day he would take this pillbox!

A war with no guns fired began.

Fang Xiu returned from his assignment. Probably he had decided at last to put a stop to this business, so he went to his office alone and knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”

Chang Dou’s adrenaline secretions became excessive.

Fang Xiu closed the door behind him. He was silent for a while, then quietly said, “I came to talk things over with you, concerning…”

“Wait!” Chang Dou shouted.

“Let me ask you a question first.” Chang Dou stood in front of him, serious and solemn. Seriously and solemnly, he asked, “Can I kiss you now?”

Fang Xiu: “…”

“You…you only have two options, you can nod or shake your head. You can’t say anything else.”

Fang Xiu was blank for a while. Then he blankly shook his head.

Chang Dou’s head drooped. A little disheartened, he falteringly said, “OK…I understand, you don’t like me.”

Though Fang Xiu had in fact been planning to politely turn him down, he still hadn’t been planning to use such a novel means to do it.

“But I won’t give up!” The next instant, Chang Dou raised his head, his eyes like two burning Cosmos about to burn through his lenses…but he didn’t seem ridiculous. In that instant, he didn’t seem like an underaged boy in a manga; he seemed to have walked out of the crudely made black and white page with the bearing of a grown man, standing upright in front of Fang Xiu. He sighed softly, raised a hand, considered, put it back down, then quietly repeated, “I won’t give up.”

Chang Dou pulled the door open and said to Fang Xiu, “You don’t need to say anything. Leave now. I understand what you mean, but I don’t want to hear you say it.”

“Chang Dou.” Fang Xiu sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “You’ve grown up a little.”

Chang Dou suddenly smiled. He said, “In the Projector, I was trapped in an inescapable maze with you for twelve years. Even if I had only been six years old then, I would still be an adult by now.”

Suddenly, Fang Xiu didn’t know what to say. He could only let Chang Dou close the door in front of him. He irritably leaned against the corridor wall and lit a cigarette. Just then, the door Chang Dou had closed opened a crack once again. Chang Dou looked at him and went back inside. Puffing and blowing, he pulled out a first-aid kit, walked up to him without a word, and rolled up Fang Xiu’s pant leg.

Fang Xiu was startled and pulled his foot away, but Chang Dou held it firmly.

He still couldn’t walk entirely easily. During the assignment, his ankle had been brushed by a bullet, leaving a shallow wound.

Chang Dou knelt on one knee, carefully used a cotton swab to clean the wound, then applied medicine.

The cigarette Fang Xiu had lit burned all the way down to the end; he had forgotten to put it in his mouth.

Still later, Chang Dou’s life had only two centers of gravity—work, and making Fang Xiu look at him. What games, cartoons, Sora Aois, and all 2D means of messing around? He discarded them all without hesitation. He wanted to become a better person. Each time he thought he had become a bit better, he would attract Fang Xiu’s notice by every possible means for a chance to get one look.

Then he confessed over and over.

Every time, when Fang Xiu finished listening in silence, Chang Dou wouldn’t let him speak, only let him either nod or shake his head in response of the question “Can I kiss you?”

The RZ Unit’s technical department had refused Chang Dou three times. Fang Xiu had refused Chang Dou seven times, or was it eight?

But…there was no need to worry.

Chang Dou said to himself, There’s no need to worry.

There was a very dangerous field assignment. Even the technician was included. He was in the car controlling the equipment. When the arrest operation was coming to an end, the signal suddenly cut off.

Chang Dou didn’t know whether it was his own communication signal that had cut off or whether everyone’s signals had been blocked. If it was the latter, that was a bigger problem. So he quickly began to inspect the link and activated the emergency system. Just then, there was an explosion nearby. Someone came towards his car. The car door on one side was pulled open. Someone pulled him out of the car. There was a rumble, and the car where he had been sitting blew up.

Chang Dou saw clearly saw that, when it blew up, a string of blood droplets flew from Fang Xiu’s shoulder.

Fang Xiu quickly took him to hide under a big tree. He lit a signal flare, and then confused fighting began. They seemed to have returned to World War II. Both sides’ tech support was gone. They fought with guns, relying on radio to contact their people. They fought for a whole day and night. By the time the battle finally ended, Fang Xiu was half-soaked in his own blood.

Chang Dou returned to headquarters following Fang Xiu’s ambulance the whole way, followed him to the hospital room, and firmly disobeyed orders, stubbornly insisting on staying to look after him.

Fang Xiu was pretending to sleep, Chang Dou could see it. Each time it was only the two of them left, Fang Xiu pretended to sleep and ignored him in order to avoid awkwardness.

Chang Dou carefully took Fang Xiu’s hand and looked. No reaction. Then he tentatively drew closer…hm? Still no reaction.

His heart suddenly beat faster and faster. He slowly came closer and closer, until his breaths were clearly falling one by one on Fang Xiu’s skin. Fang Xiu’s eyelashes trembled, and he still…resisted and didn’t react.

Truly a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle[28]!

So Chang Dou became bold. He closed his eyes, almost piously leaned down, and gently kissed Fang Xiu’s dry lips, just a single touch. He felt that he was about to fly up.

The whole time, Fang Xiu lay in bed playing dead.

A big smile slowly appeared on Chang Dou’s face. He softly said, “I already told you the rules. This is tacit approval, isn’t it?”

That had to be it.

If you wanted a goal, a thing, or a person, however remote, however difficult, if you kept working hard and working hard, if you never gave up, you could make your wish come true.

That was what Chang Dou thought. Then he happily lay down at the side of the bed and fell asleep, still with a suspicious smile at the corners of his lips.

After a long time, Fang Xiu opened his eyes in his hospital bed, looked down at Chang Dou’s messy hair, then lightly raised his uninjured hand, took off his glasses, which had already fallen off his nose, and lightly put them aside.

Little Chang Dou was a person who would bash his head against a wall without looking back. Anyway, all his life, experience had told him that if you kept bashing the wall, you would one day break through.

[1] 连连看, an image matching game with many variations (and no official English translation, as far as I can tell).

[2] “Two Tigers” is, to begin with, the Chinese edition of “Frère Jacques.”

[3] Beggar’s chicken is a dish in which a whole chicken is baked while wrapped in clay and lotus leaves.

[4] Reference to the anime Ikkyū-san, based on the life of the very nontraditional Zen Buddhist monk Ikkyū; the title character rotating his fingers on his bald head when he’s thinking of a plan is a common occurrence in the anime.

[5] Popular card game from 2008 based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms; players take on various roles, including enemy agent. It allows for up to ten players.

[6] Characters from the very racy Ming Dynasty novel of manners 金瓶梅/The Plum in the Golden Vase. Ximen Qing is a rampant social climber, and Pan Jinlian is a married woman who has an affair with him and later murders her husband when he finds out.

[7] The “xiang” in his name is 香, variously “fragrant” or “appetizing” depending on context.

[8] This is the helpline number for China’s cellphone system.

[9] 王羲之, lived in the 4th century during the Jin Dynasty, one of the most famous masters of calligraphy.

[10] Huang Jinchen’s surname, 黄, means “yellow” and is also used to mean “pornographic.”

[11] All characters from Jin Yong’s novel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber; the Abbess Miejue is Zhou Zhiruo’s teacher and objects to her relationship with the novel’s protagonist Zhang Wuji.

[12] Half of a quote from 19th century German philosopher Hegel, in full "The real is the rational and the rational is the real.” In a very rough interpretation, its claim is that anything that can be logically derived from true premises must be real, regardless of whether it is supported by evidence. Original: “Was vernünftig ist, das ist Wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig.”

[13] 二胖, combination of stupid and fat; I’ve decided it’s cuter left in pinyin than any available translation.

[14] This continues the reference above to an episode in Journey to the West. “Royal brother” is what the Queen of Women’s Country called the monk Tripitaka.

[15] One of many dirty spoofs on 靜夜思 (Quiet Night Thought), a very well-known poem by Li Po.

[16] Original lines: 平生不会相思，才会相思，便害相思. From 春情 (Stirrings of Love) by Xu Zaisi.

[17] 刘姥姥进大观园 - a scene from Dream of the Red Chamber; the expression is used to describe someone simple and unsophisticated being overwhelmed by unfamiliar surroundings.

[18] 程朱理学, a branch of Neo-Confucianism named for notable philosophers who formulated this way of thinking; it places emphasis on rationalism.

[19] The Jiajing Emperor, born Zhu Houcong, was an emperor of the Ming dynasty nearly killed in the Palace plot of Renyin year by several palace women.

[20] Suxiao jiuxin pills (速效救心丸), a traditional Chinese medicine, and nitroglycerin are both used for the treatment of chest pain and heart disease.

[21] Chen Shimei is a Chinese opera character who represents a heartless and unfaithful man; he uses his wife to gain social position, then deserts and tries to kill her.

[22] Respectively, the first two are references to two of China’s Four Great Folktales: The Butterfly Lovers, in which Ma Wencai is a merchant with whom Zhu Yingtai, the female protagonist, has an arranged marriage, and jumps into a grave with her dead lover in order to escape; and The Legend of White Snake, in which Fahai is the evil Buddhist monk who is jealous of the titular character and attempts repeatedly to sabotage her romance with Xu Xian. The third reference is historical: Li Houzhu (birth name Li Yu, known for his ci poetry) was the last ruler of the Southern Tang, which was conquered by Zhao Kuangyin, Emperor Taizu of Song.

[23] Eileen Chang, a mid-20th century author from Shanghai; the quote is from the novella Love in a Fallen City (倾城之恋).

[24] All parts of a traditional upper class marriage ceremony.

[25] 陆小曼, an acclaimed mid-20th century painter, writer, singer, and actor.

[26] This speech and his earlier one are references to Red Rose, White Rose (红玫瑰与白玫瑰), a novella by Eileen Chang, whose work is also referenced previously; the red and white roses represent two women in a man’s life. The precise quote referenced is: Marry a red rose and eventually she’ll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is “moonlight in front of my bed.” Marry a white rose, and before long she’ll be a grain of sticky rice that’s gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart. (Karen S. Kingsbury translation).

[27] Sora Aoi is a Japanese former adult video actress and nude model.

[28] The term that gets rendered in English as “ninja” is 忍者 (“shinobi” in Japanese); in Chinese the literal meaning can be read as “person who endures.”

1. 1: Dr. Kou

2. 2: The Gun

3. 3: Lao Yao

4. 4: The Projector

5. 5: First Shot of the Great Adventure

6. 6: Lao Yao (1)

7. 7: Lao Yao (2)

8. 8: Lao Yao (3)

9. 9: Lao Yao (4)

10. 10: Lao Yao (5)

11. 11: Lao Yao (6)

12. 12: Mountain (1)

13. 13: Mountain (2)

14. 14: Seven People (1)

15. 15: Seven People (2)

16. 16: Seven People (3)

17. 17: Blab

18. 18: Crisis

19. 19: Intervention

20. 20: Watched

21. 21: Illusion

22. 22: Hug

23. 23: Seed

24. 24: Little Loli vs. Creepy Uncle

25. 25: Who Am I?

26. 26: The Magician

27. 27: Movement of the Heart

28. 28: The Nameless Island

29. 29: Rescue

30. 30: A Second Time Axis

31. 31: All One’s Life Land

32. 32: Base Camp

33. 33: The Confession

34. 34: Holding Back

35. 35: Bewildered

36. 36: Memory Chip

37. 37: Scan

38. 38: Follow-up to the Confession

39. 39: Sneak Attack

40. 40: Beginning

41. 41: The Death of Hope (Part 1)

42. 42: The Death of Hope (Part 2)

43. 43: Love

44. 44: Untitled

45. 45: Supermarket

46. 46: The Choice

47. 47: The Lovers

48. 48: Elephant's Bane

49. 49: Nightmare

50. 50: Murder

51. 51: Looking Back

52. 52: Hatred

53. 53: Sea of Ghosts

54. 54: Prelude to the Abyss

55. 55: The Abyss (1)

56. 56: The Abyss (2)

57. 57: The Abyss (3)

58. 58: The Abyss (4)

59. 59: The Abyss (5)

60. 60: The Grand Conclusion

61. EXTRA

62. CHANG DOU EXTRA (Part 1)

63. CHANG DOU EXTRA (Part 2)