It was some sort of a plant, one with three thin leaves, each about a meter long. It looked like it was malnourished, appearing very thin and it was uprooted by Bai Yang. There was still dirt on its roots. Although it looked fresh, it definitely did not look appetizing.
With a forced expression, Bai Yang stared at this plant in his hands for half an hour, as if a pause button in him was hit.
He then threw away the plant in his hands, as if it were on fire or some sort.
"Oh god!"
With a scream and as if there was a rabid dog chasing after him, he rushed back into his room, turned it upside down, found his wallet and charged out of his house again, but not before slamming the door back hardly….
The weather was scorching hot, but Bai Yang was in a cold sweat, he had goosebumps all over; with a naked top, boxers, one foot bare and the other wearing a flip-flop, he ran like there was no tomorrow, entirely neglecting the looks of the passersbys gave him.
"How embarrassing…"
"Does he know no shame?"
"What a bad example to the little ones….."
"Ah, that big brother has abs!"
Like a rabid dog, Bai Yang crossed one street from another while making a fool out of himself.
Ten minutes later, he arrived at the hospital and ran straight towards the psychiatry department, jumping the queue.
In the diagnostic room, there was an old driver… oh, an old doctor who was making himself comfortable, with the cup of tea he was sipping on and the newspaper in his hands, taking his own sweet time. Compared to the other departments, the psychiatry department had the least workload, for there were tons of psychos out there but barely a few that were willing to search for help from the doctors.
Peng….
The door was slammed apart by an external force all of a sudden, the sudden impact scared the old doctor and he tore his newspaper apart out of shock.
"Doctor, please help me! When I was at home, I found myself in the middle of a forest, but there is also… there is also this tiger that wants to eat me and poof, I was back home again…."
Bai Yang charged into the room and poured his heart out in one go, his arms grabbed onto the old doctor's torso firmly, just like a drown man holding onto the last straw that might save his life….
"Young man, calm down, calm down. Stop shaking me now, I'm feeling dizzy now…."
After some great effort, the old doctor let out a relieved breath after he managed to calm Bai Yang. He took a sip of his tea again to calm himself down from the scary young man's sudden assault on him and reached his hands toward Bai Yang, "Young man, where is your medical history?"
"....."
An hour later, Bai Yang returned with his queue number and medical history and explained his situation. After some tests, the old doctor concluded, "Young man, you are not sick, you are perfectly fine. It's just that the weather is too hot. Take care of yourself, don't get yourself a heatstroke, also, don't stay up late. When you are tired, you might just hallucinate and have illusions, go home now. Make yourself some green bean soup to neutralize the heat in you and you'll be perfectly alright."
"No, doctor, please trust me. I'm really sick, by sick I mean I'm really sick. My mental faculties are in disorder. Look at me, here, at my shoulder, I've been stung by a giant mosquito, my legs too, pierced by a thorn on the ground! These are all caused by that forest, I was clearly in my house just now but if I was at home, how would this have happened? Is my mental problem beyond saving? Or I'm having dissociative identity disorder, so I don't even know after I ran into a forest for no reason?"
The panic Bai Yang shouted, while wearing an expression of disbelief.
"Are you the doctor now or am I the doctor? Trust me, you are perfectly fine, you know what you are doing and show no symptoms at all. Now, go home and stop messing around..."
"Doctor, you should just take a look at me again and prescribe me some medicine."
"…."
After some persistent negotiations, the old doctor gave in and prescribed Bai Yang with some medicines for relieving stresses on the mind and that was when Bai Yang finally left.
Standing at the entrance of the hospital, Bai Yang was still worried, after some thinking, he decided to head over to the other hospitals while enduring the weird looks given to him by others.
He visited a few other hospitals only to have the same outcome, that he was fine and as healthy as he could get.
After all, mental disorder was not something that would appear just like that, there would be some obvious differences between a normal person and a person who truly had mental problem; after explaining himself, the doctors all concluded that either Bai Yang was messing around or he was having a heatstroke that gave him such illusions.
He dragged his tired body back home in the end. After loitering around for some time, he mustered his courage, opened the door and checked carefully before entering. There was nothing wrong at all, he searched around with a stick used to hang clothes as something to defend himself and sank into the couch after ensuring that everything was fine. His heart, however, was in conflict.
It was no doubt that he was a university student who received top notched education and that he watched a lot of TV shows that involved teleporting someplace far away. But even so, he still couldn't accept it when such a thing happened to him; apart from thinking that something was wrong with his mind, there was no other explanation he could come up with.
The fact that the plant was still lying on the coffee table, the dirt was even on the floor, his missing flip-flop, cup noodle and the soup stain on his body confirmed that everything really did happen….
Then that raised the question, what was happening? He was right at home and when he sat down, he landed in another place?
"That place is definitely not the Earth I know. The sun on Earth is golden, but the sun over there is white. I travelled into another world and returned right away, without a reason? Is this a trial of world travelling?"
After some strugglings, Bai Yang confirmed that he was fine and the now calm Bai Yang finally began to think of his spectacular encounter seriously.
As someone who grew up consuming all sorts of toxins, though his encounter was beyond imagination, Bai Yang quickly accepted the fact.
"The question right now is how did I manage to return after getting there? Nothing strange happened to me prior to that, so how is this happening? And I actually managed to return…."
Sitting on the couch, Bai Yang mumbled to himself but before he could finish his words, with a blink of an eye, he disappeared from the living room again….
As for Bai Yang, for an instance, his vision blurred and with another blink, he found himself at the forest again, still in his seated position. He jumped back up again as his butt was stung by something sharp.
"I really came back… Holy shit, tiger! Go back, go back!"
Bai Yang immediately saw the tiger again, it was still crawling over there and the terrified young man shouted in his heart, Go back, go back right now!
And he disappeared, right from the forest and back to the living room….
With the familiar home decorations in his vision, Bai Yang was awestruck, a few seconds before he was still in his living room, another second later he was in the forest and another few seconds later, he was back in the living room…
"Siiiii…. Ouch…."
He removed a sharp thorn from his butt, the residual pain telling him that it was all real!
The reason why humans conquered earth was because of their intelligence. After two short and confounding experiences, Bai Yang, who was definitely not an idiot, finally understood what was happening, more or less.
"I don't know what that place is, but it is dangerous and getting there…."
Shua—
He disappeared again, only to reappear a second later, with a confused expression, "And coming back all depends on my thought. If I want to get there…."
"I will be there…."
"And I will come back if I want to come back."
After coming to that conclusion, Bai Yang blinked back and forth. He stared right at the ceiling, for he knew that he had gotten lucky. He did not know what was happening, but reality was staring him right in the face and nothing could change it!
With another scratch on his head, Bai Yang simply covered his wounds with bandages and dozed off for some time before jumping back up. He grabbed onto the grass lying on the coffee table, sat in front of his computer and started searching for the information regarding to plants. After two hours of research, he shockingly found nothing related to the grass he brought back.
"This grass, must have yet to be discovered by humans, but that sun over there can't be undiscovered. There is no white sun the size of a car wheel on Earth. That place is definitely not Earth."
After that, he was excited yet worried. Perhaps no one would be able to remain calm when discovering an entire new world unknown to any human. It was as if there was a cat relentlessly scratching Bai Yang's heart.
"Getting there and returning, I will appear at the same spot. So how am I supposed to explore the world if that tiger is still sitting there?"
As much as he wanted to go there again, Bai Yang would still see that tiger every time he "blinked". He couldn't figure out why would that tiger stubbornly camped by this location; what did he even do to the tiger?
Little did he know that the tiger was already dead, so he kept thinking that the tiger was waiting for him.
But, he was not stupid at all, after a few times, he noticed something was off about that tiger. In the next blink, he carefully waited for two seconds, prepared to run anytime and in the end, his eyes widened after seeing an arrow impaled through the tiger's head, right through its eyes!
"Dead? What's wrong? Shot by someone else, with an arrow? There are people around!"
Upon thinking of this, Bai Yang ran immediately, returned home and finally let out a relieved breath. It was just way too dangerous, what if an arrow flew out from the forest and gave him a pierce? Just the thought of it was scary enough!
"That place is too dangerous! A tiger larger than a bull, and an arrow that could impaled its head, what kind of arrow and bow possesses such power!"
Though Bai Yang only knew a little about that world, his conclusion only told him that it was one fraught with danger!
But then again, the more dangerous it was, the more curious he became. There was a saying that curiosity killed the cat. Humans were driven by the eagerness to explore the unknown, and Bai Yang was a human. His head rolled around, scanning his house all over, hoping that he would find something useful for his exploration of the new world….