Huai Shi never dreamed that before reaching the peak of his life, he would one day enjoy the same treatment as the school beauty, complete with a bodyguard right out of legends.
Unfortunately, aside from being a flashy Cowherd, this bodyguard had more than a bucketful of shortcomings...
Before Huai Shi could object, Ai Qing had briskly arranged everything and quickly assigned him a twenty-four-hour personal bodyguard—unlucky Liu Dongli.
When Ai Qing was around, Liu Dongli didn't dare to be too presumptuous, but as soon as she had left, he began to strut around Stone Marrow Pavilion as if he owned the place.
"Damn, what a dump, what a shame for this house, the taste isn't half bad... Where's my room?"
Huai Shi rolled his eyes, "Pick any; there are plenty of empty rooms. Even the clutter room has a bed, take your pick."
"What's for eating? I haven't even had lunch yet."
"Interested in plain boiled noodles?"
"Where's the bathroom?" he continued, taking out an assortment of bottles and containers with a worried look, "I need to hydrate, the ultraviolet rays have been too intense lately."
"If you don't have a habit of stepping four steps backwards into the bathroom, it's just around the corner, and by the way, there's no water heater. You'll need to heat your own water; firewood is out back in the yard."
"Tsk."
Liu Dongli sighed unhappily, unsure if it was because he couldn't step backward four steps or couldn't take a shower at his leisure. After he toured the whole mansion, voicing his opinions on everything from the front yard, backyard, living room, balcony, bathroom, and so on, he finally remembered something and pulled out his phone, "Eh, what's the WIFI password?"
"There isn't any!"
After having his issues handled by Ai Qing's carrot-and-stick approach, Huai Shi wasn't in the best of moods either and found Cowherd particularly irritating, "Are you here to be a bodyguard or to act like a big shot?"
"Stupid question, obviously to act like a big shot."
Liu Dongli snorted, slinging his hands behind him and walked out. After a while, he returned, lugging a huge black plastic bag, "Where's the shovel?"
Huai Shi looked at the human-shaped plastic bag and felt a bit creeped out, "What the hell are you up to?"
"Burying a body," Liu Dongli retorted. "You wouldn't want this thing lying around in the corridor, would you?"
"...Where do you plan to bury it?"
Huai Shi became wary.
Without replying, Liu Dongli glanced outside the window, causing Huai Shi to jump up hurriedly, "No way! You're thinking of burying a body in your own garden? How tactless!"
"Then where should I bury it?"
"The hillside behind the back door is full of empty spaces, bury it as far away as you can!"
"Tsk, what a hassle."
Although Liu Dongli was feeling lazy, he didn't object further. He picked up the body and the shovel and left.
Watching him leave the house, Huai Shi finally relaxed.
"Ah, he's finally gone." Raven popped out of nowhere, "Made me hide for ages."
Seeing the slack bird, Huai Shi grew even angrier, "Where the hell were you just now?"
"I was tidying up your loose ends. With that girl's sharp eyes, do you think your Apocalypse ash could have gone unnoticed?" Raven rolled his eyes.
Now that it was mentioned, Huai Shi couldn't help but feel irritated, "What on earth is that stuff? Why does it come out of my hand?"
He had thought that at the brink of death, he might awaken some miraculous power, but what he got was Magical Chili Pepper—nobody could cope with that...
"Ah, well, if we're talking definitions here, it's a rare Source Substance material, extracted from a wide array of death and destruction, the high purity essence..."
Raven pondered for a moment before answering, "If you want me to explain how you could scatter that stuff, I'd say it's because you've read through death records, and with your unique traits, extracted the fear you feel towards death, mixed it with your dissipating Source Substance, and synthesized high purity Apocalypse.
However, this isn't your soul ability; it's more like a byproduct of you subconsciously using your traits—similar, I suppose, to the noise of a washing machine, the wastewater of an air conditioner's external unit, or the radiation from an induction cooker."
"Can you not choose a different adjective?"
"Alright, so let's put it this way, you are—probably a Negative Energy Producer now."
"You don't have to add that 'probably'!"
Huai Shi was furious, glaring at him: "And what kind of crappy skill is this? Can't you get me a better one?"
"I'd love to, but... you know how the saying goes, 'Some walls cannot be painted over,' right?"
"..."
Glaring at it hatefully for a long while, Huai Shi soon reacted: "In that case, if negative emotions can be extracted, then positive emotions might work too, right? Does that mean I can produce 'Liberator' on the fly?"
"Oh, you mean the 'Liberator Dust'?" the Raven nodded, "That's true, but the problem is... you need to have happy memories to work with, don't you?"
"Bullshit! Why wouldn't I have happy memories? I'm so happy!" Huai Shi indignantly thumped his chest: "You have no idea how joyous my life has been, okay? I'm just short of laughing from dawn till dusk. After sleeping, I can pick up right where I left off and keep laughing!"
"..."
Without a word, the Raven just looked at him until Huai Shi turned away awkwardly, "Let's... change the subject."
Thus, under the crushing weight of reality, he came to terms with the fact that he had become a Negative Energy Producer.
"Now that we have visitors at home, for safety's sake, I suppose I need to hide for a while. From here on, you're on your own."
Hearing footsteps at the back door, the Raven quickly said, "To avoid getting caught, don't read the death records from the Book of Fate when others are around. Try meditating on your own."
"Meditate?"
Huai Shi was stunned: "How exactly do I do that?"
"Didn't I give you the WIFI password?"
The Raven spread its wings with nonchalance and flew off into the distance, leaving behind its final words.
"—Look it up yourself."
.
.
After being busy for an entire afternoon, he finally managed to take care of Liu DongLi's strange and varied demands.
In the meantime, Huai Shi found a moment to sneakily check on his phone exactly what 'Peppa', no, what meditation was...
It took him three to four hours, sifting through a hundred thousand ads and bizarre cult propaganda materials, before he finally found a relatively reliable explanation in a dictionary entry from a foreign website.
To put it simply, there are many different types of meditation. If you want to do it the high-end way, it's pretty complicated. You have to find a quiet place, ideally where a gentle breeze blows and the moon hangs high, or amidst bamboo, or by water. Then you take a bath, change into clean clothes, abstain from food for three days, burn incense, and so on and so forth...
But if you're going for the low-end version, it's ridiculously simple: just find a comfortable spot to lie down, close your eyes, empty your mind, and you're done.
While it sounds ludicrous, at least this method can't cause much trouble—the worst that could happen is you might accidentally fall asleep. If you try some weird method on your own, a hormonal imbalance may be the least of your problems; you could be sprinting down the road to psychosis...
In a website link referenced by the encyclopedia entry, Huai Shi read a summary by a British occult enthusiast on the essence of meditation: devoid of its esoteric background, for the average person, meditation is a way to relax the nerves and give the brain a break. By emptying the self, you enter a state of deep hibernation, giving an overworked digestive and nervous system a chance to rest and heal.
Therefore, it's not limited to sitting meditation, ascetic practices, chanting sutras, or popping pills—as long as you can get yourself into a relaxed and empty state, whatever you do is fine.
The blogger also recommended methods he'd personally tried and listed their pros and cons, which included: writing, with the downside being that writer's block can lead to anxiety, and if someone discovers you've used your own name for the protagonist in 'Are Goblins in the Pond?', you will cheerfully embrace social death as it goes viral; playing the piano, which is hard for beginners and can easily disturb the neighbors, leading the blogger to abandon it after being beaten up by a neighbor for the third time.
In the end, the blogger concluded: painting is best.
In his latest blog post, he stated that he managed not only to empty his mind and enter a meditative state through the focus required by painting, but also to hear ancient souls whispering truths about the universe in his dreams and beside his ear, having returned from the seventh dimension, which enlightened and liberated him.
At the end of the article, he also posted his latest artwork that showed a drastic improvement in his drawing skills.
"Yikes..."
Huai Shi leaned back, trying to get as far away as possible from the screen that displayed a 'masterpiece' that resembled a mix of dried sheep's blood, mangled organs, and bulging eyes: "Bro, are you okay?"
Before turning off his phone, he took one last look, the guy's most recent blog post was from two years ago.
And the address he left on the blog belonged to a city Huai Shi had never heard of, called Manchester, which couldn't even be found on mapping software; perhaps this blog was a joke he had made... right?
After turning off his phone, Huai Shi faced his cello and had a daring idea.
All it took was to empty his mind, right?
He couldn't write novels or paint, the piano he could play was not stage-ready, but the cello should be fine, right?
Having been itching to try for a while, he first went to boil water for a shower and changed into some more serious performance attire. Then, with an air of seriousness, he calmed his mood for quite some time before raising the bow under Liu Dongli's amused gaze.
"Can you play 'Pomp and Circumstance'?"
As he munched on sunflower seeds, Liu Dongli requested a song, "'Peach Blossom Romance' or 'Paradise Pure Land' would do too."
"Scram!"
Huai Shi rolled his eyes; when he heard 'Pomp and Circumstance', he thought the guy had finally gotten serious, but he realized his thoughts were completely different from his own.
"Just one piece by Bach, listen if you like, if not, scram."
Having said this, Huai Shi ignored him, lowered his eyes, and drew the bow. However, just after playing a single note, his movement suddenly came to a halt.
He froze in place.
The deep resonance of the strings still lingered in the air, slowly reverberating, then dissipating... but it somehow sounded different from before, or as one might say, the sense of nuance was completely different. It was not an issue of touch or rhythm, but a different kind of depth that he couldn't sense before.
It was as if suddenly someone else was playing.
No, to say that it felt like a different cello would be more accurate.
Huai Shi had never imagined that such warm and soothing notes could come from his own hands and his old cello; the frail sound seemed to be endowed with a rich texture, and he could feel them flowing.
When he played the strings again, that rich yet airy melody, as if imbued with life, gushed forth from the strings like water, as if extending his will and body. He transcended his tiny shell, elevated and transformed into dense light and rain, spreading around, commanding the melody, resonating in the vast hall.
The obscure sensation that his teacher had tried to explain repeatedly yet he could never grasp, he suddenly found it was so simple in this moment.
The abundant emotions that inexplicably emerged from the depths of his being merged into the deep melody with the movements of his fingers on the strings, like a river crashing into the surging sea, shaking his consciousness, sweeping him along to fly to a distant place.
"Holy moly, did I just level up?"
Without the leisure to marvel or feel excited, Huai Shi was so captivated by his own melody that he couldn't help but immerse himself in the sorrowful and deep sound of the cello.
It was as if he had fallen asleep again.
Yet in the dream, there were none of the deaths and fears that had always been haunting him.
In a tranquil darkness, he felt as though he was submerged in water, filled with silence and serenity.
When he struggled to open his eyes, everything in front of him was blurry and indistinct; he could only vaguely discern the distant light, rippling like the tide.
But when he tried to move his limbs, the darkness seemed to tear open, and he was back in the empty hall again.
Floating in mid-air.
When Huai Shi looked down, he saw himself engrossed in playing the cello.
It was as though he had split into two, one physical self lost in performance, and the spiritual self, as if riding the melody, had broken free from the body's constraints and soared through the air.
He suddenly discovered that Liu Dongli had left the hall at some unknown point.
Curiously wandering around, he found he could pass through walls like a ghost, moving freely, yet he was unable to leave the vicinity of Stone Marrow Pavilion.
It was as if he was imprisoned by invisible walls at the center.
"This is protection, Huai Shi, don't misunderstand the kind intentions of others."
The ethereal Raven perched on a branch outside the wall, as if seeing through his thoughts: "Separating source substance is an exceptionally dangerous affair. Had it not been for the protection of Stone Marrow Pavilion, you might have already been like a candle in the dark, targeted by something sinister, right?"
With that, it flapped its wings and sent Huai Shi, who had climbed upon the wall, flying back, "Just a friendly reminder, do not attempt this anywhere else until you have perfected it on the Mercury Stage."
Like a drunk or dreaming, Huai Shi didn't even hear clearly what it was saying. Drifting like a fallen leaf, he wobbled through his flight, lingering around Stone Marrow Pavilion.
Soon, he found Liu Dongli, sneaking around in the washroom on the third floor.
Taking advantage of when Huai Shi was not paying attention during his bow playing, Liu Dongli had already secretly made his way to the third-floor toilet, locked the door, carefully looked around to make sure no one was paying attention, and then reached into his small bag to pull out a bottle.
Huai Shi's heart instantly rose.
What on earth was he trying to do?
Just as Huai Shi curiously poked his head halfway through the wall to spy on what mischief this guy was up to, he saw him sigh, remove the long hair dyed with strands of gold... from his head.
Removed it…
Huai Shi's eyes widened in shock: What the heck?
All Liu Dongli did was turn on his phone's flashlight, shine it on the mirror to lighten his bald head, and his expression became one of grief, "Two more have fallen off... ah, every time I use my ability, more fall off... That woman is really evil..."
Holding two fine fluffs in his hand, Liu Dongli was almost moved to tears. After a long rant about the heartless Ai Qing, he sighed deeply, scooped out a bit of paste from the bottle, applied it evenly to his scalp, and then, hearing the end of Huai Shi's bow playing, quickly put on the wig again and hurried away.
With a belly full of speechlessness, Huai Shi also got dragged back into his own body as the music from the bow stopped.
He opened his eyes and saw Liu Dongli right where he had been, clapping and praising as if he had never gone anywhere.
"Nicely played!"
Liu Dongli seriously commented, "However, there is still room for improvement."
For some reason, Huai Shi felt like Liu Dongli was suddenly looking at him with pity...
.
All in all, the night passed without incident.
The next day, before dawn, Huai Shi was rudely awakened by Liu Dongli's knocking.
After a long-missed normal sleep, he yawned sleepily, pushed open the door, and then saw Liu Dongli's dark eye circles.
His eyes were full of bloodshot.
"What happened to you?" he asked in astonishment: "You look as if you've seen a ghost."
"What do you think?"
Liu Dongli looked at him with a bitter expression: "What the hell is up with your place?"
"What do you mean what's up? Isn't it just a bit rundown and old?" Huai Shi leaned back with a look of disdain: "Why are you city folks so delicate?"
"Delicate my ass! A bit rundown, I could treat it like camping, but you never said your house was a Haunted House!"
Liu Dongli's expression became even more grief-stricken: "Since the early morning, there was a constant dripping sound from the toilet next door, the floorboards in the hallway were creaking, and there were footsteps! I heard them loud and clear!"
"Isn't that typical for old houses?" Huai Shi casually picked up his toothpaste cup and headed downstairs, nonchalantly retorting: "Haven't you ever seen worn-out facilities?"
"Does your worn-out house come with sighs from empty rooms, too?"
Liu Dongli was hopping mad: "I'm afraid your place might be haunted!"
"..."
Huai Shi was silent for a moment, looked at him with increasing pity, and after a while, gently patted his shoulder: "Old Liu, you must be tired, right? Don't be afraid, there are no ghosts in this world..."
Long after Huai Shi had left, Liu Dongli, who stood there stunned, finally snapped out of it, so angry he felt like jumping up on the spot and hitting someone with several sticks, topping it off with a 'full combo':
"I could even let it slide if you don't call me 'bro', but Old Liu, what the hell is that! I'm old enough to be your uncle!"