In order to save money on medicine, Lin Baixiang died on his way to the company.
He woke up again with the tolling of the bell on the wooden wall. With his empty eye sockets and furrowed brow bones, he tried hard to get familiar with the grayness in front of him.
After a short while, a ray of white light entered the wooden house through the window and landed on the dusty dressing table. Only then did he slowly sit up from the bed and put on a tattered Taoist robe to cover his empty skeletal body.
There was also a lot of white dust on the Taoist robe. He gently jumped onto the decaying wooden planks, stirring up patches of white dust. Then he stood in the white mist and waited blankly for dozens of breaths. After the white dust settled back into place, he limped laboriously to the dressing table and sat down.
His empty eye sockets fell on the dusty bronze mirror. He gently raised his arm, which had no flesh left, and wiped the surface of the mirror. His skeletal face was then reflected in the bronze mirror.
Then he picked up something like a hairpin with his fingertips and coiled up the withered hair on his skull. After coiling the withered hair twice, he placed his hands on the dressing table and Lin Baixiang looked out the window with a puzzled expression on his skeletal face.
A fifteen-year-old girl was dancing barefoot among fifteen pink lilies planted in the soil. The pink lilies were in bud, tightly wrapped and blushing, just as beautiful as the girl in the middle.
The white light shone on the girl's face, making her skin glisten and her eyes sparkle. Her movements were light and graceful. Her body kept waving the thin gauze on her body, giving her an ethereal sense of elegance unique to the fairies in the sky. There was a faint smile on her face, as if she would never have any worries. She just danced there lightly, as if she would never stop.
Lin Baixiang stared at the girl痴迷ly.
He had to rescue this girl from here as soon as possible.
This thought emerged among countless vague thoughts. Lin Baixiang opened his mouth bones and made a soundless "ah ah" twice. Then his body went limp and slumped on the chair. He looked helplessly at the decaying ceiling.
He didn't know how long he had been in this gray world. Every time he woke up from the darkness, he instinctively sat here waiting for some strange power to infuse into that piece of incomplete, soft and sticky thing in his round skull, telling him how to save the girl outside the window.
At first, Lin Baixiang just thought it was a dream. Later, after he couldn't count how many times he had woken up, he realized that he was no longer in the world full of towering buildings.
In his vague memory, when he first woke up here, there was still some residual flesh color on his arm. I don't know how much time had passed. By the time he woke up this time, all that was left of his whole body was that piece of incomplete, soft and sticky thing in his skull. It was not because his body only had that piece of incomplete thing left that his thinking, actions, memory, eyesight and world view had become extremely strange.
So, he spent several days slowly getting familiar with his surroundings and gradually accepting the madness of this world. Among them, the memory of saving this girl was particularly profound.
After waiting for a long time, about thirty-odd breaths, that strange power accurately infused into that piece of incomplete, soft and sticky thing in his skull. Lin Baixiang followed the "instruction" of the incomplete thing. Without daring to move his facial bones, he used his arm to take out a yellow piece of paper from the dressing table.
This was one of the few items he could see clearly. Apart from this yellow piece of paper, there was an ordinary writing brush, a decaying peachwood sword, an inkstone, that bronze mirror, a chair and a dressing table. And there was also the scene where the girl outside the window was located.
He glanced at the girl with his empty eyes. The girl was still dancing among the pink lilies. However, a pink lily had emerged from the soil. It seemed that the girl had been affected by this lily and her figure seemed to have become a little more mature than before. It seemed... seemed... to have grown a little.
Lin Baixiang pondered for a long time before he understood the strange thing that had happened to the girl. So, he picked up that ordinary writing brush with his arm that had no flesh left and instinctively recorded it on the piece of paper.
He didn't know why he had to do this, but he was sure that every time he wrote something on this yellow piece of paper, that strange power would tell him something about this place... uh... some things after he woke up from the darkness.
After writing that thing crookedly, Lin Baixiang looked at what he had written before on the yellow piece of paper. It was written before that there was a "big hand" here observing everything here. He could control everything here and prevent them from saving this girl.
When the writing reached this point, the strange power even made a paragraph break on that yellow piece of paper. In the fifty-fourth year of the Jianyuan era of the Daliang Dynasty, Lin Baixiang was ordered to investigate the Lu family's murder case. Now, they were trapped in a large courtyard by this "big hand". The large courtyard consisted of the girl's boudoir, a dining room, a ancestral hall and a long corridor.
When he laboriously read and memorized the words on the yellow paper, he swept his empty eyes downwards, but saw a blurred mass of writing. The writing seemed to have been smeared out by something.
The writing from a very long time ago was also smeared out together. The incomplete thing in his skull suddenly turned into a mess. He tried hard to recall what had just happened, but he couldn't remember that thing at all.
This thought instantly filled that thing which had become a mess. An indescribable breath filled his whole body, making his whole body of bones tremble and his hollow breastbone shake violently. He instinctively looked at the girl outside the window with his empty eyes.
At this moment, the girl's eyes also met Lin Baixiang's.
The mess in his skull felt the girl's pure gaze. He couldn't figure out why he had the thought of saving this bright and beautiful girl when she was dancing here so nicely. It would be good to just keep it like this. Maybe that "big hand" just liked watching the girl dance.
So, well, relying on this thought, he shakily got up and tried hard to walk towards the bed, wanting to sink into the darkness forever and not have to think about what that strange power was... not have to think about what that "big hand" was.
Yes, the mess in his skull also agreed with this statement and controlled Lin Baixiang to walk towards the bed.
But at this moment, his legs didn't listen to the "instruction" of that mess.
At this time, that strange power came from his legs.
The mess felt that strange power and frantically issued the "instruction" to make him go to the bed.
Lin Baixiang felt as if he was being pulled, just like the "tug-of-war with a turtle" he had experienced in the previous world. And now he was like the long silk cloth in the middle, the one being pulled.
Under the pull of these two forces, Lin Baixiang felt that his skeleton would be pulled apart in the next second.
He didn't know whose instruction to follow, that of the mess or that strange power. Such a choice made his brow bones furrow into an "eight" shape. He carefully thought about the two forces and gradually had some vague ideas:
That strange power had surrounded him for a long time and had always been helping him somewhere. It had never shown up in person, but it had also never... never harmed him. It couldn't be ruled out... that it was fooling me. Fooling me? Making me think that that "big hand" was bad, but in fact, that "big hand" was good?
So, was that really the case?
Had that strange power that had been helping me secretly all the time been lying to me?
I don't think so. Lin Baixiang vigorously shook his skull, shaking off the memories implanted by that mess and the memories that were about to be successfully replaced by the mess. Another vague idea emerged:
We should be one. Maybe it was because that "big hand" used some power that I couldn't understand to separate "me" from that "myself".
If that was the case, how could I put "me" and that "myself" back together again?
This vague idea suddenly stopped. Lin Baixiang gently raised his brow bones. There came a void sound from the two empty holes on both sides of his skull, which were used for discerning positions by listening to the wind. The sound came faintly:
"Spirits and immortals from all directions, expel evil... uphold the right path."
"Quickly take... the writing brush on the table...."
When the sound appeared, Lin Baixiang instinctively prepared himself. This strange place was about to welcome a great battle.