Chapter Eighty: The Past and the Forgotten Truth

He was speaking in a low voice when the world around him began to shift. The corridor before him took on a layer of age-stained, yellowed wallpaper, its surface crowded with flowers, a style clearly not of modern making, old-fashioned to the eye.

He watched the hallway seem to warp. The walls changed at certain points, extending their lengths at specific nodes and bending the passage out of shape.

The corridor widened before his eyes, ceasing to look like a corridor at all, the surroundings turning into a room, a room with no entrance or exit.

“What is this supposed to be?” he murmured.

Furniture began to appear within it.

The walls seemed to liquefy, spitting out chairs and tables from within. Piece by piece they slid outward, filling the room and giving it the faint air of habitation.

Before Chen Qing stood a desk lit by a lamp, the light falling across its surface.

To the left of the desk was a bookshelf packed with books, its top shelf bare.

He turned to look behind him. There was a leather sofa there, much of its color already worn away.

Upon that sofa, there seemed to be the imprint of a person, as though someone had sat there for a long time, leaving the shape behind.

“So this is all there is to trap me with?”

He turned back toward the desk and walked over.

Only when he came close did he see an old-colored envelope lying on the desktop.

The lamp shone directly upon it, as if highlighting it.

“Am I supposed to read this letter?”

He exhaled softly, pulled out the chair, and sat down before the desk. He picked up the envelope; the seal was still intact, never broken.

He bent it slightly, snapping the seal.

By the light of the lamp, he drew out the paper inside.

And saw the words written on it.

“Why? Why are you not dead?”

He stared at the black-ink writing. The handwriting was eerily familiar, and yet, as he looked at it, he felt as though he had never seen it before.

What was this place trying to tell him?

He frowned, and at that same instant, a tremendous sound burst from behind him.

It was deafening, like something collapsing.

He turned, his gaze momentarily blank.

There, the sofa that should have been standing against the wall had toppled backward, and the thunderous noise had come from it.

The sofa seemed almost solid, its back broken clean in two.

Behind it, where a wall should have been, there was now a tunnel the width of the room. He frowned, trying to see its far end, but the passage seemed to bend somewhere ahead, preventing the light from reaching through.

“What is hidden beyond that tunnel...”

He spoke in a low voice, then his eyes suddenly fixed on the envelope.

The words inside the letter—the neat, delicate script—seemed to have grown larger.

“Why are you still alive?”

His expression froze, and in his mind there seemed to flash a rain-soaked night long ago.

He saw a writhing figure drawing closer step by step, saw that twisted, swollen face asking in a fetid breath, “Why are you still alive?”

He shook his head, clearing the chaotic thoughts from his mind all at once. Focusing again on the present, he tucked the envelope away and walked toward the tunnel.

The moment he stepped inside, the lights in the room behind him went out.

He looked ahead. Once he passed the bend, light suddenly appeared.

Beyond the turn, at the far end, was another room.

And in that room sat a person.

She had her back to the tunnel, slim and graceful, sitting straight-backed, her arms moving over the desk.

She seemed to be writing something, or perhaps waiting for something.

Chen Qing slowed his pace and entered the room, stopping some ten-odd meters behind her.

He did not advance. He only watched the young woman sitting at the desk.

After the two of them remained like that for three or five minutes, the girl lowered her arms, and a soft click sounded from the desk.

It seemed she had put down her pen, a pen somewhat heavy in build.

The sound was unnaturally clear against the tabletop.

“Why were you able to survive?” she asked, her tone flat, as though speaking of something utterly unrelated to her.

“Because I was lucky?” He looked at the girl’s back while his fingers searched through his pocket.

Nothing there. He could not find a single relic in his pocket.

His expression turned grave, and bits of memory within his mind began to fade away.

He only felt that the scene was familiar, yet he could not remember where he had seen it before.

Those memories should have been seared into him, and yet he had forgotten them.

He staggered two steps, his feet beginning to retreat.

He saw the woman before him cross her hands, resting the right over the left, then place them parallel to the desktop.

He watched the girl sit quietly, then lean her head back. Her eyes appeared before Chen Qing, her inverted face level with his. The two of them stared at each other without expression, and after holding that gaze for a long time, the girl suddenly smiled.

There was clearly a smile on that face, yet as he watched, her features began to swell, and her limbs sprouted many suppurating sores.

Those once slender, snow-white limbs no longer held the slightest trace of humanity.

Her hands slid from the desk. Those arms were far longer than those of an ordinary person, and when they hung down, they dragged upon the floor, slanting a good six or seven centimeters.

Chen Qing looked around. The whole room was growing gloomy and dark. Everywhere his gaze reached, the scenery began to distort, taking on a strange, inhuman quality.

The standing vases no longer rested upon their bases; their bodies had twisted, their mouths turned downward, resembling half of a Klein bottle.

He looked toward the bookshelves. The once straight wooden frames had warped beyond reason, and the flat surfaces had become razor-sharp.

He watched as everything around him seemed to spin upside down. The lights in the room turned dazzlingly multicolored, and whatever they illuminated appeared to come alive.

The books touched by that light slowly rose to their feet, their bodies supported by countless tiny tendrils, a few centimeters long, crawling along the floor.

The carpets struck by the light began to contort, folding themselves into the shape of a small, slightly raised hill.

He saw tens of thousands of fine eyes opening upon that carpet, spread across the little mound in an uneven pattern, some large, some small, scattered irregularly.

Chen Qing lowered his gaze to his shoes. The dizziness in his head was overwhelming now, and his steps would not steady. He stumbled backward, and the instant he retreated into the tunnel, the room beyond returned to normal.

The girl sat at the desk again, her hands crossed and folded, as though nothing had ever changed.

The desk, the mutated furniture, all lay there as before.

“What... is going on?” he murmured, his eyes fixed on the girl in the room.

“Who exactly are you?” he said softly, and by some ghostly impulse, his fingers drew the letter from his pocket.

“Why am I the one still alive?” He looked at her, his steps slowly backing away.

At that moment, a gentle female voice suddenly echoed through the room.

“One must not gaze too long upon any object. One must not set foot in foreign lands. One must not violate the rules. One must not lie.”

Her voice was calm, and it echoed again and again within the room. Chen Qing’s retreating steps faltered, then came to a slow stop.

He looked at the woman’s figure, his expression touched with surprise.

He felt that some very old memory had been forgotten, and that some more recent memories, too, could not be recalled.

He remembered standing with Bu Zhaozhao in a monastery. He remembered entering the rite of ascension for a relic.

Yet he felt, with unsettling certainty, that he had forgotten something. He had forgotten what secret he had used as the key to his advancement.

Now he understood clearly that the key seemed extraordinarily important.

“Do I need to recover the secret from the ascension rite?”

He looked at the girl’s back, and after a second or two, shifted his gaze to the candlelight. The flame this time seemed subdued.

It swayed quietly, illuminating the girl’s collar, while the pale blue hem of her dress fluttered softly at her feet.

“You still need to recover another memory.”

She spoke, a smile appearing on the face he could not see.

“What memory do I need to recover?”

“That is something you must find.”

He frowned deeply and turned to look behind him. At the far end of the passage, a point of light shone.

“What is a foreign land?”

“It is simply a foreign land.”

He turned back and asked, “Why are you helping me?”

“Because I never intended to kill you in the first place.”

As she spoke, the girl stood up from the desk. “I never meant to kill you. I still have something to ask of you. How could you die like this?”

Listening to her, Chen Qing frowned harder. He clearly remembered that the girl...

Wait. Why do I feel that she once wanted to kill me?

He froze. A chill traveled from his fingertips. He looked down and saw that his fingers, gripping the letter, had gone white.

“You... what exactly have I forgotten?”

His face turned pale. He stepped backward, turned around, and ran into the tunnel.

He ran through the passage, but what met his eyes was no longer the chamber he had seen before. The world ahead had become a vast expanse of yellow sand, sand stretching to an unreachable horizon.

Chen Qing paused in confusion. He looked back, and the light beyond the corner behind him had gone out.

“What is fraud?”

At that moment, a voice suddenly sounded in his mind.

It seemed to be his own, and yet it had never felt so strange.

“What is fraud?”

He listened to the words and searched the sea of yellow sand for a moment.