"Name."
"Huai Shi."
"Age?"
"Seventeen..."
In the police station, while giving his statement, Huai Shi increasingly felt that the dialogue was too familiar. Had it been repeated several times already somewhere?
Fearing some mishap, even after the record was made, he clutched the policeman's hand and asked repeatedly, "You guys don't recruit Cowherds here, do you?"
"..."
The policeman's expression twitched. Not wanting to deal with him, he poured him a cup of tea, saying he could leave after the checkup.
Huai Shi sat on the chair and heaved a sigh, still shaken.
A narrow alley, a dead person, a small goldfish, an iron box.
So many strange elements crammed together, even someone as experienced and world-weary as Huai Shi was a bit overwhelmed.
But one thing was certain: none of this was normal!
Considering the recent explosion at the port, it might be a gang war among drug traffickers!
What if there were two ounces of pure white powder in that box? It would be a real mess if the cops caught him with that.
Although he was indeed so poor he was almost unable to afford food, that didn't mean he should be looking for a free meal in jail, right?
In such circumstances, as a citizen of the Dongxia Republic—no, as anyone with a bit of common sense—reporting to the police was the right thing to do, right?
"That's right, you did well. In such a situation, seeking help from the police immediately is the most rational method," the officer, who returned his belongings in the evidence room, nodded approvingly. "If it were a bomb instead of powder in there, things could have been much worse..."
"But what exactly was in that box?" Huai Shi asked, driven by curiosity.
"Don't know. We've scanned it with X-rays and performed an explosive detection test. There doesn't seem to be anything dangerous inside, but it looks like an antique. We'll see what it really is when the expert comes tomorrow. But there's nothing more for you here; you can go home," he said, placing the basket in front of Huai Shi.
Since the case involved a death, all of Huai Shi's personal belongings had been dismantled and checked. Upon retrieving them, he immediately took out the thick notebook he had carried for years and inspected it thoroughly.
No one had tampered with it.
His nervous demeanor caught the eye of the officer in the evidence room, who couldn't help but laugh. "What? Afraid we'll read your diary? Young people still keep diaries nowadays, haha! Don't worry, we didn't look, we didn't look..."
Huai Shi smiled awkwardly and shoved the notebook into his pocket. As he picked up his phone, he accidentally saw the bank balance text message, causing his heart to ache sharply once again.
After repeatedly confirming with the police station that there was no reward for reporting such incidents, he walked out the door in sorrow, feeling the world was bleak and desolate.
As he trudged along with his head down, the streetlight behind him cast a long shadow.
Within the flickering shadow, it seemed as though a Raven took flight.
BOOM!
Thunder rumbled through the night sky.
It was as if it had waited for Huai Shi to leave. After a brief pause in the evening, torrential rain came howling, accompanied by flashes of lightning and claps of thunder.
By the time Huai Shi got home, he was completely soaked.
Standing before the large iron gate, he sighed, took out his key, unlocked the iron chain wrapped around the gate, and, against a sharp grating sound that even the heavy rain couldn't suppress, pushed the door open with great effort.
"I'm back..."
In the darkness, no one responded.
Under the flashlight of his phone, the ancient estate, covered in dead leaves, revealed its decrepit and ruined façade.
Layers of ivy and vines clung to walls long stripped of their coating. The courtyard beyond the iron gate, littered with dead leaves, was in disarray. The long-neglected fountain pool had dried up, and the stone carvings on either side were damaged and incomplete, looking strange and chilly.
In the sky, covered with dark clouds, a sharp flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the grim outline of the ancient house stretching out into the courtyard.
At the foot of Qingshiu Mountain on the outskirts of Xinhai City stood Huai Shi's home.
Long ago, it was known as the 'Yu Garden Stone Marrow Museum.' At the time, this garden, which took five years and considerable expense to build, was regarded as the height of luxury. Flowers bloomed in the garden year-round, evergreen pines and cypresses stood guard at the entrance, the splendor within the building was beyond description, and its master was a preeminent tycoon in East China, with a constant stream of horse-drawn carriages and visitors arriving daily...
But that was all ninety years ago.
The world changes too quickly. In just ninety years, it transitioned from the old steam era to the electronic era, and then into a new electronic age; the world cycled from peace to chaos, and back to peace again. So much has happened, and there's too much to remember, to the point that many things have become relatively less necessary to recall.
The Yu Garden of today, after a brief period of splendor, has experienced a long silence and decline, forgotten by most.
Wild grass grew rampant; the opulence of the past was no more. Spreading ivy covered the cracks in the mottled walls, and most of the courtyard sculptures were damaged and fragmented, unrecognizable. After being squandered and ravaged by prodigal descendants, what was once a grand mansion was now empty, a mere shell, about to become... no, it had already become a Haunted House that wasn't even particularly famous.
For Huai Shi, this rundown house, a cello of similar age that was on the verge of breaking down, and his own bleak life were all he had left.
But as the old house continued to deteriorate and the cello began to show cracks from unglued seams, Huai Shi felt that even his life was about to bid him farewell.
"The current balance of the savings account ending in 8193 is 144.444 yuan..."
Amidst the howling wind and storm outside the window, Huai Shi finally checked his bank card balance.
Mother of heaven... how am I supposed to live on this!
Even if he ignored the rather symbolic string of digits after the decimal point, he felt a strong urge to die.
What could he do?
After all, this was the legacy his own parents had left him.
When Huai Shi was born, his family still had some foundation. If he had been a little more motivated, reviving the family business might not have been impossible. Instead, when his grandfather passed away when Huai Shi was three, his parents began a superluminal descent into ruin, squandering the family fortune at an astonishing rate within just a few years.
The pair of degenerates ate, drank, whored, gambled, and even abused drugs. Finally, before the company went bankrupt, they embezzled its funds and fled, leaving Huai Shi alone to face the frenzied shareholders demanding their money...
Almost everything of value in the house had been taken.
Huai Shi's grandfather had expressly made a will before his death. He entrusted a lawyer to leave this old house to Huai Shi, to be formally inherited once he came of age. If not for this, Huai Shi would probably have been wandering the streets like a stray dog long ago.
Sometimes, human endurance is truly infinite. Like Huai Shi; he'd felt like he was going insane since he was ten. Yet, he never expected his nerves to be so resilient; he showed no signs of a mental breakdown to date.
At most, he occasionally experienced auditory hallucinations: footsteps in the old house, water dripping upstairs at night, or someone sighing while he was sleeping...
Life must go on.
Even if life becomes unbearable, you still have to carry on.
In hindsight, his survival up to this point was truly a miracle.
Everything had been gradually getting better. He would grow up, earn a full scholarship to university with his grades, and find a job that paid more money. At last, it seemed like life was inching towards the right track.
He was merely poor to the point of near starvation.
Is life always this painful, or is it just childhood that's like this?
Unfortunately, there was no middle-aged, plant-loving uncle there to answer him.
He was neither a child nor Matilda.
And so, amidst the deep nocturnal sorrow, Huai Shi crouched on the balcony, smoking and staring into the distance at the torrential rain, sighing helplessly.
The thunder roared.
Cold rain fell from the sky, as if it were about to swallow the entire world.
Huai Shi's accumulated anger finally erupted. Rising from his heart, it drove him to yell at the sky, "You thieving heavens, what's the use of all this? If you have the guts, just come and kill me directly!"
"—I want to defy the heavens!!!"
With that roar, the frustration in his heart was vented, and Huai Shi finally felt a bit of relief.
But immediately after, he heard a rumble. The cloud, pregnant with endless rain and lightning, suddenly shuddered, emitting a sharp sound like tearing steel.
Right above the Stone Marrow Pavilion, a massive rift abruptly tore open the clouds. Then, a blazing bolt of lightning lashed down like Heaven Punishment, striking directly onto the railing in front of Huai Shi, shattering the ancient railing completely.
Amidst the pungent odor of ionized air and flying debris, Huai Shi collapsed to the ground.
Damn... It actually worked?
Scrambling and crawling back into the house, he mustered the courage to stick his head out before closing the window and shouted, "I take it back! I take it back, Brother! I was just kidding!"
SNAP!
The window closed.
Huai Shi sat in his chair, wanting to cry but with no tears coming out, and couldn't help wanting to howl at the sky again.
Life had become unbearable!
His bank balance had plummeted to three figures. While job hunting, he'd nearly applied to a Cowherd Club. Even going home could lead to encountering a bizarre death. And now, trying to defy the heavens had earned him a lightning-strike warning...
For the time being, his only hope was that some idiotic netizen might bring a little joy to his miserable life.
With a glimmer of hope, Huai Shi turned on his phone, only to see someone in the class WeChat group had posted a photo of him standing in front of the Cowherd Club. A bunch of people were vigorously tagging him, and someone with the username 'Beast and Slavish Heart' was shouting, "Congratulations to Boss Huai on his center stage debut in the Cowherd world! Should we girls from the class get together and send a flower wreath?"
"Piss off! I don't like girls; I only like smooth-skinned baldies like you two!"
After sending his reply, Huai Shi turned off his phone and couldn't help covering his face.
Great, now the whole world knows I almost became a Cowherd...
What's the most frustrating thing in the world? It's not losing your good name built over ten years in a single day, but losing your good name without having done anything remotely beastly at all.
It's such a rip-off!
Why did this have to happen?
Despite having acquired such a large house and a golden finger, two joys should have overlapped and brought forth even more happiness. I should have been enjoying a dream-like, blissful time. Yet, why—
BOOM!
Before he could finish his thought, another thunderclap struck outside the window, startling Huai Shi even through the glass. He dared not let his mind wander any further and could only pull out the thick notebook from his bag, tears welling up in his eyes.
Can't you be a bit more impressive? Look at other people's golden fingers! They can add points, issue quests, or even turn into beautiful girls. Why can you only keep a diary?
Indeed, this thing was his golden finger.
Ever since he found this thing after a high fever at age nine, he knew it wasn't ordinary. He diligently safeguarded it. As he grew older, he dreamt nightly of hearing a mysterious voice whisper in his ear, 'Super XX System fully loaded.' Then he could stand out from the crowd and attain enlightenment. He imagined transforming his life into a thrilling tale, counting so much money he'd fry hundreds of cash counters. He dreamt of becoming so famous that even after death, he could turn into a beautiful girl and enter a game's gacha pool...
But so far, he hadn't found any use for this damn thing.
It seemed like just an indestructible notebook—immune to tearing, burning, or soaking. Its only seemingly impressive feature was its ability to automatically write diary entries, updating in real-time what he did every moment... as if it were saying, 'I'm going to record every foolish thing you do during your adolescent fantasies just to show you later.'
He flipped open the thick cover; the silhouette of a Raven on the title page was still eye-catching.
Huai Shi went straight to the last page to review his fantastical day. When he read the entry describing his departure from the police station, he froze for a moment.
He read, "'Amid the flickering shadows, it seemed as if a Raven took flight?'"
Huai Shi finished reading and couldn't help but exclaim to himself, I didn't expect this crappy thing to be so good at setting a mood... Maybe I can plagiarize a few passages for some fantasy novel later and earn a bit of cash.
Of course, this embarrassing remark was also mercilessly recorded.
"..."
Sighing, Huai Shi casually flipped further, not expecting to find anything since the rest should have been blank. But to his surprise, at the very end, there was a thick interleaf. Behind the interleaf were several strange files...
They resembled résumés, complete with two-inch ID photos.
Most were burly men with large heads and thick arms, each looking capable of thrashing several Huai Shis at once. There were also several 'snake-faced' beauties he'd never seen before, and one bald, prematurely aged man whose face seemed familiar from local news...
Chen Bo, Wang Quan, Mu Jing, Lu Bai...
These strange profiles multiplied rapidly, finally stopping when there were over seventy of them.
"What the hell..." Huai Shi muttered, staring at the notebook in astonishment, stroking his chin. Could the lightning strike have activated it?
He opened the window, placed the notebook on the balcony, and shouted to the sky, "Why don't you try zapping it a few more times?"
The sky ignored him, not even deigning to toss him another bone.
In the awkward silence, only the freshly updated entry in the notebook recorded the foolish stunt he had just pulled...
He coughed. "Ahem, let's just pretend that never happened."
Huai Shi sighed, brought the notebook back in, and tossed it onto the table.
I can't figure out what's going on. Might as well let it be. I still have to look for a job tomorrow. Better get some sleep; anything is possible in dreams...
He threw himself onto the bed and closed his eyes.
When he opened his eyes once again, he saw, under the dim light of a streetlamp, a hunched figure standing there, squatting like an ape. When it lifted its head towards him, it revealed a ferocious mask.
The next moment, he was dead.