Chapter 54: Begonia Young Again in the Rain

"I sent a message to my mother. She will be here soon." Bai Zhi shook her cell phone and sat back at the desk obediently.

Ning Zhe turned his head to look at her sitting quietly and obediently on the chair, and frowned slightly.

Bai Zhi's condition is not right. She seems to have no memory of what happened last night, and her behavior is like that of two completely different people. Bai Zhi last night was completely different from the shy and obedient girl she is now. At that time, she... was more like a human than she is now.

...No, let's take care of ourselves first.

Ning Zhe looked out the window. The old camphor tree in the yard had dropped its withered red leaves, and the air was filled with a thin dusky air.

He raised one hand and looked down at the lines on his palm. A deep fear surged from his chest to his spine: "If one day in the future, I forget who I am, then what's the difference between me... and a ghost?"

Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to call it a ghost.

Taiyi is a ghost, it is a rule, not a superpower that is randomly awakened in the world of universal martial arts. The rules are absolute and fair.

Absolute fairness means that Ning Zhe is not simply stealing other people's identities, but the stolen identities and memories are also subtly affecting him. Sometimes he wants to light a cigarette to dispel his boredom, but Ning Zhe does not smoke, and it is Zhang Yangxu who is addicted to smoking.

Sometimes, a kind of detached indifference would arise in his heart, as if he himself was the unkind heaven and earth, treating all things as straw dogs... But Ning Zhe knew that he was not like that. The truly detached one was the snake god named Zhao You.

Today, Ning Zhe has begun to feel lost.

"It was fine when I was in He Village. Although the Snake God's memories were complex, they were not enough to shake my self-awareness. But since I returned to reality, I have stolen the identities and memories of several people one after another. Their life experiences have begun to affect my decision-making."

Ning Zhe closed his eyes, and scattered illusions emerged before his eyes: "Especially Liu Yunzhi's identity. That is her own understanding of herself. It is the most complete and profound. It has the greatest impact on me and is also the most fatal."

Second only to the long and boring time of tens of millions of years that the Snake God spent.

It is foreseeable that if I continue to use Taiyi's rules, as the identities and memories I steal become more and more numerous and complex, Ningzhe's self-awareness will become increasingly indifferent, until it reaches a certain critical point - I am no longer myself.

Ning Zhe knew clearly what was happening to him, but he could do nothing.

"If I continue like this, I will die, or become another person, but what's the difference between that and being dead?" Ning Zhe opened his eyes and clenched his fists: "We must find a way out."

"Well, you just said you read my diary?" Ning Zhe was in distress when Bai Zhi's voice suddenly came from the bedside. Her tone was soft and refreshing, like a crabapple flower: "What's going on?"

Ning Zhe stood up and said, "Your mother showed it to me. She was very worried about you and was afraid that you might have some mental illness, so she secretly read your diary."

"Are you a psychiatrist?" Bai Zhi looked at him in confusion. Ning Zhe was obviously about the same age as her.

"I'm not, it's just that your mother is willing to believe me." Ning Zhe shook his head and said, "I have read your diary, and you have read the letter I wrote, so we are even."

Bai Zhi looked down at the thick stack of letter papers on the table, which were in various colors, and asked curiously, "Did you write all of these?"

"Yes..." Ning Zhe was reluctant to mention his dark history, but since Bai Zhi had seen it, there was nothing to hide: "You can see that my family conditions are not good, and my grandparents are not well-off. So since I was in junior high school, I often helped my classmates write love letters to earn some pocket money or snacks. Speaking of which, I have to thank them for their early love." Although he has never been destined to fall in love.

Ning Zhe got off the bed and walked to the desk. He picked up a thick stack of colorful letter papers and tumbled them on the table to make them neat. "What you are reading are all drafts. After all, love letters to girls cannot have deletions or typos, so after writing the draft, you have to rewrite it before sending it out."

"And then what? Do girls like the love poems you wrote?" Bai Zhi's face was full of curiosity. It seemed that this kind of thing was quite new to her.

"You think too much." Ning Zhe put the letter back on the table and said calmly, "Whether a love letter will be accepted is never determined by the content of the letter, but by the sender and the recipient. Because it is the people who are in love, not the words on paper, and the fancy words are only embellishments."

“A truly charming person doesn’t need these external things to assist him, and others usually just give them to him.” Ning Zhe concluded.

Bai Zhi lowered her head in frustration: "I think being able to write such romantic poems is also part of a person's charm."

"I'll just take it as a compliment." Ning Zhe didn't care what she thought: "But thank you anyway."

"Hey? Why are you thanking me?" Bai Zhi was confused.

"Thank you for letting me see what my old self wrote..." Ning Zhe took a deep breath and calmed down his chaotic mood: "I feel like myself again."

Yes, those confession letters were written by me, those corny words, those gorgeous phrases, those shy poems describing the love of a young boy… green, bitter, passionate, implicit, these are all mine, and I must never lose the person I once was.

I am Ning Zhe, not anything else.

Complex emotions accumulated in his chest, making Ning Zhe feel extremely certain.

"You are really a strange person." Bai Zhi lowered her head in frustration, but she still asked in a low voice, "Can I still read these drafts?"

"It's up to you." Ning Zhe said and walked out of the room.

A dark red sunset glow hung in the distant sky. The sun was setting in the west, covering the quiet town with a thick night. Ning Zhe stepped over the green onions planted by the wall and came to the gate of the courtyard. Outside the gate was his grandfather with a head full of white hair, sitting on a rattan chair and smoking.

Ning Zhe greeted him, walked over to his grandfather and asked him if he had caught any fish in the reservoir today.

The grandfather, who had been empty-handed for several days, was so angry that his beard was shaking. He turned around and smiled mysteriously, asking him who the girl who had been waiting in his room was.

Bai Zhi sat on the chair in front of the desk and pulled out a piece of letter paper. The golden sunset illuminated the revised words on it:

[It was a rainy evening, and you were still waiting anxiously in front of the dormitory building. I didn’t understand at that time that this torrential rain would bring dampness to my life.]

"How lustful." Bai Zhi whispered to herself.

(End of this chapter)

previouscatalognext