Chapter 745 The long-lost space
"elder brother!"
The shadow's voice had a tremor like shattering crystal.
"You finally came!"
Li Dujuan's shadow trembled slightly in the void, and the floral dress on her body looked like smoke blown by the wind.
"I've waited for so long... so long that I thought you had forgotten me..."
Wang Jianguo's fingertips passed through her shadow and touched a cold mist.
He saw tiny beads of light condensed on the little girl's eyelashes, which looked very much like the dewdrops on the grass leaves in the Great Northern Wilderness in the early morning.
"Silly girl,"
He heard his own voice echoing in the void, with a strange hoarseness.
"How could my brother forget..."
"Then why don't you come?"
Li Dujuan's shadow took half a step back, and the sequins on her braids fell off.
"Last time you said you were digging a canal far away... Sister Yu Li even wanted to give you her red headscarf..."
Her voice became smaller and smaller, and the tail end was swallowed by nothingness.
"I am collecting light points every day, hoping to light your way home..."
Only then did Wang Jianguo notice that there were countless faint particles of light floating around the little girl, like imprisoned fireflies.
He remembered that Li Dujuan used to like collecting fluorescent powder in glass bottles, saying that she wanted to light up the mountain road for people returning home at night.
"Xiao Juan,"
He squatted down and tried to touch the light particles, but saw them all drill into Li Dujuan's shadow.
"Brother now has a place to live..."
He slowly recounted what had happened during the day: Zhao Shuzhuo's hand patting his shoulder, He Yushui's red cloth, the three hundred solid blue bricks from the brick factory, and the residential plot under the old elm tree.
"We will build three tiled houses in the future,"
He looked into Li Dujuan's eyes which were gradually becoming clearer.
"The east end is for bedrooms, the west end is for herbs, and the yard is for crabapple trees. When they bloom in the spring, they will be just like the flowers on your skirt..."
Li Dujuan's shadow suddenly stretched out her hand, as if trying to grab the corner of his clothes, but it only passed through nothingness.
"elder brother,"
Her voice was choked with sobs.
"Can I come and see your new house? I want to put window decorations on the windowsill..."
A breeze suddenly blew out of nothingness, sweeping up countless points of light that swirled around them.
Wang Jianguo saw Li Dujuan's shadow gradually fade and dissipate in the light like morning mist.
"Yes,"
He said to the gradually blurry figure.
"When the house is built, I will leave the brightest room for you..."
The floating dots of light in the space of consciousness suddenly gathered into a leaping shape. Li Dujuan's shadow circled to avoid Wang Jianguo's outstretched hand, and the red hairband on her pigtails swung out tiny arcs of light:
"I knew my brother didn't lie to me!"
She squatted down and poked the spiritual ice crystals condensed on the ground, then suddenly raised her face, and the tears on her eyelashes turned into starlight and dissipated.
"Sister Yu Li is waiting for you over there. I have to go read. Sister Haitang said that if you can't recite it, you won't get any candy."
When Wang Jianguo's consciousness touched the tips of her hair, the shadow had turned into thousands of light spots, like dandelions blown by the wind. One of the particularly bright spots of light passed across his heart, leaving a minty coolness.
The mist in the depths of the space suddenly surged up, and an old locust tree formed by spiritual energy slowly appeared.
Yu Li was leaning against an imaginary tree trunk, the cuffs of her blue cloth shirt mended with fine stitches, exactly how she looked in his memory when she was twenty years old.
"Did Xiaojuan cry again?"
Yu Li's voice was as gentle as water vapor. She raised her hand and brushed across the tree trunk. The falling spiritual leaves gathered into frost flowers on the shoulders of Wang Jianguo's shadow.
"Xiaojuan is so well behaved and now loves to study. I have to give you a surprise."
Wang Jianguo's consciousness twitched, as if he was back in Old Beijing, the night when Yu Li made something delicious and secretly stuffed it into his mouth.
He looked at the faint silver lines on Yu Li's temples - those were the traces of years of erosion by the space restriction. His throat seemed to be clogged by the sandstorm in the Great Northern Wilderness.
"Yu Li, I'm useless..."
"What nonsense."
A spiritual crabapple blossom condensed at Yu Li's fingertips and she gently pressed it on the center of his phantom's brow, allowing the cool energy to seep into the depths of his consciousness.
"I heard that you built a canal and a brick factory in the Great Northern Wilderness,"
Her eyes curved into crescents in the faint light of spiritual energy.
"We can feel it through the restriction, your spiritual energy is getting stronger day by day."
Faint sounds of horns could be heard in the distance, like brick factory workers singing a tamping song.
Wang Jianguo looked at the frayed edges of Yu Li's cuffs and thought of the red cloth He Yushui had stuffed into his pocket this morning:
"I have a homestead now, right under the old elm tree, with three tiled houses,"
His consciousness was trembling with excitement.
"The windows face south, so you can dry herbs on the kang when you come, and you can plant crabapples in the yard..."
"Look how beautiful you are."
"Oh, I found something important. I found this in the warehouse. There is an instruction manual. You can also collect spiritual energy in the space, but it must be placed in this box."
"We managed to collect some, see if you can use them."
Yu Li raised her hand to wipe away the light spots on the shadow's shoulders. Her movements were so natural that it seemed as if they had never been separated.
"I've calculated that when your house is put up for construction, the moon phase will be the most suitable for breaking the ban."
She took out a spiritual package from her sleeve.
The moment the package touched Wang Jianguo's consciousness, a warm current mixed with the smell of fireworks surged through his body.
He thought of Haitang's deft hands and the bangzi opera she always hummed while squatting in front of the stove and making fire.
"Tell Haitang that when the house is built, I will build her a heated kang with a chimney."
Wang Jianguo's shadow glowed with a steady red light, which was the excited fluctuation of spiritual energy.
The spiritual locust tree behind Yu Li suddenly shook violently, and countless points of light fell down.
"The ban has been strengthened again..."
She frowned and pressed the tree trunk, a faint white light seeping out from under her green cloth shirt.
"Go back quickly, don't waste too much spiritual energy."
"etc!"
Wang Jianguo hurried forward, and when his consciousness touched her wrist, fine cracks had already appeared on the spiritual wristband there.
"Yu Li, you have to promise me that you won't collect spiritual energy anymore. It will harm your body..."
"Silly brother,"
Yu Li suddenly laughed, and the white light seeping from the cracks gathered into a transparent bead in her palm.
"Look, this is the spiritual energy that Xiaojuan secretly saved. She said she wanted to use it as a wick for your new house."
She pushed the bead gently, and it turned into a meteor-like light trail that sank into the depths of Wang Jianguo's consciousness.
"Go back quickly."
The space began to shake violently, and Yu Li's shadow gradually became transparent. Wang Jianguo saw that the last thing she said with her mouth was "take care".
And under the old locust tree, a young bud had appeared at some point and was struggling to grow upwards against the ice crystals.
When his consciousness suddenly returned to his body, it was already late at night. The corner of the red cloth under the pillow was stained with a faint spiritual fragrance, which was very much like the smell of the spiritual crabapple on Yu Li's fingertips.
He sat up and touched his chest. The spiritual energy bead given by Xiaojuan was slowly circulating in his body, as warm as a green brick just out of the kiln.