Without eyes, without limbs, without senses. The things of the outside world to him were just one ripple after another, big and small.
Yin Ren had experienced this state before.
When he fought with the sniper—no, perhaps he should call him “Mr. Qiu”—and turned into pure essence, his perception of the outside world was the same as it was now. It was more accurate to say that his current perception was even purer.
Like a lifeless sea.
The outside world was like a drizzle, stirring up one ripple after another. Besides that, everything in the world was nothingness. There was no color, temperature, weight, and Yin Ren couldn’t even feel his “own” body.
In the vast solitude, his thoughts were like sugar cubes thrown into water, gradually dissolving and becoming loose and blurry. Even when he was asleep under a seal, Yin Ren had never felt such a terrifying emptiness.
Like a never-ending free fall.
Did Shian’s memory spell fail?
No, that’s not it.
That memory spell had been confirmed by Li Nian and Fu Xingchuan. There were no problems with either the design of the spell or the underground Evil Spirit used as an auxiliary. Even if there were major issues, it shouldn’t have caused such a fierce Evil Spirit like himself to enter an unknown environment.
He must have obtained some kind of “role identity” from this era.
But now, Yin Ren couldn’t even guess what kind of creature he had become in this state.
Yin Ren tried his best to stay conscious and attempted to move. But with no sensory perception, he didn’t know how to exert force, nor did he know where to exert it. After flailing for several hours, Lord Ghost King collapsed mentally and began to despair.
What kind of role was this? Was he turned into moss in some cave?
Despite his despondence, Yin Ren set himself a countdown timer. After five minutes of listlessness, he regained his composure and continued to struggle and explore.
Zhong Chengshuo was still technically a “flesh puppet”. Even if the man could adapt to his situation, there were still very few things he could do.
He had to get back to the team as soon as possible.
While he was thinking of a plan, a particularly tumultuous ripple caught Yin Ren’s attention. That ripple was different from the others, and it was very close to him.
[I really want to go home…]
An external thought surged into Yin Ren’s mind.
This feeling was very strange. That train of thought didn’t contain any language, but he could understand it. What the other party conveyed was the most basic and simplest “idea”.
[I really want to go home…]
That unknown thought ruminated pitifully.
[Who are you?] Yin Ren repeated this question in his mind, trying to direct it towards the direction of the transmitted thought. To be honest, he didn’t know if this method would work.
[…] The thought of that thing was blank for a few seconds.
[Siren.] It responded.
It was Dog Thing.
Yin Ren was taken aback. He did put his phone under his pillow, but his intention was to keep Dog Thing with him, to avoid any unnecessary complications. He never thought that this insignificant little thing could be affected by the spell.
[Who are you? Where is this place, and what are you doing here?] Without any language barriers, Dog Thing’s thoughts were clear and easy to understand.
It was a strange feeling, as if it had become a part of him.
[I am Yin Ren. There was a small problem with the spell, and we are trapped in a memory illusion.] Suddenly, having someone to talk to in this emptiness lifted Yin Ren’s spirits.
He roughly explained his guesses about the magic to Dog Thing. As he had anticipated, he didn’t need to organize them into words. Dog Thing smoothly understood his thoughts.
[You are too powerful. I might have been judged as a part of you.] Dog Thing tried hard to think. [Just like when copying a phone app and it contains junk data.]
[I see. That’s good. At least it won’t be too boring…]
Halfway through his thought, Yin Ren suddenly realized something.
[Let me see your memories!] He launched a barrage of thoughts at Dog Thing.
The biggest obstacle to their communication was the inability to express thoughts. Now that he was unlucky enough… No, that he finally had the opportunity to directly experience “thoughts”, he couldn’t let this go.
[No!] Dog Thing was resolute. [If you do that, you won’t need me anymore. You will eat me!]
Strangely, during their exchange, the outline of a vague image gradually emerged in Yin Ren’s mind—
It was a small, black, four-legged, cylindrical creature. Its appearance was blurry, as if behind frosted glass. In the blurry image, the thing was skinny and looked like a bat’s shriveled corpse. It curled up and trembled all over.
[You don’t look tasty, so I won’t eat you,] Yin Ren said sincerely. [Besides, this is not my body, and I have no way to find a mouth to eat you. When we leave here, you will definitely return to the phone, and I won’t eat such things.]
[Really?]
[I can also thank you by giving you some Evil Force. If you’re still not at ease, I can let you see my thoughts.]
[…] Dog Thing weighed for a long time. [Okay.]
[But I want a promise. You have to promise to send me home.] It finally said.
[No. I don’t even know where your home is.]
[You will go back.] The thin figure was very determined in its thoughts. [Strong people always go back.]
Upon further reflection, Yin Ren realized that his pursuit hadn’t changed much. After he solved the mystery of the Primordial Elementals and the mysteries around the Evil Force, he would immediately seek a special job position from Shian—after all, his identity had already been exposed, so he might as well earn some more money.
Since Zhong Chengshuo wasn’t human, they would have more time to study the truth, stroll along the road, and share the same snacks. Whether their future lives were smooth or rough, they were all the joys and sorrows of the human world.
Yin Ren had little interest in the so-called path of the strong.
But it was still doable to just send Dog Thing back home. After pondering for a moment, Yin Ren packaged his thought process and threw it to Dog Thing as a show of sincerity.
And Dog Thing delivered on its promise—
The heavy memories instantly engulfed Yin Ren.
……
The moment he touched those memories, Yin Ren understood the difficulty of communicating with Dog Thing.
The sensation it had when it was still at “home” was really difficult to describe in words.
Suppose humans didn’t have eyes, then the noun for colors wouldn’t exist. Dog Thing was like a person who only had hearing in their life, trying to communicate with someone who only had sight. The meaning of language and the definition of nouns were all mismatched, and even the most basic conversation became incredibly difficult.
It seemed that it wasn’t that this thing’s brain wasn’t functioning properly; in their previous conversation, it should have tried its best.
Yin Ren “saw” another world.
If it had to be described in human terms, countless vibrations and fluctuations swept in. He clearly didn’t see any colors, but he could feel the world’s vibrancy. The external information was like the thought exchange just now, delivering the most essential meaning into his body.
Countless information rushed in, and Yin Ren’s thoughts were in chaos, almost shutting down.
But in this pure ocean of information, Yin Ren swam freely from Dog Thing’s perspective.
Until a certain day twenty-eight years ago.
The information in the ocean suddenly turned violent, and the vibrations and fluctuations almost crushed Dog Thing’s body. Dog Thing quickly followed the rest of its kind in a mass escape, and several clusters of information were thrown back and forth in its group.
They said that the “Disgust” was moving.
Just as it received this information, a corresponding memory quickly grew in Dog Thing’s mind—”Disgust” was a predator that had only grown up in the past one or two thousand years and was the least worried about food supply in this area.
It was a massive creature covered in information, with human hands on its surface.
In Dog Thing’s memory, perhaps it had been daydreaming for too long, so its escape speed was a bit slow. Soon, the creature moved in front of it—
That thing stuck out a human-sized hand from its surface and frantically pounded in a certain direction. At the same time, there was a vague tearing sound coming from far away.
Yin Ren concentrated his mind, intending to carefully savor this memory. Who would have thought that this “inside-out” event would take twenty-two years to play out? Dog Thing didn’t dare to move. It stayed motionless at close range, not moving for twenty years.
Yin Ren had nothing to say.
Fortunately, this was a memory, and he only needed to receive everything in an instant.
Six years ago, with external cooperation, “Disgust” finally tore open a gap that didn’t belong to this world. It first stuck out an “arm”, but its body was still left in the ocean of information.
It was just Dog Thing had worked so hard to avoid it.
As space tore apart, external information poured in, mixed with a very tempting fluctuation, like a self-service buffet for a starving ghost.
Dog Thing was already weakened from hiding for more than 20 years and now completely lost its sanity. It didn’t care where the crack led, and it rushed straight towards it.
As a former Great Celestial Master, Yin Ren could recognize that crack, which was known in the human world as a “gap”.
As a former human, he could also taste the information represented by that fluctuation—it was an emotion called “anxiety”, and it was unusually intense.
The weakened Dog Thing rushed towards the source of that emotion, completely unaware that it had passed through the crack and arrived in another world.
Dog Thing collided with a flying bird first. Unfortunately, that bird seemed unable to bear such a strange “creature”. The bird fell from the sky, its dying eyes glimpsing for a moment, and the next second, its small head exploded, and its body scattered into several pieces of flesh.
The glance from the bird possessed by Dog Thing almost made Yin Ren’s thoughts stop.
At that moment, within the still-existing gap, a huge “human hand” emerged. Snow-white bone structure, black-gray metal, all kinds of wriggling texts filling the seams, and an overall dark, dead flesh-like hue.
He had fought against it before.
It was the sniper, or rather, a part of Mr. Qiu’s body.
The outline of the giant hand dissipated in the air, pointing directly towards the direction of the city with dense buildings—the direction of the Haigu Municipal Hospital. Dog Thing realized it was in trouble and wanted to turn back home, but the crack had already closed, leaving it with nowhere to go.
It struggled desperately along with the bird’s corpse, like a dehydrated fish. However, Dog Thing didn’t find another suitable “carrier” and fell to the ground with the bird’s corpse.
Yin Ren could clearly sense that Dog Thing was dissipating along with the bird. The bird’s cells were dying, and its whole nervous system was stopping. Dog Thing was struggling to hold on.
Until someone walked by.
The young man was holding a brand-new phone, humming a song while playing games. He didn’t even glance at the bird’s corpse next to him, but something “saw” it.
Dog Thing struggled and pounced towards that person.
In its view, the person’s brain emitted a deadly seductive force. At that moment, its thoughts were completely blank. This behavior wasn’t the result of thinking, but more like the most basic response under survival instinct.
Unfortunately, Dog Thing, which was already on the brink of death, missed its target.
From the perspective of the memory, the person suddenly paused. Dog Thing pounced too quickly and hit the screen of the brightly lit phone.
In the next moment, it seemed to be able to breathe again, but it was quite difficult. If Dog Thing was compared to a fish, “the other side” was like nutrient-rich, pristine seawater. Once it entered the phone, it was like being thrown into a distillation tank, which wasn’t even the size of a palm.
It could barely survive, but it was very uncomfortable.
Frail connection, weak fluctuations, and extremely low-density information. Other than the environmental pattern being somewhat similar, everything else was completely different.
Dog Thing didn’t dare move around anymore. The explosion of the bird caused psychological trauma. It didn’t know if it could attack other living beings and make it back safely. After all, it wasn’t clear how it managed to survive entering the phone.
Maintaining this state, it gradually learned those unfamiliar information bit by bit. Dog Thing still remembered the tempting power that day. If it could eat and drink enough there and become stronger, it could definitely go back home!
At the very least, if it could find other beings like itself and consume them, it could ease its situation.
Unfortunately, it tried to head in the wrong direction, acted recklessly in front of humans, and was sent to the Shian storage warehouse as a “spirit weapon”.
It was close to its target prey, the “Evil Spirit”, but it was still out of reach.
Roughly speaking, this was just the story of a silly little animal’s suffering. If this were earlier, then surely, Yin Ren would have hummed a tune of <The Little Mouse Climbing Up the Lamp Post>* for it.
*Chinese nursery rhyme and children’s song. It tells the story of a little mouse that climbs up to the top of a lighthouse to see the world. The song is often used to teach young children about the importance of being curious and exploring the world around them.
However, Yin Ren didn’t have the leisure to do so now.
In a flash, the past fragmented clues were like pearls that connected into a string—
[They can affect people’s emotions, causing them to shout and laugh…]
These things seemed to be particularly sensitive to emotions. On the other side of the rift, they didn’t refer to the sniper as “Mr. Qiu” or anything like that. They called him “Disgust”.
[An old man said before that if you go to an inexistent place, you will see them. If you dream too deeply, you will see them.]
They lived on the “Other Side” beyond the gap. Does the interstitial space in the gap count as an inexistent place? And does the “Archive” environment, which is used on the brains of the insane as its stage, count as a “deep dream”?
[Carelessly contacting them will destroy one’s soul… The elders in our region call them the ‘Primordial Elementals’.]
If their previous speculations were correct, then “Divine Descent” was the scattering of the flesh of a large-scale Primordial Elemental in the mortal world…
The Evil Force, which was converted from the “flesh”, could provide people with the ability to interfere with the Other Side, such as “Charon”, and the power to control emotions, such as “Resonance”. Then it wouldn’t be strange if these Primordial Elementals themselves had stronger abilities.
Yin Ren savored Dog Thing’s memory and poked at the small, cowering shadow with his mind.
If he had a mouth, Yin Ren would wryly smile.
So it seemed that humans weren’t directly on the menu of these beings. Then why did these Primordial Elementals, who lived on the distant Other Side and fed on emotions, set their sights on the mortal world?
In order to squeeze an arm through, Mr. Qiu dug for twenty-two years, which shows that the other side wasn’t a sieve. How did the bloody “Divine Descent” come about? And how were the Evil Spirits and other evil creatures produced?
Yin Ren attempted to ask about the distinction between “strong” and “weak” and the hierarchy of the “food chain” on the Other Side. But once it involves judgments that were close to instinct, Dog Thing couldn’t transmit clear thoughts.
It seemed that the intelligence of Dog Thing had reached its limit.
Yin Ren still didn’t understand the essence of the Other Side and Primordial Elementals. He realized that such deep research should be left to his innocent accomplice to explore.
Yin Ren decisively stopped thinking.
If he gave these pieces of intelligence to Zhong Chengshuo, that guy would be quite happy. He could already imagine how the expression of “surprise” would appear on his serious face, and Yin Ren was looking forward to it.
He rolled up his sleeves in his mind and gave Dog Thing a light kick.
Dog Thing: [?]
[Let’s find a way out together,] Yin Ren said. [I’m different from you. I’m not just ‘wanting to go home’. I ‘will definitely go home’.]
……
Fu Xingchuan sat on a wooden chair, watching Lu Xiaohe
and Fu Tianyi.
This time he wasn’t just putting on airs and sitting back to relax. It was really because the things that a dog’s paw could do were quite limited. He couldn’t interfere with the two younger ones, who were busy. Fu Xingchuan used his paw to play with the dry tobacco on the table and occasionally took a bite.
Following the excellent tradition of Shian, the two of them quickly transformed this room into a temporary base.
After everything was done, Fu Tianyi sat on a stool with a gloomy expression. “How wretched. I finally became the boss of Huajisi, but I can’t even direct a subordinate.”
In order to maintain the “logical coherence” of the memory environment, Fu Tianyi told Huajisi that he was conducting dangerous research with the scholar Li Heyan and didn’t let anyone follow.
This directly resulted in their only available forces being one man, one woman, and a dog.
“Pack up and ask the villagers for some information this afternoon. It’s best to leave before nightfall. It’s the end of the Gong Dynasty now—it’s troublesome to encounter bandits and wild beasts at night, even if we don’t run into any evil creatures.”
Lu Xiaohe had already prepared paper, pen, and charcoal and was working hard to wrap the charcoal into a usable makeshift pen.
“If necessary, we can call some people to help. Just don’t cause any trouble—this village’s environment is so vivid that it’s definitely not a memory of Yin Ren’s. The Evil Spirit that remembers this place so clearly is probably nearby. The sooner we leave, the safer we’ll be.”
They came to investigate the chaos; not to swim naked in the center of it.
During the end of the Gong Dynasty, war and monsters were rampant. Historians could study human wars, but as a biologist, Lu Xiaohe didn’t want to become a witness. Moreover, the current highest fighting force was a dog, and she didn’t want to experience the close-range feeling of an Evil Spirit strolling around.
“It’s been okay for the past two days.” Fu Tianyi tried to avoid eye contact with the dog. “I just saw someone outside making things like fresh fruit and sugar melons, saying that they were going to worship on September 9th, so they had to prepare a few days in advance—there’s so much leeway, so the war is probably still far away from here.”
Fu Xingchuan suddenly jumped off the chair and shouted twice.
The dog suddenly bit off half of the dry tobacco stick and held it in its mouth. It used a spell to light the tobacco, and smoke quickly circled around its mouth as it asked a question.
[What day of the lunar calendar is it today?]
“Uh…the seventh. Why do you ask?” Fu Tianyi stared at the smoking dog, a bit tongue-tied.
[What’s the name of this village?]
“Yin Village.”
Upon saying this, Fu Tianyi realized something, and his complexion suddenly turned pale.
“It should be a coincidence. In the late Gong Dynasty, Yin was a common surname…”
[Do you believe your own bullshit? This is the memory of an Evil Spirit!] Fu Xingchuan wished he could spit out the cigarette and bite a mouthful of Fu Tianyi’s calf.
Lu Xiaohe stopped making her homemade pen, and her face gradually turned ugly.
Fu Tianyi became as white as a snowman. “In the evening of September 7th, the Goulou Army raided the heartland of the Gong Dynasty. They first occupied the mountainous areas that were easy to defend and difficult to attack, hoping to establish a large camp… Yin Village, Hezhuang, and Chenjiakou were the first to be massacred.”
“At dawn on the eighth day, an Evil Spirit was born. No one on the scene, whether it was the Gouluo Army or the local residents, survived.”
[On the ninth day, the Great Celestia Master Zhong Yi returned to his hometown and sealed the Evil Spirit in his homeland.] Fu Xingchuan helped him complete the ending of the story.
“No, that’s not right,” Lu Xiaohe said.
She put on a serious face that belonged to Li Heyan, and a layer of sweat appeared on her forehead.
“I looked at the data before I came here. Many villagers went into the mountains before the army attacked. According to their account, all kinds of dogs in Yin Village started barking frantically early in the morning on September 7th. These people felt uneasy and decided to leave.”
“But we’ve been here for so long and we haven’t heard a single bark,” Lu Xiaohe added with a dry voice.
Everyone fell silent.
Lu Xiaohe and Fu Tianyi had been acting discreetly, trying not to affect the ability to maintain the established memories. Besides, they didn’t arrive in the village until later in the day. Fu Xingchuan had also turned into a normal, common dog without the ability to manipulate the larger environment.
[If the time and place are correct, then it must be the ‘people’ who are wrong.]
The dog spoke up and blew a line of smoke rings.
[Let’s not leave yet. We’ll stay here.]
“Why? Wouldn’t it be more dangerous to stay here?” Fu Tianyi exclaimed.
But Lu Xiahe remained silent, rubbing her chin and furrowing her brows.
[First of all, the disrupted memory is that of the Evil Spirit. In its memory, the Great Celestial Master will still come on September 9th. This Great Celestial Master is our primary observation target, and Yin Ren himself must remember this. We happen to meet here.]
[Second, the spell I designed won’t have this kind of loophole. The character confusion already has me stumped. Now, I can be certain…]
Fu Xingchuan drooped his tail and puffed more rapidly.
[This is an enemy attack.]
At the same time, inside the ancestral hall of the Yin Village.
A slender black dog stood up and sniffled. Its neck was tied with a finely embroidered silk ribbon, and its fur and paws were clean, indicating it was well taken care of.
It looked disdainfully at the pig’s head in the bowl, and a hint of human resentment flashed in its eyes.
