Chapter 392: Between the Mists (Part 1)

Lin Ling's words left Li Duojin frozen in place; he saw himself in Lin Ling's eyes—eyes that had never rippled with waves regardless of the situation—a Li Duojin whose face was stiff with astonishment.

"Until hell is empty, I vow not to become a Buddha... hmm, what a grand aspiration." Lin Ling spread his arms, stretched, and then walked up the stairs step by step. "Humans have desires, and Buddhas have great love... when all pain and sorrow constitute hell, there can never be a day when it is empty.

That greatness in your heart, not becoming a Buddha, not being able to become a Buddha, is his destiny."

Li Duojin fell silent, and only after a long while did he ask bitterly: "Then where is he now?"

"If not becoming a Buddha is his destiny, then he can be everything." Lin Ling said with a smile, "He can be you, be her, be grass and trees, be the earth, be passing clouds and smoke, and he can even be... an Alien God, but, he will never be me."

Li Duojin's expression shifted between light and shadow, his gaze darting across everyone in front of him, thinking incessantly; he was locking onto an answer in his heart.

Following Lin Ling's hint—no, it should be called an explicit suggestion—an answer emerged in his mind.

"Is he... that Alien God now?" Li Duojin thought of a great existence, that One Who Returns All Things who transcends time and space, who stands above all things, the gatekeeper of the Ultimate Abyss located beyond the multi-dimensional universe.

Lin Ling looked at him with a smile; although he did not give a clear answer, Li Duojin was already certain of the truth. His faith seemed to collapse, his steps were unsteady, and he seemed unable to stand firm in this space-time, swaying as if about to fall.

Meow.

The black cat let out a soft cry toward Lin Ling and rubbed against his ankle a few times. A trace of human-like sadness flickered in its golden pupils, but it quickly vanished.

Wei Jiang stepped forward and gently patted Li Duojin on the shoulder, giving him a look of comfort.

The reactions of the black cat and Wei Jiang made Li Duojin's heart jump again. He then said with a bitter expression: "So you all knew long ago."

He looked at Lin Ling with a complex expression, "May I ask you one more question?"

Lin Ling nodded, "Ask away."

"Since you are not the Venerable One, why is the past you speak of so similar to the Venerable One's?" Li Duojin sighed inwardly.

At this, Lin Ling's lips curled slightly, his bared white teeth making one feel involuntarily nervous, "Because I, once counted as his shadow..."

Rumble!

The sound of thunder startled the sleeping man awake. He opened his eyes and saw several beams of white light streak before him; lightning struck down at a very close distance, piercing the churning, rolling black sea.

The man shook his head, trying to drive away the pain, dizziness, heaviness, and dullness brought on by his hangover, but his brain felt like an hourglass constantly losing its balance, merely shifting the uncomfortable sensation from the left brain to the right, and back again, which only made his senses more chaotic and even more uncomfortable.

He pulled back the quilt and got up. A vodka bottle rolled back and forth on the uneven floor, creating an irritating and unpleasant noise. He had to lower his head, reach out, pick up the bottle, and shove it into a cabinet crammed with all sorts of messy bottles and jars; most were liquor bottles, with a small portion being medicine bottles that had once been filled with injections.

The man took off his undershirt, which was reeking of alcohol and sweat, tossed it onto a hanger, and then took down a raincoat from the hanger. He put it on while walking out of the room and onto the pitching deck.

The storm at sea washed over this fishing boat that had set sail. These seawater and rainwater would not wash everything clean; instead, they intensified the original fishy smell.

Wrinkling his nose and spitting out a mouthful of phlegm, the man walked with unsteady steps to the fishing boat's control room.

"Yo, you're finally awake, Drake." The one steering the boat was a middle-aged man who looked somewhat short but had extremely thick arms. Seeing Drake walk in from outside, he immediately greeted him with a smile, "Still drunk? There's hangover medicine on the table; take two pills if you can't handle it."

Drake chuckled: "Thanks, Old Peng, but there's no need. I quite enjoy this uncomfortable feeling."

"If someone else said that, I certainly wouldn't believe it, but coming from you, I do." Captain Peng Sanxi looked at the surging waves outside the window, yet his face showed no panic; he remained as chatty as ever. He gave the other man a strange look, "Everyone avoids suffering, but you don't."

Drake laughed softly. As he conversed, his mind gradually became active, and the discomfort in his body slowly faded. He looked at the sky outside the window, at the storm that seemed ready to swallow the ship at any moment, and was equally unafraid, murmuring: "Have you ever felt for a moment that this world is very unreal?"

Peng Sanxi thought Drake was referring to the scene of the storm at sea being too shocking and terrifying, not like a meteorological phenomenon that should exist in this world, so he said with a faint smile: "I've been sailing for over twenty years. I've experienced this level of sea storm at least a dozen or twenty times. I've even seen worse; that scene was just like some terrifying demon wanting to destroy the world. I've escaped death several times, so I've come to view life and death lightly; I don't feel anything is unreal or terrifying anymore."

Drake knew he and the other man were not on the same wavelength, so he just smiled.

Peng Sanxi seemed to have opened the floodgates, perhaps because Drake was the only person on the boat with whom he could talk calmly. "However, there was one sailing experience that still makes me feel very..."

Peng Sanxi's facial features seemed to scrunch together, a strange look of terror flashed in his eyes, and his face twitched. The tangled expression seemed to be recalling that unbearable past, or perhaps he was weighing how to describe that past, and finally, two words spilled from his mouth.

"Incomprehensible."

Drake pulled up a chair and sat down at the door, pressing his arms against the back of the chair, pricking up his ears to listen to the other man tell his story.

"How should I describe that day?" Peng Sanxi watched the bow of the ship cutting through the waves, his spirit lost in memory. His body seemed to resonate once again with himself on that day in his memory, and he felt the gale at sea slowly become eerie and sinister.

The family Peng Sanxi grew up in was not wealthy, but it could be considered well-off. His ancestors had relied on the sea for generations, so navigation and fishing were considered the "craft" passed down in his family.

With the development of the times, simple navigation and fishing could no longer keep up with the trends of the era. More and more fresh industries entered the public eye, and inheriting the family business became less important. Moreover, that "family business" wasn't actually fresh; if his family didn't do it, someone else would. His parents didn't demand that he must inherit this trade; letting him occasionally follow them out to sea was just to satisfy a young boy's curiosity, and if he could learn a little, it could be considered leaving himself a backup plan.

In fact, Peng Sanxi didn't intend to be a sailor at first; his childhood dream was actually to be a painter.

Hearing this, Drake did not show any look of mockery or doubt, even though the Peng Sanxi before him looked burly and had a face full of flesh, the exact opposite of the stereotypical frail painter. He believed what Peng Sanxi said.

Instead, it was Peng Sanxi himself who blushed first, feeling a bit embarrassed.

Painter and fisherman, it sounded like a very distant gap, yet Peng Sanxi said that he had actually liked drawing since he was a child and had outstanding talent in painting. He had never attended any training or received guidance from any famous master, yet he could always produce paintings that left the school's art teacher in awe.

In the old house of the Peng family, perhaps the trophies and certificates from his childhood painting competitions were still kept to this day.

Speaking of these, Peng Sanxi did not show a proud expression; his face held more of a complex emotion that was hard for others to resonate with. It seemed that besides the joy of his talent shining brightly, that childhood experience also hid pain and fear that perhaps only he could understand.

Peng Sanxi said that he often had the same dream since he was a child, dreaming of a colorful world. The brilliant and varied colors sounded beautiful and strange, but he only felt deep fear from those colors.

He felt that those colors were alive, only that ordinary people could not understand them. They would emit sounds of unknown meaning, some sounding like the waves of the sea crashing and pounding against the hull of the ship.

Even though they didn't emit human language, Peng Sanxi could hear those colorful things calling out to him, asking him to go to them.

That side was where those existences lived, a place full of incredible, breathtaking wonders, a highly advanced civilization that humans could not reach even if they spent thousands or tens of thousands of years. Those existences had abandoned their physical bodies and broken free from the shackles of flesh-and-blood creatures to reach the palace of eternal life, but they had also correspondingly lost the ability to reproduce their species. In order to expand their race, they would often recruit people from other races like him who possessed some special talent he couldn't know of. As long as he agreed, he would become one of them.

He told the people around him about this dream, but whether they were adults or friends, they all thought it was just a dream he had.

He initially thought so too; after all, it was too bizarre and strange. But as time went on, he found that he had a deeper and deeper impression of such dreams, precise to every detail of the scenery in the dream, and the sounds were all so fresh in his memory. He wavered in the thought that it was just a dream.

He tried to convince the people around him, but his parents were very busy with work, and he couldn't talk to them.

His friends also walked away shaking their heads because he often "spoke nonsense" whenever he wanted to talk about those things. Thinking about it, it was normal; when a person, even your friend, keeps spouting nonsense beside you with a straight face, even the greatest patience will eventually grow weary.

Moreover, as those dreams became deeper and deeper for him, they were also slowly eroding his spirit, which led to his mental decline. He would often lose focus, sometimes involuntarily muttering strange syllables, and even seeing hallucinations in reality.

His mental state had some problems, which made him look like a little madman at the time, and he thought this was another reason why his friends were afraid of him and distanced themselves from him.

However, he was not isolated at that time; there was still someone willing to believe him, and that was the teacher who taught him to paint—Qin Qing.

She was a beautiful, dignified, and elegant female teacher, and also the only art teacher in their school. She was gentle, mature, and understanding, and was the object of longing for most of the men in their school, and he was no exception.

Peng Sanxi considered himself quite lucky; he was a student in the painting interest group she led, and because of his outstanding ability, he became her favorite student.

Teacher Qin took him to participate in various painting competitions and won many awards. He could be said to be the male closest to Teacher Qin.

During that time when he was harassed by strange dreams, if not for Teacher Qin's meticulous companionship and care, he probably would have found it difficult to get through those agonizing years.

Seeing her student wither day by day, Teacher Qin could only watch helplessly, unable to share even a little bit of his pain, and she was very anxious.

Qin Qing believed that he had contracted the same illness as other geniuses in the world, like a genius disease.

It is said that genius is on the left and madness on the right, and between genius and madness there is but a single thought's difference; some geniuses truly can see the things they imagine in their own minds due to their naturally outstanding imaginative abilities.

Thus, Teacher Qin Qing gave the then-Peng Sanxi a terrible idea.

She told him to try to paint everything he saw in his dreams, and she coaxed him, saying that if those things were real, they would surely possess a marvelous charm under his brush; although not everyone would be able to grasp it, she presumed there would be people who, after seeing his paintings, would begin to believe what he said.

Moreover, he also needed to vent; merely speaking with dry, barren language was not enough, and he should use a more direct way of pouring out his heart; painting was the best method for someone as introverted as him to relieve his worries.

Peng Sanxi was immediately moved upon hearing this at the time, but it was not as if he had never thought of doing so; he just always felt that those things should not be painted, and the existences in his dreams told him that it was fine to just speak of their affairs orally, but they must never be presented in the form of art such as writing or painting, as that would only bring him unimaginable disaster.

However, this feeling of being possessed by ghosts was like a rubber band about to be snapped, making it increasingly difficult for him to keep his will taut; he wanted so desperately to prove it to the world.

He was not a madman; those unknown and great lives truly existed in this world, and humanity was not the only species, but even humanity and life forms hundreds or thousands of times more advanced than humanity were merely dust particles that had fortunately fallen into the cracks of this absurd universe, not yet blown away by the "gale" that ran rampant through the cosmos... He wanted to tell everyone all of this, but the warnings from those lives in his dreams were as deafening as a thunderclap on flat ground.

But this was Teacher Qin Qing's suggestion, and he had always been very obedient to Teacher Qin; after all, the status of Teacher Qin in his heart was second only to his parents.

After pondering for half a day, Peng Sanxi finally nodded solemnly and agreed to Teacher Qin's proposal.

It was just that he also kept his guard up, telling Teacher Qin that he needed a separate, quiet room, and that she must not come in to watch until he had finished all of his paintings, nor could she come in to disturb him at will.

In Peng Sanxi's perception at the time, he felt that the lovely and respectable Teacher Qin was not someone who would casually break her word.

When Teacher Qin heard that Peng Sanxi had actually agreed, an undisguised ecstasy appeared on her face; she grabbed the young Peng Sanxi's shoulders forcefully, met his gaze with those wide-staring eyes, and indicated that she accepted Peng Sanxi's conditions.

Facing Teacher Qin's expression and behavior at the time, Peng Sanxi's heart began to beat uneasily; he had never imagined that this female teacher possessed such forceful strength, and the deep fanaticism hidden beneath the surprise made him feel deeply panicked; for a moment, he felt intense regret.

But Teacher Qin seemed to have discovered the fear on his face; she quickly restrained her emotions and returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.

That afternoon, Teacher Qin stated that she had obtained the school's approval for her application, specifically opening up a useless room for a painting genius like him to use temporarily; that room was the very last office on the third floor of the old school building.

That office was as small and cramped as he had imagined when he arrived; rather than calling it an office, it was more like a "Xiao Hei" room used for corporal punishment at the time.

However, there were also good points; before he arrived, Teacher Qin had already cleaned it, so at least he did not need to endure the dust filling the room and entering his lungs while painting, allowing his mind to be more focused and his paintings to be more perfected.

The office was narrow and deep; its only two sources of natural light were the open door and a frosted window at the far end. The office was very simple, with a swaying pendant lamp overhead. Where the desk had originally been placed, the desk had been removed, leaving only the marks of it having been there for a long time, replaced by the drawing boards, easels, and other items he needed for painting. Countless pigments, brushes, and other equipment were neatly placed along the wall, and he could use anything in the office as he pleased.

Teacher Qin seemed somewhat impatient, perhaps having some urgent matter; she hurriedly gave him a few instructions and then left the office, leaving him alone in this office, in this desolate and deserted old school building.

Peng Sanxi felt somewhat uneasy; to suppress his anxious and wild thoughts, he prepared to start working after locking the office door, but after thinking about it, he was struck by a whim and propped the only heavy object in the office, a half-length human statue, against the door, and only then did he return to his position to paint.

Peng Sanxi painted with rapt attention, doing his utmost to depict everything he had seen in his dreams; even if he believed he could only capture one percent, or one ten-thousandth of the charm, he still did his utmost to paint.

He did not know how much time had passed; when he was painting the third picture with cold sweat pouring down like rain, at the moment his fully concentrated spirit slightly relaxed, he finally heard the subtle "bang-bang" noise that he had subconsciously ignored while painting with rapt attention. His spine turned cold, and he looked back toward where the sound was coming from, discovering that it was precisely the sound of the office door and the statue propping it up colliding.

Was it the wind?

It was not.

Peng Sanxi clearly saw the silhouette of a person pressed against the frosted glass of the office door, the skin pressed tightly against the glass, and he could imagine a pair of bloodshot eyes staring as wide as copper bells.