Chapter 54

"I sent Mom a message; she'll be here in a while." Bai Zhi shook her phone and sat back down at the desk in a proper manner.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe turned his head to look at her obedient appearance sitting quietly in the chair, frowning slightly.

Bai Zhi's state is not right; she seems to have no impression at all of what happened last night, and her behavior is like two completely different people. The Bai Zhi of last night was not at all this shy, obedient girl; at that time, she... was more like a person than now.

... No, let's worry about myself first.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe looked up toward the window. The old camphor tree in the courtyard dropped withered red leaves, suffused with a thin twilight.

He raised a hand, looking down at the lines on his palm. A profound fear surged from his chest cavity up his spine: "If one day in the future, I forget who I am, what difference is there between such a me... and a ghost?"

Perhaps it wouldn't be an exaggeration to be called a ghost directly.

Taiyi is a ghost, a rule, not a superpower randomly awakened in a world of universal high martial arts. Rules are absolute, and rules are fair.

Absolute fairness means that Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe is not simply stealing others' identities; the stolen identities and memories are also subtly influencing himself. Sometimes he wants to light a cigarette for himself to dispel his frustrated mood, but Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe doesn't smoke; the one with the smoking addiction is Zhang Yangxu.

Sometimes a kind of detached indifference rises in his heart, as if he himself were the unbenevolent heaven and earth, treating all things as straw dogs... but Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe knows he is not like that; the truly detached one is the Serpent God named Zhao You.

To this day, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe has begun to feel lost.

"It was fine when I was in He Family Village; although the Serpent God's memories were complex, they were not enough to shake my self-cognition. But since returning to reality, I have successively stolen the identities and memories of several people; their life experiences have begun to affect my decision-making."

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe closed his eyes, and loose illusions appeared before his eyes: "Especially Liu Yunzhi's identity; that is her own cognition of herself, the most complete, the most profound, and it has the deepest and most fatal influence on me."

Second only to the long and boring time of the Serpent God, spanning tens of millions of years.

It is foreseeable that if he continues to use Taiyi's rules, as the stolen identities and memories become more numerous and more complex, 'Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's' self-cognition will become increasingly indifferent, until it reaches a certain critical point—I am no longer me.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe clearly knows what is happening to him, but he is powerless.

"If this continues, I will die, or become someone else, but what difference is there between that and dying?" Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe opened his eyes, his hands clenched into fists: "Must find a way out."

"Mm, um, you just said you looked at my diary?" Just as Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe was distressed, Bai Zhi's voice suddenly came from the bedside, her soft tone gentle, refreshing like a begonia flower: "What's going on with that?"

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe straightened up and said: "Your mom showed it to me. She was very worried about you, afraid you might have some psychological illness, so she secretly looked at your diary."

"Are you a psychiatrist?" Bai Zhi looked at him in confusion; Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's age was clearly about the same as hers.

"I'm not, it's just that your mother is willing to trust me," Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe shook his head: "I looked at your diary, you looked at the letters I wrote, so we're even."

Bai Zhi lowered her head and looked at the thick stack of letter papers on the table, of various colors, and asked curiously: "Did you write all of these?"

"Yes..." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe was not very willing to mention his dark history, but since Bai Zhi had already seen them, there was nothing to hide: "You can tell, my family's conditions aren't very good, and my grandparents aren't wealthy people. So starting from junior high school, I often helped classmates write love letters to earn some pocket money or snacks. Speaking of which, I have to thank them for their puppy love." Although love had never had anything to do with him.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe got off the bed, walked to the desk, and picked up the thick stack of colorful letter papers, knocking them neat on the table: "The ones you see are all drafts. After all, love letters to girls can't have deletions or typos, so after writing the draft, I have to copy it again before sending it out."

"Then what, then what? Do the girls like the love poems you write?" Bai Zhi's face was full of curiosity; it seems this kind of thing is quite fresh to her.

"You're overthinking it." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe put the letter papers back on the table and said flatly: "What determines whether a confession letter is accepted is never the content of the letter, but the sender and the recipient themselves. Because it's people who fall in love, not the words on the paper; flowery language has always just been decoration."

"Truly charming people don't need these superficial external things to assist; others usually just throw themselves at them," Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe concluded finally.

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

"I'll take it as you complimenting me." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe didn't care about her thoughts: "But still, thank you."

"Eh? Why thank me?" Bai Zhi felt puzzled.

"Thank you for letting me see the things I wrote in the past..." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe took a deep breath, and his chaotic mood calmed down: "I feel like I'm me again."

Yes, those confession letters were written by me; those mushy words, those flowery phrases, those shy poems writing the feelings of youth... green, sour, passionate, subtle, these are all my things; I must never lose the me of the past.

I am Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe, not anyone else.

Complex emotions piled up in his chest, making Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe incomparably certain in his heart.

"You really are a strange person." Bai Zhi lowered her head in frustration, and asked in a small voice, unwilling to give up: "Then can I still look at these drafts?"

"Suit yourself," Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe said, walking out of the room.

In the distant sky, a piece of dark red sunset hung, the rising sun setting, pulling a thick night curtain over the quiet small town. Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe stepped over the small green onions planted by the wall and came to the courtyard gate. Outside the gate was his white-haired grandfather sitting in a rattan chair smoking.

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

His grandfather, who had been 'air-forced' (caught nothing) for several days, was so angry his beard trembled, but then he turned around and smiled mysteriously, asking who the girl who had been guarding his room was.

Bai Zhi sat in the chair at the desk, pulled out a letter paper, and the golden sunset illuminated the revised text on it:

【That was an evening when it was raining. At that time, you were still waiting anxiously in front of the dormitory building. At that time, I didn't understand that this torrential rain, which lasted for a while, sprinkled the dampness of my whole life.】

"So mushy," Bai Zhi whispered to herself.

(End of chapter)