Chapter 1
The icy, suffocating feeling was the last memory Xie Qingyan retained in her mind.
Lake water rushed into my mouth and nose, burning my lungs, and my consciousness sank and floated in the darkness.
One moment his best friend was discussing the poetry gathering after the Qionglin Banquet with him, the next moment a sharp weapon pierced his chest, and Xie Qingyan was violently pushed into the Taiye Pool by his best friend.
"Why……"
The image of her best friend's face, contorted in the moonlight, became the last thing Xie Qingyan saw before her consciousness faded.
————
When consciousness returned, it was a different kind of dull pain, spreading from the head to every part of the body.
Xie Qingyan suddenly opened his eyes and coughed violently, his throat filled with the pungent smell of disinfectant.
"He's awake! Our son is awake!" A woman's voice, trembling with sobs, rang out from beside him. Immediately afterward, a middle-aged woman, her face streaked with tears, came over and tightly grasped his hand.
Those hands were rough, covered in thick calluses, yet possessed astonishing strength, trembling with a cautious tremor.
"Xiao Yan, you scared your mother to death! It's all your fault, your parents were too busy with business and didn't take good care of you, boohoo..." The woman said, tears rolling down her cheeks again.
Standing next to him was a man who was also dressed simply and had a dark complexion.
The man's lips trembled as he awkwardly patted his wife's back, his eyes fixed on Xie Qingyan, as if afraid he would lose his breath again in the blink of an eye. "It's good that you're awake, it's good that you're awake..."
Xie Qingyan's pupils contracted slightly as he forcefully suppressed the turmoil in his heart. Where was he? Who were these people? Their clothing was so strange, and their language was quite blunt and vulgar.
Just as he was feeling lost, a torrent of chaotic memories flooded into his mind:
Xie Qingyan, eighteen years old, a senior high school student. Her parents are vegetable farmers who run a small business, leaving early and returning late to sell vegetables at the market, thus neglecting to discipline the original owner of her personality. This indirectly led to the original owner's introverted and gloomy personality, making her like an invisible person in class, without friends, and with poor grades.
The original owner's cause of death was also accidental drowning.
The intertwining and collision of two Xie Qingyan's memories is a headache-inducing experience.
Xie Qingyan groaned, closed his eyes, and dug his fingertips deep into his palms, using his strong willpower to force himself to digest this unbelievable reality.
He, the top scholar of the Great Jing Dynasty at the young age of eighteen, died because of the jealousy of his best friend. His soul traveled through a thousand years of time and space and attached itself to the body of this young man with the same name and surname who also died in the water!
"Doctor! Doctor, my son..." The woman cried out in panic when she saw Xie Qingyan close his eyes.
A doctor in a white coat quickly came over and examined Xie Qingyan with some unusual instruments. Finally, he said to the anxious couple, "Don't worry, the child just choked on water and is a little weak. Observe him for a while and if there are no problems, you can go home."
Xie's mother pressed on, "Really, doctor? Should we give my son another full checkup? Just in case..."
Mr. Xie was very impatient: "Why do you need a full-body checkup? The doctor said our son is fine, so he's fine. Can a doctor be wrong?"
The couple started arguing incessantly, and their voices reached Xie Qingyan's ears, causing him quite a headache.
At that moment, a strong feeling of emptiness came from my stomach.
Xie Qingyan opened her eyes again and, following the original owner's memories, awkwardly said, "...Hungry."
One word made Xie's mother beam with joy, and she said repeatedly, "It's good that you're hungry! It's good that you're hungry! Let's go home, Mom will cook you something delicious!"
Mr. Xie nodded in agreement: "Yes, yes, yes! Let's go and complete the discharge procedures right away!"
After completing a series of procedures that Xie Qingyan couldn't understand, he was carefully helped away from the place called a hospital by his parents, one on each side.
Just as Xie Qingyan was walking through the bustling hospital lobby, her steps suddenly stopped.
As if drawn by some invisible force, his gaze suddenly fell on the bench in the corner. There sat a boy wearing a blue and white striped hospital gown.
The boy's forehead was wrapped in thick bandages, with a small, glaring red patch on the white gauze. His head was bowed, his bangs obscuring his eyes and brows, and his aura seemed out of place in this world. It wasn't just simple quiet; it was a deathly stillness, devoid of life.
Xie Qingyan's heart sank for no apparent reason.
A strange sense of familiarity welled up in his heart.
That figure, the curve of its bowed head, the posture that seemed to separate itself from the world—it felt like I'd seen it somewhere before.
Not in this lifetime.
He tried to search his memory, but found nothing.
Just then, a middle-aged man in a sharp suit, his face ashen, strode up to the boy. He spoke, his voice, though filled with suppressed anger, still clear and piercing in the noisy hall:
"Jiang Ci! Are you trying to completely embarrass me?! You're in the hospital on your very first day at this new school! I'm warning you, if you cause any more trouble, you're being sent abroad next month, out of sight, out of mind!"
The boy named Jiang Ci suddenly raised his head.
In that very instant—
Xie Qingyan's breath hitched slightly.
He bumped into a pair of eyes.
Dark, unfathomable pupils. There was no anger, no resentment, only desolation within. The emptiness in those eyes was chilling, as if all the light, all the warmth, all the emotions had been burned away at some unknown moment.
But beneath this desolation, a strange sense of familiarity suddenly sharpened in Xie Qingyan's heart. Those eyes, those eyes that seemed to hold the weight of endless night…
Where have I seen this before?
He couldn't remember. The feeling was like a fishbone stuck in his throat, clear yet elusive.
Jiang Ci merely glanced at the man indifferently, as if the sharp accusations were meaningless. Then, he slowly and mechanically lowered his head again. His back was slender yet stubborn, like a seedling that refused to bend in a storm.
Xie Qingyan stood there, his fingertips slightly cold. An almost instinctive impulse compelled him to approach, to say something. But he himself was now adrift, unable to do anything.
He glanced at that corner one last time, and then, urged carefully by his parents, he slowly turned around and walked toward the exit.
And just as he turned and took a step—
On the bench, the boy who had been keeping his head down seemed to sense something and, without warning, raised his eyes.
His gaze passed through the figures moving about in the hospital lobby and landed on the back of the person wearing an ordinary school uniform.
The boy's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.
A very faint, sharp pain came from a corner of my heart.
Jiang Ci himself couldn't explain it. The feeling came abruptly and inexplicably, like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, creating a fleeting ripple.
He watched him walk to the door, watched him turn his head slightly as if he said something to his parents, and then disappear into the bright daylight outside the door.
The hospital lobby remained noisy, with a strong smell of disinfectant.
On the bench in the corner, the boy with a bandage wrapped around his forehead lowered his head again.
This time, however, there seemed to be a slight fluctuation in the depths of that frozen wasteland, a fluctuation that even he himself had not noticed.
Like a dusty ancient mirror, accidentally brushed by a ray of distant starlight.
——
After leaving the hospital, Xie's father, unusually, didn't seem to care about the money and flagged down a blue metal box. In Xie Qingyan's remaining memory, this seemed to be a means of transportation called a taxi, but seeing it steadily stop in front of him still gave him a chill.
Xie's mother opened the car door and carefully helped him into the back seat. The car was clean but cramped, filled with an unfamiliar smell. Following the original owner's memories, Xie Qingyan pulled the seatbelt and fastened it with a "click," his movements slightly slow and clumsy.
The car started slowly and smoothly merged into the traffic on the street.
In that instant, Xie Qingyan's breath hitched.
Through the glass window beside him, a bizarre and rapidly changing world crashed into his eyes without warning.
On the wide, smooth black road, all sorts of brightly colored iron boxes stretched out one after another, like a ceaseless torrent of colorful iron, rushing along in an orderly fashion. They were moving much faster than any of the ornate carriages he could remember, almost whizzing past and leaving only blurry afterimages.
He subconsciously gripped the fabric at his knees, his knuckles turning slightly white from the force.
My gaze went beyond the traffic and into the distance.
Skyscrapers rose from the ground, soaring into the clouds and dominating the skyline. Their facades were either smooth, mirror-like glass, reflecting the clouds and sunlight, dazzling the eyes; or solid stone structures, their cold lines exuding an undeniable modern authority. This was a completely different world from the ornately decorated pavilions and towers of his memory, filled with an oppressive sense of power.
Is this the world a thousand years from now?
Xie Qingyan's heart was filled with turmoil.
He had studied the classics diligently since childhood and boasted of his extensive knowledge, knowing everything from astronomy to geography. But at this moment, he felt as insignificant as dust.
The scene before my eyes is beyond human description; it is simply a masterpiece of nature, a legendary fairyland, no, a spectacle that is more real and more breathtaking than any fairyland.
The sluggishness of the horse-drawn carriage era was utterly crushed at this moment. In its place was this breathtaking speed.
He was so engrossed in watching that he forgot to hide the shock and bewilderment in his eyes.
The huge glass windows displayed unfamiliar goods; people walking along the roadside were dressed in various styles and hurried along, almost each carrying a small, glowing device; on the huge hanging plaques, dynamic portraits shimmered and changed unpredictably.
All of this silently proclaims a civilization completely different from the Great Jing Dynasty.
Seeing that he was staring out the window in a daze, Xie's parents assumed that he was either exhausted from falling into the water or still feeling lingering fear, so they did not disturb him.
Xie Qingyan slowly leaned back in his chair, forcibly suppressing his turbulent emotions. The unfamiliar and noisy world outside the window contrasted sharply with the tranquil countryside, cobblestone paths, and wisps of smoke he remembered.
An unprecedented sense of loneliness, like the chill outside the car, quietly seeped in.
He came from an era of poetry, wine, calligraphy, and painting, but was thrown into this torrent of steel and speed.
The road ahead is long; how should he conduct himself?
After an unknown amount of time, the taxi stopped in front of a two-story self-built house.
The Xie family was indeed poor.
The self-built house, located in the old town, has mottled walls and simple furniture, but it is kept very clean. A faint smell of earth permeates the air.
"Xiao Yan, why don't you rest at home for a couple of days? Dad will ask your homeroom teacher for leave." Mr. Xie rubbed his hands together, his tone ingratiating.
"What rest?!" Xie's mother said quickly as she tied on her apron to prepare the meal. "Xiao Yan is a senior in high school now, and there are only two hundred days left until the college entrance examination. How can he just let his studies be delayed? Besides, the first mock exam for seniors is at the end of the month. I don't think he has anything serious to do. Let him rest early tonight, and I will take him to school early tomorrow morning."
Mr. Xie was furious: "Study, study, all you know is studying! Our son just got back from the hospital, what's wrong with missing a couple of days of study?"
Mother Xie put down the spatula and said angrily, "You make it sound so easy. If he falls behind in his studies because he doesn't go to class, are you going to pay for his tutoring?"
Mr. Xie was immediately deflated. He didn't want to push his son too hard, but he also couldn't bear to spend money to send his son to tutoring classes.
Xie Qingyan, who had been silent to the side, suddenly perked up.
A mock exam? Or an actual exam?!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com