Recovery (I)
He Shu was always thinking about the last time he caught nothing while fishing. Unfortunately, Li Qingshan's illness had worsened since then, which made him feel that it was his fault for forcing him to go out. So he let go of his obsession for the time being, and while accompanying him to recuperate, he secretly practiced magic.
In order to make Qingshan get better as soon as possible, Heshu has been trying to get close to him whenever he can in the past two days. Although he has not been able to come up with a method to cure the disease, he still gives him some true energy from time to time.
After a few days of close contact, Li Qingshan finally believed that He Shu would not be easily sickened by him, so he no longer cared about his approach.
These two days he was practicing calligraphy in his study, and Heshu was reading a book and taking a nap beside him.
With nothing to do this afternoon, He Shu came to Li Qingshan's room again. He walked to the study as if he was familiar with it, picked up a copy of "Zhengmeng" and walked into the bedroom. He leaned on the couch and began to read it boredly.
But after a moment, he put down the book in his hand.
Although the contents here were all words he knew, when put together they became a mysterious book that he could not understand at all.
After patiently reading two lines, He Shu could no longer continue. His fingertips moved slightly, and a faint air current stirred the asparagus fern basking in the sun by the windowsill.
He Shu grew tired while playing. Unable to bear the boredom any longer, he broke the silence in the room with a sound:
"Qingshan, what on earth are you doing staying in the study all day?"
"I'm copying calligraphy. What's wrong, Brother He?"
He Shu lay down completely. He lay on the bed, put his arms under his face, tilted his head and looked towards the study.
A breeze lifted a corner of the bamboo curtain, letting in a ray of afternoon sunlight. The bamboo sections cast mottled shadows on Li Qingshan.
He was copying a calligraphy piece, his body bent not too low, and the cuffs of his sleeves brushed the edge of the rice paper as his wrists rose and fell, causing a slight rustling sound.
The scattered light specks filtered through the sparse bamboos outside the window, flowing onto the desk and falling on the few strands of hair hanging down from Li Qingshan's forehead, swaying slightly as he put pen to paper.
His hair was tied loosely at the back of his head, the result of He Shu insisting on helping him that morning.
"Then you practice calligraphy every day, don't you feel bored?"
Li Qingshan paused writing upon hearing this, and turned his head to look at He Shu. His gaze happened to meet the slanting beam of light, and his eyelashes cast a small shadow under his eyes.
When his gaze met his, He Shu subconsciously turned his head away. He aimlessly glanced around the furnishings in the room, and finally quietly fell back on Li Qingshan.
He Shu couldn't help but think of that moment by the stream, when they looked at each other in the same way. In the warm sunshine, that strange, uncontrollable feeling came up again, and his heart was beating like a drum, causing his chest to ache slightly.
"Fortunately, if you calm down and devote yourself to one thing, time will pass quickly."
He Shu was upset by his increasingly rapid heartbeat. He sat up suddenly and decided to find something to do to stop thinking about it:
"Really? Then Qingshan, I want to practice calligraphy too!"
Li Qingshan saw He Shu walk into the study room and subconsciously raised the corners of his mouth and retreated to the side of the desk:
"Why are you suddenly interested in this? Is the book not interesting?"
"It's not that it's ugly, it's that I just can't understand it!"
He Shu seemed to be recalling the torment he experienced while reading. He moved closer with a gloomy face and took the ink-wrapped brush from Li Qingshan.
"Then I'll prepare some storybooks for you later. Those books are really not suitable for you."
"What is a storybook?"
"They're just books about popular stories, historical novels, heroic legends, romances..."
He Shu listened, nodded, and was about to write when someone suddenly approached and held his hand:
"Brother He..."
Warm breath wrapped around the sound and spread over the earlobe. Slightly cool fingertips with thin calluses covered the back of the hand. The touch was like a stone thrown into the lake of the heart. The next second, the brush originally held in his hand was in the person beside him.
"That's not how you hold a pen."
Li Qingshan said this, stepped back to the side of the table, lowered his head, explained, and demonstrated the pen-holding posture in his hand, and finally handed the brush back.
He Shu stood there in a daze, his hand still hanging in the air, not retracting it.
"Brother He?"
“I…I understand!”
He Shu seemed to come back to his senses suddenly. He reached out and quickly took the pen, lowered his head, and the unconcealable blush spread from the base of his ears, quickly dyed the sides of his neck red, climbed up his cheeks, and finally even the tips of his ears became hot.
His eyelashes trembled violently and his vision was a little erratic. He Shu could only lower his eyes to hide the panic in his eyes.
The rough feeling of the thin calluses on Qingshan's fingertips seemed to still linger on the back of his hand, like being hit by a weak electric current, running along his arm straight to his heart, making him feel numb and tingling, which was very strange.
He didn't know what was wrong with him these days. His face turned red and his heart beat faster at the slightest provocation. He Shu frowned in confusion.
Suddenly I remembered that there seemed to be an entry called "palpitation" in the medical book I read yesterday. When I thought about it carefully, my symptoms matched it one by one.
This disease came on strangely. If Qingshan knew about it, I'm afraid he would force me to drink those bitter medicines again.
He Shu thought about this and held the pen for a long time without taking any next step.
"Do you really understand?"
Li Qingshan thought he was pretending to know, and was about to take the pen to demonstrate again, but someone dodged his touch.
He Shu just started writing with an awkward posture. He didn't know how to write, so he could only copy and "paint" a pattern that could not be considered a word, stroke by stroke.
It was crooked and looked like the scribbles of a toddler who was just learning to walk. Compared with Li Qingshan's smooth and flowing handwriting, there was a world of difference.
He couldn't bear to look at it again, so he quickly took away the rice paper carrying his "masterpiece" and hid it behind him. He put down his brush and scurried back to his bedroom, saying as he ran:
"I suddenly thought that book was quite interesting..."
When Li Qingshan reacted and looked up, all he could see was a hurried figure.
He Shu felt guilty and didn't dare to look at Li Qingshan, but he heard a very light laugh coming from behind him.
When I couldn't help but look back, I happened to see him with his head down and his face covered. His tightly pursed lips couldn't suppress the upward curve. It seemed that he had lost the mind to continue copying the calligraphy because of me. He also took a book and walked into the bedroom.
Seeing someone approaching, Heshu hurriedly folded the rice paper into a small piece and hid it, thinking of finding an opportunity to quietly destroy his unsightly "calligraphy" so as not to defile Qingshan's painstakingly written calligraphy.
He lowered his head and felt Li Qingshan approaching. He thought he was coming to snatch the paper, so he subconsciously held the thing in his sleeve tighter, but the man who was getting closer and closer just stopped and sat down not far away.
Soon, the room was so quiet that the only sounds left were the rustling of pages turning and the two people's shallow breathing.
In this almost stagnant silence, a sharp and rapid female voice exploded in his ears without warning.
"Crane Book! Crane Book!"
He Shu, who had just relaxed, couldn't help but frown. He raised his eyes and looked around intently, but couldn't find the source of the sound.
Li Qingshan was still sitting on the stool reading a book, his expression unchanged, as if he didn't hear the voice.
Am I the only one who can hear this? It seems to be coming from inside my head...
"It's been four or five days since the agreed date. We agreed to meet at the inn, but how come there's no news at all? Where are you now? I almost neglected my mission in my quest to find you..."
The voice suddenly stopped again, and He Shu sat up straight in alertness.
He felt that this voice and this name were very familiar, and the things he had been worried about seemed to be about to be cleared up.
"Qingshan, did you hear any sound just now?"
He asked nervously, his voice tense and trembling uncontrollably.
"No, what's wrong?"
The shrill voice began to chatter in his mind again. He Shu subconsciously curled up his fingers, leaving four crescent-shaped blood marks on his palms.
In his blurred vision, a bony hand suddenly reached out to his forehead. Li Qingshan's face with a nervous expression appeared in front of him in an instant, his lips opening and closing as if he was saying something, but he couldn't hear a word.
"Don't be so happy in the mortal world that you don't want to come back! Don't think that Madam Xi is so far away in the north that you can't reach her. You know the consequences of leaving without permission and disrespecting the immortal laws. Are you trying to make up for the thunder you dodged when you ascended to immortality?"
The only thing left in his mind was the voice that seemed to penetrate his skull, carrying with it an unquestionable threat and tremendous rage.
"Playing dumb? Okay, Heshu, listen to me, I've returned to the Ninth Heaven and I don't have time to look for you anymore. If I don't see you back in half a moment at the latest, you'll never come back. Just stay in the human world and fend for yourself!"
What…Ninth Heaven? What…Thunder Tribulation?
These two words hit his heart like a heavy hammer. An inexplicable fear gripped him and cold sweat instantly soaked his inner clothes.
Who is "Madam Xi"? Who is this person?
She must be talking to me...
Is He Shu... calling me?
I’m not He Wuming… I’m He Shu?
No…no…
Who am I?
Countless questions bombarded He Shu's already confused mind. Every word would bring out a little broken memory, but it was like poison, tearing at his fragile nerves.
He Shu suddenly felt a great resistance in his heart, as if he was rejecting the memory that suddenly appeared.
"Brother He? Brother He, how are you? Do you have a headache again?"
"Green... Qingshan..."
The solar plexus began to jump, as if a needle was stirring and pricking inside repeatedly. A sharp pain instantly exploded from the back of the head, fiercely tearing at He Shu's consciousness.
The pain spread all the way to my eye sockets, and my eardrums were filled with endless buzzing, quickly swallowing up all the sounds from the outside world.
This pain felt like I'd experienced it countless times before, it was incredibly familiar. My vision began to spin, just like it always did with a headache.
The pages of the book spread out on the table and the white clothes of the person beside him gradually became blurred and turned into pale spots of light. The few remaining rays of light were spinning wildly in front of his eyes. The ground under his feet collapsed with a loud bang, and his body fell backwards, falling into endless darkness.
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