Chapter 6: Collapse of the Mental Landscape
Uncle Fu knocked on the door very lightly, with an almost regular rhythm: three times, a pause, and then one more time, as if he was afraid of disturbing something.
Lin Yao suddenly came back to his senses and saw that the sky outside the window was already immersed in indigo.
The last bit of sunset was reluctantly withdrawing from the window frame, stretching his shadow very long and crookedly sticking to the foot of the bed.
He actually sat on this hard wooden bed for the entire afternoon.
"Xiao Yao, it's time for dinner." Uncle Fu pushed the door open, the alloy tray in his hand shone with a cold light, and on it were three things:
Silver-gray nutrient paste was cut into cubes, its surface gleaming with a star-like energy sheen. A small dish of deep purple crystalline food, compressed interstellar fern roots, refracted tiny rainbow lights.
There was also a hemispherical hot food box, which emitted light golden steam when opened. Inside was bread steamed with rye flour, a specialty of the radiation belt, and a piece of half-melted cheese was embedded in the bread crumb. The cheese was made from star milk from the lunar ranch and had a mother-of-pearl luster.
"Your meal has been changed today." Uncle Fu placed the tray on the floating dining table. He pressed the table lightly with his fingertips, and the table immediately rose to the appropriate height.
"It seems that they are really going to fulfill their promise this time." Uncle Fu's tone was very happy, the kind of happiness that came from the heart.
He pulled out a palm-sized metal can from his cloth bag and said, "This is Star Honey. You loved to spread it on fern root crystals when you were little."
Lin Yao watched the old man's calloused hands unscrew the metal can, and the amber liquid of Star Honey stretched out in thin threads at the mouth of the can, mixed with the faint smell of engine oil on Uncle Fu's body.
When he was young, he was a mechanic for the Delin family. He had repaired the engines of starships, and his hands always had this indelible smell.
As he grew older, the De Lin family remembered his previous contributions and kept him to be in charge of some less important courtyard matters.
This smell should have made him feel at ease, but now it was like a thin needle, gently pricking his nerves.
"Are you bored staying in the house this afternoon?" Uncle Fu sat on the folding chair he brought with him. The chair legs made a slight hydraulic sound when they unfolded.
Lin Yao picked up the rye bread, and the warm touch came through his fingertips. The cheese inside was slightly hot.
He took a bite. The coarseness of the rye mixed with the richness of the cheese had a very solid taste, but it couldn't suppress the confusion in his heart.
In the original owner's memory, Uncle Fu always said that "Star Honey is calming to the nerves". Every time he delivered the medicine, he would add a spoonful of it to the medicine. But the metallic taste of the medicine mixed with the sweet fragrance of the star honey created a strange harmony.
Lin Yao shook his head, swallowed the food in his mouth, and kept his eyes on the bread without raising his head:
"I planted flowers for a while before returning to the house. I didn't stay here all the time."
Uncle Fu nodded and said it would be nice to go for a walk in the yard.
Then the topic seemed to end here, and the room was quiet. For a moment, the only sound was the sound of Lin Yao chewing.
Uncle Fu rubbed his hands and looked around. "Are you thinking about the White Tower guide assessment?" he suddenly asked.
Lin Yao paused, then raised his head to look at Uncle Fu; as far as the original owner could remember, he had never mentioned the matter of reporting for the assessment to Uncle Fu.
Uncle Fu didn't hear an answer for a long time, so he turned to look at Lin Yao. Their eyes met, and Uncle Fu's gaze was a little evasive.
As if he suddenly realized that his question was abrupt, he rubbed his rough palm on his knee, and his knuckles turned white from the force.
The silence in the air stretched for a few seconds, and only the sound of Lin Yao chewing rye bread seemed particularly clear in the quiet room.
I…” Uncle Fu opened his mouth, his Adam’s apple moved, as if he was choked by his own question, and a barely perceptible red appeared in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
As he spoke, his eyes quickly swept across Lin Yao's face, then hurriedly looked away, rubbing his hands in front of him, as if trying to find something to break the awkwardness.
His eyes continued to move around the room for a while, and finally landed on the electronic calendar on the wall. The words "Central Star White Pagoda Academy Guide Assessment" written in red pen on the blank space were particularly eye-catching.
"Look at you, kid!" Uncle Fu seemed to have suddenly found a way out. His tone became lighter and he pointed in the direction of the calendar.
"It's written there, so clear in red ink. I saw it when I came in."
"Yeah," Lin Yao replied vaguely, as if he hadn't noticed Uncle Fu's changes. "The medicine seems to be working. My mental strength and spiritual body are recovering. I want to give it a try."
Uncle Fu smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes squeezed together, with a bit of deliberate naturalness:
"The White Tower has added a field test this time. The location is outdoors. I'll go get you a thicker coat so you can take it with you."
Lin Yao looked at his hand pointing at the calendar. There were many scars of varying depths on that hand, which were the marks left by years of tinkering with machinery and gardening.
In the original owner's memory, Uncle Fu always used this hand to repair his toy computer, bring him various foods, and also used this hand to bring him the bowl of yellow-green medicine every day.
"Thank you, Uncle Fu." Lin Yao lowered his head and continued to chew on the rye bread, his voice muffled.
"No, no!" Uncle Fu immediately responded, his tone kind but also a little cautious, "I watched you grow up, that's all!"
He paused, then added, "If you need anything, tell me and I'll get it for you."
Lin Yao didn't respond, but just stuffed the last bite of bread into his mouth.
The grainy texture of rye grated his throat, and he suddenly remembered what the original owner had written in his diary:
Uncle Fu asked me today if the medicine was bitter. I said a little, and he said he would add some honey tomorrow. He seemed really worried that I wouldn't take the medicine.
At that time, the original owner just thought it was the old man's concern, but now think that there might be something else hidden in that "fear".
Seeing that he didn't say anything, Uncle Fu didn't ask any more questions. He just stood up and cleaned up the dishes: "I'll go wash them, you take a rest. I'll bring the evening medicine later, so I won't disturb you."
When he walked to the door with the tray, he paused, looked back at Lin Yao, seemed to want to say something but stopped, and finally closed the door gently.
The room was quiet again, with only the electronic calendar screen still lit. The text written in red pen was like an eye, quietly looking at Lin Yao.
He walked over to the calendar and ran his fingertips over the words.
Uncle Fu probably knew there was something wrong with the medicine. But why did he do this? Was he coerced, or... was there some compelling reason?
The original owner's excitement when he signed up, Uncle Fu's sudden question, the bowl of medicine with a metallic taste... These fragments slowly took shape in his mind like a puzzle, but fell apart again because of the lack of a key.
It was just like the bowl of medicine mixed with star honey that the original owner had been drinking, a mixture of sweet and bitter, it was both an antidote and a poison.
-
As the chill of the second half of the night seeped into the quilt, Lin Yao was thrown awake by a sharp pain.
It was not an ordinary headache, but the kind of pain that felt like a blunt object was repeatedly hitting the skull. Every time the headache beat, the temples would tighten and the eye sockets would swell and ache, as if the eyeballs would be squeezed out by this force in the next second.
He curled up at the head of the bed, digging his knuckles into the wall, not noticing the blood seeping through his fingers.
The pain was drilling into the mental picture along the nerves, like countless red-hot needles piercing the broken scars of the peony tree.
"Ugh..." He groaned, and cold sweat instantly soaked his pajamas.
His consciousness was forced to sink into the mental picture, and the scene before him made him gasp:
The originally weak peony was now shaking violently. On the silvery-white vines, those broken marks that looked like thin ice were glowing, and the edges were a strange red, as if they would completely collapse at any time.
The flower bud at the top was wilted like a piece of crumpled paper, and the black hole was spinning madly, devouring the already thin spiritual power around it, and even the mist of the entire spiritual picture was churning, as if it wanted to completely crush the flower.
"Four times..." Lin Yao gritted his teeth.
He had missed taking his medicine on time four times since he first arrived, and the effects of the medicine were wearing off.
Those traumas that were forcibly suppressed by the drugs, those concealed mental decays, are coming back like a tide as the effects of the drugs wear off.
The original owner had been drinking the medicine for so long that he had become dependent on it. It was like using anesthetic to cover a wound. It might look like a scab, but the muscles underneath were quietly rotting.
Now that the anesthetic has worn off, the rotten area has finally revealed its hideous true appearance.
He tried his best to endure the pain and sat up from the bed with difficulty. His eyes fell on the table where the bowl of medicine that Uncle Fu had brought him in the evening was still there.
The pain drove Lin Yao to struggle to the table. With every step he took, his head felt like it was going to explode, and the peony in his spiritual sea trembled even more violently.
Finally reaching the table, Lin Yao staggered a little, but luckily he managed to hold on to the table in time, but the old table let out a shrill scream.
He held the creaking table with one hand and picked up the medicine bowl with the other. A thin film had formed on the surface of the cold yellow-green liquid, like solidified pus, and it glowed with an eerie luster in the moonlight.
Lin Yao's fingertips trembled violently due to the pain, causing the medicine bowl to shake as well. The yellow-green liquid inside surged like waves under the membrane.
This was probably the reason why Lin Yao did not pour it out immediately when Uncle Fu brought the medicine in the evening!
Is it to prove that there is something wrong with the medicine, or that the mental and physical condition is very poor, or something else?
At that time, he left this bowl of medicine for some unknown reason. With a severe headache, Lin Yao was a little dazed. Now he couldn't tell what his purpose was.
There was a voice in his heart that was bewitching Lin Yao. With the help of the pain, his eyes began to blur:
As long as you drink it, even just one sip, the tearing pain will disappear immediately.
The original owner's memory fragments came back again:
Every time after drinking the medicine, the mist in the spiritual sea would become lighter, and the trembling of the peony would subside. That short-lived "comfort" became the only reason to support the original owner to drink the medicine.
It's like drinking poison to quench thirst. Even though you know it's poisonous, you are still greedy for that moment of respite and drink it again and again.
He could even imagine the feeling of the medicine sliding down his throat, with the sweetness of star honey and that faint metallic taste.
The bowl of medicine was within reach, but the image in the mental picture came back to mind:
The broken marks on the peony tree were becoming thinner at a speed visible to the naked eye due to the backlash of the drug, and the black mucus oozing out from the edge of the black hole was three times thicker than before.
Those days that are ‘pacified’ by medication are not healing at all, but are hammering nails into the coffin of the spiritual body.
"No..." Lin Yao's eyes suddenly became clear.
"So... you knew... there's something wrong with this medicine!" Lin Yao's Adam's apple rolled, and his voice was hoarse as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
Because he had lost his strength, his legs hit the corner of the table hard. The pain made him black out, but it was nothing compared to the severe pain coming from his spiritual body.
He looked at the bowl of medicine in his hand as if he were looking at a poisonous snake spitting out its tongue. It could temporarily numb the pain, but when he let his guard down, it would bite off the last bit of life from the peony.
Without curtains to block the view, the starlight from outside the window shone in, casting tiny spots of light on the medicine bowl, like a handful of poison powder.
Lin Yao carried the bowl and moved step by step to the bathroom. Without any hesitation, he picked up the bowl of medicine and poured it in. The sound of the liquid hitting the wall of the tube was particularly clear in the silent night.
Only then did Lin Yao breathe a sigh of relief. This medicine not only had an hallucinogenic effect, but also had a bewitching effect.
When he climbed back onto the bed, Lin Yao was almost exhausted from the pain. He was sweating profusely, as if he had been pulled out of the water.
The soaked pajamas stuck tightly to his back, outlining the lines of his spine that were tense with pain. Every breath was accompanied by a tearing pain, as if his lungs were crumpled into a ball.
There was another vibration in his wrist, but Lin Yao couldn't care less about it at this moment.
He curled up into a ball, resting his forehead against the cold wall, letting waves of severe pain come over him. The coolness could not suppress the burning pain that seeped from his bones.
The severe pain in the mental picture was even worse than that in the cranial cavity, as if there was an invisible grinder, crushing the already weak peony bit by bit.
"It hurts, so be it..." Lin Yao closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and smiled, the taste of blood filling his mouth. "It's better than rotting to death in the medicine."
He could clearly see that the silver-white vines were beginning to break apart at their most fragile points.
It didn't break suddenly, but like the cracked ice, fine lines appeared first, and then with a "crack", the cracks spread out with a piercing mental scream.
The broken vines did not fall to the ground, but turned into countless ice-blue points of light, floating in the gray mist, and disappeared in the blink of an eye, without leaving even a trace.
The ice-blue leaves began to look like kites torn by the wind, with curled and blackened edges and the star-shaped serrations peeling off bit by bit.
They were no longer drooping, but separated from the vines in a twisted posture. Some of them shattered into powder in the air, while others quickly melted as if corroded by strong acid, and even the ice-blue background faded to gray.
The most heartbreaking thing is the bud.
It no longer shrank, but was forcibly stretched open by an invisible force. The ice-blue petals turned outward layer by layer, but began to wither the moment they unfolded.
The black hole at the top expanded wildly, like a greedy mouth, swallowing up the surrounding golden light, petals, and even the spiritual power in the air.
The already weak pistil was now shattered into pieces by the black hole, and even the roots of the bud began to loosen.
The entire flower shrank and shrank at a speed visible to the naked eye, and finally fell apart completely with a "pop" like a crushed glass bead.
Lin Yao's consciousness was floating in the mental picture. He realized that the mental picture was collapsing, but he could only watch it all and was powerless to do anything.
He wanted to reach out and hold up the falling leaves, to block the madly expanding black hole, but his consciousness seemed to be nailed to the spot, and he could only let the grinder continue to operate.
Every time a vine snapped, his nerves twitched; every time a leaf fell, his consciousness became more blurred;
When the flower bud completely shattered, Lin Yao suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood, which splashed on the cold wall, like a flower that suddenly bloomed and quickly withered.
The mist in the spiritual sea became as thick as ink, and the cracked black soil sank completely, without even a trace of green sprouts left.
The remains of the peony were gone, as if it had never existed. Only the empty, hollowed-out spiritual space remained, still retaining the aftermath of the pain of its destruction.
"I can't save it..." Lin Yao murmured to himself in his heart, his voice as light as a sigh, but with heart-wrenching despair.
The spiritual body that the original owner had carefully protected and treasured ultimately could not survive the backlash after being deprived of the medicine.
The severe pain continued, but it seemed to have lost its target and began to aimlessly crash into his spiritual sea.
Lin Yao curled up tighter, pressing his forehead against the wall with increasing force, until his vision went black and he completely lost consciousness.
In the darkness, he seemed to be able to see the shadow of the original owner:
The boy who cried while holding the "Spiritual Body Care Manual", the boy who secretly poured out the medicine but had to continue taking it because of the side effects, the boy who longed for his spiritual body to regain vitality.
At the last moment before darkness fell, he seemed to hear a very light sound, like petals falling to the ground, and then suddenly there was a slight "swish" sound.
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