"Ms. Lin Tantan... a nationally recognized top-tier therapist... the world's only person with five supernatural powers... passed away at the National Central Hospital at the age of twenty..."
"Lin Tan Tan...died at the age of twenty..."
Ye Xiao could no longer hear anything. Only these few words kept swirling and repeating in his mind. He stood there in a daze, just like the many other people around him.
These people were shocked and sad. Some lamented that he died so young, some sighed and said it was so pitiful, and some covered their mouths and cried.
But no one knew that there was a man who was suffering a million times more than them. He stared at the huge screen, not at the host's sad face, but at the portrait on the side of the screen.
She was a girl who looked exceptionally young, with a beautiful fair face and a slight smile. She seemed to be looking at me from a great distance, and her calm gaze had a reassuring power.
Ye Xiao's vision blurred in an instant. He recognized her. Although her face was not exactly the same, he knew that it was Lin Tan Tan, his Tan Tan!
Next, the screen showed an interview at the hospital, the body lying on the hospital bed, the family, colleagues and leaders weeping and grieving, and then some footage of Lin Tan's past life was replayed. The news concluded with high praise for his contributions to the country, and so on.
Ye Xiao's eyes were filled with bloodshot anger. All those voices turned into a humming background noise. He clenched his fists and suddenly looked up: "What do you mean? Why did you send me here?"
Strangely, his almost roaring voice did not attract the attention of those around him, as they were still immersed in their own sorrow or discussions.
These people…can’t see him.
Ye Xiao's eyes focused and he understood. Either he was not a real person coming here, but perhaps just a soul or a consciousness, or everything here was fake.
A familiar voice sounded: "Don't you want to see her? I brought you here."
Then a person appeared beside him, it was indeed Xu Tianjin.
Xu Tianjin looked at him with a smile. Although he had the face of a young man, he had the kindness and tolerance unique to an elder. Was this him throwing away all disguises and revealing his true face?
Ye Xiao looked at him, panting.
Xu Tianjin sighed: "But I can't bring you to this world easily, so everything you see now is a projection."
"Or you can understand it as a projection here of a fragment I grabbed from that world."
Ye Xiao's eyes moved, and he heard two meanings.
First, this place is indeed fake, but it also really happened. Second, the person in front of him is not an ordinary person. He seems to have very powerful abilities, but that ability is not so great that he can do whatever he wants. At least he can't let himself really enter Tan Tan's world.
Ye Xiao suddenly calmed down. The other party must have a purpose for doing this. It couldn't be that he just wanted him to see what happened here.
Xu Tianjin praised him, "You're very smart and quick to react. You understood and calmed down so quickly. That's great."
Ye Xiao asked, "What exactly do you want to do? Letting me see this will help me find Tan Tan, or..." His voice dropped and became hoarse, "Is she still there?"
"There's no rush for this question. Don't you want to see her? Go see her."
Ye Xiao's body stiffened: "You mean..."
"It's just what you think."
A moment later, Ye Xiao arrived at the gate of the central hospital.
His expression was complicated. Although it was just a projection, everything here was very real. He could even touch things here, but the other party couldn't feel it. Everything happening here could not be affected by him.
He walked into the central hospital.
Here I would like to talk about the hospital mentioned. She said that she stays here most of the time, and only leaves here to go home and reunite with her family during a few longer holidays a year. Most of the time, even during holidays, her family comes here to see her.
She said she was lazy and she was very busy with a lot of appointments.
She spoke with a touch of pride, but she didn't tell him that this had been going on for most of her life since she was fourteen. Her laziness was largely due to her inability to stand on her legs, making travel inconvenient and boring. Furthermore, once she went out, she would easily be attacked or asked for help, and she might even need an entire army to protect her closely, mobilizing a large force...
Ye Xiao walked silently, holding a book that Xu Tianjin had casually conjured up for him. The book recorded Lin Tantan's life. He sometimes read the book, and sometimes looked up at the scene of the hospital. When he arrived at his destination, he raised his head from the book, his eyes were bloodshot and painful.
What hurts more is the heart.
She never told him that she, a person with five-element abilities, was so special and that her life was so difficult. She also never told him that she had always lived under the shadow of death.
He went upstairs, passing many people along the way, and he passed through their bodies directly, and now these people really looked like projections. Finally, he came to a room with a sign saying "Mortuary".
He was silent for a moment and walked straight through the door.
The temperature inside was extremely low and the light was dim. A girl was lying quietly on the bed, her face lifelike, still maintaining the last trace of a peaceful and tranquil smile.
Tears welled up in Ye Xiao's eyes uncontrollably. He slowly approached her and looked at her quietly for a long while. He stretched out his hand and touched her cheek very carefully and tremblingly. It was so cold that it chilled every bone in his body.
After she left, he didn't look at Lin Tantan's body again. He regarded it as an unrelated object and told himself that Tantan was gone and that was not her corpse.
But when he saw the body in front of him, he finally couldn't hold it anymore.
When he didn't know, in a place he couldn't see, Tan Tan experienced everything in his life in this body: joy, pain, happiness, and suffering. He grew up from a tiny baby into a beautiful and lovely girl, and finally left this world in this body.
Her tears, her laughter, every minute she spent, what she had thought about in her mind, what she had hoped for, what she had liked, what she had hated, he knew nothing about it, had no way of participating in it, and could only search and pursue it dryly in books and in words.
Ye Xiao was heartbroken. He slowly leaned over and tremblingly placed a kiss on the little girl's cold forehead.
"Talk..." I want to talk.
Suddenly the door was opened and many people walked in. In addition to the people from the hospital, there were also many people in uniforms. The two sides seemed to be handing over. The latter group came in, carrying an ice coffin and transferred the body on the bed into it.
Ye Xiao forgot that this was just a projection and stopped them, saying, "What are you going to do?"
However, his attempt to stop them was in vain. These people still passed through his body and carried the corpse down. Ye Xiao subconsciously wanted to grab them, but his hand passed through the body.
He suddenly fell silent.
He couldn't stop it, he couldn't do anything. The most he could do was touch it cautiously. Any slight force would go straight through, and this was already a stolen privilege.
He watched silently as the men closed the ice coffin, covered the little girl's face in front of him, and then they took her away.
He croaked, "Where are they taking her?"
Xu Tianjin suddenly appeared beside him. "Tan Tan signed an agreement before her death to donate her body to the nation. She said she was the only surviving person with five-element superpowers in the world, and her remains would be of extremely high research value. They'll hold a grand memorial service for her, and then take her to the safest and most private place. Her body will be dissected open, the energy core in her cranial cavity removed, and every part of her body sliced and studied repeatedly. Many countries are even willing to pay a large sum of money to purchase a single organ or limb from her body for research."
Ye Xiao shouted: "Stop talking!"
Xu Tianjin looked at him, sighed, and said quietly, "Tan Tan knew about this situation before she died, but she signed anyway. She knew that even if she didn't, the country wouldn't give up her body. She couldn't let her family or loved ones cremate her or bury her secretly, and she certainly couldn't find a place to blow herself up. That would only offend the country. Even if the country didn't take action, there would be many people coveting her body. Compared to that, it's better to let the government take over."
Xu Tianjin's voice dropped. "Ever since her powers faded and her health deteriorated, many people have been waiting for her death. An entire regiment of soldiers has been stationed around the hospital to guard it. She was even told not to go home, let alone die at home, as there's a high chance she'll be attacked on her way there or back."
"Since then, she has never set foot outside the hospital."
"When she was little, she told me that if she were to die one day, she wanted to travel and explore. She could sit by the window on a rumbling antique train, looking out at the sea of flowers and closing her eyes. Or she could lie on the grass on a snowy mountain in the crisp, dry air, watching the starry sky gradually fall asleep. Or she could swim in the deep and mysterious seabed, touching the fish, find a cluster of beautiful corals and curl up among them, or sleep in a big shell... Those were the most romantic ways she could think of to die."
"In the end, she could only stay in a small ward, facing a small window. Unfortunately, I, an irresponsible old man, could no longer help her..."
Xu Tianjin sighed deeply, "Sorry, I'm old now, so I just like to nag."
Ye Xiao sat on the ground leaning against the hospital bed with his head lowered. He seemed to be swallowed up by the coldness and darkness of the morgue, looking more like a corpse than the one just now.
There was a long silence, as if all space was swallowed by silence, leaving only his heavy breathing. He finally wiped his face, stiffened and slowly raised his head, and said in a hoarse voice: "Who are you?"
Xu Tianjin smiled faintly: "Tan Tan mentioned it to you before, she has a very good teacher."
Ye Xiao's pupils trembled, and he exhaled after a long while: "She said that her teacher helped her a lot, but then he suddenly told her that he was leaving. She hasn't seen him since then. She misses him very much... But her teacher probably didn't look like you."
"Of course, I just borrowed this young man's identity and memory." As he said this, Xu Tianjin's face and figure changed, turning into a kind-looking, white-haired old man with a gentle and profound smile.
Ye Xiao looked at him for a long time, his eyes still full of suspicion.
The old man didn't wait for a response. After thinking for a moment, he slapped his head and said, "Oh, I forgot." Then he changed his form again, this time into a middle-aged woman with the same kind and friendly face. "I used this image as her teacher."
Ye Xiao: “…”
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