area51novel Chapter 388 The world is vast, I walk alone.
Chapter 388 The world is vast, I walk alone.
Lin Yan returned to his mansion in Deep Water Bay.
The room was empty, with only the soft sound of his own footsteps echoing in the living room.
He didn't turn on the main light, but instead sank into the large bed, relying on the dim light coming in from the window.
Exhaustion, a deep-seated exhaustion, enveloped him.
My eyelids felt heavy, and my consciousness teetered on the edge of lucidity and confusion before finally sinking away.
He had a dream.
My first dream since my rebirth.
The light in my dream was bright, with a warm, yellowish hue like that of an old photograph.
Hunan, a small county town whose memory had long since faded.
My father, Lin Jianshe, was young and thin, with a lively spirit rarely seen in that era.
He caught a good time, followed others to do business, and his family's life improved visibly.
Later, the whole family moved to the provincial capital.
The father married the mother, and his smile was genuine.
He was born in December 1981. The first few years were filled with warmth and joy, reminiscent of sweet fried dough sticks and Jianlibao (a popular Chinese herbal drink).
Then, time began to accelerate.
As my parents' business grew, their suitcases spent less and less time at home.
He was left with his grandparents. The old woman's hands were rough, but her palms were warm.
He followed them, weaving through alleys and the vegetable market.
During junior high school, my grandparents passed away one after the other within two years, as if they had made a pact.
The funeral was very grand.
Then, there was a packaging process with almost no transition.
A few clothes, some books, and a plane ticket. He was sent to the other side of the ocean, a place where he couldn't speak the language and the seasons were reversed.
My father's voice always sounded busy on the overseas phone, accompanied by the rustling sound of turning pages.
"If you don't have enough money, just say so... Study hard... It'll be easier once you become a citizen..."
The mother's voice was more distant and softer, carrying an almost imperceptible sigh.
From then on, home became the intermittent static of a telephone line, the cold numbers on a money order, and the unfamiliar nationality label on a passport.
Until one day, the phone rang sharply in the middle of the night.
My father is gone.
He went back to attend the funeral, but the people in the black and white photos were already strangers.
The ceremony was very grand, and many people came. He stood in the family section, looking like an out-of-place guest.
The dream suddenly jolted here, like a television screen with a poor signal, distorted, and then went out.
Lin Yan suddenly woke up in bed.
Outside the window, it was still Hong Kong at night.
He raised his hand and touched the corner of his eye, feeling a little wetness.
Inside his chest, the heart that belonged to Lin Yan was beating clearly, carrying with it a sense of bewilderment and dull pain that belonged to another Lin Yan, decades overdue.
He sighed. "I'll go back and check. Even if I don't know if I'll find it!"
Lin Yan left a note for Lin Er and flew back to the mainland on his sword overnight.
The speed of the Nascent Soul stage is three times that of the Golden Core stage. He landed in Changsha in less than ten minutes.
He followed his vague memories to the Shazitang residential area on Shaoshan Middle Road, his childhood home.
Lin Yan leaned against the camphor tree downstairs and lit a cigarette.
For the first time in his life, nicotine permeated his lungs, keeping him company as he slowly waited for dawn.
The sky brightened completely.
The neighborhood awoke with the sound of running water from taps, the crisp clinking of spatulas, and the familiar aroma of noodles cooked with lard and chili oil, wafting from the cracks in the doors and windows of each household.
Lin Yan, dressed in a sharp suit that stood out starkly against the drab gray surroundings, stood quietly at the entrance of the building.
Residents who are going to work or buying groceries in the morning can't help but cast a curious or scrutinizing glance as they pass by.
An elderly man with gray hair, wearing an old cotton coat, slowly walked out of the building entrance carrying a bamboo basket. He stopped when he saw him.
Speaking in heavily accented Changsha dialect, he asked, "Little one, who are you looking for?"
Lin Yan opened his mouth and found that the familiar tones from his childhood had long been lost in the long passage of time and the barriers of rebirth.
He switched to Mandarin:
"Sir, I'm from the north looking for my relatives. Could you tell me if there's a family named Lin living on the third floor of this building? The head of the household is named Lin Jianshe?"
The old man squinted, thought for a moment, and shook his head firmly: "No? The third floor? The family on the third floor is surnamed Li! They've lived there for many years! You must have the wrong place, right?"
Lin Yan's heart sank.
Why doesn't it match?
He thanked him, asked no further questions, and walked straight up the somewhat dimly lit stairs. The edges of the cement steps were peeling, and the handrail was rusty. Third floor, facing the dark green iron door on the left side of the stairs.
He stood in front of the door, his heart inexplicably racing in the hallway. After a two-second pause, he raised his hand and knocked.
"Knock knock knock".
The sound of slippers walking could be heard from inside.
Soon, the door was opened a crack, and a middle-aged man in his forties, wearing work clothes, peeked out, his eyes filled with wariness and confusion at being disturbed.
Which one are you looking for?
Lin Yan steadied himself and tried to keep his tone calm: "Comrade, excuse me. I'm here to find relatives. Is this Lin Jianshe's home?"
The middle-aged man frowned even more, glanced at him up and down, shook his head, and said in a heavy accent, "No! You've got the wrong person! There's no one with the surname Lin in this building!"
The door was then closed with a dull thud.
Lin Yan stood in front of the closed door, the hallway now filled only with dim light and his own breathing.
That doesn't match. There is no Lin Jianshe in this world.
Lin Yan stood silently for a moment, then turned and went downstairs.
He wouldn't give up.
After leaving Changsha city, he found a quiet, deserted alley, made a hand seal to conceal his figure, and then transformed into a streak of light, rushing towards central Hunan.
In a short while, he was standing on the land in the suburbs of the small county town he remembered.
Muddy field ridges, low farmhouses, and rolling hills in the distance. He found a house behind him and, disregarding how out of place he looked, began asking the villagers he encountered for directions.
"Excuse me, how do I get to Lin Manfu's house?"
He asked one person after another.
An old farmer picking vegetables in the field, a woman chatting idly at the village entrance, and children playing.
The answers he received were surprisingly consistent: they shook their heads, looked blank, and told him definitively that there was no one named Lin Manfu in the village, nor had there ever been.
Standing under the century-old camphor tree at the village entrance, Lin Yan looked at the familiar yet unfamiliar scene before him, and his last glimmer of hope was extinguished.
He closed his eyes, and his divine sense silently spread out, covering an area of a hundred miles. Every house, every field, and every face appeared clearly in his "eyes".
No.
There was no grandfather's wrinkled face, no grandmother calling him "Manzai" in her native accent, and no mud-brick house that once held the warmth of his childhood, with its rising smoke from the chimney.
It's completely gone.
He withdrew his consciousness and slowly opened his eyes.
The last vestige of obsession, like the ashes of burnt-out incense, quietly scattered in the wind.
He was at peace with it.
He just... wanted to see his grandparents.
But this path, from the very beginning, did not exist in this time and space.
He turned around, took one last look at the land, and then transformed into a beam of light, soaring into the sky.
The heavy burden I carried when I arrived has now vanished without a trace.
The mortal body within his sea of consciousness suddenly grew three inches taller and donned an outer robe.
The world is vast, and I walk alone.