Are You Summoning Me?

After finishing the buffet, Qin Luming took Zuozuo and Caicai for a stroll through the streets. They had both eaten quite a lot, yet they were still lively and skipping about, not so round and stuffed that they could barely move and needed to be tucked under someone's arm.

When they passed a collectible shop, Qin Luming took them inside for a look. Zuozuo wanted an iCave Optimus Prime, while Caicai wanted an MK44 Iron Man Hulkbuster Armor that could fit her seven-inch Iron Man inside.

"Then you'll have to do chores when we get home." It was perfectly normal for children to like toys. Zuozuo and Caicai both liked dolls and plushies more commonly favored by girls, but they were also extremely fond of these models more often preferred by boys.

Qin Luming laid down his condition, and Zuozuo and Caicai nodded furiously together.

Seeing the two little girls gaze at Qin Luming with such expectant eyes, then nod in unison before turning to watch him pay, the shop owner could not help laughing. With two sisters this adorable, what would be wrong with buying out the entire shop and giving them all the toys?

Once they got their toys, each of them hugged hers and started arguing.

They argued over whether Optimus Prime or Iron Man was stronger. Since they were not at home, they did not come to blows. Qin Luming ended the discussion by declaring that Superman was stronger than both of them.

Qin Luming had not come away empty-handed either. He had spotted two unusually designed risqué items and bought them. The shop owner was somewhat impressed by him too—he could bring his little sisters out and still buy such things without changing expression.

After returning home, Qin Luming took out two brushes and several kinds of paint from the storage room. He had them remove the stair panels first, then go up to the terrace and paint to their hearts' content.

Qin Luming took a laptop and sat at the other end of the terrace. He lit the decorative fireplace filled with fireproof stones, watched flames of every color sway about, and began plotting the story... Though it was already half past ten, he ought to write at least a little. As for ten thousand words a day, that was merely an ideal.

A person could not lose their ideals just because they could not achieve them. One had to have ideals first; whether they could be realized was another matter.

The QQ icon in the lower-right corner of the screen kept flashing. When Qin Luming opened it, he found a chat window packed with messages from numerous group chats... He had never understood what kind of setting this was. He had only wanted to click on one and take a look.

In one of Ma Shilong's reader groups, people were saying that Ma Shilong's new book had gone several days without an update again. Ma Shilong usually chatted and shot the breeze in that group... It was also where Qin Luming had gotten Ma Shilong's address.

Ma Shilong had published physical books before. After they were released, he had given away several sets in the group. His own address had been left behind when he mailed them out. Later, Qin Luming had asked for Ma Shilong's address in the group so he could send him razor blades, and someone had given it to him.

Casually sending someone else's address to a stranger whose intentions were unclear... Was that unbelievable? It was perfectly normal. People hid all sorts of things in their hearts, whether deliberately or not.

Qin Luming sent a red packet before leaving the group. Then he tipped Ma Shilong's new book several times as a gesture of mourning... When Ma Shilong had been struck by Zhou Nan's Emperor's Hammer, his heartbeat and breathing had stopped immediately. Qin Luming could not tell whether it was a divine spell that froze someone in a fixed state or whether Ma Shilong had simply been killed outright.

Feeling rather sentimental, he was not in the mood to write. He would rest for today.

Qin Luming told the two little girls, who were playing Optimus Prime versus Iron Man, that they had to finish painting before they could sleep. Then he went to shower and prepare for bed.

The night was silent, and the air in the room was warm. Qin Luming breathed evenly and drifted into sleep.

"Are you summoning me?"

Qin Luming heard a voice. It was like a beautiful melody stirred from vibrating strings, carrying a dreamlike quality that pierced through time and space. It seemed to whisper beside his ear, yet when he tried to recall it carefully, it felt as though it came through layers upon layers of space and time.

The voice had a youthful quality to it, a little like Zuozuo's and a little like Caicai's, yet it belonged to neither of them. Neither Zuozuo nor Caicai would ask such an arrogantly intoned question.

It carried the bearing of someone looking down from above. Even from the voice alone, he could imagine her indifferent posture, like a deity in the clouds.

Qin Luming walked in the direction of the voice. Beneath his feet, mountain springs murmured and streams babbled. The dark forest stretched without end, and towering trees blocked his path. It seemed he could only meet the owner of that voice by passing through this primeval woodland.

That cold, emotionless voice seemed to tempt him from the depths of his soul, making him cross the dense forest without regard for anything else.

Beyond the forest lay an even more endless grassland, a vast expanse that even a heavenly horse, running until it was drenched in blood and sweat, could never cross.

At the farthest edge of the grassland stood snow-capped mountains, as though they rose from the end of the earth to uphold the height of the sky. Majestic and towering, they connected earth and heaven.

That voice continued to echo by his ear, so Qin Luming kept walking. His mind was muddled, and he knew only to follow the voice onward. After what felt like countless ages, he finally stood atop those snow mountains. To his horror, the tranquil night sky he had thought was the eternal backdrop above him during his climb was actually an abyss. The river of stars stretched on, shooting across hundreds of millions of miles until it reached the end of the void, becoming the final scenery beyond the snow mountains.

That voice was at the end of the void.

Qin Luming focused his gaze, and his sight actually pierced through the countless worlds lying between them. He saw the owner of that voice standing in the void.

"Are you summoning me?"

The voice repeated itself. Qin Luming involuntarily lifted a leg and fell from the snow mountain, leaving behind the world whose very end he had run to reach.

Qin Luming jolted awake, frightened by that terror of falling into a world of void. He reached up and grabbed his hair, only to find it soaking wet. His fingers brushed across his scalp and over his forehead, where sweat beaded everywhere.

"What kind of dream was that?" Qin Luming tugged at his ear. Dreams were usually hazy when recalled after waking, but he clearly remembered so many scenes from this one. Those landscapes felt like a journey he had only just experienced. In particular, the sensation of standing atop the snow mountain at the end of the world still echoed vividly in his heart.

It even made him feel that reality itself was suffused with an illusory ripple, and that only everything he had seen in his dream was real.

The voice in his dream had said that Qin Luming was summoning her, but he felt more like she had been summoning him. What summoned being stood still while the summoner went through so much trouble to visit her like a pilgrim?

Qin Luming was drenched in sweat, and the blood inside him surged as though it were about to burst through his skin. He went out onto the terrace of the master bedroom. Cold air washed over every hair on his body, and the contrast of cold outside and heat within made his skin burn painfully. He turned on the rainfall showerhead on the terrace, and a powerful slanting stream of water poured down like a summer downpour beating against him. Only then did the burning sensation gradually fade.

Qin Luming stared at his own skin in disbelief. His emotions slowly settled, though he still panted in great gulps. He could feel that his body had expended an enormous amount of strength, as if he had truly just performed some sort of summoning ritual.

Another strange experience he could not understand had happened to him.