One day in early May 2017, Jingcheng, a second-tier city in southeastern China.
To the residents of Anping Residential Complex in South City, Chen Mo had always been a good-for-nothing. He loafed around all day without ambition, and no one had ever seen him hold down a steady job. He had barely scraped by for over a decade on the compensation money from that incident years ago.
Perhaps his only redeeming quality was that he lived a fairly clean life and had never brought any strange women home overnight. Yet as Chen Mo grew older, even that sole virtue gradually took on a different meaning.
By the time Chen Mo was nearly thirty, he still had not changed. At last, this became the neighbors' greatest complaint about him, without exception. Why? He was almost thirty, yet not only was he unmarried, he did not even have a girlfriend. That was no way for a man to live a settled life.
Chen Mo was an orphan, though he had once had parents who loved him dearly. When he was sixteen, he had gone on a trip with them. The bus they were riding in was unfortunately involved in a traffic accident, and in the end, he was the only one who survived after emergency treatment.
After that, the once cheerful and lively Chen Mo gradually became gloomy and withdrawn. Just like his name, he grew increasingly silent and reticent, slowly shutting himself completely inside his own world.
With no family or relatives, Chen Mo naturally had no one who truly cared about him. There were occasionally one or two kindhearted neighbors who tried to talk him through things, but he usually brushed them off with perfunctory murmurs of agreement. More than ten years passed in the blink of an eye. Chen Mo had suffered no major illnesses or disasters, and somehow managed to get by.
At around three in the afternoon, Chen Mo slung a backpack filled with offerings, incense, candles, and other items over his shoulder. After locking his door, he left his residence.
On this day more than a decade ago, Chen Mo had lost both his parents. Every year thereafter, on the same day, he brought offerings to the cemetery where they were buried to pay respects to them.
Because the accident had happened at around six in the evening, the stubborn and persistent Chen Mo made a point of coming to worship around that time every year.
Jingcheng Second Public Cemetery was located in the eastern outskirts of Jingcheng. The entire graveyard occupied several low earthen hills. Though the hills were not tall, they were covered in lush vegetation. In May, the whole cemetery appeared especially verdant.
By the time Chen Mo arrived at Jingcheng Second Public Cemetery, it was already past four in the afternoon. Since it was in the suburbs and not during a peak mourning season such as Qingming Festival or the Winter Solstice, the cemetery was nearly deserted, making it seem particularly vast and quiet.
Chen Mo did not mind. After putting on his backpack, he headed straight for the Small Hill on the eastern side of the cemetery. His parents' resting place was halfway up that hill.
An hour later, Chen Mo arrived at his parents' gravestone. He opened his backpack and first took out a rag. Carefully and gently, he wiped the gravestone, as if afraid that using too much force would damage the stone. Afterward, he stood and cleared away the fallen leaves and occasional windblown trash around it.
Once he had finished cleaning, he took out the prepared dishes, fruit, memorial wine, and other offerings from his backpack and placed them one by one on the offering table before the gravestone. Finally, he removed a small bronze incense burner and set it in front of the offerings.
Chen Mo silently lit the incense and placed it in the burner. Then he knelt before the grave and respectfully kowtowed nine times. Only after everything was done did he spread his backpack on the ground and sit on it casually. Picking up the half-dozen beers he had placed beside him earlier, he began drinking in silence.
Chen Mo did not usually drink, but whenever he came to visit his parents, he always brought himself a few cans of beer. To Chen Mo, this was their family reunion drink. As he drank, he recalled memories of his parents and the happy times they had shared. Sometimes, he muttered to himself about how he had been doing, as though telling them.
After taking a sip of beer, Chen Mo's gaze went unfocused as he sank into his memories. The dim afterglow of the setting sun fell across his profile, while everything around him remained silent and still. Soon, after several cans of beer, clarity returned to his eyes.
"Dad, Mom, take good care of yourselves over there..." Chen Mo said in a low voice. Then he murmured, "I'll live on. I'll live on..."
Chen Mo would never forget that dark, rainy night. When a kind passerby had dragged him from the mangled bus with all his strength, his father had looked at him with an expression beyond words and used the last of his strength to shout, "Live on..." Chen Mo would never forget it. It had been his father's final cry, made with his life, deeply branded into Chen Mo's soul.
"Dad, Mom, I'm living well... very well... You don't need to worry about me..." After opening another can of beer and taking a large gulp, Chen Mo said hoarsely.
The afterglow of sunset was about to vanish. Chen Mo looked at the incense in the burner. Every time he came, he waited until it had burned out before packing up and leaving. He actually had countless things he wanted to say. For all these years, in order to "live on," he had studied Taoist scriptures and read Buddhist sutras. Yet more than a decade had passed, and unsurprisingly, he had achieved nothing.
Chen Mo drained the last can of beer in one gulp and silently put the empty cans into a garbage bag. Looking at the incense that had nearly burned down to its base, he said despairingly, "In a few more years... if I still fail, I'll just find a woman and get married. I'll give you a grandson... Let him take my place and live on..."
A fierce gust of wind swept past, rustling the leaves. Chen Mo looked up at the sky. At some point, the dark heavens had filled with lead-black clouds. The immense oppressive feeling, as if the end of the world had arrived, made his heart palpitate.
Suddenly, a bolt of purple lightning shot straight down from the clouds, illuminating Chen Mo's stunned face before it could turn to fear. The lightning was so fast that in the next instant, Chen Mo lost consciousness. Only one thought flashed through his mind:
I hope death... is not eternal...
The last stick of incense in the burner burned out at the same time, leaving only the smiling photographs of Chen Mo's parents on the gravestone...
Darkness. Silence. Like the void before the birth of the world, there was no concept of time passing. Within that deathly stillness, Chen Mo's consciousness drifted endlessly. He did not know how long he had existed there, nor how much longer he could continue to exist.
The lifeless silence of the void was like ice-cold frost, freezing his thoughts and eroding his will. It battered his soul again and again, trying to melt him completely into the void. Chen Mo felt as though he were being dissolved. As for what would happen after he dissolved? He truly did not want to know, nor was he willing to know.
He could not remember how many times he had wanted to give up. Yet whenever he felt that his soul was about to melt away, a tingling sensation would emerge from its depths and spread throughout his entire soul. He could feel his soul gradually growing stronger.
After countless times, Chen Mo's consciousness gradually became stronger and clearer, and all his past memories returned to him with perfect clarity. He felt his soul becoming increasingly condensed. Perhaps he truly could endure forever...
A strand of light flashed through Chen Mo's mind in an instant. The sudden change startled Chen Mo out of his memories. Then an enormous suction force abruptly appeared, dragging his soul toward that strand of light.
I hope death... is not eternal...
On a stormy afternoon, in the back mountain behind Lassos Noble Vocational Academy west of Linshui City, a blond-haired youth in a white knight uniform stood beneath a tree, sheltering from the rain with a one-handed sword in hand.
The youth stared in confusion at the sudden thunderstorm with his purple eyes. His body pressed tightly against the tree trunk, trying his best to avoid the rain.
Dark clouds churned across the sky, and bolts of lightning illuminated the heavens. Without warning, one bolt struck straight down onto the tree the youth was using for shelter. The immense power split the tree in two, then the lightning slanted down and struck the youth. He only had time to let out an instinctive cry of pain before smoke rose from his body and he collapsed to the ground.
After the blond youth lost consciousness, a streak of purple light appeared at the same time and shot directly toward his head.
Chen Mo's soul transformed into purple radiance and crashed into the youth's sea of consciousness. The youth's sea of consciousness was in complete chaos, making Chen Mo's soul feel intensely uncomfortable. After wandering aimlessly for a while, Chen Mo finally reached the center of the sea of consciousness, where he saw the youth whose soul had been shattered by the lightning strike.
The youth's soul had broken into dozens of fragments of varying sizes, drifting unconsciously through the sea of consciousness. Chen Mo looked at a small fragment floating before him and instinctively touched it with his own soul. A memory that had belonged to the youth suddenly came flooding in. As the fragment completely merged with Chen Mo's soul, a subtle connection formed between Chen Mo's soul and the youth's body.
Realization struck Chen Mo, and he immediately stopped hesitating. He quickly stepped forward and merged every fragment of the youth's shattered soul into his own. Then Chen Mo sank into the youth's vast memories.
The rain had stopped. At the roots of the fallen tree, the unconscious blond youth let out a hoarse groan. After quite some time, he finally forced his eyes open. He did not get up immediately, but lay on the ground resting for a while longer before trying to sit up with his back against the tree roots.
Chen Mo silently surveyed the unfamiliar surroundings. His eyes held shock, curiosity, and, deep within, a trace of hope. Seeing that evening was approaching, he examined his new body and found only a few minor abrasions. He wanted to return to the youth's dormitory from his memories and rest.
At the same time, because he had absorbed the youth's soul, there was no longer any barrier when controlling the youth's body.
Chen Mo rested for about twenty minutes to recover his strength. He picked up the one-handed sword the youth had been holding and used it as a cane. Limping, he began making his way back to the dormitory.