Death Regression

Ning Zhe walked farther into the house but didn't see his grandparents.

He took out his phone and checked the time:

June 6, 2018. The twenty-second day of the fourth lunar month. 7:27 a.m.

At this hour, his grandfather should have gone fishing at the reservoir outside town, while his grandmother was probably selling vegetables at a stall on Old Street in Ancient Tablet Town. There was no one in the old house.

Ning Zhe went to the old camphor tree, casually brushed the fallen leaves off the wooden bench, and sat down to examine himself. His clothes were spotless, without a trace of dust or blood. The injuries he'd suffered in He Family Village had disappeared, and his body felt as it always had.

Just like before he entered He Family Village.

If he couldn't still easily transform into a magpie and fly up to a branch, he might have thought everything that had happened was a dream.

"Right, Auntie... she should be alive, shouldn't she?" Ning Zhe picked up his phone, unlocked it, and scrolled to the bottom of his contacts, but couldn't find anyone listed as "Feng Yushu."

"So that's how it works?" Ning Zhe frowned slightly. He thought he understood the logic.

Unlike Ning Zhe, who had entered that strange place early in the morning, Feng Yushu had been pulled into He Family Village at around seven that evening. She'd been about to bring a cup of coffee to her husband's room. The moment she opened the door, she'd entered that place.

"If the time you return to reality matches the time you left it, that means Feng Yushu hasn't entered He Family Village yet. Tonight, sometime after seven, she'll return from that shattered world the moment she opens the hotel room door."

An idea surfaced in Ning Zhe's mind. "Does this mean that if I go to the Village Clinic now, I can see Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu before they die?"

There was also Zhang Yangxu. He'd entered He Family Village later than Ning Zhe, so he and Xie Sining might both still be alive in the real world...

At the thought, Ning Zhe stood up and hurried across the leaf-strewn courtyard, leaving his old family home and stepping onto the streets of Ancient Tablet Town.

Ancient Tablet Town was Ning Zhe's hometown, a backward rural town with no major industries. Everything here felt quiet and peaceful. The streets were nearly empty in the early morning, with only a few students who'd just finished morning study sitting in the breakfast shops that opened early. Steaming vapor drifted up toward the sky.

The owners of the breakfast shop were both acquaintances of Ning Zhe. Before he'd even come close, he heard the middle-aged woman in a checkered apron call out cheerfully as she held a strainer: "A Zhe, when did you get back? Is your school on break? My daughter didn't even tell me..."

"No, I took some time off and came back. They say the town's going to be demolished soon, and our land's been requisitioned. But there's no one at home who can read the paperwork, so I had to come back and take a look," Ning Zhe replied casually.

He paid the breakfast shop 2.5 yuan with Alipay, then took three piping-hot pickled cabbage buns and a cup of soy milk from the Shopkeeper.

As he walked down the street, munching on a bun, Ning Zhe pulled out his phone and entered Feng Yushu's number from memory.

The call connected a moment later, and a gentle, calm woman's voice came through the speaker. "Who is this...?"

"Hello, my name is Ning Zhe."

"Ning Zhe? Do I know you?" Feng Yushu sounded puzzled. A faint rush of wind came from her end. She was probably taking the call somewhere open, like in a car or at a gas station.

"Then I must have the wrong number. Sorry for the trouble." Ning Zhe took a sip of soy milk. "But we'll meet again someday, somewhere else."

"What are you talking about...?" Feng Yushu was thoroughly confused, but Ning Zhe had already hung up.

Ning Zhe finished the buns in a few quick bites, then tossed the plastic bag and soy milk cup into a roadside trash bin.

Making sure no one was around, he turned into a secluded alley. A black-and-white magpie soon flew out.

The Village Clinic, where Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu were interning, was an approved provider for medical insurance, located across from the Dragon King Temple by the bridge. Ning Zhe spread his wings and glided over the town in the early morning. Warm sunlight fell softly, and a gentle breeze slipped between his feathers. It felt wonderful.

Before long, Ning Zhe had reached the sky above the Village Clinic.

Just like the sparrows perched on the nearby power lines, he landed without a fuss on a Money Tree in a pot outside the clinic and quietly watched what was happening inside.

Like the barbershop and breakfast shop, the clinic opened early. It wasn't even eight yet, but patients were already waiting to be seen. A woman holding a child sat on a bamboo chair, anxiously watching the child's flushed face. The child must have developed a fever in the middle of the night, which was why she'd come so early.

When Ning Zhe was little, his grandmother had brought him here early one morning, too.

Soon, Doctor Lin came out after washing his face and brushing his teeth. After asking a few simple questions about the symptoms, he slipped a mercury thermometer under the child's arm.

"Let's take her temperature first. Sit here for a bit. I'll go buy breakfast and be back in a few minutes." After speaking, Doctor Lin stepped out of the clinic and spotted Ning Zhe standing quietly on the Money Tree.

The worry on the woman's face eased a little. Smiling, she said, "A magpie on a Money Tree means good fortune, Doctor Lin. You're going to get rich!"

"Getting rich off sick patients isn't a good thing." Doctor Lin chuckled and teased the magpie perched on the Money Tree. When Ning Zhe didn't fly away, his smile grew even brighter. He ambled out the door.

Ning Zhe waited patiently. Doctor Lin returned with breakfast and finished diagnosing the child. Only then did two young people, a handsome man and a beautiful woman, arrive together to start their shift.

They were Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu.

For young people nowadays, getting out of bed before nine counted as an early start.

Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu arrived at just the right time. Doctor Lin had just finished giving the child an injection. He sent Ye Miaozhu to the pharmacy to get the medicine on the prescription, while Gu Yunqing went to the clinic entrance and pushed open the rest of the front door, which had only been half open.

Then, with a thud from the pharmacy, Ye Miaozhu collapsed in front of everyone as soon as she opened its door.

Ning Zhe watched silently. Inside the clinic, Doctor Lin, who was eating breakfast, and the woman holding the child were both startled by Ye Miaozhu's sudden collapse. At the entrance, Gu Yunqing's body sagged against the door he'd just opened, then slowly slid to the ground. He was no longer breathing.

They were both dead.

"So it really is..." Some of Ning Zhe's suspicions had been confirmed.

Just now, the time had come. Gu Yunqing and Ye Miaozhu had returned from He Family Village one after the other.

But the ones who'd come back were two corpses.

Would Feng Yushu, when she returned from He Family Village at seven that evening, be alive or dead?