"His eyes seem to have moved..." an unfamiliar voice echoed beside him. "The patient in bed 57 seems to be waking up. Hurry and get Director Wang!"
Pain and stiffness throughout his body, along with the assault of light, flooded into his brain. When he opened his eyes again, Landen Gallop saw several blurry figures watching him.
"He really woke up! This is unbelievable!" exclaimed a tall man dressed in white.
"Yeah, he's been here for three years, hasn't he?" said another woman, wearing a dark blue sweater.
"Do you remember who you are?" The shortest woman leaned in close to Landen's face, letting him finally make out her youthful features.
"Lan..." Landen tried to speak, but felt his lips split with pain. A dry sound came from his mouth, and his throat felt like it was on fire.
"All right, stop teasing him. He's been in a coma for three years. It'll probably take him several more years to recover!"
What was going on? Was this a hospital? Through the haze and confusion, Landen Gallop finally came to a possible explanation. I wasn't killed when I got hit? They brought me to a hospital?
"Doctor! My uncle really woke up?" another man's voice called from the doorway of a nearby hospital room.
Six months later, on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, at a public cemetery in the suburbs of Pengwei City on the eastern coast.
Under the setting sun, row upon row of gravestones cast long, jagged shadows across the hillside.
"I never expected to come on a day like this! And by the time I found you, it was already this late. There was nothing I could do."
In front of a gravestone, Landen Gallop—or rather, He Chao—pulled nine copper tripods, each about the