Changes and Work

—A city lay prostrate beneath his feet.

This was not a physical "bird's-eye view," but a kind of illusory perception, freely unfurling through the emptiness.

Standing by the window, Li Yun quietly closed his eyes. To outsiders, he probably looked like he was simply spacing out.

By now, he no longer even needed to deliberately look. He could already "see" the fleeting currents flickering on and off within the motion-sensor lights along the fence at the entrance to the residential complex in the distance, as effortlessly and naturally as reading the lines on his palm.

On a utility pole several hundred meters away, two sparrows fighting over food gave off vague "emotional fluctuations" more akin to those of young children—

Inside an apartment high above, amid the restrained yet fierce bickering of a young married couple, there was an increasingly sharp and obvious anxiety over mortgage interest rates—

As fish fried in a kitchen pan, water mixed into the oil and sent up a loud series of sizzling splatters, startling the clearly inexperienced auntie into snatching up the large aluminum pot lid beside her and holding it in front of herself like a shield—

And farther away, the collective consciousnesses gathering amid the traffic on the streets resembled an intermittent "ribbon of light."

The impatience of drivers waiting for the green light; the cautious thoughts of an elderly person looking around while leading a child across the street; the nauseating discomfort endured by a passenger on a long-distance bus while clutching an empty plastic bag—

At that moment, these joys, angers, sorrows, and pleasures, perceived by the sole observer yet deliberately "blurred" by him, spread all around like faded paint mixed together and splashed across a canvas.

No one paid them any heed.

It had to be said that after