The Diary

Gao Jian had never known much about Elder Gao's work. The original owner of his body had not been particularly close to Elder Gao, but after Gao Jian transmigrated, Elder Gao's vigil at his hospital bedside, day and night, had brought grandfather and grandson somewhat closer.

As for Uncle Qi up ahead, he had heard a little about him and knew he worked in public security. But just now, he had clearly heard the title Uncle Qi used when addressing the old man.

Only then did Gao Jian realize he seemed to know nothing about this grandfather he had inherited. After a moment's thought, he opened Doubao on his phone and searched for the old man's name.

"Holy deputy commandery governor, deputy provincial governor, deputy inspector, deputy military commissioner..."

Staring at the headshot against its blue-to-white gradient background and the densely packed résumé beneath it, Gao Jian was dumbfounded.

One of Handong's top three.

I stumbled into... Wait, no, not really.

Compared with an immortal like him, even the ruling powers were far too weak.

Once he understood his grandfather's position, Gao Jian could more or less see why Counselor Wang, the Consul General, Deputy Director Bian, and Officer Liu had all been so polite to him. He had always assumed they were looking after him because he was young.

So it had been because of the old man.

In that case, perhaps I got clear of the State Security Bureau's investigation so quickly because the old man put in a word?

Hard to say. Ultimately, he's only number three in a region, with numbers one and two above him. He probably doesn't have that much pull.

After marveling briefly at the old man's position, Gao Jian took his copy of "1587, A Year of No Significance" back to his bedroom.

The moment he pushed the door open, a strong, musty smell hit him.

Gao Jian's room was small. The bed was an ordinary, one-and-a-half-meter-wide solid-wood bed, neatly covered with a dark blue sheet. An old alarm clock stood on the bedside table. Apart from the small bed, there was only a bookcase, a desk, a chair, a fan, and a paperweight.

Despite its simple furnishings, the room had a strong student feel. Numerous model rockets, aircraft carriers, and tanks sat on top of the bookcase. He had assembled them back in elementary school, and they were thick with dust.

Some specialized books on aerospace and a few yellowing university textbooks lay on the old wooden desk. Clearly brought home during his university years, they too were covered in dust.

Gao Jian blew gently, and a clean breeze immediately swirled through the room. It rushed into every crevice, sweeping away every speck of dust.

Gao Jian opened a narrow gap in the dark gray curtains, letting the afternoon sunlight spill inside. The light stretched across the wooden desk, chair, and floor before finally climbing onto the bed, dividing it into azure and dark blue waves of color.

Leaning at the edge of the light, Gao Jian carefully surveyed the room.

He had never touched the original owner's belongings.

Not even the little plastic Peashooter ornament on the windowsill.

In the past, he had always deliberately avoided the traces of the original owner's life. But after everything he had been through, he set aside his cultivator's aloofness for the first time and examined the room closely.

Clearly, the original owner had been a typical child of a government compound. Gao Jian noticed five volumes of the Complete Works of Mao Zedong on the shelf. The wall beside the bed was also covered with posters of his idol, along with lyrics from one of his idol's songs.

"Man bade the ape farewell. Only a few stones were polished in that childhood age..."

Gao Jian recited softly.

The original owner had rarely come home during his undergraduate and graduate studies, then suffered a car accident after graduation. After transmigrating, Gao Jian had left the room completely untouched, so it still retained a strong air of youth.

Only, that youthful air seemed overlaid with a twilight-colored filter.

The red-leaning decor also reflected the original owner's inner world to some extent. Gao Jian even spotted a copy of "How the Steel Was Tempered" worn ragged from reading, offering another glimpse into his personality and tastes.

Gao Jian set "1587, A Year of No Significance" on the wooden desk, approached the bookcase, and scanned the titles one by one.

"Quite a few philosophy books."

Gao Jian murmured to himself.

Philosophy books occupied half the bookcase. Marxist philosophy made up only part of them, with continental and analytic philosophy each taking up another section. There were also books covering metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, logic, and more.

Interestingly, materialist philosophy sat on the left, with Marxist philosophy at the far left, while idealist philosophy sat on the right, with Hegel's idealist dialectics at the far right. In the middle were transitional subjects such as natural philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion... There was even a copy of the "Tao Te Ching."

The "Tao Te Ching" sat dead center. It could not have been more squarely in the middle.

"He read a pretty wide range."

Gao Jian was thoroughly impressed.

Clearly, although the original owner had been a science and engineering student with homebody tendencies, his brand of geekiness was distinctly different from the currently popular "moe-obsessed slacker culture."

Apart from the philosophy books, the rest of the wall of books consisted of science fiction. It occupied the other half of the shelves. He had clearly been a sci-fi fan too, which suited his science and engineering background.

If only I could have inherited all your memories.

Gao Jian thought as he looked at the somewhat unfamiliar wall of books.

Gao Jian had not inherited all the original owner's memories. The car accident two years earlier had severely damaged the original owner's brain. By the time Gao Jian transmigrated, he had been almost brain-dead, with extensive memory loss. Less than a tenth of his memories remained accessible.

Still, even the fragments he had inherited allowed him to draw a few conclusions.

The original owner had not been one of those Jiahao-style students who loved showing off.

In his memories, the original owner had never flaunted his literary or philosophical knowledge to others. His walls were covered with idol memorabilia, yet his accounts on the major internet platforms had almost no posting history. That also suggested he had not been in the habit of arguing politics online.

"So well-behaved."

Gao Jian sat on the edge of the bed, deep in thought.

The original owner had been so well-behaved that Gao Jian found it a little hard to get used to.

Even his romantic history was spotless. He had had no shortage of admirers in high school, but Gao Jian had gently turned them down one by one. During both his undergraduate and graduate studies, he had ignored advances from older and younger female students alike, spending all day tinkering with his damned rockets.

In the cabinet beneath the desk, Gao Jian also found an old desktop computer. Both the monitor and tower had been stuffed inside and were thick with dust. He hauled them out, gave them a quick cleaning, and plugged them in.

After a full minute, the computer finally struggled to life.

It was even still running Windows 10.

Once it booted up, the password was, predictably, the original owner's birthday. Gao Jian searched the computer's contents and found nothing but a few old RTS games. Then he opened the browser's bookmarks, and his expression immediately turned strange.

There were some discreetly pornographic videos with pure-romance themes, every last one featuring childhood sweethearts.

The Ten-Thousand-Year Green Bamboo Sword suddenly flew out and hovered in midair, blocking Gao Jian's view.

"Stop it."

Gao Jian flicked a finger against the blade. Blue-green spiritual energy instantly rippled out, sending the entire sword flying. It landed on the floor and rolled around in pain.

Looking at those discreet, youth-themed romantic videos, Gao Jian actually felt relieved.

At least his sexual orientation had been normal.

If a teenage boy did not even know how to get himself off, Gao Jian would have had to wonder whether the original owner had been normal at all.

After deleting the browsing history for the original owner, Gao Jian held out his hand. The spirit sword immediately flew into his grasp, and before it could struggle, he stuffed it into the Storage Bag.

Like a visitor from outside, Gao Jian inspected every inch of the little room, as though getting to know himself all over again.

Gao Jian even found the original owner's middle-school diary. But its entries contained only innocuous descriptions of scenery and moods, with a little mockery of the very act of "keeping a diary" tucked in toward the end.

Who would put their honest thoughts in a diary?

On the diary's final page was this passage:

"Hello there, gentlemen reading my diary."