Yao Jingjing walked to the corner and sat down at a small table that could only accommodate one person facing another. Their faces were less than fifty centimeters apart, but the other person's face was still shrouded in a thick fog, making it impossible to see his appearance clearly.
The waiter came over and asked her what she would like to drink. She saw that the waiter looked normal and obviously did not notice the abnormality of the person sitting opposite her, nor did she feel the hellish deathly atmosphere and coldness emanating from this corner.
Yao Jingjing knew this was the effect of the mind; the mist was affecting her consciousness, blurring the lines between dream and reality, making it difficult to distinguish between the real and the unreal. This person's Mental Power was unprecedented, which aroused her competitive spirit. After three years of hard work, she finally had the opportunity to test it out.
She calmly ordered an iced lemonade, regulated her breathing, and focused her consciousness on the mist. Her mind was like a drawn bow; as the bowstring tightened, the surrounding space became clearer. She could see the scabbed scars, the dead skin peeling off, and the new skin on the face in the mist, like an old cicada shedding its shell. But what concerned her most was the red curly hair peeking out from under the cloak. Although the bar lights affected the color gamut, she still thought of the strand of hair she had picked up from her great-grandmother's grave, which the associate professor at the research institute had identified as belonging to Europe red-haired person from three thousand years ago.
Yao Jingjing wanted to see more clearly, but even with her mental strength pushed to its limit, she still couldn't construct a clear outline of the person's facial features and store him in her memory. However, the deathly aura was weakening, and she sensed a struggle from death to life emanating from him.
The man tapped the table lightly with his long, curled fingernails, a hoarse, rusty voice emanating from his throat. "Not bad, who taught you?"
Yao Jingjing knew this was his real voice, not a direct consciousness generated through mental means, but it sounded even more like it came from hell than the voice that had just been transmitted through consciousness, giving her goosebumps all over her body.
She composed herself and replied, "No one taught me."
This answer wasn't exactly a lie, because aside from Qingmu's initial enlightenment, Hou Biao was the only one she sparred with in the past three years. She didn't want to casually reveal Qingmu's name and the secret of the Mental Power he taught her to strangers, especially since Qingmu had been gone for so long, so long that she had buried him in the deepest, most hidden place in her heart, a place even she couldn't see. Now, when she thought of him, she would only think of a piece of wood, an evergreen tree, an eternal and elusive memory.
However, in the clash of powerful Mental Power, she still could not hide what she was thinking.
"Huh, a tree?" The man was clearly surprised. "Is it this one?"
In Yao Jingjing's mind, she saw a tree, with a man and a woman standing under it, and a large black bird vaguely visible on the treetop, spreading its wings and flying.
She was very familiar with this scene. She remembered the photo of the theft at her great-grandmother's house. Wasn't this the scene in the photo? Only the tree in front of her was more realistic. She could clearly see the gnarled branches and the mulberries hanging from the branches. But the two people under the tree were still as blurry as in the photo. It was clear that this person had never seen them before. Therefore, she could only reconstruct the tree but not the people.
"No one can learn to this level without a teacher. I originally thought it was the person under the tree, but I didn't expect it to be this tree," the man said.
Yao Jingjing reaffirmed her suspicions, took out the strand of hair, placed it on the table, and asked, "Who are you?"
A smile appeared on the lifeless face hidden in the mist. Withered fingers, like carbonized saxaul grass in the desert, lifted the cloak covering his head, revealing a head of half-dried, half-new hair.
"I am Ramesses, the Guardian of the Holy Land; you may also call me Redbeard," the man said.
Yao Jingjing felt the name was familiar, but couldn't quite place where she'd heard it before. She glanced at the strange face and said, "But you clearly don't have a beard; you only have red hair."
Ramesses touched his chin with his long fingernails. "Hmm, the beard's fallen off. It won't be easy to fix. Let's wait and see; it's not important."
Yao Jingjing didn't care whether he had a beard or not, and asked, "Why did you dig up my great-grandmother's grave? Where is my great-grandmother's body?"
Ramesses put his cloak back on and said, "Why would you think I dug up the corpse from the grave? What use would I have for it?"
"It was you who dug this grave," Yao Jingjing said.
"If I hadn't suspected it, I wouldn't have even glanced at it." Ramesses ' hand gripped the wine glass again, but he didn't seem inclined to drink; his fingers tapped the glass lightly and rhythmically. "Take another look at your maternal grandmother—no, your great-grandmother. Well, you China have such complicated generational systems. Alright, look at your great-grandmother's picture!"
Yao Jingjing then saw her great-grandmother's photos again. She knew that these were Ramesses's recollections, presented in this Real-Scene Dream space, with details even clearer than her own memories.
"These photos were probably taken in different eras, and some of them even have dates on them, spanning decades. But have you noticed that your great-grandmother has never changed? It's as if she never ages," Ramesses said.
Yao Jingjing discovered that this was indeed the case. When she first saw these photos, she felt that something was wrong, but the old and damaged photos and the nearly one-century distance between them made her overlook these details. Now, looking at them carefully, she realized that her great-grandmother's appearance in the photos had not changed at all.
"This... could it be...?" When Yao Jingjing had this thought, she suddenly realized that she had been influenced by the other person too much, to the point that she was unconsciously thinking about things in a certain direction.
She immediately snapped to attention, her body jolting, her consciousness radiating a defiant spirit, and asked, "What exactly do you want?"
Ramesses seemed pleased with her reaction, saying, "I'm looking for a cat from the Holy Land."
"A cat?" Yao Jingjing immediately thought of Ruxue, who was guarding her mother's mind and was later sent into Hanran's body by Qingmu.
"So you knew!" Ramesses said. "Tell me, who took it, and where did it go?"
"I don't know," Yao Jingjing said.
Two chilling gazes suddenly shot out from under the cloak, like X-rays from hell, piercing through Yao Jingjing's consciousness.
Ramesses sighed and said, "It seems you really don't know."
Yao Jingjing felt that this strange red-haired man must have some mysterious connection with her great-grandmother and her family. She even felt that he had an inexplicable relationship with Qingmu.
"You..." After confirming that the other party meant no harm, Yao Jingjing changed her form of address, "Mr. Ramesses, the Holy Land you mentioned, the cat, my great-grandmother, and... and that tree... could you tell me everything?"
"Hmm, mission..." Ramesses ' voice echoed from the mist, "Everyone has their own mission. I am the Guardian of the Holy Land. Osiris awakened me in the flames, and I can already feel the divine power surging from the void. No one can escape the cycle of fate. Born here, die here. Are you ready, child? The battle has begun!"
"Battle? What battle?"
"Humanity's battle!"
"For whom do we fight?"
"Fight for freedom!"