An Untold Story

The person behind the stone wall hadn't lied.

By the time Luoyang City had its third spring rain, Li Shiyi's illness had mostly recovered.

He stopped coughing, and his body no longer felt weak.

But the dreams continued unchanged, and Li Shiyi was curious about the identity of the person behind the stone wall.

So they began talking through the wall.

As they talked, Li Shiyi discovered that the person knew a great many things.

He knew about toilets, which A-Xu had mentioned, and light bulbs. He also knew about strange things like gunpowder and radium.

The person behind the stone wall was the same kind of person as A-Xu.

Li Shiyi realized this, and wanted even more to learn about the world behind the stone wall.

The person talked with Li Shiyi about many things.

Even the unfinished Journey to the West and Records of the Three Kingdoms that A-Xu had told him about-the person remembered them clearly and explained them well.

He was like an all-knowing god who answered every question, telling Li Shiyi about the torch of civilization through the stone wall.

This should have been a very fortunate thing, but Li Shiyi gradually discovered something that made his blood run cold.

When the fourth spring rain fell over Luoyang City,

Li Shiyi stood in Mid-Lake Pavilion, staring at the sky expressionlessly. He wasn't coughing, but he felt nothing else at all.

The other people in the Mansion thought Li Shiyi had recovered. But only Li Shiyi knew that his illness was getting worse.

He looked like everyone else, but that was only because the illness had entered its next stage.

From body to soul, this illness was a "baptism" from the inside out.

Li Shiyi gradually stopped feeling the stirrings of his emotions. He became neither happy nor sad, cold and indifferent, hardly seeming human.

He grew "cleaner" and cleaner, more and more like an unfamiliar shell.

In the dead of night, the voice behind the stone wall still hadn't gone away.

But Li Shiyi had begun to wonder about a few new things:

Why did the person behind the stone wall know so much about him? Why did he always bring up A-Xu?

Why was he willing to tell him everything, without the slightest fear that Li Shiyi might reveal his secrets?

Li Shiyi couldn't understand. But by then, he had lost the most basic human emotions.

He asked the person behind the stone wall these questions.

But the person was quiet for a long time. In the end, he only said that when the final spring rain came, Li Shiyi would know all the answers.

Li Shiyi accepted this and waited for the final spring rain to arrive.

By day, he acted as he always had in front of everyone in Luoyang City, as if his body instinctively knew how to put on an act.

He also carefully replied to the letters A-Xu sent back from Chang'an City, doing everything he could to avoid giving himself away.

But that girl seemed to have sensed something was wrong. She wrote letter after letter, constantly asking questions and probing him.

In the end, Li Shiyi failed to perform well in this final act.

The girl on the other end of the letters realized he was ill, so she sneaked away from Chang'an City and hurried back to Luoyang, travel-worn.

But... she still came back too late.

That night, a heavy rain fell. The Willow Trees in Luoyang City were blown this way and that, their branches clawing wildly at the air.

And Li Shiyi finally pushed down the stone wall from his dream and saw what lay behind it.

It was a water prison, a water prison in Chang'an City.

Every drop of water he heard came from the water prison.

As it turned out, the city hidden in the fog from the very beginning had been Chang'an. Li Shiyi walked the streets of the empty city, yet saw nothing but mist.

A few years earlier, Li Shiyi had guarded a prisoner outside this water prison. A devil.

Later, that devil died in the water prison in Chang'an City.

But years later, Li Shiyi had returned here alone.

When the back of the wall was pushed down, Li Shiyi also saw the thing trapped in the water prison.

It was a black, humanoid monster. Its face was a pitch-black skull, and cold, mechanical blue light glimmered in its eye sockets.

It seemed to have no human consciousness, yet it had hidden behind the stone wall, pretending to be human and talking with Li Shiyi for a long time.

"It's a robot. You could also say it's my system. I don't know if you'll understand."

A voice, familiar yet strange, sounded from the mist behind him.

Li Shiyi turned around in a daze and saw a middle-aged man who should have been dead for years.

It was the devil from the water prison, the devil who had come back from the dead.

"You asked why I dared to tell you everything?"

The devilish middle-aged man gave a strange smile. "Because after tonight, I'll be you."

Li Shiyi's consciousness began to grow hazy and gradually dissipated.

But just before he lost consciousness completely, he still heard the man's final words clearly.

"Oh, right. Your younger sister A-Xu is a Transmigrator too, just like me. We're the same kind."

Li Shiyi opened his mouth weakly, but no sound came out.

At the moment of his death, Li Shiyi thought of many things. He thought of the girl who would soon hurry back to Luoyang.

By then, the person she met would no longer be him. He wondered if she would recognize the difference.

He thought of the questions Great Ancestor and his father had asked him, questions he'd never had the chance to answer.

There were so many things he'd never said aloud, but now he would never have the chance to tell anyone.

For example, he had known from very early on that his younger sister, A-Xu, was from another world.

He had known from the moment she was born.

When Great Ancestor asked whether anyone in the world was born knowing everything, Li Shiyi had stayed silent for a long time. In the end, he had still covered for that silly little girl.

When A-Xu was born, she was foolish and stubborn, without a trace of a Transmigrator's cunning.

The baby in the swaddling clothes neither cried nor fussed. There was no innocence in her eyes, only coldness and defiance.

She stared openly at the boy frozen beside the bed. The stubbornness in her eyes seemed to clearly declare that her soul came from another world.

At the time, Li Shiyi had indeed broken out in a cold sweat, thinking of the kind of person Great Ancestor had told him about.

But after instinctively taking a step back, Li Shiyi noticed the little girl in the swaddling clothes clenching her hand tightly.

He looked at her in silence for a long time, and she stared back at him just as stubbornly.

In those clean eyes, Li Shiyi saw fear, unease, and... apology hidden beneath the coldness.

Outside the window, rain poured down. Inside, the candle flame quietly flickered.

"Li Xu knew Li Xu was a Transmigrator. He'd known from the moment that girl was born."

"When she was very young, that girl didn't like talking to outsiders. She thought this wasn't the world she knew. Everything was unfamiliar, and it made her afraid and uneasy."

"Even when she spoke to her own parents, she only lowered her head, pressed her lips together, and said nothing."

"But as soon as she saw her carefree older brother, she'd grin without stopping and chatter on and on."

"Those two... were both very gentle people."

The Red-Robed Judge smiled soundlessly, silent sorrow deep in his pupils.

"But what good did it do? On the day Li Xu returned to Luoyang, Willow Catkins filled the sky, and she still died at his hands."

"An unfamiliar soul took over that boy's body and used his hands to destroy everything."

"Now that really is a heartbreaking, helpless story."