Capítulo 966: Chapter 966: Doomed Affinity, Oh, Doomed Affinity
After returning from Shadow City, I called over Qianqian and my sister, saying there was an important matter to discuss—did I use the word correctly this time?
Big Sister looked at my serious face and couldn’t help but sigh, “Ah Jun, it seems this trip to the Divine Realm has really brought back some shocking news. Earlier, it felt like you had more to say. Is it related to that Abyss Gate in the Divine Realm again?”
“No, it’s more of a personal matter, about something from our childhood,” I thought for a moment. “Sis, do you remember about a dozen years ago when you first told me and Qianqian that we might move? Did anything unusual happen that day?”
Usually, things that happened over a decade ago are forgotten by most people. But that day was special because it was the first time Big Sister mentioned the possibility of moving in the future. This was one of the significant events in my otherwise uneventful first twenty years of life, so I remembered it clearly, and Qianqian and my sister probably did too. So, I was quite confident in asking.
“Ah, suddenly asking this,” my sister was clearly surprised by my question but still furrowed her brow in thought, “I don’t remember much from over ten years ago, but I do recall the first time moving was mentioned… You and Qianqian were both there, and Qianqian’s parents were out, so she had dinner at our place.”
Qianqian’s mind was more active than my sister’s, and she suddenly remembered more, loudly adding, “Stew! We ate vegetable stew! Ah Jun tricked us by putting rock candy in the stew! Then Sister Chen Qian made Ah Jun eat that bowl himself.”
I felt deeply embarrassed, face flushed, and poked Qianqian’s head, “It wasn’t tricking, you always put random seasonings in your food, even as a kid. I was just making a suggestion!”
“Haha, saying it like that, I do remember, it was indeed a day like that,” my sister laughed warmly, “Ah Jun, why did you suddenly think of this? Planning to visit our old neighborhood? It turned into a commercial street a few years ago, didn’t it?”
“No, I wanted to ask if you remember what happened after that evening,” I shrugged, “Do you remember the sky suddenly going dark, and Qianqian got scared and cried…”
Then, I detailed the mysterious events I experienced at the “Travel Wall” in the Goddess Temple, though I left out everything related to the temple to prevent misguiding Qianqian and my sister’s memories. After listening intently, both remained silent for a full two minutes, Qianqian looking up at the sky at a 45-degree angle, adorably like a little squirrel contemplating life, while Big Sister furrowed her brow, pressing her forehead with her finger. Finally, they both shook their heads: “Don’t remember!”
As expected, this confirmed the Supreme Life Goddess’s conjecture!
If what we encountered back then was indeed related to the Abyss, that thing clearly disrupted the memories of then-ordinary people like me and Big Sister and Qianqian!
“But I do remember in the following days, it seemed like there was a severe flu in our area,” Big Sister said, “About half of the old district’s people felt unwell, many got seriously sick, and both you and Qianqian took time off from school. I remember this clearly, and it was mentioned in the local newspaper afterward…”
“Newspaper! Right, the newspaper!” I suddenly slapped my forehead, quickly linking up a Spiritual Connection and sending a text to Sivis, “Sivis, please get an expert in intelligence to find a local newspaper from K City fifteen years ago, around September to October. I’m not sure of the exact date…”
Finding a newspaper from over a decade ago sounds like a highly technical task that ordinary people would have no idea how to tackle. However, for experts in the Military Intelligence Department, this was hardly a problem. Sivis managed to solve the task I gave her with just a move of her fingers and a word:
She pointed at Ling Meng and said: “Go, get Shime Maru Wen back.”
As a Tengu, with ideals, aspirations, a progressive mindset, and a humble learning attitude, Shime Maru Wen loves newspapers and gossip, and she has an amazing hobby of not only reporting news but also collecting old news—she loves cutting out newspaper articles.
I don’t know when she started doing this, but apparently, by now, Wenwen has almost collected a complete set of all the newspapers ever available in K City. In the welfare housing given to her by the Time-Space Administration, the thick collection of cut-out news reportedly reaches from the basement to the ceiling of the second floor, hearing that someone finally acknowledged her love for journalism, the Tengu girl was so moved that she immediately drove a small truck to deliver her collection to my living room, leaving me anxious enough to almost hit her.
With the help of the “senior text worker” (Wenwen’s self-proclaimed title), the report from those years was quickly dug up, with an eye-catching headline: “Sudden Off-Season Flu Epidemic in the City, Please Pay Attention to Weather Changes.”
Seeing this headline, I decided I would never believe what was written in newspapers again.
“Look, here is a line: …some patients show signs of mental confusion… From New Street Bridge looking at South District, the sky was overcast… Abnormal weather approaches, mind your health…”
After finishing reading, I solemnly asked my sister, “Tell me, with everyone mentally confused, how did these experts conclude this was a flu epidemic?”
No one paid attention to my question. Big Sister just nodded, “It seems there indeed was such an event, though I almost forgot it altogether. Ah Jun, you mentioned hearing some strange sounds yourself?”
I nodded, “Today’s mention of the Abyss Deep Diving Ship, I can’t shake the feeling that these two events are connected?”
“Then they are connected,” Qianqian said, shaking her head with excitement, but unfortunately, her way of thinking links everything in the world together, so it’s not entirely reliable.
“The timing doesn’t quite match, but the Abyss, as a thing, can’t be interpreted by common sense. If the Abyss really did appear in K City back then… how could that be? We were just ordinary people at the time, and any real contact with the Abyss would have left no survivors,” my sister scoffed at herself, waving her hand, “And over the years, it’s been so peaceful, could the Abyss Power be like that? Appearing in a world, then disappearing without doing anything.”
“Let’s not worry about that now, let’s stick to one hypothesis: if the Abyss really appeared once around the three of us back then, what was it I heard—just put it out there, I’ve linked it to the ‘calling’ mentioned in the Deep Diving Ship’s Voyage Log, I mean, could what I heard over a dozen years ago really have been the information from the Deep Diving Ship.”
Maybe my contact with Taville earlier expanded my thoughts, and my wild speculations could now serve as a script. Regarding the messages that echoed in my head back then, what I could only relate to was the Abyss Deep Diving Ship. But with this guess, obviously no one dared confirm it; we could only say it might be so: the Deep Diving Ship sent out a call within the Abyss Gate, but due to the distortion within the Abyss, the call was delayed tens of thousands of years, until over a dozen years ago, it suddenly popped out of another fleeting Abyss Gate and reached the brain of a potential Void Creature like me. This, then, fits Taville’s conjecture that “all Abyss Gates are internally connected,” except it can’t explain why the Abyss Power that descended on K City back then disappeared.
Having filled in all of this in my mind, I suddenly felt this event was completely dramatic!
While I was marveling at how life is like a melodrama, either type A or B (speaking of which, I don’t think dogs have blood types… why are we studying this!), Lin Xue’s voice suddenly came from behind: “Oh, you guys are here, what are you talking about.”
I turned to look and almost burst out laughing: this girl had definitely just come from the kitchen, with at least a dozen cucumber slices stuck to her face! Looking like a watermelon frost lozenge come to life.
“What are you staring at, never seen cucumbers applied to the face?” Miss’s lips didn’t move at all while she spoke to me using ventriloquism.
“I’ve seen cucumbers applied, just never seen a rich young lady like you use them,” I laughed as I pointed at the cucumber slices on Lin Xue’s face, “In my impression, those billionaires don’t leave the house without bathing in milk, spraying thirty-thousand-a-gram perfumes, and spending three hours dressing, or else they feel they are wasting the national economy, at least that’s what I thought before I met you.”
Lin Xue domineeringly shoved me aside with a hip bump, almost stacking me and Qianqian on top of each other, then sat down on the other side, pulling my collar along the way: “And you’re a national leader, look at your Adidas.”
I was at a loss for words, but still quickly peeled off the cucumber slices from Miss’s face: “Alright, stop fooling around, with skin like yours, if you still needed maintenance, how many girls worldwide would commit collective suicide? You’re so fresh you’re almost turning into a deep-sea fish species.”
No girl dislikes being complimented on her looks, even a girl like Miss Lin, synthesized from rare materials, is the same. Although the cucumber slices were peeled off her face, she still had a joyous smile, yet she tried hard to maintain an angry look. Seeing this nearly unreplicable cute Miss expression, I couldn’t help but pinch her nose. We’ve been together for so long that the formerly proud Miss Lin is now able to accept this level of intimacy calmly. Of course, while accepting it, she still inevitably pokes me in the lower back. What is that saying again? If Miss Lin weren’t proud, would this world still exist?
Just then, looking at Lin Xue’s face, I felt my heart stir.
Some images slowly overlapped, with a thought and a sentence uncontrollably echoing in my mind: Could this be so damn unfortunate?!
“Wood, what are you daydreaming about again?” Lin Xue tapped my forehead with her hand, “Are you really planning to be a blockhead?”
“Hey, did you always live abroad when you were a kid?” I casually grabbed her paw and asked seriously.
“More or less…” Lin Xue tried to retract her hand, but it was futile. She had no choice but to roll her eyes at me with a slightly red face, “Though when I was about eight or nine, I came back for a year because my dad realized he could hardly communicate with me in Chinese anymore. My mom said if they didn’t bring their daughter back, they’d make him kneel in front of the TV remote every night, changing channels added ten minutes, changing volume added twenty minutes…”
My god, how mighty Lin Xue’s mom is, but this isn’t the main topic. Right now, all I want to say is: this damn destiny!
“What’s up with you today? You’re so weird, spacing out here and there!” Miss waved her hand back and forth in front of my eyes; Sister Chen Qian and Qianqian cast curious glances my way, while Qianqian, with a concerned look, pulled out a box of Stomach Comfort Capsules, God knows what she was thinking.
“Hey, do you remember that year, you probably got lost and wandered into a shabby alley?”
I slowly said, feeling in my heart at least a reinforced battalion of grass mud horses galloping wildly, some white-haired, some yellow-haired, and some grey-haired. If Miss Xue nods this time, I might order Shadow City to open the lottery industry tomorrow; life should have some drama…
The expression on Lin Xue’s face obviously went blank for a moment. She’s no fool; even if she’s not in Prophet mode, she guessed what I wanted to say, and given her IQ that supposedly read for a master’s and doctorate at Cambridge before eighteen, her memory’s probably sharper than mine, Qianqian, or Big Sister’s. So she froze for a bit and looked at me unbelievably: “I remember I asked a dirty little guy for directions then, he was wearing a shabby school uniform with frayed edges…”
“Later, the two exchanged gifts; back then, Miss Xue was such a cute and polite little loli, how did life ruin her this way,” I confirmed in my heart, spread my hands with a wry smile, and finally didn’t forget to emphasize, “Speaking of the ‘little guy,’ you kept this impression from childhood till now as just these three words, how am I supposed to bear—You’ve called me ‘blockhead’ for three years!”
“No way! It’s actually you?!” Miss screamed strangely, leaping more than two meters off the sofa, squatting with a bang on the nearby low table. The blue yowl asleep under the table darted out through the window in fright, and I shrugged at her, “What’s impossible? You know I grew up in K City, moved from the old district back then. You left me a stamp before. Wait, I’ll find it; I still have that thing preserved!!”
Miss stared over here like she’d seen a ghost, her gaze six parts shock, three parts anticipation, and one part decisiveness of “If you dare cheat me, I’ll kill you.” Big Sister stood next to her, eyes wide in disbelief, staring at me, while Qianqian was still daydreaming.
I rummaged through my personal space, but fishing out a stamp from over a decade ago from the heap of odds and ends wasn’t easy. When I first got the personal space, I was so smug, happily tossing everything useful and useless in there, and almost cheerfully decided to hit the road alone the next day. Back then, I thought I would pack my belongings in personal space, build a small hut at the South Pole, then when the expedition team arrived, I’d wear a red cotton jacket, don a white beard, drive a sleigh, and have a coincidental encounter with them, tricking them into believing that all the Santa Clauses went on strike that Christmas…
This silly thing never came to pass for another equally silly reason: I never found any reindeer that wouldn’t freeze to death at the South Pole… Well, it’s all mistakes of youth. Now, I no longer envy those idiots who venture alone with space rings, what good is going out, not even able to eat a leek pie.
“Look, this is it.” After quite some time rummaging around, I miraculously procured a small tin box, a pencil case I used myself in elementary school. It was the trend at that time; opening it revealed several layers of plastic compartments, inside of which were all my treasures from before middle school, including engraved eraser heads, small wooden carvings, a polished and holed coin, two train-track flattened nails—turned into small darts, and a commemorative stamp that was nearly black-and-white.
Seeing the small piece of paper, Miss directly fell off the low table, then darted over two and a half meters to snatch the item from my hand: “You… It’s really you, dude! It’s incredible… Uh, so you actually used this stamp?”
Miss discovered that the back of the stamp had some paper residue not yet peeled off and couldn’t help shouting.
I looked up at the sky: “Ah, didn’t you tell me to write you a letter at that time? I took it seriously…”
Lin Xue: “…Well, I didn’t seem to know back then that you needed an address to write a letter, so…”
“So the post office guy pulled me out.”
Lin Xue: “…”
After half a minute of silence, Miss’s face grew increasingly bizarre, as if she was having a three hundred round battle in her mind. Just as I was about to ask what she had eaten wrong, she suddenly sighed long and deeply: “A cursed relationship!” Then she took out a small lump from her personal space, tossed it over: “Your Zhu Bajie, Wood!”
When I looked, my brows instantly beamed with delight: It was exactly the “woodcarving” I gave to the girl dressed like a little princess back then, a crooked wooden stick with a small hammerhead. Of course, I always maintained it was a not-yet-completed Zhu Bajie carving, even though after finishing, it could barely be called a rake.
“Laugh you fool, you must be thinking unhealthy thoughts in your mind!” Miss gritted her teeth, looking over here, “Don’t let your imagination run wild! I was only nine that year, hear me, nine! Save all your hormones for me until thirteen to talk about. This thing just happened to be by my side and I forgot to throw it away, later after several years I felt it’d be a waste to discard, it’s childhood memories after all, right… Hey, what’s with that expression!”
Even Miss’s face couldn’t help turning red, sighing long and deeply once more: “A cursed relationship!”
For the first time in my life, I felt maybe fate wasn’t so shitty after all.
At this point, Qianqian finally snapped out of her daydream state, jumped up from the sofa, and clasped my neck: “Ah Jun! You need to explain!”
I looked at Qianqian’s fierce and evil face, wanting to cry without tears: “Explain… What should I explain! Didn’t you hear Miss Xue say? We were only eight or nine years old that year, and the combined IQs of us from eight to nine weren’t higher than the table; who had so many flashy thoughts? You tell me, explain what!”
Qianqian let go, sat back on the sofa as if nothing happened: “Nothing really, just the heroines on TV all say this at this moment. Oh, I want to eat sugar-fried chestnuts, buy some tomorrow!”
Me: “…”
Lin Xue stared blankly for a while, then suddenly communicated with me through spiritual connection: “Do you know how much trouble Qianqian’s brain saves you, Wood?”
I continued: “…” (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcome to visit to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets; your support is my greatest motivation.)