Whoosh~
Hiss~
An Chang finished his cultivation session and tried to open his eyes. As expected, he still couldn't manage that simple action.
He hadn't been able to open his eyes for a very long time, so long that he almost forgot how much time had passed.
From the initial panic and fear, to the effort of trying to move but failing to even twitch his eyelids, and now to the current numbness. He had grown accustomed to the feeling that his body was under his control, yet moving even slightly was a luxury.
Trying to open his eyes after every cultivation session was perhaps his way of resisting fate.
This attempt failed once again, as always, and he began to recall the past.
Starting from his earliest traceable memory, he meticulously reviewed every single detail in his mind.
He didn't know how many times these memories had been reviewed in his mind. It was only after a cultivation session, when he thought of his daughter and was startled to find her appearance and voice becoming blurred, that he decided he must recall his past after every session.
His past, having been recalled countless times, had long been broken down, mashed up, and filled his mind, while every detail concerning his daughter was treasured and buried deep within the recesses of his memory.
He could forget his unhappy childhood, the hardships of struggling alone, the woman who suddenly entered his life and then left, forgetting everything. The two things he hoped to always remember were himself and his daughter. If he ever forgot his daughter, he didn't know what would happen to him.
He tried so hard to wake up partly due to basic human instinct, and partly because he knew his daughter was waiting for him.
Every time he thought of this, he began to seriously question whether he had made a mistake. Shouldn't he have avoided rushing into an experiment that outsiders, and even he himself, viewed as suicidal? Wouldn't it have been better to simply live out his life properly with his daughter?
He then arrived at the same answer he reached after every reflection: he didn't know why, and he couldn't figure out the reason that made him frantically stake everything on the strange experiment that had left him unable to wake up until now.
Since he could remember, An Chang had lived in an orphanage. The superintendent was a middle-aged man who loved Taoist culture, was obsessed with impractical cultivation and alchemy, and occasionally recited Taoist scriptures to the orphans. An Chang was deeply influenced, but as he grew up and received compulsory education, he stopped believing in the Qi refinement and breathing techniques the superintendent often talked about.
When the superintendent passed away, An Chang attended the funeral and was so sad that he momentarily deluded himself into believing the superintendent had ascended to immortality. Now, he thought that cultivation might be real, but the superintendent's ascension was truly just self-comfort.
An Chang chuckled self-mockingly internally. His experiment should be considered a success, as it verified that people truly could cultivate Qi. However, An Chang wasn't sure if controlling this Qi to circulate throughout the body counted as cultivation, and no one could answer him. He was probably the only person on the entire globe who had cultivated Qi. If he considered it cultivation, no one could refute him. If he could wake up, he might even become the founder of Qi cultivation.
But how long had it been? Ever since he cultivated this breath of Qi during the experiment, growing from faint threads to a vast ocean, he had remained in this state: conscious, with his body under control, yet unable to move.
It had been so long that despair had set in. He feared waking up suddenly only to find himself too old to move, and his daughter having been 'eaten by the old cow'—taken advantage of by the experimental assistant he had dragged in from a third-rate university. He might even have grandchildren calling him grandpa. The thought made An Chang's scalp tingle; he dared not dwell on it.
An Chang sighed internally, gathered his scattered thoughts, buried his memories deep in his mind, and began cultivating again... Whoosh~
Hiss~
Another cultivation session ended. As he slowly guided the Qi to his Energy Center, An Chang sighed softly and tried to open his eyes.
The result was the same as countless times before: failure.
However, An Chang seemed to hear a strange sound.
Mixed in with the sound of his heartbeat, blood flow, and the Qi churning in his Energy Center, there was a very, very faint but unusually persistent chime.
It was similar to the 'beep' sound of a security door opening, and An Chang was suddenly thrilled.
For An Chang, this chime was like a sudden, deafening clap of thunder in the silence—no, it was much more intense. He focused all his attention on the sound.
The beautiful, thrilling feeling, like a congenitally deaf patient hearing sound for the first time, made him wonder if he had finally gone mad during the long darkness.
He confirmed again and again that the chime was clear, sharp, and persistently ringing in his ears.
After a few chimes, the sound abruptly stopped, followed by a mechanical, synthesized voice. This voice seemed to be describing something, but An Chang was absolutely certain that unless he had truly gone mad, he shouldn't be unable to understand what it meant.
In fact, An Chang couldn't understand it. The voice had clear intonation and rhythm, and was clearly a language devoid of emotion, but it wasn't any language An Chang knew.
His excitement was shattered by the voice. The unfamiliar language and mechanical tone plunged An Chang into deep unease.
After the mechanical voice sounded, there was no further follow-up. But An Chang waited anxiously.
He didn't know how much time passed.
A sensation, like flowing water, gently and slowly gathered at his chest.
Then An Chang opened his eyes.
A stream of tears slowly flowed from a pair of clean, clear large eyes, tracing a path down a tender, pale cheek, landing in the settled dust and splashing up ugly mud flowers.
What met his eyes was not the incandescent light he had longed for, nor the hospital ceiling he had anticipated, nor even the various terrible scenarios he had wildly imagined after hearing the strange language.
Yet, it might be worse than all of those.
It was a bloodstained longsword. The blood had dried on the blade, presenting a dark, blackish sheen under the dim sunset. An Chang could smell a faint, metallic stench. The sword was suspended right before him, and he could clearly see the tip still trembling.
Worse than the scene he opened his eyes to was everything that scene implied.
The moment he regained his senses, An Chang realized he had become an Infant. He didn't know what incredible event had transpired to turn him from a thirty-four-year-old man, tormented in endless darkness, into an Infant lying in this strange place.
He felt only fear and despair. What filled him with despair and terror was not the trembling, bloodstained longsword suspended before him; he didn't even know what he was despairing or fearing, but simply shed tears of regret involuntarily. The joy of being reborn, mixed now with despair and regret, had turned into an unrecognizable emotion... Ned simply bandaged the wound on his right leg, and then silently began clearing the ruins before him.
He moved the broken stones away piece by piece. When he encountered larger ones, he used a nearby stick to pry them open. When he hit a wooden beam lying across the rubble, he fiercely chopped it into segments with his longsword. Only when the heat subsided slightly and the sun began to set did he neatly arrange the bodies of the six Knights who had accompanied him.
Then he cleared toward the center of the ruins, where he found the body of Lyanna, still faintly recognizable, and in her arms, a blue-faced Infant who had long since stopped breathing. He couldn't help but burst into loud sobs again.
After his sobs subsided, Ned inadvertently noticed a black circular object not far away.
Under the setting sun, dark purple patterns on the black circular object emitted an ominous glow. Ned raised his longsword and walked toward it.
Right before Ned's eyes, the dark purple patterns on the black circular object began to twist and deform. It slowly shrank from its original circular shape. The sphere, which was originally about two meters in diameter, had shrunk to about one meter by the time Ned approached.
Even though Ned had experienced many terrible things that day, the scene before him, which defied his lifelong common sense, still filled him with disbelief. It also made him wary, and he slowly held his sword horizontally in front of him.
Approaching slowly and cautiously, the sphere began to sink and deform. By the time Ned reached it, it had transformed into the shape of an Infant. Then the black and purple color slowly slid away, revealing tender limbs. Like flowing water, the black and purple hue gradually gathered on the Infant's chest, turning into a black and purple mark.
In an instant, Ned's not-so-extensive deductive reasoning, as if divinely guided, led him to a conclusion: the culprit behind this catastrophe was the seemingly harmless Infant before him!
Thinking this, the longsword held horizontally before him, filled with hatred, lunged toward the Infant's brow.
Precisely at this moment, the Infant opened his eyes.
Ned looked at the Infant before him: sparse black hair, clear black eyes, light eyebrows, and tears tracing a path down his cheeks. The longsword in Ned's hand began to tremble.
"Ah!" he cried out, as if gathering courage, and finally threw the longsword aside, kneeling before the Infant and picking the child up.
He said: "Perhaps you are the perpetrator of all this, but the result is my own doing." As he spoke, a new tear streak appeared on his face.
His knightly education prevented him from harming an innocent Infant. The calamity that had befallen them and the resulting sin were attributed entirely to himself. Even if it was wishful thinking on his part, things had come to this, and he had no other choice but to bear the burden of it all.
The setting sun cast red light over the ruins, falling upon Ned and the Infant as if staining them with blood. Their shadows stretched longer and longer until they disappeared into the darkness.
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