Chapter Ninety-Five: The Illusory Realm

Hua Sheng was a little lost. Just then, a nurse came in and asked, “Why did you come in here so carelessly? Get out at once. She has just taken her medicine and needs to rest.”

As she spoke, the nurse pushed him toward the door.

“I’ll come again next time,” Hua Sheng said hurriedly, waving to Mi Ying.

“Mm. Oh, right. My sister has a bit of a spoiled temperament, but she likes you. She’s always telling me how much she misses you...” Mi Ying wore a foolish little smile. “You... you must remember to come see her often.”

Before Hua Sheng could answer, the nurse had already pushed him out the door.

With a bang, the door shut.

But he did not return to his own room. He set his cane against the corridor wall and sat down on the floor outside the ward. The floor and the walls were cold, and through his pale blue hospital clothes that chill seeped into his spine. He wanted to use that coldness to still the turmoil surging in his heart.

No one knew how long had passed before the nurse came out of the room and, seeing Hua Sheng there, was startled. “What are you doing sitting here?”

Hua Sheng picked up his cane, rose unsteadily to his feet, and asked, “Has Mi Ying fallen asleep?”

“She has. Don’t go in and disturb her. Every time she can’t even sleep for an hour, and her body is getting worse and worse. Ah...”

“What exactly is wrong with her? Since she knows me, can you tell me why she’s staying here? And what happened to her hair? Last time I saw her, it was short brown hair. How did it turn into long dark red hair?”

“That’s a wig,” the nurse said. “Come with me.”

The nurse took Hua Sheng to the lounge and told him about Mi Ying’s condition.

“Mi Ying is not what she seems,” the nurse said.

Hua Sheng thought of himself and said, “I could have guessed that.”

“You couldn’t have guessed this.” The nurse’s lips twitched. “Mi Ying is actually a boy.”

Hua Sheng stared in shock, mouth agape. “A boy?”

The nurse said, “I know what you’re thinking. You thought he was just like you, only...”

“Then what exactly happened?”

“He used to be a handsome young scion from a wealthy family...” the nurse recounted. “You know, a young master like that is always surrounded by girls.”

The nurse said Mi Ying had originally been a very intelligent young gentleman from a rich and privileged household. The family had two daughters and one son, and he was the youngest. When he graduated from high school, he was admitted to a famous Ivy League university in the United States. So he asked his parents for a sum of money, took himself and his two older sisters abroad on a trip as a reward of sorts. At the same time, because he had been around so many girls in school, he also invited six female classmates he was close with to join him as a graduation trip.

The entire destination and itinerary had been arranged by him alone over the course of a week. It was meant to be the kind of ostentatious graduation trip a rich young man would show off. But tragedy struck during the journey: the business van Mi Ying had rented was hit by a landslide and tumbled down the mountain. Worse still, because of a fuel leak, the vehicle exploded and caught fire. In the blast, only he was thrown through the window and spared the sea of flames. Mi Ying, who miraculously survived with more than a dozen fractures all over his body, personally dragged eight girls’ charred, unrecognizable bodies out of the vehicle and kept vigil alone beside those eight burned corpses for an entire night.

Overwhelmed by guilt, he used shards of broken glass to slit his own throat. The wound went deep enough to reach his trachea and esophagus. Fortunately, the rescue team reached the bottom of the valley at that moment and rushed in to intubate his lungs and stop the bleeding, saving his life by a hair’s breadth.

When Mi Ying awoke in the hospital, he told others that in his dream, it had not been the rescue team that saved him, but the dead sisters and classmates. To let their souls live on, he had allowed them all to take up residence in his body. After that, Mi Ying bought many different wigs and dresses, often dressing himself up in different ways and claiming to be different people.

Naturally, no one believed such words. Everyone thought he was delusional from mental illness. Because he believed nine souls lived within him, every time he slept for only a few minutes, another soul would awaken. Lacking rest, his body’s functions deteriorated day by day, and his illness grew more severe. In order to ensure he got any rest at all, the doctors could only let him depend on sleeping pills from then on.

A month later, Mi Ying’s mother died of grief. A year after that, his father was diagnosed with liver cancer and soon passed away as well. Relatives hired formidable lawyers and divided up most of his parents’ assets, leaving only a small portion to cover his medical expenses. With no one willing to care for Mi Ying anymore, he was sent to this hospital, and no one ever came to visit him.

Not only that, the effect of the sleeping pills he took was becoming stronger by the day. Even the most potent sedatives could now only put him to sleep for an hour or two. If the dose were carelessly increased, it would be life-threatening.

“You must remember to come see her often...”

As Hua Sheng stepped out of the lounge, those words Mi Ying had just said echoed in his mind, and for a moment he could no longer tell who Mi Ying truly was. His heart was a mess of bitter sensations, as though a stone had been laid upon it.

He suddenly understood why Doctor Yu Ran had previously been unwilling to tell him that Mi Ying lived here. In this world, all that Mi Ying could have was himself. He had to visit Mi Ying more often. No matter in what guise Mi Ying chose to meet him.

Everything was so brutally real. Only fairytales held beautiful things. In reality, most of life was suffering. So-called choices in life were mostly nothing more than choosing between different degrees of pain, light or severe.

Hua Sheng began to accept this real world, even taking the initiative to ask whether he might spend his free time in the hospital learning something. Seeing Hua Sheng gradually regain his spirits, Doctor Yu Ran was very pleased and even bought some self-study exam books, telling him that if he was willing to enroll in a self-study course, Yu Ran would be willing to teach him after work. In less than two years, he would be able to obtain a college diploma.

With a diploma, he would be able to find a job someday. He might not earn much, but at least he would no longer have to rely on others and could support himself.

Of course, the "Cat Nurse" was also very interested in the several hundred thousand words Hua Sheng had painstakingly written, and read through them with great enthusiasm. Her boyfriend worked as an editorial assistant at a publishing house, and the Cat Nurse strongly recommended the manuscript to him as well, hoping it could help Hua Sheng get published.

Time passed, and two months had gone by since returning to the real world. Hua Sheng had also begun to like this real world. He resolved to face reality, because reality too held things he could look forward to. At the very least, he knew that many people cared for and loved him. But after his leg was injured, he was often awakened by nightmares in the middle of the night.

It was the nightmare of himself falling into an abyss. In the dream there was nothing at all, no scenes from any world, only darkness and his own endless descent. When he woke in the middle of the night, his pillow and clothes were soaked through with cold sweat, and sometimes even the sheets were not spared.

Besides that, every morning he felt himself becoming more lucid than the day before.

He began to distinguish fantasy from reality.

He resolved to raise his head and keep walking forward on the road of this real life.

But he never could have imagined that when he finally decided to lift his head, the figure before him would be that of Supreme Young Lord.

It happened on this very morning.

It was an utterly ordinary day, with nothing unusual about it. After Hua Sheng finished the thin rice porridge the nurse had brought him, he did not finish the leftover steamed bun. He thought perhaps it was because he had stayed in the ward too long, and the lack of exercise had caused his loss of appetite.

For reasons he could not quite explain, when he saw the bright morning light outside the window, he suddenly wanted to go out and bask in the sun. So, leaning on his cane, he took a walk downstairs by himself.

The morning air was a little cool, and Hua Sheng’s hospital clothes seemed somewhat thin, but it did not matter. The grass outside was damp, covered in dew that had condensed overnight. The dewdrops were crystalline, sparkling with tiny points of light. Stepping onto the grass felt like stepping onto a carpet woven of crystal.

Hua Sheng walked forward at an unhurried pace. He had plenty of time and was in no hurry to reach anywhere. He also did not care, because no matter how he walked, he would still not leave Saint Pingning Hospital.

He paced across the lawn like that and encountered no one. When he moved from the side near the hospital building to the side by the entrance, he saw a figure standing outside the hospital gate. Hua Sheng had never been outside the hospital gate before. Beyond it was a road, though perhaps because Saint Pingning Hospital was not located in a bustling district, there was no heavy traffic at all—there was not even a single car passing by.

The figure wore a white Supreme T-shirt and jeans, with a pair of Warrior sneakers on his feet. The outfit looked familiar. As Hua Sheng looked upward, he saw the face that should have been there.

It was Supreme Young Lord, with a bright earring dangling from his left ear and a lean, narrow face. Supreme Young Lord was standing at the hospital gate, dressed exactly as he had been the last time they returned to the mortal world together.

Hua Sheng suddenly remembered that he had forgotten all about Supreme Young Lord’s existence. Then in the real world, who would Supreme Young Lord be? What was his name?

No matter what his name was, within Hua Sheng, Supreme Young Lord had always been an important presence. Judging by the way he stood outside the hospital gate, he was likely not like Yu Ran, Mi Ying, and Hua Sheng himself; he was not a patient in this hospital. He must also have his own name. His real name.

But in his mind, Hua Sheng could not remember what Supreme Young Lord was called. He could only try asking.

Supreme Young Lord was looking at him too. From that gaze, Hua Sheng could tell that this person recognized him.

A little relieved that the scene would not be awkward, Hua Sheng lifted a hand and waved.

Supreme Young Lord gave him a grave nod.

Hua Sheng, supporting himself heavily on his cane, walked step by step to the hospital gate and forced out an apologetic smile. “Hello, I’m Hua Sheng. I’m sorry, I live in this hospital and my mind is a little muddled. I can’t remember your name.”

“I am Supreme Young Lord! You don’t remember me? Have you gone mad or something?”

Supreme Young Lord’s eyes were filled with confusion. Then he said the words that nearly made Hua Sheng’s heart stop:

“I am Supreme Young Lord of the Way of Art school, Hua Sheng! You’re trapped in an illusion! Wake up!”