Chapter 222: Three Hundred Poems
After the beginning of spring, Xie Chongyi appeared, at least on the surface, to have completely returned to normal.
Xie Yi handed over most of the work, keeping only the most troublesome parts for herself. She said, “The pollution source has already been completely eliminated. We still have to go back.”
“But a lot of people will probably want to stay in Suyou. Maybe in the future, Suyou will become the most powerful… nation on this planet.”
Xie Chongyi appeared in the lobby of the government building. On the wall directly facing the main entrance, the identities and positions of the current administrative personnel had all been publicly displayed, and the photos had only recently been added.
Wu Heng’s name was at the very top. The photo was obviously not recent. Xie Chongyi recognized it immediately—it was their high school registration photo, probably dug out of the database by Ginger using his ability.
Back then, Wu Heng had been thin and pale. Years of malnutrition made his face look barely larger than a palm. His chin was delicate and sharp, and he stared at the camera with a somewhat vacant expression, his eyes resembling a lifeless swamp.
Compared to everyone else on that wall, he looked completely like the weakest and most harmless fledgling.
But the words written after his name were: Lord.
Xie Chongyi stared at it for a while, then raised his hand and wiped it away. Taking a pen, he rewrote the title beneath the person in the photograph:
King.
His king.
A few days later, Professor Ye summoned him to the research institute. Professor Ye was a highly respected botanist whose previous research had focused on the possibility of long-term survival for plant symbionts. But now that all the plant symbionts had died out, his research had collapsed halfway through. These days, he was wholeheartedly studying the possibility of bringing plant symbionts back from the dead.
“There’s a saying in physics: matter can be shattered, but it cannot disappear. Do you know what that means?” Professor Ye said. “There’s a very good chance he still exists somewhere in this world. It’s just that his form may be somewhat different from before.”
“Oh, right. Tomorrow, when you pass by that street full of poppies again, collect some samples for me from different parts of the plants. I want the roots, stems, and leaves.”
After agreeing, Xie Chongyi left soon afterward.
To be honest, he had no optimism whatsoever about what Professor Ye might discover from those samples. Shen Ping’an’s life itself had originated from Wu Heng. Wu Heng could grant Shen Ping’an a new life because he was the original host, but Shen Ping’an could never give Wu Heng a new life in return.
After leaving the research institute, he did not go straight home. Instead, he went to the little bar he and Wu Heng had visited together before. The owner had changed, but the large black cat lying inside the shop was still there.
However, the table he and Wu Heng had used back then was currently occupied. Xie Chongyi walked straight over.
The story of the Chief beating a rude man half to death at the cemetery had long since spread everywhere. Almost everyone knew that his mood had been terrible lately. The gentleness and brightness that had once been highlighted by Wu Heng’s gloomy coldness had vanished completely. The real Xie Chongyi was far more violent than Wu Heng.
“Is anyone sitting here?” he asked first.
“No one! No one…” The speaker hurriedly yanked his friend to his feet. “Please, have a seat.”
Xie Chongyi sat down, clasping his hands against his forehead as the nerves in his head throbbed painfully.
The chair across from him scraped softly against the floor.
Then a voice he knew better than any other sounded out.
“Class Monitor, I want to eat this.”
The young man abruptly looked up.
There was no one there.
Matter does not disappear. Matter only exists in different forms.
Xie Chongyi braced himself against the edge of the table and stood up. Without ordering anything, he turned and hurried out again, paying no attention to the strange, worried looks from the people inside the shop behind him—
Ever since his partner died, the Chief had been acting neurotic the whole time. He really looked pitiful.
X and Shukui had already been squatting eagerly by the front gate for hours, waiting for Xie Chongyi to come home. Whenever Xie Chongyi was absent, the parrot simply could not stop twisting its head around to bite at the feathers on its back.
What they had not expected was that Xie Chongyi did not come in through the front door today—he entered from the back.
X slapped on the backyard light bulb with its claw and flew onto Xie Chongyi’s shoulder, while Shukui circled restlessly around his feet.
Xie Chongyi did not go inside immediately. In a corner of the backyard, he picked up a flowerpot. Inside it was a flower seedling whose stem had already withered and bent halfway over. Carrying the pot into the house, he moved in such a fluster that he almost shut Shukui outside when it lagged behind by a step.
Fortunately, X had long since grown used to Xie Chongyi’s recent absentmindedness. It wedged itself between the doorframe and the closing door, practically doing the splits, and managed to stop the door from shutting so Shukui would not be forgotten outside.
Xie Chongyi placed the flowerpot on the dining table and first took off his coat. One by one, all the lights in the house switched on through psychic powers until the entire room was as bright as daylight.
“My eyes are blind!” X shouted.
After rolling up his sleeves, Xie Chongyi began scooping out the top layer of soil with his hands. Little by little, the roots of the seedling were exposed to view, and a faint smell of fermented plant decay drifted through the air.
Yet Xie Chongyi’s expression did not change as he continued what he was doing. At last, he lifted the entire seedling out and set it beside the pile of dirt. Then he turned the flowerpot upside down over the dining table and dumped out all the soil.
“Food!” X paced back and forth.
“Your mom,” Xie Chongyi replied concisely.
“Swearing means your mouth gets slapped.”
A rare trace of a smile appeared at the corner of Xie Chongyi’s lips. “Like you say it any less?”
Wu Heng’s way of educating X had always been different from Xie Chongyi’s. When X acted shamelessly, Wu Heng would simply ignore it and let it play and make a fuss by itself off to the side. But Xie Chongyi would press the attack until X became so angry it hopped around furiously, and only then would he ignore it.
Furious, X chased after Shukui and started pecking at it. During the chaos, Xie Chongyi made a video call to Professor Ye.
The young man aimed the communicator’s camera at the sprout on the table.
“Can it still live?” he asked.
Professor Ye adjusted his glasses and leaned in for a very careful look. “You’re saying this is the original body? Are you sure? Wasn’t the only original body Wu Heng himself?”
“It sprouted back then. He pulled it off himself.” Even now, thinking back on that scene still made Xie Chongyi want to laugh.
“Oh—” Professor Ye visibly became excited. “If it’s a sprout separated from the original body, then it really could be considered an independent existence. It’s just that it also seems to have been affected. Is it still alive?”
“Are you the expert, or am I?” Xie Chongyi shot back.
Professor Ye pondered for a moment before saying, “Bring it to the research institute tomorrow.”
—
The next day, after delivering it to the research institute, Xie Chongyi returned home carrying both the seedling and a large pile of supplies. After examining its condition, Professor Ye advised against removing it from its familiar soil environment. Instead, he only gave Xie Chongyi some nutrient soil and nutrient solution, instructing him to mix them gradually into the old soil in small amounts over multiple applications.
In truth, when Professor Ye said all this, he held no hope whatsoever.
Even if the seedling could be kept alive, that did not mean Wu Heng would come back to life. And even if Wu Heng were reborn, there was no guarantee he would return in human form.
The reason Professor Ye continued supporting Xie Chongyi’s ideas was simply because he hoped Xie Chongyi could survive this devastating blow.
Everyone thought that way.
Xie Chongyi carefully and cautiously tended the half-withered seedling all the way into summer. Although the process of decay had stopped, there was still not the slightest sign of new growth.
At the same time, news arrived that Dou Lu had attempted s**cide at home.
No one understood why. The disaster was already over, and the future was full of hope.
Xie Chongyi sat beside the hospital bed, peeling an apple that would never be eaten for Dou Lu.
Doctor Chen said once again, “I’m not a miracle worker.”
That night, Wu Zhi secretly slipped into the hospital. Her ability was plunder—the power to take from others, or from herself. In a certain sense, plundering was also a form of giving.
Dou Lu’s condition turned around and stabilized, but Wu Zhi disappeared for two or three days afterward. The energy inside her body had inexplicably vanished completely. None of the ability users could find her—not even Ginger, who was the best at tracking people, could sense her existence.
During those few days, Lin Mengzhi became utterly haggard. He even got into a fight with Xue Shen when the latter tried to force him to eat. In the middle of their cold war, Lin Mengzhi wandered the streets aimlessly and, in the end, unexpectedly ran into Wu Zhi beside a remote garbage pit, looking practically like a beggar.
“Mengzhi, Mengzhi, where did you go? Have you seen my brother?” She clutched two mineral water bottles in her hands and ran excitedly up to him with shining eyes. “Brother, brother, brother—where’s my brother?”
Lin Mengzhi stared at her speechlessly. He took two steps backward, but Wu Zhi pressed closer.
“Is Brother playing hide-and-seek with me? I don’t want to play anymore. I’ve already been looking for days, but I still can’t find him…”
Lin Mengzhi suddenly realized what had happened, and tears instantly streamed down his face.
When word spread that Wu Zhi had been found, Xie Chongyi put down his work and hurried back into the city from the forest district. By then, Bo Ying’s Grandma had just finished bathing Wu Zhi and changing her into clean clothes.
“Mengzhi, why does your grandma look different now?”
Lin Mengzhi sat in the corner, painfully clutching at his hair.
Since no one was paying attention to her, Wu Zhi shoved Bo Ying’s Grandma away. “I want my brother to dry my hair!”
“Give it to me.” After arriving, Xie Chongyi took the towel from Bo Ying’s Grandma’s hands. Wu Zhi looked at him warily, but since he seemed difficult to mess with, she did not resist.
Halfway through drying her hair, Xie Chongyi said softly, “Wu Heng had something he needed to do, so he had to leave us for a while. He’ll come back very soon.”
Wu Zhi immediately lifted her head. “How long is ‘very soon’?”
“When you can recite all three hundred Tang poems from memory, he’ll come back.”
“But I still can’t even count from one to a hundred!” she cried in horror.
Above her head, X circled around shouting, “Dummy! Dummy!”
“You are a dummy! Stupid bird, I hate you!”
Xie Chongyi walked around to the front, bent down, and gently hugged Wu Zhi.
“This is pretty good too, actually.”
A few days later, the research institute confirmed Wu Zhi’s examination results. She had turned back into an ordinary human and was no longer an ability user. As for the lesions in her brain, they still could not determine the exact cause. It might have been caused by all the energy inside her body being transferred away at once, or it might have been the result of continuous emotional blows combined with the fact that she had always been someone extremely fragile and easily shaken.
But regardless of the exact reason, everyone understood clearly in their hearts that the root cause behind all of this was Wu Heng’s disappearance.
Wu Heng had been like a soft, delicate thread of cotton tying all of them together. Once he was gone, the pieces he had held in place began to show faint signs of falling apart.
In early autumn, Dou Lu applied to resign. She left alone and went to the largest bay in Suyou to work as an environmental protector.
By early winter, Wu Zhi had successfully graduated from preschool. Accompanied by Shen Ruyi, she went before Xie Chongyi and recited the poem “Quiet Night Thoughts.” After earning his praise, she happily ran off, with Shen Ruyi chasing after her.
“Wu Zhi, we’re friends now, right?!”
“You have to help me memorize all three hundred poems before we’re friends!”
Xie Chongyi watched the backs of the two childish fools disappear behind the lawn before slowly closing the door.
He had been tending the seedling in the flowerpot for more than half a year now, yet there was still no change at all. It had not gotten worse, but neither had it improved.
He was practically on the verge of praying to gods and Buddhas.
He simply did not believe Wu Heng had truly vanished from this world.
He had to be somewhere, waiting for someone to awaken him.
Only the dining room lights remained on. After feeding the dog and the bird, Xie Chongyi stood before the dining table. A faint current of air appeared in the palm of his right hand. He raised his left wrist above the flowerpot and used his power to slice it open. Bright red blood gushed out violently, yet his expression did not change in the slightest.
The dark brown nutrient soil gradually became soaked through, turning red and dim beneath the blood. The flow of blood slowly weakened and lessened, and only when Xie Chongyi judged it to be enough did he seal the wound.
Across the dining table, the dog and the bird stared at him as though they had just seen a ghost.
“You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die!” X shouted loudly.
Xie Chongyi replied blandly, “You don’t understand.”
After mutating, the poppy had become a man-eating plant. Of course normal methods of raising plants would not work on it. At least, that was how Xie Chongyi saw it. Hadn’t Wu Heng always wanted to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Now he could finally get his wish.
Eat your fill, drink your fill, and then come home obediently.
After several consecutive days of bloodletting by Xie Chongyi, Wu Heng awakened in the deep-sea region of the largest bay in Suyou.
Only, he had turned into a tiny fish.