Chapter 1 The Patient

  Patient

  This towering cliff stands alone on the coast, surrounded by strange and rugged rocks. Few people come here, and from the other side of the cliff comes the roar of the sea like a fierce beast.

  Yao Fang thought, I either climb up or turn around and leave.

  The salty, cold sea air fell from the cliff, eroding Yao Fan's thin clothes. His undershirt was already dampened by the air and clung to his body, making him feel even more uncomfortable due to his bad mood.

  He tried to forget the damp chill and focused his attention on rock climbing.

  Every step was on slippery rocks, and with every step down, Yao Fan worried that these rocks, which had been corroded by seawater for thousands of years, would suddenly shatter. Refusing to give up, he finally climbed to the most difficult place on this cliff, a steep slope formed by the collapse of rocks that had been eroded by sea fog and weathering over the years.

  "No matter what, I must climb up!"

  Yao Feng suppressed the trembling of his hands and feet, gritted his teeth, and resolutely climbed up with both hands and feet.

  He felt his performance was as excellent as those extreme rock climbers on TV, so he was a bit proud of himself.

  The only difference between him and those rock climbers was that he had no safety rope to protect him. If he fell, he didn't know what would happen. Maybe he already knew the consequences, but he just didn't care anymore.

  Yao Fan simply enjoyed his current complacency.

  After more than ten minutes, he finally conquered the last rock wall, panting like a cow and standing at the top of the cliff. His whole body was trembling as if he had fainted - his chest was heaving, his hands and feet were shaking, and even his entire torso was shaking uncontrollably due to excessive force and tension. His fingers were white and stiff with pain from gripping too hard.

  He slightly grinned and smiled to himself, then recklessly stood at the edge of the cliff, gazing out at the East Sea like a wild beast.

  The white horizon line between the sky and the sea was clearly visible, like a white dragon shaking its body with sparkling water light, rolling and undulating. Yao Fang licked his lips, imagining the taste of the white dragon.

  It was probably because his eyes were somewhat uncomfortable from the reflection of the sun's rays on the sea surface at noon, so he lowered his head to look down at the cliff below, where the sea water was emerald green, like melted jade, still as beautiful as it was when he came last time.

  Yao Weng muttered to himself: "If I could be buried here, it would be extremely beautiful. As long as the fish don't eat my corpse, it's absolutely better than a public cemetery that costs tens of thousands of yuan per grave."

  In May, the sea breeze in Jiaozhou Bay blew so hard that people's skin was tightened all over. Yao Fan's clothes were quickly blown dry, and his collar, cuffs, and pant legs were filled with countless sea breezes, swelling to the brim. His thoughts and emotions, like the sea breeze, slowly filled his body and mind.

  Like a withered pine on the edge of a cliff, he could be blown down by the wind at any moment and fall into the sea, but his feet were rooted in the stone crevices like sprouts. Because his mind was in a mess, he continued to stand still, trying to sort out some thoughts.

  The waves crashed one after another, producing a deafening roar, smashing against the reefs below the cliff and turning into countless white foams, then came another wave, and another, the boundless sea vowing to fight to the death with this precipice.

  Yao Weng continued to look down the cliff, and the more he looked, the more he felt his body was suspended in mid-air, as if he was about to lose weight. The waves and mountains below, which had been battling for thousands of years, seemed to be pulling him into the chaotic void with an epic magic.

  At this time, Yao Fan's mind finally cleared up.

  ……

  He didn't dare look down again!

  He didn't even know why he had come here today.

  It wasn't until now that I finally remembered why I came here!

  Since the beginning of this month, Yao Weng has been feeling uncomfortable and often numb in his hands and feet. By the end of the month, these symptoms had developed into a very serious condition.

  From the beginning of the month, I often felt numbness in my hands and feet after sitting at my desk for a long time. By mid-month, it had developed into stiffness all over my body! There was even one time when I couldn't move due to muscle stiffness and stood still on the subway train, missing my stop!

  This time, missing the station head's experience really scared Yao Fan. He was still young after all, and although his life wasn't much better than that of his peers, he hadn't fallen behind them by too much either. So he couldn't bear to part with this colorful and seductive mortal world. He feared death, so he didn't want to die immediately.

  Yao Weng did not sleep all night and went to the Qingdao Municipal Hospital for a physical examination early the next morning, fearing that he had contracted some kind of terminal illness.

  When drawing blood, when the needle pierced a vein, Yao Weng even experienced auditory hallucinations.

  "Blood Soul inquires of the host, whether to initiate Blood Sacrifice."

  Yao Fan swore that he had clearly heard the voice, and it seemed to be coming from right beside his ear. However, no matter how frantically he looked around, he couldn't find anyone who was speaking.

  When he anxiously asked the nurse who was taking his blood if she had also heard such a sentence, the nurse looked at him sympathetically and whispered, "I think you're in poor spirits, maybe it's neurasthenia. Our hospital's psychiatric department has the best psychological consultants in the country."

  Yao Feng gazed coldly at the young nurse and responded with a cold smile, but couldn't conceal the unease in his heart.

  "Thank you, I will consider your suggestion."

  Even if he disliked the little nurse's judgment of him, Yao Fang was still very polite, a politeness that had been cultivated in him since kindergarten.

  Yao Fang spent a total of 1,200 yuan to do a full set of physical examination, blood routine, urine routine, nerve function, muscle function, electrocardiogram, CT, liver and kidney B ultrasound...

  Yao Fan, who had never been seriously ill in his life, underwent a thorough physical examination at the hospital for the first time since birth. However, he felt no resistance and instead developed an extreme dependence on the hospital for the first time in his life.

  He wants to live.

  After undergoing a series of physical examinations that lasted for five consecutive hours, Yao Fang left the hospital with an uneasy heart. For the next two days, he couldn't stop thinking about the examination report, even to the point of being distracted and absent-minded at work.

  Two days later, Yao Fan drove to the Qingdao Municipal Hospital early in the morning to pick up his physical examination report. However, on the report, it was clearly written with four dull Chinese characters - everything is normal.

  Yao Fangan's hand grasped the report, and at that moment, he felt his whole body trembling. The symptom of his whole body stiffening, which had been occurring more frequently lately, struck again.

  Yao Fan cried out in his heart: "Is it an incurable disease? Have I contracted a terminal illness?"

  Yao Feng stood frozen in place, his mind racing with terrifying thoughts of his miserable second half of life. Was he going to end up paralyzed from the waist down? Then become completely paralyzed? Unable to take care of himself?

  At the thought of becoming a cripple who can't even take care of his own eating, drinking and bowel movements like those often seen on TV, Yao Fang's 185cm tall frame couldn't help but tremble with fear!

  "I won't lose my dignity like that! I won't!!!"

  Yao Feng, who was standing stiffly in place, almost let out a shrill cry, but at this moment he suddenly discovered that his whole body had become so stiff that even his mouth couldn't be opened!

  "It's all over! Haha! It's all over! I really shouldn't have gone out drinking so much! I really shouldn't still be smoking until now! I really shouldn't have been eating off the old capital of my university volleyball team, not going out to exercise..."

  Yao Fang stood upright in the midst of stiffness, confessing with a bewildered spirit. By the time this spell of stiffness passed, his entire undergarment was soaked with sweat.

  He left the hospital and drove aimlessly around the port city, with no one knowing what he was going to do, not even himself.

  At last he arrived at the nameless rocky hill that was often climbed during his university days, and ascended the precipice with a dazed yet practiced air.

  Yao Fang stood facing the precipice, recalling Nietzsche's words "When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you", but at this moment he had none of the interest in exploring the unknown that he had in college.

  Yao Feng closed his eyes in terror and let out a frantic roar towards the sea.

  I'm still young! I don't want to die yet!!! I don't have the guts to jump down!!!! I really can't do it!!!!!

  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

  "Why is the host so excited?"

  "Get out of here, you old man! Who are you!" Yao Feng heard this strange and low voice again, and he let out a nervous howl.

  "Does the host want to sacrifice blood for transcendence?"

  "Blood sacrifice you..." Before Yao Fang could utter the word "sister", the space-time around him distorted, and he felt himself being sucked into a white tunnel. In this tunnel wrapped in white light, his past growth experiences flashed before his eyes like a movie playback.

  He finally fell on the slippery rock, feeling dizzy and numb in his head, with an inexplicable soreness all over his body.

  After who knows how long, Yao Fan finally managed to prop himself up with both hands and slowly got up, muttering to himself in a low voice: "I must have gone crazy... That little nurse was right, I need to go see a psychiatrist. Maybe all of this is just my hallucination, that voice, the stiffness, they're all just hallucinations."

  After making up his mind, Yao Fan decided to return by the original route, but found that the slope of the stone was unusually steep, and there was no familiar feeling of revisiting the old place as he had come.

  "No wonder I felt that the road down the mountain was not right, it turned out that I got the slope of the mountain wrong. Otherwise, this should be where you can see the highway below! My car is still parked on the side of the road." Yao Feng muttered to himself as he walked around the cliff, feeling more and more uneasy with each step.

  The surroundings were all unfamiliar, and the scene was completely different from when Yao Fang arrived. Yao Fang was also getting more and more fearful, he felt that he had been possessed by evil spirits.

  But the more this happened, the more it sparked his curiosity. He finally found a slope and climbed down the rock wall with his hands and feet, only to discover that the highway was gone, and his car was nowhere to be seen.

  "Where is this? Where's the road?" Yao Feng muttered to himself, feeling a growing sense of fear in the face of these unreasonable and unfamiliar sights.

  "Reporting host, this is 1875."

  "Who are you, you, you? 1875? Qing Dynasty? Time-traveling?... No! No! I must be... hallucinating! That little nurse was right, I really should go see a psychiatrist."

  "I am Blood Soul, sorry, recently my gradual formation seems to have made your body feel uncomfortable."

  "......Are you saying that my recent numbness and stiffness are all caused by you?!"

  Blood and soul speechless, it's considered as default.

  "What kind of monster are you! What do you want to do! I'm still young! Don't want to die yet! Please don't bother me!" Yao Feng finally begged without regard for his dignity.

  "To put it simply, I am a trans-temporal antimatter parasitic life form. I can allow you to freely shuttle between two parallel time-spaces. The cost of each crossing is 100 milliliters of your fresh blood, which is called the Blood Sacrifice."

  Yao Fang's mind was completely messed up, he furiously shouted: "Isn't this the same as that book called '1949 I Come from the Future'? Do you think I'm a three-year-old kid? Are you going to tell me next that you're the divine manifestation of the condensed spirit of billions of Chinese souls?"

  Xue Hun didn't respond to Yao Fang's monologue, and instead said calmly: "This is the Qing Dynasty, please be careful, host. If you die, I'll disappear too. After growing for tens of thousands of years, I don't want to be eliminated at birth. Alright, just call me when you're ready to go back."

  "Hold on! Hold on!" Yao Feng hastily called out to Xue Hun, after all, he had too many questions that he wanted to ask Xue Hun at this moment.

  For the next half hour, Yao Weng was in a state of shock and engaged in a silent mental exchange with this mysterious blood soul in his mind. After confirming the identity of this intelligent life form, Yao Weng spent half a day thinking deeply before accepting this surreal reality.

  He walked with difficulty, hesitantly heading in the direction of the old city of Qingdao.

  He wanted to confirm whether he had really developed schizophrenia or if he had actually traveled back in time to the Qing Dynasty.