Chapter 1: Die with Dignity

  My name is Lí Shèn, I am 23 years old. From the day I died until now, it has been one year and thirteen days.

  That's right, you didn't misread it, what I meant is that it has been almost a year since I died.

  One year ago, I was just an ordinary schizophrenia patient living in a mental hospital. One year later today, I stand under this gloomy sky with an extremely unusual and eerie posture.

  At this moment, I can be described as a "bloody sorceress" without exaggeration. Like the sexy and seductive female demons in those hot-blooded online games that men love to play, I wear a blood-red, floor-length dress that perfectly accentuates my curves, with a nearly ankle-length hem that flows like vibrant silk around my ankles as I move. My feet are always clad in about 10cm high red stilettos, but even so, I can still run effortlessly under the night sky, my long, fiery red hair dancing behind me without a hint of wind.

  I often run wildly like a blood-red cheetah that has lost control on such nights, sprinting through the streets of this place, and sometimes when I run fast, the places I pass by seem to be streaked with a trail of blood in the night sky.

  I'm used to this passionate and uninhibited sprint, in the dead of night, using this almost cruelly beautiful way to vent my inner repression. The first time I updated because although I wanted to escape, I couldn't understand, but life over the past year has made me deeply realize that I am no longer a person. Not even a species, not even one that appears in any myth or story. I have become a lonely, ethereal existence.

  And every time I think of this, a thread of helpless sorrow will flash through my heart.

  Today, I'm again speeding through the streets of this city on such a dull and dark night. In my mind, however, I couldn't help but recall the scene from a year ago when I first arrived here.

  One year ago, I was just an ordinary junior female student. If I had to say what made me different from others, it would probably be that not long after entering my junior year, I developed dissociative identity disorder. For more and faster chapters, please visit [website]. In fact, my personality has always been a bit strange, but my mental illness is not severe, although sometimes I have some quirks, compulsions, or occasional mild emotionalization, it doesn't affect my normal life.

  But this minor illness that I had never paid attention to suddenly brought about a drastic change in my life, like a long-plotted villain.

  One day, for some reason, my second personality suddenly erupted, and on that night, I was completely controlled by another personality. With a knife in hand, I stabbed the chest of a senior student who had been secretly in love with me for many years. As for everything before and after this incident, I don't remember anything. All I know is that after the knife kissed the senior's body, I fainted and when I woke up, I was already lying in a psychiatric hospital.

  My doctor is a stunning mixed-blood, Sino-American mixed-blood. However, he looks more like a Chinese person, although his hair is black and his eyes aren't completely blue, the mixed-blooded aura still makes him shine with an unusual light. But when I gave him admiring glances, and he told me that it was I who killed my beloved senior with my own hands, I felt like closing my eyes would make everything go dark.

  I used to love him so much, but because of the so-called schizophrenia, before I had a chance to say "till death do us part" and "grow old together", in order to prove the spirit of "love even after death", I stabbed a sharp knife into his heart.

  And my memory of reality only stays at the scene where two plump nurse girls held down my convulsive fit, and the handsome doctor inserted a huge needle into my slender arm.

  I soon lost consciousness after being kissed by the needle, and when I woke up again without knowing how long it had been, I was already in this ghostly place where I am now.

  In my memory, at the moment I woke up, I was standing in the very center of this city. I just stood there, as if I had been standing there all along, and then suddenly woke up.

  The city seems to have no blue sky, the whole sky is gray, there is no sun, but there is light, it's just unknown where the light comes from.

  When I opened my eyes, all I saw was people coming and going on the street where I was, and the first person to enter my field of vision was an old man.

  The old man was an ordinary old man, what's extraordinary is his head.

  I stared at his eyes on his head, slowly widening, a fear of seeing monsters as soon as I woke up flooded my heart.

  I am terrified because his head has no skullcap.

  No, no skull cap. Just like that Japanese woman in the old movie "Kill Bill" who had her head cut off, or that man in "Hannibal" who was later cut open by Hannibal, this old man's skull cap is also gone. Because he is shorter than me, I can clearly see his brain exposed on top of his head due to the lack of a skull cap, still with blood red.

  Then, without hesitation, a thunderous cry burst forth: "AHHHHHHH!!!!!!" From my abdominal cavity, it shot up to the top of my skull at incredible speed, transforming into a dolphin-like sound that echoed through every street and alley. I was even startled by my own scream, feeling my scalp begin to tremble, and I had an urge to reach out and touch the top of my head to see if it was still there.

  Along with my dolphin-like voice, there was another panicked and shrill low-pitched dolphin sound, also a sentence: "Ah----!!" It was just this old man who made it, and because the tone wasn't high enough, it was completely overpowered by me, but I still heard it.

  He seemed even more panicked than I was, staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.

  "What's your name! It should be me who's calling!" I stammered, stretching out my hand and tremblingly pointing at his head.

  "No, no, I'm just surprised to see a living person here after so long. Don't be afraid, little girl..." The old man's eyes seemed to have a faint glimmer of tears as he looked at me with a pitiful expression.

  The corners of my mouth twitched and I seemed to have become a completely different person because I really didn't know how to understand his words.

  In the midst of convulsing and trembling, I seemed to suddenly realize something, then immediately panicked and looked around at the people walking on this street.

  I felt a sudden urge to fall backwards and kiss the ground at a 90-degree angle.

  Those who exist everywhere here cannot be called human beings.

  They each have their own shapes and types, there are female knights wearing ancient costumes, white-collar workers wearing modern clothes, Dongdongs that look like Superman, and a bunch of zombies. There are even Dongdongs with mixed limbs of humans and animals, and is that a vampire? Or is that a tall Avatar over there? And many more combinations of species that break through my imagination as a human being. For more and faster chapters, please go to...

  I don't know how to put it, but everything that can be imagined and things that cannot be thought of are all mixed together here. It's as if different time and space have intersected and merged, with the heavens, earth, and people in discord, and eerie things everywhere. However, these creatures here seem just like ordinary people, walking on the streets, occasionally passing by me, looking at me with slightly surprised eyes.

  In comparison, an old man who is just tearfully staring with no head on top doesn't count as scary at all, and is even quite silly.

  The adjective flashed through my mind, and as I looked at the old man's head in front of me, a wave of nausea surged into my throat.

  But I tried hard to swallow back the sudden feeling of nausea, and then I reacted to this incomprehensible scene in a way that a normal person would.

  I raised my left hand and gave my pretty left cheek a loud slap. With a crisp slapping sound, I couldn't help but exclaim: "Damn, it really hurts!"

  It turns out I wasn't dreaming after all.

  But if I wasn't dreaming, how should I explain the scene in front of me? I stared blankly at the old man, my mind deciding whether I should faint with my face to the ground.

  "When people first arrive here, they glow. It's been a long time since we've seen a living person, so I was a bit surprised to see you glowing just now. Don't worry, little girl, the leader will come soon and take you to the great hall to explain everything." The old man seemed to be trying to comfort me, who had received a strong stimulus, and even trembled and stretched out his hand to me. Then I found that his head began to slowly grow a fontanelle, and as soon as he finished speaking, the top of his head returned to its normal human shape. And at this time, he seemed to be just an ordinary old man."

  But his change didn't comfort me, instead it left me standing there with a stupid expression on my face.

  The old man was just about to continue speaking to me when suddenly a halo of light began to emerge around me, the halo surrounded me and gradually enveloped me.

  This halo of light somehow brought me a sense of security at this eerie moment, and I quickly thought to myself: 1. Probably I'm going to cross back over. 2. I'm going to wake up. 3. Maybe I just died and now I'm going to come back to life.

  As expected, my imagination proved my IQ. When I couldn't help but sneer at the cliché of being greeted with a halo no matter what situation, it only took about one second for me to discover that everything around me had changed.