Lu Yingjiu took half a step back.
His eyes kept moving around, and I didn't know what he was looking at.
“Click—”
“Click—”
With it as the center, black cracks spread out, covering the walls and ceiling. Soon, the whole room was covered with spider-web-like cracks.
A lot of wall paint had fallen off, breaking into white pieces and powder, piling up a few centimeters at Lu Yingjiu's feet.
He looked around.
Behind every peeling patch of wall is an eye.
They rotate slowly, densely packed together, covering every corner, enough to drive anyone with trypophobia crazy.
59 Eyes
This word appeared in Lu Yingjiu's mind for no reason.
He didn't know why, but he just knew that there were 59 eyes looking at him. The tide of eyes overwhelmed him, and he felt the suffocation of his lungs being squeezed.
I can't breathe.
Heavy eyelids -
“…Mr. Lu.”
"Mr. Lu, look at me."
"Lu Yingjiu, are you listening?"
“Huh?” Lu Yingjiu came back to his senses.
The sun was shining brightly in front of him, and the breeze gently blew the curtains. He and a woman sat face to face, with the seat behind them soft.
He wondered confusedly, where am I
Wasn't I just at home, looking at the eyes in the wall? How did I end up in this place
The woman held a notebook in her hand and pushed up her glasses: "Mr. Lu, how often does this happen?"
"…What's the situation?" Lu Yingjiu asked.
The woman said: "That's right. I often see eyes in the walls of my house."
Lu Yingjiu: “…I don’t know.”
The woman smiled, lowered her head and scribbled something on the paper, then said, "You've been under too much pressure lately. Maybe your anxiety disorder has triggered strong hallucinations. I'll prescribe some medicine for you. Remember to take it on time. Let's stop here for today."
When she finished writing, she stood up and prepared to see him off and drink wine.
Lu Yingjiu suddenly asked, "What day is today?"
"May 31st," the woman replied.
In Lu Yingjiu's memory, the day when he finished the commission and saw his eyes again at home was May 14th.
A full half month passed in between.
And he has no memory at all.
Lu Yingjiu took out a diagnosis of severe anxiety disorder and a pile of medicines, and stood in the hot afternoon sun.
People are coming and going around.
He felt a huge sense of loss in his heart.
The car stopped on the side of the road and he drove home.
When I opened the door, two cats came to greet me with their tails erect.
Lu Yingjiu smiled, squatted down, touched their heads, and subconsciously looked at the wall.
The walls are clean and there is nothing on them.
Could it really be his hallucination
The days that followed were all the same.
He still exorcises ghosts every day and works overtime at the Qingdeng Society. The society knows that he is in a bad mood and has tried its best to reduce his workload. Xia Heping also reminds him to take medicine every day.
Life returned to normal.
However, when he returned home every day, he would still look at the wall subconsciously.
Every day the walls remain intact.
Purely white.
During dinner one day, Lu Yingjiu asked casually, "By the way, how is the old man we met last time? Is he still living there?"
Xia Heping looked at him, hesitant to speak, and after a while he replied in a low voice: "Chief Lu, you don't know, he is dead."
"Dead?" Lu Yingjiu paused.
"Yes." Xia Heping spoke with great difficulty, and was saddened by the incident. "A week after we found him, the old house caught fire and he couldn't escape. All the animals he raised died as well."
Lu Yingjiu was stunned for several seconds.
Finally he sighed and lowered his head.
There were a pair of eyes on the table, staring at him!
He stood up subconsciously, and took out the talisman paper in his hand.
“…Mr. Lu.”
"Mr. Lu, please answer my question."
"You're really okay, aren't you?"
It's sunny.
It was the clinic again, and Lu Yingjiu still didn't know how he got here. His memory was disconnected, and he only remembered that he was having dinner the previous second.
The woman pushed up her glasses and said, “Mr. Lu, have you had a good rest recently?”
“…Yes.” Lu Yingjiu answered in a daze, “I’ll try to rest.”
"You must be under a lot of pressure at work," the woman said. "I suggest you take a leave and rest for a while."
"I can't take leave." Lu Yingjiu said.
What if he had been on leave for so long and another commission came in? If he could get a better result and save more people, then he would go no matter what he said.
The woman pushed up her glasses again. "Your stress mainly comes from work, so I sincerely suggest you do this. You have severe PTSD, so you shouldn't touch that kind of thing for a short time, so as to avoid... unnecessary consequences."
ptsd, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Many of Lu Yingjiu's colleagues have had this problem - most of the time, it was because of their negligence and incompetence that they failed to save the client, or even watched the client die in front of them.
They either stopped exorcising ghosts, or suffered from sleepless nights, nightmares, or developed extreme anxiety.
Lu Yingjiu has always been a very strong person. He can control his emotions by himself and has never had such signs.
As if she saw through his confusion, the woman said, "Didn't you meet an old man named Cai at work?"
"Yes." Lu Yingjiu nodded.
"He died in a fire," the woman said, "along with a dozen animals he kept at home. It's because you didn't drive away the evil spirit."
Lu Yingjiu hesitated and said, "... Is it because I didn't drive away the evil spirit?"
"Well, you were careless and didn't notice that there was another ghost in the house." The woman said, "You told me all this. That's how the fire started. You never got out of this shadow. So, you need to rest, a long time."
The road is filled with wine and I am in a trance.
Is it really that surprising
"Plop, plop, plop—"
"Plop, plop, plop—"
That heartbeat came again.
He went home, and after much hesitation, he finally asked the Qingdeng Society for a half-month leave.
In the past half month, Lu Yingjiu has not come into contact with any ghosts.
Every day he watered the flowers and fed the cat at home, and ordered all the delicious takeouts nearby. The pace of life suddenly slowed down, and he was not used to it at first, but soon he accepted the slow pace of life.
He began to have strange dreams.
The dream contained completely different scenes.
Sometimes, he dreamed of the vast ocean, where the coastal ship was as helpless as a leaf, tossed by the waves.
The people on the freighter were not sailors, but exorcists. The spirit ape sat on their shoulders, its golden hair wet by the rain. In each of their hands was a complicated talisman paper, burning in the wind, echoing the formation on the seabed.
Then golden light bloomed on the seabed, illuminating the lingering dark clouds.
Sometimes he dreamed of mountains burned by fire.
The sanatorium collapsed in the fire, leaving only ruins. A red snake lay across the mountain, surrounded by raging fire, and the mountains were all red as far as the eye could see.
The same bright formation lit up, spreading across the mountains and fields, shining brightly.
Then the people standing in the mountains, those strangers, began to talk to him. Lu Yingjiu could not hear their voices, but only saw their anxious expressions.
These wild dreams haunted him.
Whenever Lu Yingjiu woke up from a dream in the middle of the night, he would always see a black cat sitting beside his pillow, rubbing its furry head against him, with complex emotions in its scarlet eyes.
"… What do you want to say?" Lu Yingjiu couldn't help but smile and touched it. "What do you want to tell me?"
The black cat didn't answer.
—It didn’t answer at all, but just wagged its tail and licked Lu Yingjiu’s palm.
Lu Yingjiu rested for half a month and his condition improved.
The day his sick leave ended, he got up early as usual to prepare for the Qingdeng Festival.
When he got downstairs, the sunlight was so bright that he couldn't open his eyes.
People were coming and going around him, and he half-closed his eyes to try to adjust to the light—
"Mr. Lu? You are distracted again."
"Mr. Lu, you're still not in good condition. Please rest for a few more days."
"Does your delusion... still exist?"
"Delusion?" Lu Ying said drunkenly, "What delusion?"
He returned to the conversation room and sat on a soft chair with a cup of warm water at hand.
The off-white curtains fluttered in the wind, and the laughter of children could be heard from afar.
The woman leaned forward and looked at him intently: "It's just a delusion about ghosts and monsters."
"Do you still consider yourself a 'ghost exorcist'?"
Lu Yingjiu: "… If I'm not a ghost exorcist, what am I?"
The woman sighed softly, "There are no ghosts in this world, nor are there any 'ghost exorcists' or 'Green Lantern Society'. All of these are just fantasies. You don't even know how to use talismans, let alone exorcise ghosts at the risk of your life."
"Mr. Lu, you have to recognize the truth and actively seek treatment, then you can get better."
She handed over a small bag filled with pills: "The medicine is the same as last time, remember to take it on time."
Lu Yingjiu: “…”
Lu Yingjiu said: "Didn't you just tell me last time that I have PTSD and shouldn't do this anymore? You are admitting that there are ghosts in the world."
“Not so easy.” The woman continued to sigh, “Mr. Lu, your delusions are getting worse. I’ll contact your family.”
She was looking through her notebook, apparently looking for contact information.
"No need to look for it." Lu Yingjiu said, "I don't have any family."
"What about your friends?" The woman looked at him.
At this moment, Lu Yingjiu wanted to blurt out a few names.
But his mind seemed to be stolen, and he couldn't remember who those people were at all. Finally, he said, "I don't have any friends either."
The woman said, "Then you should go back and rest early. You live alone, so please take care of your health. If you have my phone number, feel free to contact me if anything happens."
“…Okay.” Lu Yingjiu nodded, “I’ll remember that.”
After leaving the clinic, he drove to where the Qingdeng Society was located.
It was empty, with nothing in it, except for a run-down alley and a few dirty stray cats.
I called the phone number I remembered, but it was either unavailable or answered by a stranger. The little ghosts that used to roam the streets were gone, as if they had never existed.
This is a world without ghosts.
Lu Yingjiu led two people home, one went upstairs, and one stood in the living room.
The cow cat is gone, the talisman paper in the drawer is gone, and the amulet hanging at the door is gone.
It turned out that everything was just his fantasy.
So what is real in this world
He imagined the eyes in the wall.
He imagined ghosts and a dangerous, busy and fulfilling job.
He imagined friends and family, old colleagues, and all kinds of wonderful life...
Now the fantasy has been shattered.
Everything he did was denied.
Lu Yingjiu was alone, standing in the dim living room with pills in hand, until the dusk completely submerged the earth.
"Meow—" a familiar voice came.
Lu Ying was stunned and looked back in disbelief.
The black cat came around the corner and rubbed his trouser leg affectionately.
Lu Yingjiu's eyes were a little moist for some reason. He picked up the black cat, touched its soft fur, and murmured, "Is it true..."
The black cat wouldn't answer, licking his palm tenderly.
In the days that followed, the condition became more serious.
Lu Yingjiu's whole world was distorted.
The clock hands spun backwards, the bus station was loaded with ships, and the accumulated water flowed back into the black clouds in the sky. The whole city was talking, sometimes it was a few months of daylight, and sometimes it was a few months of polar night.
The lamps grew eyes. The ones looking up were spotlights, and the ones looking down were street lamps. The stairs grew mouths, and they would sing with every step down. He could just sing a whole scale from his home to the fourth floor. The door handles grew noses, and could smell who was in front of them, so people no longer needed keys and padlocks.
The fire brigade put out the sun with water, and the thief stole a corner of the moon. Fish drowned in the ocean, and the ground was covered with dead birds, whose entrails flowed out and bloomed into beautiful flowers.
The dead can often be seen on the road when drinking.
Walking on the street at midnight, his shadow split into three, broke free from the ground, and followed closely behind him.
There were monkeys on the top of the wall, red snakes on the ground, peacocks spreading their feathers under the moon, and dogs with big ears lying on the street. These animals that died in the fire came back silently, watching him, gazing at him.
"Have you ever seen the world through the eyes of Heaven?"
A voice suddenly sounded.
Old man Cai was standing on the street corner, with no expression on his face.
His face changes with every passing second.
Young and old, handsome and ugly...
It was as if countless figures were gathered on him.
Lu Yingjiu had already gotten used to these illusions, and replied calmly: "It's all my imagination anyway. It's whatever I thought it would be."
"So what does it look like in your imagination?" the old man asked.
"It is well-ordered, and everything in the world is clearly planned. When you look at an object, you can know its origin and destination; when you look at a person, you can know his birth, aging, illness and death." Lu Yingjiu thought for a while, "After all, it is the law."
The old man shook his head: "No, that's not right."
"What's wrong?" Lu Yingjiu smiled.
The old man pointed around and said: "The world you see now is the world created by the Heavenly Dao. It is chaotic and distorted."
Lu Yingjiu: “Hmm?”
"This world was born from chaos. Time, space, all forms and souls are meaningless to it, so there is no need to 'see'. It needs to see the most original appearance of the world and glimpse the truth in the chaos."
Lu Yingjiu said, “I don’t understand.”
Old man: “…”
Lu Yingjiu added, "I am mentally ill, so I assume that you are some kind of person I imagined, trying to preach to me and making me sicker." He patted the old man on the shoulder and said, "If you are not my imagination, then you seem to be sicker than me. Go home and take some medicine."
Old man: “…”
Seeing that Lu Yingjiu was getting farther and farther away, he shouted: "Aren't you curious about why you can see the 'world in the eyes of the Heavenly Dao'?!"
"Because I have delusions." Lu Yingjiu said, "But I think I can still see the world in your eyes."
Old man: “…” He was almost furious, “Look around!”
Lu Yingjiu looked around.
The animals continued to stare at him silently, their eyes dim, as if urging him.
The old man caught up with him.
This time, the old man's face became young and handsome, looking like a complete stranger. He spoke again: "These - including me, are all your subconscious, reminding you that it's time to go back."
"Where are you going back to?" Lu Yingjiu asked.
"Go home," he said, "to find the one you love, and the one you love."
"Lu Yingjiu, there are still people waiting for you. Your journey should not end here."
"But I—but we can't teach you how to distinguish between truth and falsehood." He looked deeply at Lu Yingjiu, his expression changing in a thousand ways. "Heaven denies everything you do, but that doesn't mean that those things are really illusions."
"But," he smiled, "you've already noticed it."
"Plop, plop, plop—"
"Plop, plop, plop—"
There was that heartbeat again.
That day, Lu Yingjiu returned home along the twisting streets.
Take a shower, take medicine, and go to bed.
He began to dream again.
A dreamy blue-green peacock spread its wings and flew over the empty building, its tail feathers entangled with the glow of the formation.
In the dream, on the coastal bridge, the woman fought with the servants alone, and burst into tears after seeing a burned car.
Lu Ying drank the wine over and over again.
The last dream was set in the eerie ghost world.
He looked at the man in black clothes, handsome and cold, with a wave of his hand, a blood mist rose for miles - he crushed hundreds of ghosts again and again, crushing bones into the dust. Finally, the man turned around and looked at him from a distance, his eyes seemed to contain thousands of words, and were full of tenderness and love.
"… Respectfully." He called out in his sleep.
My mind gradually becomes clearer.
He seemed to remember something.
When waking up from the dream, Lu Yingjiu subconsciously wanted to find the trace of the black cat.
In these crazy days, the black cat was his only comfort, his only reality.
But it's different from usual.
The black cat did not respond to his call.
Lu Yingjiu thought that it might have been trapped in the living room, so he got out of bed and opened the bedroom door.
There was a sticky liquid on the door handle.
He turned on the light and saw that his hands were covered in blood.
Not only that, the entire living room and the entire room were covered in blood, and the wall was cracked. 59's eyes moved around, staring at the center of the living room.
In the center is a dead black cat.
It lay quietly, a large pool of blood gushing out from under its body and flowing to Lu Yingjiu's feet.
It's dead
The eyes spoke silently.
Now I am truly single.
Lu Yingjiu: “…”
Something is wrong.
Something is very wrong.
A strong thought lingered in my mind: "He will not leave me like this."
He will always be by my side, as promised.
This sense of disconnection made his mind clear. His breathing became smooth, his heartbeat became regular, and his chaotic thoughts became extremely clear.
Lu Yingjiu walked over silently, knelt beside the black cat, and gently stroked its scarred body.
Then he stood up again.
If it happened to other people, the death of Black Cat would definitely be the last straw that broke the camel's back.
But his mindset had changed.
He ignored the horrified eyes and went back to the bedroom and opened the drawer.
There are thick notebooks in the drawer.
When you open it, you'll see pages full of dense runes and formations!
—These things have appeared in his dreams.
But those dreams were so blurry and dim that he couldn't even see the faces of people, let alone the fine patterns of the formations that would make anyone dizzy. Every time he saw them, he would just glance at them hastily, without any extra time to observe them carefully.
Besides, given his mental state, it is difficult for him to even have a normal rest.
But he actually drew those formations!
Not even the slightest mistake!
Lu Yingjiu recorded the complex lines in every crazy dream and in those quick glances.
For the parts that I couldn't see clearly, I drew them out of thin air based on theoretical knowledge, instinct, and perhaps some subconscious memory.
Just like that, over the course of several months, he slowly restored the four array centers in an impossible way.
At this moment, he picked up the pen and added the last part of the battle eye - that was what he saw in his dream just now.
The shapes of the eye of the formation were connected to form the shapes of a peacock, a monkey, a dog-eared beast, and a long snake, which corresponded exactly to the animals he had encountered.
This can't be a coincidence.
It couldn't possibly be his imagination.
The needle eye was already complete, and he saw the clue: the purpose of these four array eyes was to protect.
To protect something.
For example... someone who is deeply trapped in hallucinations.
Lu Yingjiu took a deep breath and put down the pen and paper.
For the first time in so many days, he truly felt that he was alive.
He took a long breath—
"Mr. Lu, do you still have delusions?"
"Mr. Lu?"
"Are you listening to me?"
The sun was warm in the clinic. The woman pushed up her glasses and asked, "Are you taking your medication regularly?"
“…No.” Lu Yingjiu replied, “I threw away all the medicine.”
The woman gasped: "How could you do this! If your condition gets worse, you will be forced to go to the hospital. For your health..."
"Who am I?" Lu Yingjiu asked.
Woman: “…Huh?”
"Who am I?" Lu Yingjiu asked again, leaning forward with his fingers touching each other.
Steeple gesture.
Represents confidence and aggressiveness.
He looked at the woman expressionlessly. At this moment, the roles of patient and doctor had been reversed.
The woman was obviously flustered. "You are my patient, being treated for severe paranoia. You have invented a world full of ghosts, and you are a so-called 'exorcist.'"
"So-called 'ghost exorcist'." Lu Yingjiu smiled. "Then I'm curious, does the talisman paper have any effect on me?"
The talisman flew out and began to burn under the woman's horrified gaze.
The fire spread quickly, setting the entire clinic ablaze, and also the entire world ablaze. People were burned and screaming, their eyes popped out of their bodies, and Lu Yingjiu sat quietly in the red.
He said: "There are two failures."
"First, you underestimated my ability. You didn't expect me to be able to restore the formation, nor did you expect me to have so many things to worry about. After all, I am a genius, right? You look down on me like this, which makes me very unhappy;"
"Second, let Jing Xian die, trying to give me a fatal blow. But how could he die like this? He was so powerful and omnipotent, and he promised that he would never leave me, and I was willing to believe everything he said."
"Besides, even if it's death," Lu Yingjiu smiled, "such a love-brained man would probably feel resentful if he didn't die by my side. He can't allow this to happen. He wants to die in my arms."
The woman could no longer answer and was engulfed by the flames.
Lu Yingjiu opened his hand, there was an old wound on the back of his hand, a medal from fighting ghosts; he stretched his muscles, his tall body showed the strength and elegance of a veteran of hundreds of battles; he touched his heart, it was beating hard, showing the passion and sincerity in his heart.
How could these be fake
It’s just that he hasn’t noticed it until now, it’s just that he has been deceived all along.
Countless faces flashed by.
Jing Xian, Ye Feng, Chu Banyang, Chen Zheng, Chen Xiaoling...
The flames burned fiercely, overturning this illusory world.
Everything I love, he thought, is real.
—They are waiting for me to come home.
…
Hundreds of ghosts are still surging in the air.
In the illusion, it seemed like several months had passed, but in reality, only a few seconds had passed.
In these few seconds, Lu Yingjiu's figure was swallowed by a thick fog.
It was extremely dark in the thick fog, with only a beam of light falling from the sky and landing in front of him.
In the beam of light, a translucent golden figure slowly descended.
Its face and body shape kept changing, and finally became the same as Lu Yingjiu, with a deep red heart in its chest.
"Plop, plop, plop—"
"Plop, plop, plop—"
The sound of heartbeats could be heard.
It reached out its hand, stroked Lu Yingjiu's face almost gently, and leaned over to touch its forehead with his.
Come on, it said silently.
The golden light gradually merged with his body.
In the next few seconds, Lu Yingjiu suddenly opened his eyes!
Without waiting for the humanoid to react, his left hand gripped its neck like an iron clamp while his right hand tightly grasped its heart.
“Plop, plop, plop!”
The heartbeat quickened and the figure struggled frantically.
"You didn't expect it." Lu Yingjiu stared at it intently, and raised the corner of his mouth, "I'm back."
The traces of the gods swept through him, his eyes were dyed with silver light, and he crushed the pounding heart with his bare hands! !