Zhou Sheng said, “You want to get out?”
“No.” Yu Hao said, “I want to look for a door. A door that can lead to the next layer of consciousness.”
Zhou Sheng didn’t interrupt and just looked quietly at Yu Hao.
Yu Hao suddenly turned around and looked at the charcoal stove in the middle of the room. Right at that moment, the exchange of consciousness with the Golden Crow Wheel started up! Yu Hao once again sensed some advice from the Golden Crow Wheel!
“I get it now! We still need a key!” Yu Hao immediately said, “A lighter! Do you have it?”
Zhou Sheng motioned for Yu Hao to open his hand up, and he tapped on the middle of this palm. A lighter appeared in Yu Hao’s hand. He walked forward, crouched down, and lit up the charcoal stove.
The charcoal stove glowed red, and the room began to change! At this moment, Yu Hao knew that he may have touched upon the truth…
The red light transformed into a mist. Zhou Sheng was on guard as he watched the charcoal stove, and in the next moment, the lit charcoal stove was suddenly extinguished. Their surroundings started twisting, the room morphed, and giant, monstrous-like mouths appeared on the walls. Zhou Sheng said, “Be careful!”
Yu Hao, “Wait!”
He slowly stepped forward, raised his hand, and a silver light burst out from his hand. Under the illumination of that silver light, the transformation of the walls gradually settled down, and a door appeared.
Zhou Sheng, “Fuck, what’s the meaning of this?”
Yu Hao looked back and intertwined his fingers with Zhou Sheng’s. He was about to go forward to push the door open, but Zhou Sheng had his hand on the door handle before him.
“Open it and see?” Zhou Sheng asked.
Yu Hao’s breathing was about to stop. He nodded slowly.
Zhou Sheng pressed the handle down and gently pushed the door outward.
A bizarre light shone in, following which, a strange and distorted space appeared outside the door! Fragmented planes, multicoloured lusters, as well as twisted cities. This door opened in mid-air. The two of them stood at the door and looked around; no matter which direction they looked in, there seemed to be no end in sight!
Yu Hao, “The collective unconscious, this place really does exist!”
Zhou Sheng closed the door. Yu Hao said, “Wait, let me take another look! I saw something…at its deepest part! Where the light came from!”
“Don’t.” Zhou Sheng said, “It feels unsafe to me. The Golden Crow Wheel reminded me to not step out.”
Yu Hao, “But the Golden Crow Wheel didn’t say that to me.”
“Don’t take the risk,” Zhou Sheng seemed a bit angry, “It’s not that I’m not letting you go but only go after thinking it through. What kind of meaning does this hold for you?”
“Okay.” Yu Hao said, “Let’s stop here for today ba, leave the room behind.”
Zhou Sheng reminded, “You’ll have nightmares.”
“I won’t.” Yu Hao insisted, “If you destroy it again, I might forget everything that happened here…wait, have you destroyed it before?”
Zhou Sheng and Yu Hao fell silent in a split second. Both of them looked at each other. Yu Hao said in a low voice, “You erased this room from my memory?”
“Yes.” Zhou Sheng said calmly.
Yu Hao said, “Is that what I asked for?”
“Because you had a nightmare.” Zhou Sheng didn’t answer the question.
“When?” Yu Hao asked again.
Zhou Sheng, “The first time you came to my house for the New Year.”
Yu Hao nodded. Zhou Sheng was a little uneasy, he asked, “Are you angry?”
“No.” Yu Hao shook his head. At this moment, he realised that another door appeared in the cement room, but it faced another direction in its original position.
Yu Hao pushed the door open, and sunshine shone in. They had returned to the surface world of his memories.
“This is so amazing.” Yu Hao exclaimed.
“This memory was restored,” Zhou Sheng walked under the sun and said to Yu Hao, “So it appeared on the surface world, where it should have been.”
They were in a gingko forest, right in the back garden of the palace. There were no NPCs nearby, and the entire scene appeared both tranquil and strange. Yu Hao said, “It’s so close to my totem?”
“It would be too odd for a place like this to appear in the palace.” Zhou Sheng explained, “It’s not that I don’t respect you.”
“Indeed.” Yu Hao said, “If it were me, I would want to move this away too. That’s it then, I still need to think about it more, good…”
Suddenly, a violent tremor started, and there was an upheaval in the dream world. Yu Hao and Zhou Sheng woke up one after another.
“Yu Hao?” Fu Liqun’s face appeared in front of him.
“I’m sorry, I thought you guys shouldn’t be doing anything important.” Chen Yekai said outside the door, “But a sudden incident cropped up, I don’t think it can be dragged out any longer.”
Zhou Sheng got up. Yu Hao looked at his phone. Chen Yekai had called him several times in the middle of the night, but his phone was on silent mode, so he hadn’t answered any of them.
Ou Qihang said, “Were you guys in a dream? Why didn’t you call us too?”
Yu Hao said, “It’s just something trivial…What happened?”
Chen Yekai showed Yu Hao his phone. On it was the message he sent out in the middle of the night last night—【Huang Ting’s missing】.
Yu Hao sobered up in an instant. 5.30 AM, Chen Yekai had obviously rushed over and didn’t sleep all night.
“Before Huang Ting disappeared, the last person he saw was you.” Chen Yekai asked, “Did he say where he was going?”
Yu Hao was still not entirely lucid. He struggled to shake his head. Zhou Sheng heated a few cups of milk in the microwave, placed them on the table, and said, “I was about to look for you guys too, just got back last night, so I haven’t had the time to. Now that everyone’s here, let’s exchange the information that we have ba.”
Yu Hao forced himself to drink some milk first, then said quickly, “The inside story is really complicated…but I didn’t expect this, why did he go missing? Why did they catch him?”
“Speak slowly,” Ou Qihang said, “Don’t be anxious.”
Yu Hao started recalling from the afternoon when he met Huang Ting. Fu Liqun had just heard the inside story as well, and when everyone heard the part where Huang Ting was sick, they all fell silent for a moment.
“He asked me to contact a doctor for him.” Chen Yekai said, “Is he that ill? Have you seen the medication he’s taking?”
Yu Hao shrugged and narrated almost everything about Huang Ting and the Golden Crow Wheel. Everyone was silent. Zhou Sheng looked at Chen Yekai and said, “Not much different from what we had guessed.”
Chen Yekai looked grave. Fu Liqun said, “Ask that doctor what he’s suffering from.”
Chen Yekai nodded, then looked down and started texting on WeChat. Ou Qihang said, “He won’t be locked up by his own superior, and it wouldn’t be Sheng Ge’s superior either…”
“Qin Guodong’s pretty familiar with him.” Zhou Sheng said, “He hasn’t even locked me up yet, let alone him.”
“The only possibility left is that guy surnamed Zhao.” Ou Qihang said, “I’ve seen him before, not long after what happened with us.”
Fu Liqun said, “Something feels wrong.”
Ou Qihang said, “I think so too.”
Yu Hao raised his hand, “Me too.”
“Me too??” Chen Yekai said anxiously.
Yu Hao, “I’ve felt like something was off from the very beginning. It’s too weird. Ever since we left the south, no one has come looking for us. Regarding this matter, Ren Chong, Zhao Liang, and Qin Guodong should all understand it very clearly, yet not one of them tried to launch a preemptive strike by coming to look for Zhou Sheng — something must be wrong.”
Ou Qihang said, “Could they have some sort of special conspiracy, so they’re afraid of alarming us?”
Zhou Sheng, “Maybe. Kaikai, did they send you the medical record?”
“What does it say?” Fu Liqun asked.
“Aplastic anemia.” Chen Yekai said, “Damn it, that guy told me it was pneumonia!”
“Doesn’t he have health insurance?” Yu Hao said, “He should be able to afford treatment ba.”
Chen Yekai chatted with the doctor for awhile and didn’t even look up as he replied, “After he saw the doctor for it, he waited for a bed to become available. Bone marrow matching was suggested, but he didn’t even recuperate properly…” Then a call came. Chen Yekai answered, chatted for a while, and said, “Yes, right, I’ll think of a way to find him.”
After hanging up, everyone stared at Chen Yekai. Chen Yekai said, “Ren Chong.”
Zhou Sheng, “Has Zhao Liang looked for you?”
Chen Yekai was stunned. “How do you know?”
The corners of Zhou Sheng’s mouth lifted slightly. He and Chen Yekai looked at each other. Chen Yekai answered, “He came to our college in person during the day yesterday.”
Everyone was stunned at once. Yu Hao asked, “What did he say?”
Chen Yekai answered, “He invited me out for a cup of coffee. I was busy with class then and didn’t have the time to entertain him, so I refused.”
Yu Hao thought that they really had escaped a calamity. If Chen Yekai had agreed to leave with him, he may have been locked up just like Huang Ting. However, this proved that Zhao Liang had already lost some of his power and connections within the organisation, so he didn’t dare take away and detain people in broad daylight.
“Go into dreams to find Huang Ting?” Chen Yekai asked Zhou Sheng.
Zhou Sheng leaned against his chair, swaying back and forth, and didn’t say a word as he ruminated about it.
Ou Qihang said, “It’ll be easy to handle if we knew where he was. From the fact that he did not dare to take Uncle Kai away immediately, we can tell that it shouldn’t be a case of abusing his authority for personal gains.”
Fu Liqun, “Just afraid that…what if he doesn’t know where he is either?”
“Why did they capture him?” Zhou Sheng said, “We need to think carefully about that point first.”
“They should have caught him because they wanted to fish out what I said from him.” Yu Hao said, “But since they want to know, why didn’t they come straight to me? Did they have to go to such lengths to find a third party?”
Zhou Sheng said, “Everything in this situation is so ridiculously murky and doubtful.” Then he looked up again and looked at Chen Yekai. Chen Yekai narrowed his eyes, “Perhaps because aside from Yu Hao’s news, they also wanted to obtain inside information on Ren Chong’s side?”
Everyone stopped talking again for a moment. Zhou Sheng pondered for a while. Yu Hao felt like their minds were connected and could subtly understand what Zhou Sheng was thinking.
Yu Hao, “You’re afraid that something’s trying to lure us over into a trap? But what kinds of traps can there be? I don’t get it. If they want to cause trouble for us, can’t they just send some men out to catch us? We don’t have any authority or power at all, how can we even resist?” Then he shrugged.
Zhou Sheng grasped the Golden Crow Wheel and didn’t make a decision for a long while. Everyone was waiting. Zhou Sheng kept the Golden Crow Wheel and said, “Not for now.”
Zhou Sheng glanced at Chen Yekai, “Let’s investigate separately first.”
“Okay.” Chen Yekai was extremely worried about Huang Ting, but he didn’t refute Zhou Sheng’s decision.
“You’re in charge of Zhao Liang.” Zhou Sheng said, “I’ll look for our boss. Yu Hao, look for Lin Ze and make some inquiries. Haven’t you already asked him once before?”
“No definite news.” Yu Hao frowned, “I’ll go hurry Ah Ze again ba.”
“The two of you will…” Zhou Sheng thought about it, but Ou Qihang said, “I’ll go look for the doctor from before to ask. I think that hypnosis doctor is quite familiar with Ting Ge, I may be able to get some important clues from him.”
“Then I’ll go to the other hospital ba.” Fu Liqun said, “To ask about his condition.”
Zhou Sheng said, “Okay, let’s all set out then. Wait for my signal.”
