Forty Millenniums of Cultivation

“I—I want to know your brother’s current status, especially his, the entire process of his illness!”

Li Yao was overjoyed. He held back his excitement and asked, “What’s your name, miss?”

“My surname is Dong.”

The man seemed to have made up his mind. He asked, “Where should I start? Our family is on the edge of a mountain in the central area. Although our family has been poor since childhood, my brother has shown his talent for studying since he was very young. He is not only the pride of our family but also the pride of our town. He was admitted to a famous university with the highest score in the city.

“After graduating from university, my brother found a very good job in the provincial capital and was highly valued by the leaders. In just a few years, he became the head of the department, bought a house in the provincial capital, found a girlfriend, and was about to get married. What I meant was that my brother’s career was on the rise, and his future and love were both perfect. There was nothing that could stimulate him.

“Moreover, he has always been sunny and cheerful since childhood. He likes reading and exercising. He doesn’t have any bad habits. He doesn’t eat, drink, gamble, or smoke. He doesn’t even smoke or drink. In our town, he is simply a weirdo.

“As for our family, although we were poor, we didn’t drag him down in any way. When the two of us were young, our environment was a bit poor, and we were short of money when we were studying. But ever since he went to college, he had scholarships to support himself. Over the past two years, Mom and Dad have rented orchards, and our living conditions have gradually improved. I graduated from college two years ago, and I have also found a stable job. In short, do you understand? Our family’s life is getting better day by day. There is simply nothing to worry about.

“But my brother is crazy. That was last year.

“In the beginning, he often called me to complain that someone was following him and that someone had planted a bug in his office. At that time, I thought that it was a business dispute or some internal strife in his office. I was just a college student who had just graduated. What could I do? I could only ask my brother’s colleagues in the company to take care of him. But my brother’s close colleagues in the company all said that my brother was the most valued middle-level officer in the company and that he was at the peak of his career. Who would follow and eavesdrop on him?

“After a month or two like this, my brother’s condition became more and more serious, and he gradually experienced hallucinations and auditory hallucinations. He called me and told me that he had found his stalker, who turned out to be his shadow! He said that there was a very mysterious force that could manipulate his shadow and even use it to interfere with and hurt him!

“It was only then that I realized that there was something wrong with my brother. I scrolled through my brother’s social media and his online comments and saw those… bizarre articles such as ‘Dream Traveler’. I then contacted my brother’s colleague. One of my brother’s best friends said that my brother had been using kitchen tinfoil as a hat to cover his entire head every day. He said that it would block his brainwaves from being sent out and prevent certain evil existences from locking onto his coordinates.

“The leader of my brother’s company thinks very highly of him and has been very kind to him. He didn’t fire him even though such a thing had happened. But one time, in a meeting to welcome a certain important partner, my brother pointed at the other party’s boss and shouted that he had seen that the other party was a brutal murderer in his previous life and ruined a great cooperation plan.

“After such a thing happened, naturally, I could not stay in the company any longer. I should have sent my brother to the provincial capital’s hospital for treatment. However, in our small town, someone in our family has been diagnosed with mental illness. It wouldn’t be nice if word got out. Besides, my parents and I still had a bit of a fantasy. We thought that my brother was under too much pressure because of work. Maybe he would be better off after resting at home for a while.

“Therefore, we brought our brother back to his hometown from the capital city and asked him to rest at home.

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“In the beginning, my brother’s symptoms were indeed much better. He no longer had those messy, strange dreams, and he no longer pointed at other people’s noses and said that he had recovered from his previous life. We were all very happy and thought that my brother was about to recover.

“As it turned out, one day, my brother seemed to have read some news online about a playwright’s accidental death. His illness acted up again. He found a stainless steel frying pan at home and held it over his head. He kept mumbling words that no one could understand. His ten fingers twisted into a ball as he made some very strange gestures.

“I have to send him to the hospital now.”

“You said that my brother is not crazy. Please believe it. We, his family, hope that he is not crazy. But right now, he is covering his head in tinfoil and carrying a stainless steel pot. He is talking about his past life to everybody he meets, and he is scared of his own shadow. What is he if not crazy?”

Li Yao turned on the hands-free mode and listened to the conversation with Zhang Daniu. The two of them looked at each other for a long time and thought for a while. Then, Li Yao said cautiously, “Miss Dong, thank you for your frankness, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. Your brother said that he had the ability to travel through dreams and see his past life after he drowned in the reservoir in his third year of primary school. Have you ever heard of it before?”

“You are referring to his answer on ‘Do You Know?’

The stranger smiled bitterly. “Do you really believe what he said?”

“I don’t know.”

Li Yao said, “Therefore, I’m verifying it with you right now—a bold guess. Just be careful!”

“False.”

The stranger replied straightforwardly, “They are all fakes. He made them up.”

“Why are you so sure?”

Li Yao said, “Even if your brother’s mental state right now is really… unstable, you can’t say that what happened to him when he was a kid is definitely false!”

“Because my brother has never drowned before. Do you understand?”

The other party said, “I’m two years younger than my brother. When he was in the third grade of primary school, I happened to be in the first grade. I can already remember a lot of things. I never knew that my brother was in a drowning coma for half a month.

“Even if I’m too young and my memory is bad, my parents are not even sixty years old and their minds are very clear. It’s impossible for them to forget that their son drowned and was in a coma for half a month when he was young, right?

“Also, many of my brother’s primary school classmates are our next-door neighbors. They still live in town. After my brother’s illness flared up, I went to verify with these neighbors. None of my brother’s primary school classmates remember him drowning.

“The most crucial evidence is what my brother wrote in his answer. He said that he drowned because he went to the reservoir behind my grandmother’s house to play. However, my grandmother passed away before we were born. Our place is considered a mountainous area. It is very dry. There is no reservoir within a hundred kilometers!”

“Well—”

Li Yao was dumbfounded. “Is there such a thing?”

“Yes.”

The stranger replied, “Most of the people there are landlubbers. My brother is no exception. He doesn’t know how to swim at all. How can he drown himself in the nonexistent reservoir behind his grandmother’s house?”

Li Yao was rendered speechless. He was soaked in cold sweat.

“I’m sorry, Miss Dong.”

He stammered, “I—I don’t know. Your brother’s answers were too real and immersive. Wait. His answer was sent not long ago, and you said that he had been ill for a year. Does it mean that he wrote the answer in… a schizophrenic state, including many previous articles?”

“That’s right.”

The other party said, “At that time, his mental state was still alright. We were afraid to agitate him, so we didn’t dare to take away his phone. He held his phone and desperately wrote and posted. Many posts were posted at that time.

“I can’t blame you for that. It’s not right to say that there are no anomalies at all. Something very strange happened when my brother was hospitalized for the first time.

Li Yao raised his eyebrow. “What weird thing?”

“About your grandma’s house, the reservoir, the drowning, and the dream travelers.”

The other party said, “When I first saw his answer, I thought it was nonsense, too, because I was very clear that my brother had never drowned before. But one time, when I visited him, he told me in a low voice that drowning was real, not in this life, but in his previous life.

“He told me that he lived in a small town named ‘Lambang’ in Jiangdong Province in his previous life. There was a huge reservoir not far away from the town. He also told me a lot of local specialties, even snacks, as well as the living habits of the locals. He even spoke a few local dialects. The tones he uttered were completely different from the local dialects of our hometown, which gave me quite a scare.

“My brother asked me to go to the River East Province to find this place named ‘Liaojiang’. Although finding this place might not prove that he is not crazy, at least I can prove something!”

Li Yao was fascinated. He couldn’t help but ask, “You went?”

“I’m going.”

The other party said, “Maybe I shouldn’t go. I shouldn’t waste my time on a lunatic’s crazy talk. But he is my brother. The two of us have a very good relationship. He paid for most of my college tuition fees. As long as there is a glimmer of hope, I am willing to give it a try.”

“I went to Jiangdong Province, but I didn’t find a place named ‘Lambang’. However, according to the terrain that my brother described and the few dialects recorded, I found a county named ‘Lambang’.

“Do you know? The appearance of the place is exactly the same as what my brother described, including the reservoir in the southeast of the city, the lonely pagoda on the west side of the reservoir, and the dialect of the locals. I played my brother’s dialect for the locals, and they all said that he was a native of the area.

“My brother also mentioned a special local snack. It is to dry and grind the local specialty yellow flowers into powder before sprinkling it on the sour pulp noodles. It is sour and sweet and has a very unique taste. There are many places in the country where one can eat sour pulp noodles, but there is only one place where one can sprinkle yellow flower powder. Even in the towns 30-50 kilometers away, there is no such way of eating. I have never heard of such a way of eating in places further away.”