Chapter 43.4: Paper and Skin

The girl seemed to pout slightly.

After dinner, Li Zhuiyuan coaxed Ah Li back to her room to sleep. When he returned to the main house, he found Runsheng and Tan Wenbin sitting together in front of the TV. Spread out in front of them were wicker and wooden sticks. They were folding paper effigies while watching television.

Surprisingly, Tan Wenbin’s movements were quite deft. If you didn’t know better, you’d think his family had been running a paper effigy shop for generations.

“Binbin-ge.”

“Hey, Xiaoyuan-ge.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be reading or doing homework?”

“I brought my homework with me. I’ve already written the essay. The rest—you can help me finish before I go back.”

“If you keep doing that, your parents won’t let you come anymore.”

“Relax. The worse my grades get, the more likely they are to send me here.”

“Hard to argue with that.”

“Heh. After all, binding me to the Confucian Temple didn’t work half as well as leaving me here.”

“How hard is it to get into Haihe University?”

“Xiaoyuan-ge, are you reminding me to study hard?”

“Just asking out of curiosity.”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope.”

“Oh right, to you all domestic universities are the same. With my grades, my chances of getting into Haihe University are about as good as every household owning a color TV one day.”

“Then you should be able to make it. That’s what one of my cousins says.”

Upstairs, Li Zhuiyuan began his practice—coordinating breathwork while holding a horse stance.

Afterward, he took a shower and returned to his room.

He sat on the edge of the bed, holding the black leather-bound book.

He knew he would study it eventually.

He was still young. As Liu Yumei had mentioned, training hard techniques before his bones had fully developed wasn’t advisable. But he couldn’t accept his own helplessness in the face of repeated danger.

Sure, the crises he’d faced recently were absurd—like Zhao Kuo, who had barely stepped outside before running into Bai Qi.

Still... he needed to learn some non-physical methods to confront the Dead Sinkers head-on.

Handing him this book was an open challenge.

But the ending it aimed for might not be the one it actually got.

He slid the book under his pillow, got up, and walked over to the wardrobe, staring at himself in the mirror.

Did he feel strange, looking at himself?

But he had always felt that way when facing his reflection.

Contaminated, distorted emotions?

He only wished he had feelings for them to contaminate.

“You say I’m like Wei Zhengdao... then is it possible...”

Li Zhuiyuan pressed his hand against the mirror. His reflection blurred and seemed to morph into someone unfamiliar. Of course, it was just his imagination.

“Wei Zhengdao, do you and I—and Li Lan—suffer from the same illness?”

…

He went to bed early, so he woke up early. The sky was still dark. Turning his head, he saw it wasn’t yet time for the girl to arrive.

After washing up, he picked up the black book and walked to the balcony. The door to the east room creaked open, and Ah Li stepped out, wearing a white top and a pleated “horse-face” skirt.

She looked up and saw the boy standing on the upper floor.

Li Zhuiyuan smiled and waved at her.

Even though the sun hadn’t risen yet, his own personal sunrise had arrived.

The girl sat down beside him, and Li Zhuiyuan officially began reading the black book.

Familiar handwriting. Familiar smug tone.

Maybe it was written for a friend, so the tone came off even more self-satisfied, like sharing a prized possession with a close buddy.

Li Zhuiyuan thought, maybe it had misjudged people.

Maybe Wei Zhengdao had genuinely intended to teach him this method, but not every method works for everyone.

As he kept reading, Li Zhuiyuan became more convinced of his theory.

First chapter: Walking the Shade Control.

Second: Consciousness Integration.

Third: Guiding Cognition.

Fourth: Complete Manipulation.

The book wasn’t thick and didn’t have a lot of content. It just outlined the methodology. Learning it was a matter of imitation.

But the difficulty was immense. Just the first step—controlling the path of the shade—was beyond most people.

That thing—it really was a genius. It had mastered it and even controlled so many Dead Sinkers.

Also, the book was viciously sinister.

It treated Dead Sinkers like animals—establishing a connection through Walking the Shade, then integrating consciousness to read their memories, and finally manipulating their actions through what was essentially hypnotism and deceit.

It was like... beast taming.

Maybe a proper book would posture about “righteous extermination.”

But in notes written for a friend, the mask came off, and the real thoughts shone through.

Wei Zhengdao, you could come up with something like this and still call yourself righteous?

For Li Zhuiyuan, the first step wasn’t hard. Nor were the third and fourth—he could already control Walking the Shade, and he knew how to hypnotize and manipulate. After all, he’d been through enough sessions with psychologists to gain plenty of experience.

Only the second step remained elusive.

Wei Zhengdao’s descriptions were abstract. Li Zhuiyuan had to try translating them into modern terms to understand.

It sounded like tuning a frequency, like a radio. To resonate with the Dead Sinker.

Could that be it?

Then how to fine-tune this frequency?

Li Zhuiyuan leaned back in his rattan chair, laid the book over his face, and closed his eyes.

He tried to capture the feeling, slipping into a half-dream state before Walking the Shade.

Beside him, the girl saw him lying down and lay down as well.

Under the morning light, the boy and girl lay side by side on the rattan chairs. The girl was turned toward him, watching his face.

Li Zhuiyuan found the right state. It felt like he’d successfully entered Walking the Shade. He opened his eyes slowly—fog all around, nothing visible.

Following the book, he tried to shake the mental image in his mind—that was how he interpreted frequency.

In reality, the boy’s eyelashes began to twitch rapidly.

Ah Li noticed. She reached out a hand, but halfway through, she withdrew it. Then she closed her eyes as well.

Nothing changed in the fog.

Li Zhuiyuan realized a big problem—he didn’t even have a subject to experiment on. What was he trying to test?

But what could he do? Ask Runsheng-ge to go out and bring back a Dead Sinker for practice?

Then, the fog began to vibrate—something was resonating powerfully, responding to him.

The mist in front of him parted, and he saw a girl, hugging her knees, sitting in the middle of the darkness.

Wait—

Had he... sensed Ah Li?

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