Chapter 83: The New World
Chapter 83: The New World
"After I injected Zhou Zhou with that medicine, he grew up peacefully like a normal child. Seeing how healthy he was, I often wondered if the wise man could have been wrong, that the drug didn't only control people for 20 years, but could cure them completely." Luo Pei said here, sitting up straight for the camera.
"Zhou Zhou, although his medicine saved not only you, but also our whole family, some strange things happened to you as you grew up." He hesitated for a moment, but continued, "When you talked in your sleep at night, you often called out to a patriarch, and in the daytime, you told us some colorful stories about little vampires who tore up your homework, and so on.
When Luo ZhouZhou heard this, he looked at Chu Feng in dismay.
Chu Feng tightened his arms around him and said, "Keep listening."
"Linda and I think you are a child who loves to imagine, but yours was becoming more and more realistic, and your stories were very continuous. When you were a child, you loved to draw and paint, and you did it every day, so I hired a drawing teacher to teach you. When you were seven or eight years old, you got better and better at drawing, and I realized that something was wrong."
The sun was shining, and Luo Pei had a rare day off today, so he took out his tools and repaired the fence around the house. Something had bitten a hole in the fence, and in the middle of the night, some animal got into the yard and chewed up the flowers and plants that Linda kept.
Luo Pei was sawing the wood with a saw, and there was a running sound from inside the house. Then, a boy in shorts, like a little whirlwind, scurried out of the house and rushed to him.
"Daddy, you're home today," Luo ZhouZhou said enthusiastically.
"Yes, Daddy's off today, so I can spend the whole day with you."
"Then you can take me to the woods to catch birds, go to the beach to collect shells, Uncle Tommy's grapes are ripe, he invited me to his house, Dad will come with me, and we'll call Rhubarb to"
Luo Pei stopped sawing and said, "Then wait until Daddy fixes the fence so that the animals don't come in the middle of the night and eat all your mother's flowers and plants again."
"I'll wait for you then," Luo ZhouZhou said, and was about to take the wooden stool next to him.
"Come here and let me see if your teeth are in." Luo Pei said.
Luo ZhouZhou had lost his four front teeth some time ago, and now new ones had just appeared, but Luo Pei was worried that they might not grow in properly, so he checked them every day.
Luo ZhouZhou walked up to him, tilted his head and opened his mouth. Luo Pei bent down and looked closely at the four tiny white spots.
"Daddy, are you ready? My mouth is watering." Luo ZhouZhou said vaguely.
"Well, theyre fine." Luo Pei straightened up with satisfaction and said, "You can't eat sugar for a while, until your teeth grow in."
Luo ZhouZhou was reaching into the breast pocket of his backpack shorts and slowly took his hand out with a stiffening motion. "If these teeth don't grow well, I still have two more long teeth and I think I can have two candies a day, what do you think dad?"
"Not good." Luo Pei decisively refused.
"Oh."
"Besides, you dont have two long teeth."
"Yes, I do."
"Yes, yes, yes, you have two long teeth. Zhou Zhou, stay back, Daddy is going to start sawing wood."
Luo ZhouZhou ducked his head in frustration, flipped out all the candy from his breast pocket, looked at it again cherishing it in his palm, and handed it to Luo Pei. "Dad will put them away for me. These candies will be sad when they look at me if they know I won't eat them now. Return them to me when my teeth grow out.
While Luo Pei continued sawing, Luo ZhouZhou went to sit on a small wooden stool beside him. Luo ZhouZhou stared at his bulging pants pocket, which contained the candy he had just handed over.
Luo Pei sawed a few more times before finally stopping and saying, "Since you want it so badly"
Before finishing his sentence, he swept his gaze over the door of the house not far away, saw Linda standing there, and stopped.
"What's the matter? Why do you look so ugly?" Luo Pei asked, confused.
Linda put her hands behind her back and looked at him without saying a word. Luo Pei dropped the saw on the ground and walked over to her, Luo ZhouZhou also got up quickly to follow.
"Dad, you haven't finished yet, but if I want to eat so badly, then what? Then what?"
Luo Pei ignored him and went straight to the door of the house to look inside. When he found nothing unusual, he asked Linda, who was beside him, "What's wrong? Is something wrong?"
Linda looked at Luo ZhouZhou, who was following behind her, and said, "Zhou Zhou, wait outside for a moment while I have a few words with Dad."
Luo ZhouZhou stopped and said, "Then after you finish talking, you should finish what you said to me, too."
"Okay." Luo Pei replied absent-mindedly, taking Linda by the shoulders and walking into the house. Luo ZhouZhou went back into the courtyard to play with the blocks of wood Luo Pei had sawn off.
Linda took Luo Pei up to the second floor and pushed open a door to a room. It was a converted painting room for Luo ZhouZhou, and in it were all the paintings that he usually painted. She went in, turned the easel by the wall in a different direction, and said to Luo Pei, "Look."
Luo Pei slowly approached and saw that it was a painting Luo ZhouZhou had just finished.
A group of children were sitting around an old man, listening to his speech. The children were all wearing ponytails and purple robes, and the old man was smiling as his beard fluttered over his chest.
"You see, all the people in Zhou Zhou's painting looked terrible. Their eyes were red, their faces were pale, and they had long teeth. When I asked him what movie he had seen or what he had heard from others, he said it was neither, but that they were his patriarch and classmates." Linda wrung her hands nervously, "Zhou Zhou is always telling me this, all about his imaginary patriarch and classmates. He thinks they are all real, what should we do?
Luo Pei didnt answer. He was now filled with shock. Because the chief in the painting, if he ignored the unusual part of his face, was the wise man he had seen.
Chu Feng and Luo ZhouZhou listened with rapt attention.
When they heard Luo Pei's story, Chu Feng had a thoughtful look, while Luo ZhouZhou looked startled and slightly open-mouthed.
On the screen, Luo Pei took a sip from his coffee cup and continued.
"I thought you had seen his picture somewhere, so youI had an impression. But as you grew up and your expressions became clearer, I realized it wasn't about a picture. A lot of your behavior became stranger and stranger, like going to sleep under the bed and asking your mother to find a coffin for you. I hired a psychiatrist for you and did some psychotherapy, but nothing worked. Finally, the hospital found out that whenever you fell asleep at night, your brain wave activity was abnormally active, not like you were in a state of sleep."
Luo Pei put his hand to his mouth and said after a moment's reflection, "There is only one explanation behind this. The wise man, when he was leaving, perhaps in the middle of a stare-down with you, or perhaps when he was reaching out and pointing to your eyebrow, cast a mind control-like spell on you." 1
"I have hired many psychic masters behind me, even shamans, and all of them were helpless. That wise man was too powerful. Maybe it was just like the rumors, that he had the ability to see heaven and the earth," Luo Pei exclaimed.
"But I found out that he wasnt doing anything to you through this control, but rather he was teaching you all kinds of knowledge. So, I gradually became less nervous. More importantly, I hoped that there would be some kind of connection between you, so that if, after twenty years, your drug had failed, you could have him give you another one."
"The Alliance Institute was working on a similar drug, Benzedrine, and I don't think it worked as well as that. After I became an Alliance General, I sent people to the island where they were exiled, many times to look for them, but I never found anyone. Maybe they'd been shipwrecked on the way, or maybe they never went to that island at all."
"It wasn't until you turned nineteen and something happened that I was determined to sever your connection to the Wise Man."
Luo Pei closed his eyes and leaned back against the back of the couch tiredly.
It was late at night, and the villa area of Aleisha was quiet. Luo Pei was lying on his bed with his eyes closed, but his mind was still thinking about the day's military affairs, and he couldn't sleep.
The moonlight from outside the window came in, spilling its light all over the floor. He lifted the quilt and gently got up, tucked the sleeping Linda under the covers, and walked out of the bedroom.
He went downstairs, boiled himself a cup of hot milk, and walked slowly into the courtyard with it. The moon was so full that it shone clearly all around the courtyard, and Luo Pei paced and sipped the milk as he did so.
Suddenly, he heard a slight noise from the second floor of the villa, like the sound of a glass window being pushed open. The next thing he heard was a black shadow flying across the sky. The shadow was extremely fast, and a few leaps were all it took to disappear into the distant darkness. Neither its size nor its posture resembled a flying bird.
Luo Pei was startled to see where the shadow had disappeared, and then turned to the second floor of the villa.
There, a window had been pushed open, and it was Luo ZhouZhou's room.
Luo Pei put his coffee cup down on the flower stand beside him, hurried back to the villa, and went up to the second floor.
"Zhou Zhou."
When he pushed open the door to Luo ZhouZhou's room, he found the bed empty. As was Luo ZhouZhou's habit, he looked under the bed again, but there was no one there either.
Luo Pei checked all the closets in the bathroom and balcony, and then pushed open all the doors on the second floor, checking one by one.
"What's wrong? What are you looking for?" Linda was awakened by the sound of the door slamming shut, her pajama belt tied in her hand, and stood sleepily at the bedroom door asking.
Luo Pei sank to her knees and continued to rummage through each room, shouting Luo ZhouZhou's name out loud.
"What's wrong with Zhou Zhou?" Linda's drowsiness also woke up, "Isn't Zhou Zhou home?"
Luo Pei didn't say anything, but hurriedly walked downstairs, and Linda hurried to catch up. Butler Li was also awakened by this noise, and came out of his room on the first floor and stood in the living room.
Luo Pei quickly searched around the first floor, and then went out the door into the garden. Butler Li and Linda followed closely behind him.
At the garden, Luo Pei clicked out the terminal on his hand and was about to call Luo ZhouZhou when he heard a pounding sound coming from his head. The three of them raised their heads and saw a shadow passing overhead and stopping on the pointed roof of the villa.
The moon was now peeking out from behind a dark cloud, clearly illuminating the villa and the man standing on the villa's roof. The man looked into the distance, his face pale, his eyes blood-red, and the two sharp teeth at the edge of his mouth glowing with cold light.
It was Luo ZhouZhou.
There was silence in the garden, and all three were frozen into the statue.
A moment later, Luo Pei stumbled over his feet, and there was a loud crack of a spilled coffee cup.
Luo Pei on the screen stopped here, raised his hand up and covered his face. A little while later, he said softly, "Zhou Zhou, you looked like a vampire at the time."
"The Benzedrine that the Alliance was working on had the same effect, but none of them looked like you, and you looked like a full-blown vampire. I went through everything I could find on vampires in those days, even saw those movies a few times, and I couldn't find the real reason for this change in you."
"Actually, everything has its origin, maybe there have been Sunset Face patients before, who once used drugs like Wise Man and became like you, and over time, there were legends of vampires in the world. Zhou Zhou, and everything you describe about vampires was a dream created for you by the Wise Man."
"Your condition that night frightened me, I didn't know what the Wise Man was up to, and I was afraid he would do you harm if you continued your spiritual connection, I was afraid he would turn against you. So I made a decision to seal your memories of being a vampire and forget all about it from then on, as well as severing your spiritual connection with him. Even if you have a full twenty-year illness, I'll think of something else."
"So I brought you to the Institute and asked Qi Fen to use an instrument to seal the memories in your head. I don't know what went wrong, but when you woke up, you forgot everything about reality, except for being a vampire."
Luo Pei's voice shook a little, "You called me General, you called your mother Madam, you were always trying to run away, and you wanted to drink blood. Dad knew all the reasons, but couldn't tell you."
After he finished this part, he fell silent and went to the coffee table in a disguised manner, but his cup was shaking slightly.
When Chu Feng heard this, he looked at Luo ZhouZhou beside him and noticed that something was wrong with his expression, and quickly pressed the pause button.
Luo ZhouZhou's eyes were filled with trepidation, and asked softly, "Chu Feng, is what the General said true? Is the vampire just a dream I had, a dream that someone else created for me?"
Chu Feng looked at him, wanting to say something and then shutting his mouth.
"Are the moon on those churches, the wind on the mountain tops, the forest beside the village, and my clan leader all fake?"
Tears rolled down Luo ZhouZhou's cheeks. "How could it be fake? The patriarch touched my head, I could feel the calluses on his hands now, and a piece of the steeple of the church top was missing, I kicked it off by accident. The coffin I slept in had some old velvet in it, so I shaved off the little balls on it one by one."
Luo ZhouZhou's voice grew louder and louder, and he clenched his hands so tightly that his voice changed in pitch, "How can those, how can those be fake? How can you say it's a nightly dream?"
"Shh, no one is sure it was a dream." Chu Feng held up his face and said repeatedly, "Don't cry, don't cry, don't be sad."
Chu Feng took the paper out of the tissue box and lovingly wiped the tears from his face. But there were more and more tears, and the tissue paper was soon soaked through.
"General Luo is just guessing, isn't he?" Chu Feng said warmly, "In fact, only the wise man knew what was going on. Maybe he established a spiritual connection with you, and when you fell asleep, you were picked up by some kind of teleportation. So you were not in a manufactured illusion, but a real scene."
"Really?" Luo ZhouZhou struggled to keep his eyes open and went to look at Chu Feng with tears in his eyes.
"Do you remember what you told me about Methuselah?"
"I remember, that's the name of our tribe."
Chu Feng took another tissue to wipe the tears from his face, "I looked it up later, and in an ancient language, the phrase Methuselah means another world.
Luo ZhouZhou was startled and asked, "Another world?"
Chu Feng plucked his sweaty forehead away and said, "Didn't General Luo go looking for them a few times? There was no one on that deserted island, so your patriarch, the wise man, may have gone to another world in some way. Before he left, he cast a magic spell on you, and after you fell asleep every night, he took your spirit, or soul, away in some kind of connected way to his world."
Chu Feng tapped Luo ZhouZhou's nose. "It's the world with vampires, where you can look at the moon from the top of the church."
"Really?" Luo ZhouZhou asked in a small voice.
"Really."
"But I can't get in touch with the clan chief anymore."
Chu Feng looked at him tenderly and said, "No matter how it is, no matter where he is, you just need to know that the chief loves you as much as General Luo does."
Luo ZhouZhou looked into his eyes, smiled with tears in his eyes, and said, "Yes, whether the patriarch is real or not, whether I can see him again or not, as long as I remember him in my heart, that's enough."
Chu Feng gently kissed him on the forehead and murmured, "Zhou Zhou, I've figured out one more thing."
"What is it?"
"I think I know the reason why the Sunset Virus in your body disappeared."
"And why is that?"
Chu Feng mused, "I think the idea is to find a Sunset Face patient who has taken that drug, find someone who matches his pheromones, drink his blood, and let his body form antibody cells against Sunset Face. After extracting those cells, we can make a bottle of medicine. The wise man can't simply replicate the antibody cells, so he can only continue by treating one person and then extracting a bottle of medicine from that person."
"Then why doesn't he offer this method to the Empire so they can mass produce it?" Luo ZhouZhou asked.
Chu Feng shook his head and said, "He wouldn't dare. The empire was already controlled by the Truth Church, and he didnt dare to offer this method of turning people into vampires.
Without waiting for Luo ZhouZhou's follow-up question, he added, "Even though the Wise Man was expelled, he still wanted to keep the cure. So, instead of curing you completely, he only gave you a certain dose, which lasted just until twenty years. He taught you in a mind-controlling way, making you think that you couldn't do without drinking blood, and urged you to find your mate and drink his blood to complete it."
Luo ZhouZhou listened attentively, with tears still in his eyes.
"Zhou Zhou, in fact, he was asking you to find an Alpha that matched your pheromones. You still had that medicine in your body, and after twenty years of illness, if you drink the blood of your Alpha, you will be cured, and the cure for Sunset Face will be obtained."
Luo ZhouZhou was startled and asked, "Why twenty years?"
"Because he understood that the empire would not last long. Twenty years later, there must be a new world." Chu Feng paused and said word for word, "This wise man, he is great."
The author has something to say:
ZhouZhou's secret is finally out, did you guess?
As I write this, I would like to thank each and every angel who left a review. You are really angels, accompanying me all the way, giving me a lot of motivation and encouragement so that I can calm down and do my best to write each chapter, thank you.
MonkeyNote: I have to say, I love this new concept of transmigration.