“I’ve forgotten a piece of my memory.”
“But I still remember some vague things.”
“Please don’t doubt any of this.
You must believe it all.”
“I joined the Sword Sect at around the age of four.”
“An elder said I was born with a sword heart.”
“So he brought me to the Sword Tomb to awaken the Tang Guang Spirit Sword.
I trained day and night, forgetting to eat or sleep.”
“I went through many hardships and obstacles.”
“Until, at the age of eleven, I finally became the Supreme Sword Master…”
…
“PFFT…”
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Reading about her becoming the Supreme Sword Master at eleven, Su Dong, who sat beside her, couldn’t hold it in any longer.
A string of merciless cackles rumbled up from deep in her stomach, like air from a bellows.
It was so funny that it took her a long time to recover.
She patted the girl in pajamas, who was frozen stiff beside her, and teased:
“No way, Jianxin.
You were such a good writer when you were little, huh?”
Jiang Jianxin was wearing pink bunny pajamas and sitting on the bed with her friend, Su Dong.
Although it was raining outside, filling the room with a damp smell, it wasn’t particularly cold.
Yet her face began to burn, and her whole body turned as red as a persimmon.
“Well…
you know, thirteen is prime time for that cringey middle school phase.”
Jiang Jianxin scratched her head, picking at the Peppa Pig decoration on the diary with her fingernail as she spoke awkwardly.
Jiang Jianxin’s parents had died young, leaving her only a large inheritance.
She usually spent her holidays at home by herself.
Her college friend, Su Dong, had volunteered to come and keep her company.
Jiang Jianxin wasn’t the neatest person; when she lived alone, her house was always a mess.
Hearing that Su Dong was coming over, she’d scrambled to tidy up, giving the house a thorough sweeping for the first time in years.
Unexpectedly, she’d unearthed a pile of childhood things from a corner.
Most of it was useless toys and a bunch of old clothes.
She packed all of it into a cardboard box, planning to toss it on her way downstairs.
Besides those things, there were the diaries.
Jiang Jianxin didn’t remember having a habit of keeping a diary as a child.
But with four diaries sitting right in front of her, she began to suspect that maybe she had, in fact, loved keeping a diary back then.
The covers of all four diaries shared the same gaudy, eye-searing color schemes that little girls love—either bright pink or deep purple, covered in various cartoon designs.
Jiang Jianxin picked up the black and purple diary on top to have a look, but found she couldn’t open it.
‘Oh, it’s one of those diaries with a combination lock.’
She grabbed the front and back hardcovers with both hands, trying to force it open.
But to her surprise, the cheap-looking little thing was unexpectedly sturdy.
The adult Jiang Jianxin strained with all her might, her face turning beet-red, but she couldn’t even put a dent in the diary.
Frustrated, she had no choice but to give up and move on to the other three.
Two more were locked and just as impossible to break open, no less sturdy than the black and purple one.
The only one she could read was the one she held now.
It had a charming, baby-pink Peppa Pig cartoon cover, wasn’t locked at all, and even began with the brazen line, “To my future self.”
The words were even traced with a floral border in highlighter.
It was…
kind of hilarious…
Jiang Jianxin hadn’t expected that it wasn’t just the cover that was childish—the contents were even more explosive.
The entire diary didn’t mention a single real event; it was filled with nothing but daily fantasies about life in the Cultivation World.
It made her curl her toes in embarrassment just reading it, to say nothing of Su Dong, who wasn’t even the one who wrote it.
She could understand why her friend was laughing so hard.
Su Dong seemed to notice her embarrassment and gradually stopped laughing.
Just as Jiang Jianxin was about to say something, she heard a THUD from outside the window.
“CRASH—”
She glanced out the window, but all she saw was the pitch-black night sky and the heavy raindrops lashing against the glass.
The rain seemed especially heavy tonight.
At least, Jiang Jianxin couldn’t remember ever seeing it rain this hard.
Su Dong also looked out the window and said thoughtfully:
“The rain is really heavy tonight.”
As soon as she finished speaking, a blinding flash of lightning split the sky, followed by a low rumble in the dark night:
“BOOM—”
The brilliant light illuminated Su Dong’s face, and for a moment, her expression shifted.
The kitchen window was still open.
Even though she knew the roof had a lightning rod, Jiang Jianxin was still worried lightning might strike the house.
So she gathered the four diaries scattered on the bed, held them in her arms, and prepared to put them in the cardboard box before going to close the kitchen window.
Su Dong sat silently on the bed, staring at her back, her thoughts unreadable.
“CLINK…”
Something shiny fell out of the baby-pink “Sword Master” diary.
“Huh?”
Jiang Jianxin’s arms were full of diaries, leaving her with no free hands to pick it up.
So she walked over to the cardboard box, placed the diaries inside, and finally freed her hands to pick up the fallen object.
It was a small, three-inch-long sword.
It had no scabbard, and its blade was as bright and reflective as a mirror.
‘This is a sharpened blade.’
Jiang Jianxin’s expression faltered.
‘Strange.
I was just looking at it for ages and didn’t notice anything.
How did it just fall out now?’
Jiang Jianxin examined the small sword closely.
The bright blade reflected more than just her own shadow—there was also a bloated, swollen face slowly emerging from behind her.
It was Su Dong’s face, only it was unnaturally bloated and had a faint bluish tint, dotted with corpse spots.
It rested wetly on her shoulder, and she could almost smell the stench of rot and damp decay.
Then, Jiang Jianxin once again heard that low laughter rumbling from deep within a stomach:
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
“Jianxin, you’ve remembered it all now, haven’t you?”
Jiang Jianxin felt a chill shoot up from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head.
She belatedly realized.
Just now, when “Su Dong” was looking at her diary, it seemed she hadn’t complimented her rich imagination.
But rather…
her good writing?