Back in his room, Lin Qiye shut the door.
He didn't turn on the light.
It was deep into the night. Specks of starlight drifted through the window and scattered across the floor. In the dark room, Lin Qiye sat at his desk and slowly removed the black satin from his eyes.
The mirror on the desk reflected the face of a strikingly handsome youth.
Lin Qiye was very good-looking. If he took off the blindfolding satin and tidied himself up a little, then with that inexplicable aloofness and deep, quiet air of his, he would absolutely be heartthrob-of-the-school material.
A pity, then, that his eyes stayed bound in black satin year-round, and that his status as a disabled person buried that light completely.
In the mirror, Lin Qiye's eyes were closed.
His brow furrowed slightly. The eyelids covering his eyes trembled, as if straining to open; even his hands clenched into fists with the effort.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds...
His body shook for a long time until, finally, it could bear no more, and he slumped all at once, gasping for breath.
Beads of sweat slid down Lin Qiye's cheek, and anger crept in between his brows.
Just a little more... just a little!
Why, every single time, was it just that little bit short?
When would he finally be able to open his eyes again and see this world for himself?
He'd said he could see now. He'd lied.
His eyes simply would not open. Not even a crack.
But he hadn't lied, either.
Because even with his eyes closed, he could clearly "see" everything around him.
It was an uncanny feeling, as if his whole body were covered in eyes, able to perceive everything in every direction without a single blind spot—and to see it more clearly, and farther, than his original eyes ever could.
He hadn't always been able to do this. For the first five years after he went blind, he had been no different from any other blind person, relying on sound and the white cane in his hand to feel out the world.
But for some reason, starting five years ago, something about his eyes seemed to change—and he began, in a rudimentary way, to perceive his surroundings.
At first it was only a few centimeters in front of him. Then, as time passed, he could "see" farther and farther, clearer and clearer. Now, five years on, his range had reached ten meters.
If an ordinary person could see only ten meters, their eyes would be as good as ruined. But to a boy who had lost the light, those ten meters meant everything.
Most crucially, the ten meters he could "see" were ten meters that ignored obstacles.
In other words, within a ten-meter radius of Lin Qiye, he had absolute vision. To put it crudely, he had X-ray sight. To put it grandly, he could see every mote of dust drifting in the air, every component inside a machine, every little trick a magician pulled under the table...
And the source of this ability seemed to be precisely those eyes beneath the black satin—eyes that had stayed shut for ten years.
Yet even with this near-superhuman power, Lin Qiye wasn't satisfied. Ten meters of absolute vision was all well and good, but what he wanted was to see this world with his own two eyes.
That was a boy's stubbornness.
Tonight's attempt had failed, but he could feel it clearly...
The day he truly opened his eyes was not far off.
After washing up, Lin Qiye went to bed early as always. All those years of living blind hadn't been entirely bad—at the very least, they'd given him the healthy habit of sleeping early.
But as he lay in bed, that image rose unbidden in his mind again.
Beneath the black vault of space, on the dead silence of the lunar surface, the gray-white ground mirrored pale, bleak starlight. And in the center of the highest, largest crater stood a figure like a statue.
The figure stood there in stillness, as if it had existed since time immemorial. Sacred golden radiance bloomed from it, a divine majesty that could force every living thing to the ground.
Behind Him stretched six wings, huge beyond all reason, blotting out the sunlight cast from behind and laying an enormous shadow across the silver-gray land.
But what was truly seared into Lin Qiye's mind, impossible to dispel, were His eyes.
Those eyes, brimming with divine might, burning like twin furnaces—blinding as the sun at close range!
He had seen those eyes for only an instant, and his world had been reduced to endless night.
Ten years ago, he had told the truth and been diagnosed as insane.
But he knew better than anyone what was real and what was delusion.
Ever since he saw the seraph on the moon, he had known: this world... was nowhere near as simple as it looked.
Slowly, Lin Qiye sank into sleep.
What he didn't know was that at the instant he drifted into dreams, in the darkened room, two threads of brilliant gold lanced out through the seams of his eyelids—there and gone in a flash.
...
Tap. Tap. Tap...
In a world of mist, Lin Qiye walked alone.
The fog around him churned, seemingly without end. Though he walked through sheer nothingness, each step Lin Qiye took rang out with a crisp impact, as if beneath his feet lay some invisible floor.
Lin Qiye looked down at himself and sighed.
"This dream again... Knocking every single night—it's exhausting, you know?" Lin Qiye shook his head helplessly and stepped forward.
The next moment, the mist around him rolled back, and a modern building of bizarre design appeared before him.
Bizarre, because although it was unmistakably a building in the modern style, certain details brimmed with an air of mystery.
The great iron gate carved with a heavenful of gods, for instance. Or the electric lamps that burned like balls of fire. Or the patterned floor tiles hovering above the ground...
It was as if someone had kneaded modern architecture together with the temple motifs of ancient myth—neither fish nor fowl, yet possessed of an indescribable beauty.
Lin Qiye recognized this kind of building. In fact, it looked deeply familiar.
It bore an uncanny resemblance to Sunshine Mental Asylum, where he had once lived for a year. And the most compelling proof was this: at the entrance, where the big characters "Sunshine Mental Asylum" should have been, hung a different line of words.
—Mental Asylum of the Gods.
"What a baffling place." Lin Qiye shook his head, strode forward, and stopped squarely before the great iron gate.
Five years ago, it wasn't only his body that had suddenly begun to change. His dreams had changed too.
For five years, he had dreamed the same dream every night, and the protagonist of every one of those dreams was this mysterious Mental Asylum of the Gods.
Except the asylum's gate had always been shut tight, and no matter what he tried, it would not open.
Lin Qiye had circled the asylum countless times. The great iron gate at the front was the only entrance. The surrounding walls weren't high—but most absurdly of all, every time Lin Qiye jumped, the walls grew taller to match.
As for brute force... Lin Qiye could smash himself to pieces against that iron gate and it wouldn't so much as tremble.
There seemed to be only one way in.
Knocking.
Lin Qiye gripped the round ring on the iron gate, drew a deep breath, and struck it hard against the surface.
CLANG—!
A sound like the drone of an ancient bell rolled through the asylum. The iron gate shuddered, swayed—and did not open.
CLANG—!
Another knock. The gate still didn't open.
Lin Qiye seemed neither surprised nor annoyed. With great patience, he simply kept knocking.
Over these five years he had come to understand the rules of this dream all too well. Apart from knocking, no method whatsoever would open the iron gate—and in this dream, apart from knocking... there seemed to be nothing else he could do.
Fortunately, in the dream he never tired; otherwise his body would have collapsed long ago.
And so, like some diligent wage-slave, Lin Qiye conscientiously knocked on the door for one more night...