After leaving the funeral home, Lin Chuan did not go directly to the railway station or airport.
Instead, he hailed a cab and headed straight for a secluded antique market in the city.
Taking a few familiar turns, he found a shop he frequented.
As the door opened, a mixed scent of aged paper and mothballs rushed toward him.
“Boss, how much for this pair of jade pendants?
Are they supposedly from the Qin dynasty?” Lin Chuan picked up a jade pendant with strange patterns and asked half-jokingly.
The boss behind the counter didn’t even lift an eyelid, lazily clicking the abacus.
“Who are you listening to talking nonsense?
How could there be so many real antiques on the market nowadays, let alone from the Qin dynasty?
At best, they are imitations from the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China period, not that old.”
“It doesn’t matter, money can’t buy my happiness, after all.
I just like the patterns on this.” Lin Chuan waved his hand, paid readily, and casually picked out a dozen more old items.
Walking out of the antique shop’s doors, the sunlight was just right.
Lin Chuan leaned against the wall, casually storing all the items except the jade pendant into the debris pile of Sefirah, and took out his notebook, drawing a black line through the line about attending the funeral.
His pen tip paused for a moment, and his gaze shifted downward to a city name, which was the place he planned to go next.
In the past, he had an online friend with whom he hit it off very well.
The two often joked around in posts and discussed all kinds of wildly imaginative topics.
But one day, that person suddenly went offline and never logged onto the account again.
Lin Chuan remembered very clearly that the topic of their last argument was: “If you transmigrated to another world, what should you do as a modern person?”
The other party stated that transmigrating definitely wouldn’t turn out too badly.
Even without any cheat abilities, relying solely on the superiority of modern knowledge and a broad horizon, one would surely attain a status that would leave a mark in history.
Lin Chuan, on the other hand, ruthlessly mocked the other party’s whimsical ideas, believing that transmigration wouldn’t be much better either.
Who would actually bother to specifically memorize joke products like transmigration guides?
Realizing you transmigrated only to find you remember none of that knowledge was the normal situation.
The two engaged in a fierce discussion revolving around transmigration, and the topic gradually derailed.
They even seriously considered whether modern viruses and bacteria carried by physical transmigration would directly trigger an apocalypse and destroy the other world, or whether spiritual transmigration taking over someone else’s body and then dating your own girlfriend would count as the original owner NTRing you, and other messy questions.
It ultimately ended with Lin Chuan saying, “Have you ever transmigrated?
You just talk nonsense about things and take things for granted,” which angered the other party so much that they lost their composure and didn’t know how to respond for a long time.
Lin Chuan thought he should be judged the winner, after all, he had argued the other party into speechlessness.
As for what this had to do with his destination, that reader full of flirtatious nonsense and fantasies about transmigration had a real name: Huang Tao.
…
A few days later, Lin Chuan was sitting in the first-class cabin of a flight to another city.
As the plane broke through the clouds and flew smoothly ten thousand meters high in the sky, Lin Chuan leaned against the porthole, closed his eyes, and prepared to rest for a while.
He had been so busy recently that he hadn’t closed his eyes.
After all, every day he remained on Earth carried the risk of the Original Creator waking up, and he indeed seemed to no longer need rest and sleep.
But Lin Chuan still deliberately maintained the habit of closing his eyes to rest.
Not needing it didn’t mean he couldn’t or didn’t want to.
After running away, it would still be better to maintain the normal routine a human should have.
As for work schedules like 996 or 007, Lin Chuan had long since expelled them from the category of human routines.
Here, the Church of Evernight must be seriously mentioned.
No wonder Amanises was a senior executive of a multinational corporation.
Look at what the Sequence was called?
Sleepless!
Heaven-chosen corporate slaves and workers, way ahead, anyone understand?
Just as Lin Chuan was finally able to rest for a moment, his heart suddenly twitched.
He was surprised to find that, as if a curtain had been abruptly pulled away, that directional fooling which had previously shrouded the entire Earth and was as ubiquitous as atmospheric pressure had actually disappeared.
Perhaps the Celestial Worthy had withdrawn the symbol Himself, or the pre-set duration of the authority had ended.
But whichever possibility it was, it meant the same thing:
The Celestial Worthy no longer cared if God Almighty noticed the action of Sefirah Castle pulling people in.
In other words, at this juncture, whether God Almighty noticed it or not no longer mattered.
Perhaps there were already enough light cocoons hanging on Sefirah Castle, or…
even if God Almighty wanted to interfere, there was no time left for Him to play a part.
Because the Original Creator was probably waking up soon.
“Forget it, I’m not short of this little time.
I might as well see a good deed through to the end.”
Lin Chuan hesitated for a moment about whether to run away right now, but still closed his eyes again.
But this time he didn’t fall asleep.
With just a thought, he returned above the boundless void.
…
After the flight landed, Lin Chuan traveled through twists and turns to arrive at Huang Tao’s hometown.
This was a slightly old yet vibrant residential area.
Following the address Huang Tao had inadvertently revealed in the book club chat group back then, Lin Chuan came before that somewhat rusted security door.
“Thump, thump, thump.”
Long after the knocking sound faded, a heavy sound of slippers scraping against the floor came from inside the door.
“Who is it?” Accompanied by the sound of the security door lock turning, a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a haggard face opened the door.
“Hello, Auntie, sorry to intrude.” Lin Chuan tried to make his tone sound gentle.
“I was an online friend of Huang Tao’s in the past.
I happened to pass through this city while traveling, so I dropped by to see you.”
To dispel the other party’s concerns, Lin Chuan took out his phone and pulled up the chat history between himself and Huang Tao on the forums and QQ groups back then.
Looking at her son’s familiar online nickname on the screen, Huang Tao’s Mother first froze, then her eye sockets quickly turned red.
She touched the screen with trembling hands.
“Taotao…
Ah, he used to hold his phone every day, saying there was a group of friends online he could chat very well with…”
Wiping away her tears, she hurriedly let Lin Chuan into the house.
“Quick, come in and sit.
Auntie will pour you some water.”
Sitting in the somewhat old-fashioned living room, listening to Auntie Huang’s intermittent outpouring, time slipped away unconsciously.
Lin Chuan learned that ever since Huang Tao passed away from a “sudden illness” a year ago, this family had lost all its laughter.
Huang Tao was an only child, and his departure was undoubtedly a heavy blow to his parents.
Sitting until dusk, Huang Tao’s father came home from work and pushed the door open.
He was a man of few words.
Seeing a guest at home and learning that he was his son’s online friend, he merely nodded vigorously, a flash of hard-to-conceal grief crossing the depths of his eyes, before silently heading to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
Seeing this, Lin Chuan stood up and politely declined the kind offer from Huang Tao’s parents to stay for dinner.
“I still have to catch up with my itinerary tonight, so I won’t disturb you any longer.” Lin Chuan stood up, took out the last two jade pendants from his bag, and gently placed them on the coffee table.
“Huang Tao helped me a lot online in the past.
This is a safety talisman I had someone get; it’s not worth much, but it represents my little token of appreciation.
Now that he is gone, you two elders must take good care of your health.
If he were still here, he certainly wouldn’t want to see you like this now.”
Amidst the farewells of Huang Tao’s parents, Lin Chuan waved his hand and turned to walk out of this old residential building.
With everything settled, it was time to prepare to leave Earth.