Chapter 31 Steady

I turned around so that the herdsman, who was so frightened he had retreated to the corner, wouldn’t have to look at my back anymore.

“This hasn’t happened before?”

“No!” He said angrily.

Oh. I tried hard to restrain my inner panic. This was a new breakthrough, at least in restoring a trace of the past. As it turned out, I did touch that ghostly hand at that time, and then I fell into its trap.

The sutra…the next thing was that sutra. I took it out and found that it was completely soaked. Although the paper was brittle, it seemed like it could withstand getting wet. Maybe it had been woven with cotton or something. “What about this, this sutra?” I asked him. “Did you tell me to take it with me?”

“Y-yes.”

“Why?”

“Every once in a while, you have to read this sutra. You asked me to translate it for you. You also asked me to remind you to take it with you because you have to use it at critical times.”

I paused before carefully examining the sutra. Sure enough, I noticed some phonetic notations had been written on the edges.

“Tell me more.”

“Big brother, I don’t know.” When he called me that with his accented Mandarin, I found it particularly funny. “But there will be noises here every once in a while. As soon as you hear them, you’ll recite this sutra.”

I rubbed my chin in thought before picking up a sharp rock from the ground—I had already figured out a rough idea of the situation.

First of all, a whole portion of my memories had disappeared. In that portion, I must have figured out a lot of clues about Xiao Hua and the others, sorted out a general idea of the whole situation, and realized that chanting this sutra could help me avoid something. Then I fell into that trap.

That thing became stuck to my back as a result of that trap, and stayed latched onto me the whole time. This herdsman had no idea that this thing was on my back, which meant that even I didn’t know it was there. This was an important point—it wasn’t that I forgot this thing was stuck to my back, it was that I didn’t know it was there from the very beginning.

I knew very well that before I lost my memory, the clues I discovered must have been fragmentary.

I won’t narrate my whole thought process; just know that after a simple deduction, I discovered some habitual tricks in my way of thinking. It was through these little tricks that I realized a message was hidden in all the carvings and paintings my previous selves had put on the walls.

That is, when I was about to deduce the truth of the whole matter, the heavenly gift came in and deleted the memories with precision.

This was essentially a powerful, unperceivable force. In other words, the most important part of my memory was deleted.

This was different from what happened to Poker-Face. Almost all of his memories were erased and rewritten, but mine were deleted in pieces.

Why was there such a difference?

There were many possibilities. If I knew the truth, then I could definitely deduce a lot of things.

Another point was that I had a very sharp intuition. In real life, I felt that the simplest inference—that is, the first layer of logic behind your inference—was often the most accurate.

Right now, the first layer of logic was telling me that the power of the heavenly gift that affected us and the power of the heavenly gift that affected Poker-Face weren’t the same and may even be opposites.

The power here wasn’t so domineering and even seemed somewhat gentle, as if it was a kind of feminine power.

Once I made this inference, I began to perceive some strange contradictions that occurred throughout the whole process.

Ever since I came here, I always had a feeling that there was something at the end of this crevice that wanted to meet me. The feeling was so strong that it seemed reasonable to say that if this were true and I had been invited here, then the whole trip should have gone smoothly. There were many times along this journey where I felt like after receiving the heavenly gift, I would come back to my senses and find that I had reached the end.

However, there were so many difficulties along the way, all of which seemed to bring to mind the word “trapped”. Xiao Hua was trapped, and now I was trapped, too.

I had also seen a lot of defense mechanisms set up by the ancients here. Now that I thought about it, if the power of the heavenly gift existed here, then there shouldn’t be any need for protection at all. Looking at it again now, such a possibility seemed plausible.

So, there was a force that let me in here and another force that didn’t want me in here.

All the obstacles I had encountered were meant to prevent me from entering.

In terms of strength, I must be within the sphere of influence of that thing at the bottom of the Kunlun Mountains, so all the heavenly gifts I had received so far were meant to help me advance. After I entered the grassland, I was already within its sphere of influence so that was why I was still managing to move forward overall.

But someone had set up countless obstacles.

The fact that I was going in circles here now must’ve meant that this was one of the obstacles. So, in essence, that ghostly hand—that strange, withered hand—wasn’t some evil thing that came into being here. Then, could I think that it had also been placed here to prevent me from entering?

What I needed to figure out was which one was good for me: the one that was preventing me from entering or the one that wanted me to enter? But it was impossible to tell right now. As a human being, what I actually wanted was the right to make my own choice.

So, in all the confusion before, I must’ve had two purposes: first, prevent myself from being affected by the heavenly gift again; and second, to get out of this trap.

This meant that I could think of my current situation like this: I was trapped in an endless loop here that had nothing to do with the external environment. Everything was because I fell into this trap, and the reason I fell into this trap was because of this thing on my back.

I had only been thinking about the external environment, so that was why there hadn’t been any results.

At the same time, I realized that the sutra must be a detailed record I left for myself. It really fit in line with my character, after all.

First, I had to take that sutra with me. Second, I had to read it. And third, I had to recite it whenever I heard noises around me.

I couldn’t understand the information contained in at all, but through those phonetic notations, I could at least recite it out loud. Maybe I would understand it then.

The information it contained was very important and had to be taken with me.

This information couldn’t be perceived by the surrounding environment, but it was possible to be heard, so it had to be read when there were noises around me.

If this information was the memory of that deduction I was about to make before, it would be deleted altogether.

In order to prevent this from happening, I split the information into three pieces that were so illogical, they couldn’t be linked. Then, I memorized them over several cycles.

Ok, you can do this.

Steady.

The first thing to do now was… I held up the sharp rock and said to the herdsman, “Big Brother, if you still have strength left in your hands, I have some physical work for you. Can you cut this thing off my back?”

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