One Life, One Incarnation, Beautiful Bones

30

"I noticed." He chuckled and leaned over toward her to whisper, "You will blush."

Her eyes widened. "Really?"

"Really."

He was smiling as he stepped out of the car and left her with Uncle Lin.

However, after Zhousheng Chen had departed, Uncle Lin also got out of the driver's seat and stood beside the vehicle near its front.

This particular highrise building's parking garage was on the third level and provided a wide field of view. Her eyes swept around. She surmised that Uncle Lin had taken into consideration who she was and her status and hence did not stay in the same vehicle with her. She lowered her head and continued to browse through this book, "Strange Tales in Unofficial History," of stories that had been passed down for hundreds and thousands of years. The author's writing was quite good. The tragic parts would touch the heart while the parts about passions and fervor would cause an upsurge in emotions.

Words and sentences unfolded before her, and as they did, decades and decades passed by.

Until his name appeared.

It was simple white paper with typeset words and little more than a dozen lines of text. She however, fixed her eyes on them for a full seven or eight minutes, not daring to read any further.

Her heart pounded against her chest with a heavy, nervous thumping that could be heard in her ears.

It was not that she had never searched for information on those memories that seemed as if they had come from a half-dreamlike, half-awake state, but most of what she had found only mentioned him in passing with a few sentences. As a traitor of his country, no one would choose to write books or essays about him. His life of magnificence and accomplishments had not left any presence in the several thousand years of recorded history.

She leaned back against the seat. After a long time, she finally, word by word, phrase by phrase, finished reading this section of unofficial history.

Writers and historians from later generations were, for the most part, more ruthless with their pen.

The author described him as a self-seeking, fawning official who had held control of an army at a young age and whose power was second to none in the imperial court. The words were firm and written like absolutes, as if what he had written were the true historical facts. Shi Yi was silent for a moment. Then, she tore out that page, ripped it up into tiny pieces, and placed them into her pant pocket.

She had lost her desire to read.

As she set the book down beside her hand, she noticed the jacket he had taken off before he left the car. Her hand unconsciously stretched out and stroked it, her finger following the curve of the sleeve's edge to gently draw out a circle. This simple action already caused her cheeks to burn, as if she had touched his wrist.

He once "never forsook the world," but in the end, everything had been buried in time.

And now, what he desired to do today would perhaps, several hundred or several thousand years later, not even have a record of it.

His aspirations, his compassion, his every action and deed -- how many people truly understood these?

Her mind felt rather jumbled, and she forced herself to close her eyes to rest and allow herself to calm down.

In that moment when her eyelids closed and darkness descended with them, the piercing sound of gunshots suddenly rang out in violent succession. Shi Yi's eyes flew open and she stared disbelievingly out the window where she saw four people, who had not bothered at all to conceal their faces. Their arms were stretched forward and firing. Their target was not in her direction, but the loud crack of gunfire had shattered windows and the accompanying noise echoing through the body of the car was entirely real.