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墨書 Inktalez
I stared blankly at the person at the bottom of the stairs, swaying as they walked toward us. Hu Fang, perhaps feeling a bit fearful of the unknown visitor, slowly hid behind me, clutching my sleeve tightly.
"It's me, I'm not dead!" A somewhat weak voice came from the bottom of the stairs. I thought I was hallucinating and turned to Hu Fang, stammering, "Did you... did you hear that?"
Hu Fang's eyes widened in surprise. "I heard it!" "Is it... Li Zhisheng?" she asked tentatively. "You didn't hear wrong; it's me." The voice grew louder as Li Zhisheng approached, his face illuminated by the moonlight.
He had a cut on his forehead, blood trickling down his cheek to his chin, and his glasses were already cracked. "You... how could you..." I pointed at Li Zhisheng, momentarily at a loss for words.
He gestured toward the edge of the building. "You can go see for yourself." Hearing this, I hurried over to look downstairs and saw a yellow air cushion where Li Zhisheng had jumped. Similar cushions were placed under several other buildings nearby.
"It wasn't there when we came back just now; how could it..." I muttered to myself. Li Zhisheng heard my confusion and explained, "When I fell down, I heard them talking. The ones who jumped before me went too fast and couldn't prepare in time. Just as I jumped, the air cushion arrived in time to save my life. Afterward, they worried someone else might jump, so they placed cushions under every building."
Upon hearing this, I let out a long sigh of relief; the rage that had erupted within me vanished without a trace. I walked over to Li Zhisheng and examined him closely. Aside from the minor injury on his forehead, he seemed fine, which reassured me.
Li Zhisheng noticed the blood splattered on my face. "What happened to you?" I smiled and raised my hand. "It's nothing; just a little scrape." Then I looked at my bloodied hand, hardly believing that I had hurt myself.
Li Zhisheng gave a wry smile. "How hard did you hit yourself to get like this? Let's go; we need to get your wounds treated at the hospital. We can deal with everything else later." With that, the three of us headed downstairs together toward the hospital.
At the hospital, the doctor examined both my and Li Zhisheng's injuries. Mine was superficial and only required disinfection and bandaging. However, Li Zhisheng's head wound was deeper and needed stitches.
When Li Zhisheng heard he needed stitches, he protested vehemently that it wasn't necessary; just wrapping it up would suffice. He complained about how stitches would leave an ugly scar. Finally, after some persuasion from the doctor to make it look nice, he reluctantly agreed.
After our wounds were treated, we all headed home together. By the time we returned to our neighborhood, it was nearly dawn; the crowd that had gathered earlier had dispersed, leaving only a few police officers patrolling the area through the night to prevent any further jumps.
When the officers saw us, they approached quickly. My heart raced—were they here to arrest me?! But they walked straight up to Li Zhisheng.
One of them reached Li Zhisheng's side and asked, "Is your wound taken care of?" Li Zhisheng touched his bandaged head and replied, "Much better now."
"Even if you experience heartbreak again in the future, you can't jump off buildings. If you die, who will take care of your parents? You're still young; there are plenty of good girls out there. Don't dwell on things too much, okay? By the way, you must be his friends..." one officer said before turning to Hu Fang and me.
Hearing this made me almost burst out laughing; I struggled to hold back my laughter as Hu Fang and I replied in unison, "Yes!" The officer nodded and said, "In that case, make sure to help your friend out. It's getting late; you should head home and rest."
With that, the two patrolling officers turned and walked toward another building. As soon as they left, Hu Fang burst into laughter and teased Li Zhisheng. "Hey, did you break up?"
Li Zhisheng looked helplessly at her. "What could I do? When I fell down, they kept asking me why I jumped and wanted to take notes! What was I supposed to say? That I was possessed by a ghost?!"
Li Zhisheng pushed up his cracked glasses with a hand. At that moment, I caught a glimpse of something on his hand.
I quickly grabbed his hand and pulled back his sleeve. I was stunned to see that there was a mark on the web of his right hand, just like the one on mine. However, his mark looked as if it had just been branded, yet the color was identical to the one on my hand.
"What is going on? Did you touch my Box?" I asked urgently. Li Zhisheng seemed flustered upon seeing the mark. "No, I haven't touched the Box..." He rubbed the web of his right hand with his left hand, trying to scrub the mark away.
But no matter how hard he tried, even making his hand swell, he couldn't get rid of that mark. "Stop it; let's go home first," I said, and then I ran home with Li Zhisheng and Hu Fang.
As soon as we got home, I urged Li Zhisheng to check if there were any other abnormalities on his body. He returned to his room and stayed inside for a good half an hour before coming out. "Nothing else; it's just this mark," he said, extending his right hand with the mark.
At that moment, I noticed that his mark didn't grow like the one I had seen before; although it was visibly growing, it wasn't spreading all over his arm in a short time.
Compared to the mark on my hand, his seemed to be growing slightly faster. "Could it be that you also have a Void Spirit?" I asked in confusion. Li Zhisheng thought for a moment and replied, "That's impossible. I was possessed by an Evil Spirit before; if I had a Void Spirit, I wouldn't have been possessed. That doesn't make sense."
Hu Fang chimed in from the side, "Could it be that you just grew a new Void Spirit or something?" Li Zhisheng responded, "That's unlikely; I've never heard of such a thing being able to grow..."
Hearing what Hu Fang said felt like a light bulb went off in my head. "From what I know about Void Spirits, one type is innate, while another can be introduced into one's body through special means. Although you can't grow one anew, it's possible someone implanted one in you without your knowledge."
"Implanted one?" Li Zhisheng asked in confusion. I pondered for a moment and continued, "Exactly—implanted means forcibly giving you a Void Spirit. However, I've only seen this happen once before, and it requires a great cost. But why do you seem unaffected?"
Li Zhisheng exclaimed anxiously, "Unaffected? Look at this! I've got this Demonic Mark on my hand! I don't have your book; how am I supposed to get rid of this thing?"
I furrowed my brows in deep thought. Hu Fang seemed puzzled and suggested to Li Zhisheng, "Why don't you try laser treatment for spots?"
Li Zhisheng pointed at me and said, "Look at Shen! If that method worked for him, would he be in this situation now?!"
Suddenly, something clicked in my mind but was interrupted by their bickering. Annoyed, I said, "Stop arguing! You've distracted me from the idea I just had."
Upon hearing this, they both fell silent at once, leaving the living room eerily quiet. I kept replaying everything that had happened in my mind.
First, I touched the Box; then a black mark appeared on my hand. After using that Sheepskin Book once more, a pattern also appeared on my chest. When my marked hand accidentally touched the chest mark, it transformed into the Nine Star Diagram while the so-called Hao Yin on my hand changed from black to blue.
Previously, Yin Li had told me that his mark was red while mine was initially black... This meant that the Box used three different colors for distinction: red, black, and then blue! In other words, this blue mark represents the Third Box!
Could it be that the mark on Li Zhisheng's hand is related to something inside the Third Box? As I pondered this thought, I took out the photo Hu Fang had given me earlier and carefully examined the Box depicted in it.
Due to the fact that the photo was in black and white, there was no way to determine the color of that Box. Additionally, since the photo was old, I couldn't even recognize if it was a picture of the first two Boxes.
At that moment, Li Zhi noticed the photo in my hand. Tilting his head, he read aloud the words on the back: "Is this a warning? A warning about what? Why warn?"
Hearing his words, I replied impatiently, "Can't you see? It's a threat using your death to stop me from investigating this matter any further."
Li Zhisheng hesitated for a moment. "No, that's not right. If he really wanted to threaten you, there would be no need to go through all this trouble. Besides, if I jumped off and died, wouldn't that just completely anger you? I don't think he's that foolish."
After listening to him, I thought for a moment and found some merit in his reasoning, so I let him continue. Li Zhisheng went on, "I believe the threat he mentioned isn't directed at me. The events surrounding me might have another purpose. The real threat comes from another aspect. This photo could convey two layers of meaning. The first is that he might actually have the Third Box you're looking for. The second is that he wants to let you know he knows you're investigating something."
Suddenly enlightened, I slapped my thigh and exclaimed, "Could it be that the threat refers to the person I sent out to investigate?!"
Li Zhisheng nodded. "Yes, I think so. He might have known all your plans while you were doing these things. The real danger now isn't me; it's the person you sent out to investigate—Meng Zhuang!"
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