"What do you an?"
"This notebook was also sothing that guy picked up. It seems like a student’s exercise book, with the first half full of math problems that give a headache just at a glance. The latter half is that guy’s diary."
Sun Hang took the diary and flipped through it roughly—sure enough, the old man didn’t lie. At the very front of the notebook, a few pages of math problems hadn’t been torn out, and from the sixth page onwards, the diary of the scavenger began.
Sun Hang couldn’t help but sigh inwardly that he had arrived just in ti. If he had co a few days later, the remaining diary might have turned into fire-starting material for the old man.
Sun Hang flipped through the diary rapidly, seemingly only glancing at each page, but under the effect of bullet ti, he read the content of each page thoroughly several tis—it felt quite like the "quantum wave speed reading thod."
After reading the scavenger’s diary, Sun Hang suddenly realized a problem.
The person presented in the diary didn’t seem like soone who boasts outwardly but is full of sches internally. Instead, they appeared to be soone with extrely unstable ntal health.
The diary consisted of both text and drawings, with the first entry featuring a humanoid being deeply inspired by Kandinsky’s style... It vaguely discerned that the drawing was of a female. The humanoid had tangled long hair like straw on its head and two circles representing secondary sexual characteristics at the chest.
Of course, the main distinguishing factor was the second one, considering there were not a few males with long hair among this group of scavengers.
Around the head of this humanoid were lines seemingly ant to depict a glowing effect—drawing rays or halos around the head of a humanoid, Sun Hang had only seen in one type of art.
Religious art.
Whether in Christian depictions of Yahweh or Buddhist depictions of Sakyamuni, or even in so minor mythologies, the portraits of gods invariably have their heads surrounded by halos.
It’s as if to highlight the divinity of these gods: the higher the god’s status, the larger and more complex the halo around their head.
So, does this an... the drawing in the diary depicts a god? A goddess?
Sure enough, under the image, the first sentence written was, "My goddess! I love you so much! Your appearance is like a ray of sunshine in my dark life! The vulgar people will never understand; the world is utterly ruined, only you are the final redemption!"
"This guy... does he believe in religion?" Sun Hang looked up and asked the old man.
"Religion? I’m not really sure. Anyway, there were no Buddha statues or crosses among his belongings, and I didn’t see him attending any religious services," the old man pondered for a mont and replied, "But speaking of believers, the guy living on the fourth floor is the funniest. He’s not supposed to eat pork, yet once I cooked a pot of pork, and he was the quickest to grab it. Others asked him if he could eat pork, and he got all defensive, insisting it wasn’t pork... It seems to that believing in religion is just self-deception."
"I’m not interested in topics like pork. I just want to know if that dead scavenger ever ntioned anything about goddesses, gods, or redemption in his everyday life," Sun Hang asked again.
"You an the stuff written in his diary, right?" The old man pointed at the diary in Sun Hang’s hand.
"You’ve read it?"
"Of course, I’ve read it. Not only ; many people in this building have read it... At the ti, they even thought this guy might have noted locations of hidden supplies in his diary, but after reading it, they found out it was all nonsense."
"Didn’t you say you were barely literate and couldn’t understand his diary?" Sun Hang suddenly squinted his eyes.
"Uh..." The old man’s expression stiffened, "I... I couldn’t understand much, but that didn’t stop others from reading the diary’s content to ... During the ti just after he disappeared, his diary was used by others as a laughing stock during breaks. All that talk about goddesses and redemption... to us, it seed like fignts of a mind oppressed for too long."
"It’s not a big deal, really. After all, when everyone’s doing their ’handiwork,’ they have to fantasize about sothing good... But this guy writing all that stuff in a diary is truly laughable." The old man continued his rambling, "If I were him, even if I weren’t dead, I’d be too embarrassed to co back here knowing my diary got exposed."
"Alright... thanks." Sun Hang nodded to the old man and then left the building with the diary.
"Hey, kid, are you really not going to borrow an old cotton coat? It’s minus ten degrees out there! Think of it as a gift from ; you don’t have to return it, okay?" The old man’s voice called out behind him.
"Really, no need." Sun Hang glanced at the old, stained cotton coat with leaking stuffing, shook his hand vigorously, "I told you, I don’t fear the cold."
Amidst the surprised looks of several scavengers and holess people, Sun Hang, wearing just a knit sweater, quickly walked out of the construction site, pondering the contents of the diary in his mind.
The last dozen or so diary entries were similar to the earlier ones, mainly expressing his love for the "goddess"... In layman’s terms, it was nothing but "nonsense," or, using internet slang, he was just "having a ltdown."
This wasn’t a diary; it was clearly an abstract literary work filled with ramblings from start to finish.
Standing on an empty road, Sun Hang suddenly felt an illusion, wondering if he might be exploring the wrong direction?
After the videotape disappeared, Sun Hang had repeatedly used his abilities to track down the whereabouts of the tape but to no avail... Yet, at that mont, a flash of inspiration crossed his mind. A voice in his subconscious seed to tell him that the scavenger who had been transford in a bizarre way was the source of the clue, so he ca here to search for the scavenger’s belongings. These belongings were the only clues Sun Hang could think of... After all, the scavenger’s remains had already "disappeared" from this world along with the suspension of the videotape.
A scavenger girl told Sun Hang that after the scavenger spread the news about bloodstains being everywhere in the underground comrcial street, he continued to live in this abandoned building for so ti... This ant that during this period, he frequently traveled between the shopping center’s underground comrcial street and the abandoned building.
That’s most likely when he ca into contact with the bizarre videotape.
Initially, Sun Hang thought he might find so bizarre items among this guy’s belongings—but as soon as he entered the building, he realized he was wrong.
There wasn’t even a trace of bizarre items here.
Unless... the bizarre item among the belongings had already been taken away by soone.
[P.S. The flu was rampant recently; my dad and a friend got hit one after another. I thought I had dodged the bullet and even dared to ride out in the cold weather... But starting yesterday, my throat hurt, and today I was completely down, with a high fever, stuffy nose, and total body fatigue and pain... This Chapter was basically typed out in this state. I even feel more befuddled and abstract in my thoughts than that scavenger writing the diary...
I really don’t have the energy to check for grammatical errors and typos in this Chapter, so if anyone has ti, please help correct them. Thanks in advance.]
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