Tales of the End of the Century

Seven days after the man in gray and Vasily left, Lan Susu reorganized Sergei's notes from beginning to end. The courtyard was unusually quiet during this time. Tie Niu chopped wood, sharpened his knife, and practiced throwing his axe every day; Lao Hu tended the vegetable patch, peeled garlic, and improved the recipe for cucumber salad; Bai Ye practiced those variations that no longer needed to be memorized—brushing teeth from the middle, deciding which foot to step with first based on the wind direction, and alternating hands when holding the water jug. The reflecting mirror, wrapped in a trench coat, sat untouched under the iron bucket.

Lan Susu sat on the threshold of the east wing, with Sergei's notes, subject files, loose documents from the backup library, and her own notebook spread out on her lap. She spent two whole days picking out each page that Sergei had marked with red ink, arranging them in chronological order, and then discovered something she had previously overlooked.

Sergei wrote a line on the back of his list of test subjects.

It wasn't Russian, nor English. It was a line of symbols lightly drawn in pencil—an arrow pointing from a name on the list to a blank space next to it, which had been repeatedly erased, leaving only a barely visible shallow indentation. She held the list up to the sunlight, squinting for a long time, finally recognizing that what had been erased were three extremely illegible Chinese characters. It wasn't a transliteration of Russian; it was genuine Chinese, the strokes stiff, like something copied from a tracing book.

The three words were "Korsak".

She put the list down and turned to the next page. There were words on the back, written in red ink, the strokes pressed hard, the lines sinking into the paper: "Stage One: Seeing the light through the crack in the door. Stage Two: Pushing open a crack and looking inside. Stage Three: Opening the door and letting the light out. Stage Four: The light becomes a hand. The hand can be touched. I haven't touched it yet."

Below "Phase Four," there was a line of pencil writing that had been crossed out and rewritten, vaguely revealing the words "Phase Five." But this time, it wasn't followed by a description, but by a word she had never seen in Sergei's writing before—the Russian word "встреча," meaning encounter. Next to it, crossed out again, was a line of even fainter text: "They don't need me anymore."

She stared at the word for a long time, then opened her notebook. The first page contained seven names she had memorized since childhood: Zhuzhao, Guanwei, Ningxing, Shengyin, Huawu, Guizong, and Hunyuan. These were her family's traditions—taught by her maternal grandfather to her mother, and then by her mother to her. Her grandfather said these names were passed down from an old man surnamed Wei long ago. That old man had no descendants of his own and orally transmitted this classification to the Taoist priests of Yunlong Temple, who then passed it on to their descendants who came to study. She had always thought it was just a rough classification of states of consciousness by the older generation, without any experimental data to support it, so she never took the name system seriously, and certainly never mentioned it to her team.

Until she saw Sergei's red ink handwriting.

"Stage One: Seeing the light through the crack in the door"—exactly the same description as the microscopic realm. Sergei's subjects were marked as entering Stage One precisely when they were able to "actively perceive the hidden information."

"Phase Two: Peek Through a Crack"—corresponding to the Coagulated Realm. Sergei marked the beginning of the Crack Period at this stage. Subjects begin to see reflections in the mirror that are no longer synchronized. Bai Ye was identified as having entered this stage when she discovered symbols in her notebook that she had never drawn before.

"Phase Three: Open the door and let the light in"—perfectly aligned with the resonant environment. From "receiving information" to "emitting signals." From "perceiving" to "influencing."

"Stage Four: Light becomes a hand. The hand can touch"—Sergei did not reach this stage, but he inferred its existence based on slow signal data transmitted from the direction of the mining area. This aligns with the definition of the Transformation Realm.

"Stage Five"—when Sergei first wrote that line, he seemed to think he could do it. But then he crossed it out, leaving only a single Russian word. She hesitated for a moment, then suddenly remembered something her mother had said to her when she was little. That was the definition of the Return to the Origin Realm.

"Stage Six"—Sergei didn't explicitly label this stage anywhere. In the last few pages of his notes, he lightly traced a name in pencil at the bottom of the page: "Hun Yuan." Next to it was a question mark, which he then crossed out with a blue pen. She closed her notebook, staring at the red ink writing spread out before her. Two systems—one passed down orally from the mountains in the east for generations; the other a stage division derived from subject data by a scientist in a white coat in the north. The terminology was completely different, the pathways completely different, but the characteristics corresponding to each stage matched perfectly.

She drew a comparison chart in the margin of her notebook with a pencil. Then she stood up, walked to the jujube tree, and showed the chart to Bai Ye.

After reading it, Bai Ye placed the enamel mug on the stone. "So, which floor am I on now?"

Lan Susu pointed with the tip of her pen to the line between the "Form-Condensing Realm" and the "Resonance Realm," saying, "The peak of the Form-Condensing Realm. Sergei calls this the edge of 'opening the door and letting the light shine out.' You have already achieved the realization of 'Returning to the Center'—the reflection in the mirror has quieted down, no longer interfering with your movements, no longer blinking for you where you can't see it. But that's the 'inward' part." She paused. "Next is 'outward.' Not looking at the reflection, but letting the light shine out. Not reflecting yourself, but reflecting others."

Bai Ye looked down at the pebbles on the rock. "How do you photograph others?"

Lan Susu was silent for a moment. "I don't know. Sergei only wrote up to stage four in red ink; the rest was in pencil. He didn't finish it himself." She closed her notebook. "But I'm sure of one thing—your reflection stopped fighting you after that night. It wasn't defeated by you; it synchronized with you."

"Fellow travelers," Bai Ye said.

“Yes. You didn’t drive it away, you embraced it. It’s now in your reflection, on the same frequency as you. So your waveform on the oscilloscope is more stable than before—not weaker, but more consistent.” She turned the oscilloscope in her hand to show Bai Ye. His waveform on the screen was slowly and steadily expanding, the amplitude not increasing, but the frequency changing—it wasn’t the same as before. It wasn’t a waveform of the condensed state. She glanced at him and said, “The resonant state is just ahead. You don’t need to go looking for it, you just need to wait for it to come.”

Bai Ye waited all day.

He didn't do anything special. He chopped wood, ate noodles, and peeled two cloves of garlic for Old Hu. In the evening, he sat under the jujube tree, placed his enamel mug on a rock, and looked at the water. The water in the mug was still, reflecting the newly sprouted leaves of the jujube tree, the hazy sky, and his own face. The reflection on the water looked at him; his fingers rested on the rim of the mug, and the reflection's fingers also rested on the rim. The exact same position, the exact same posture, synchronized, without delay. He used to always compare himself to his reflection in the water, checking if it was a beat too slow, a beat too fast, or blinking at a different frequency. Today he didn't compare. He just looked. And then the reflection smiled at him.

This wasn't the first time he'd seen himself smiling in his reflection. The difference was—this time, he didn't smile. The reflection smiled first. And he didn't check if he'd smiled, didn't put his hand to his mouth to check if the corners of his lips were upturned, didn't mentally review his emotional list to judge "whether it was worth smiling just now." He simply watched the smile on the water's surface, watched it slowly fade, and then he smiled too. The kind of smile where you can't tell when it happened. Like breathing, you don't know if you inhaled or exhaled.

A tiny ripple suddenly appeared on the surface of the water in the jar. It wasn't from the wind, but from vibration. The vibration traveled from the jar to his palm, and then from his palm to his entire body. The air became very clear, so clear that he could feel the weight of every dewdrop about to fall from the jujube leaves. Tie Niu was sharpening his knife by the wall, the grinding wheel's whirring sound slowing down, and he could hear every single grain of sand. Old Hu was peeling garlic in the kitchen, the peels falling into the enamel basin as lightly as feathers on water. Lan Susu was writing in the east wing, the pencil scratching across the paper, each stroke carrying the astringent taste of graphite.

These weren't things he heard, nor things he speculated about. They were things he perceived. Not the past, not reflections, but what was happening now. Like a wall being silently slid away, his previously exclusive field of perception suddenly expanded considerably. Before, he perceived only residual information from objects—the blizzard in the suitcase, the chalk writing on the basement wall, Sergei's voice left on the tape, the person in the mirror who wouldn't move with him. Those were things that had already happened, emotions that had solidified, like a layer of paint that had dried for a long time; he could only feel the texture of the paint. But now he perceived something alive. Not memories, but the present moment. It was the direction in which the sap under the jujube tree bark was flowing, the rhythm of the tape fibers being flattened and then springing back as Tie Niu's fingers rubbed the tape on the axe handle, the extremely slight rolling of tea in Lao Hu's throat as he swallowed.

He used to be able to "see" the past. Now he can "hear" the present. Not with his ears, but with the self that emerged from the crack.

He looked down at his hands. His fingers weren't trembling, his palms weren't cold, and his shoulders weren't tense. He could feel a very thin ring around his fingertips, like air slightly expanding after being heated, then contracting again. The mirror, wrapped in his trench coat, sat quietly at the bottom of the metal bucket. He didn't look at it; he just looked down at the surface of the water in the enamel mug. On the water, his own reflection was looking at him, a slight smile on its lips. Not a beat behind, not a beat ahead. They were synchronized.

Lan Susu came out of the room, holding an oscilloscope. She said nothing, but turned the screen around for him to see. The waveform that originally belonged to Bai Ye on the screen was slowly expanding. The amplitude wasn't increasing, but the frequency was changing—it was different from before. It wasn't a waveform from the Condensed Form Realm.

Lan Susu looked for a long time. "You've arrived."

Bai Ye looked down at the water's surface. On the water, his reflection nodded slightly.

That evening, Bai Ye sat under the jujube tree, spending a long time adapting to the new level of perception. He wasn't using it to probe other people's secrets, but simply to let his body get used to this constant, subtly vibrating frequency. In the latter half of the night, he gradually learned to suppress all his senses into the background, not to deliberately distinguish them, not to chase after them, but simply to let them flow naturally in his awareness, like the sound of distant water. Then he discovered it. In a distant direction, there was a steady, quiet, and continuous gaze. Not hostile, not expectant. It was attention. Like someone standing outside his sight, not approaching, not disturbing, just quietly looking this way. He spent a long time sitting opposite it. Neither resisting nor inviting. Then he opened his eyes. Lan Susu was still awake, sitting on the threshold of the east wing, flipping through her notes.

Bai Ye placed the enamel mug on the stone. "Someone has been watching this place. Not just in the last few days, but for a long time. Not the man in gray, not Vasily. This person has no hostility. Just watching."

Lan Susu stood up and walked to the oscilloscope. Besides the stable resonant waveform of Bai Ye on the screen, there was another extremely weak signal—different in frequency, rhythm, and direction from the previously unidentified slow signal. It wasn't from the mining area. It was something else entirely.

"Who is this person?" Lan Susu asked.

Bai Ye shook his head. But he knew that someone would tell him soon.