I just wanted to cultivate immortality, but I was forced to open a harem

It was not until she read the revelations on the school forum that she learned about Lin Hezhen's family situation.

The junior must be very lonely. Both his parents died. He is alone when he returns home every day, and is excluded and bullied by his classmates at school.

In this situation, he still cared about me and helped me. Even if his words were a bit unpleasant to the ears, as a senior student, I shouldn't lose my temper with him.

Mai Sakurajima finally understood why she felt a sense of closeness with Lin Hezhen, because they were the same type of people.

Mai Sakurajima's parents are still alive, but they have been divorced for a long time.

Her mother is very career-minded. Compared to her daughter, she seems to treat and train Sakurajima Mai more as an artist, and she also hopes to make her mother happy and work hard to pursue her acting career.

From being ignorant and obedient at the beginning to liking acting and becoming more and more famous, everything went smoothly. She thinks her mother is the best mother in the world, who gave her maternal love and a lifelong career.

However, her mother betrayed the agreement she made with her, and the two clashed, quarreled several times, and finally parted ways.

In this way, Sakurajima Mai lost her only relative. She never made any friends and was not accepted by her classmates. She was like a kite with a broken string, not knowing where she came from or where she was going.

In this way, she drifted and fell until Lin Hezhen grabbed the kite string and met this boy who was as lonely as her.

Neither of them said anything, letting the silence fall.

The tram arrived at the station and they followed the crowd into the carriage.

At this time, many students were going home after club activities, and many workers were getting off work. The tram was packed with people, various smells were mixed, and the air was a bit stuffy.

Mai Sakurajima was not in "invisible" state at this time. Many people in the car recognized her. All kinds of eyes from the men around her were always cast at her intentionally or unintentionally. Although she was used to it, Mai Sakurajima still frowned.

Although there were not many reports of chivalrous people on the train, they never stopped. In order to avoid any accidents, Hayashi Kazuma took Sakurajima Mai to the corner of the carriage and stood against the wall.

He grabbed the roof ring with one hand and supported the car with the other, using his body to isolate the crowd outside. Sakurajima Mai was protected by him and stood in the corner of the car. It looked like he was "wall-donging" Sakurajima Mai.

Her face flushed slightly, and she said with a slightly evasive look, "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

The two were so close that they could hear each other's breathing clearly.

Mai Sakurajima looked at the neck and collarbone exposed in the other person's white shirt, the strong arms with smooth lines, the angular face like a sculpture, the dark and deep eyes... and suddenly felt a little flustered.

In order to break the awkward atmosphere, she took the initiative to bring up the topic: "Recently, everyone on the school forum is talking about you. Rumors are flying everywhere. Your personal information and family situation have also been exposed openly. It's terrible."

"There is no other way. With the Internet, anyone can hide behind an account and speak freely, and even deliberately guide public opinion. People don't care about the truth, they just want to vent their emotions."

"You don't seem to care."

"The sun, the moon, the stars, are eternal, but life is short and is nothing but illusions. Gossip is nothing but dust in the wind and fog on the river. Do you need to care about it?"

"Instead of clarifying the facts, are you choosing to surrender without a fight?"

"It's just that there's no need. I, Lin Hezhen, have done everything in my life, so why should I explain it to others?"

Sakurajima Mai looked up at him. Lin Hezhen's indifferent eyes were filled with superiority and indifference. He really didn't care about other people's opinions.

After a pause, he suddenly said, "By the way, Mai, come to my house later."

"Huh?" Sakurajima Mai looked like she had seen a ghost.

"Are you okay in your head?"

"No, I am sober and formally invite you to my home. Don't worry, there is no one else at my home."

"How can I be relieved? It's too early. No, why should I go to your house?"

"I want to show you something good." Lin Hezhen said seriously.

"..."

Mai Sakurajima was speechless. She thought of the jokes that were popular among female artists in the entertainment industry.

When a producer or director says to an actress in private, "Come to my room tonight, I want to discuss the script with you," this sentence basically means the same thing as the red sofa in the audition room.

However, based on her understanding of Lin Hezhen, although they had not been together for a long time, he did not give her the impression of a frivolous person.

He probably didn't mean that, did he?

Chapter 25 Talisman

Mai Sakurajima followed behind Lin Hezhen with a nervous mood, watching him take out the key and open the door.

It looked like a pet cat that had never been out of the house, cautiously and tentatively stepping into the door of a new world.

"Please come in." Lin Hezhen changed into slippers at the entrance, and then took out a pair of women's slippers and handed them to Sakurajima Mai.

Sakurajima Mai didn't answer, her suspicious eyes wandering between Lin Kazuma and the women's slippers.

Lin Hezhen explained: "These are my aunt's slippers. She is my guardian now. But she is very busy with work and rarely comes here. The slippers are hardly used."

His frank attitude dispelled Mai Sakurajima's doubts. She still teased with a mischievous attitude: "Who knows? Maybe you often bring girls home, so you always have a pair of women's slippers and pretend to be a guardian."

Lin Hezhen stared at her with his dark eyes without blinking and said, "It didn't happen before. Now, you are the only girl I bring home. If you want, I can buy a pair of slippers just for you."

Sakurajima Mai's face flushed immediately: "Who asked you to prepare slippers for me? I don't plan to live here! Don't get me wrong, I just accepted your invitation and stayed as a guest temporarily. I may never come again in the future."

"I know. Anyway, come in first." Lin Hezhen made an inviting gesture.

"excuse me."

Mai Sakurajima hesitated for a moment, but finally changed into slippers and walked into a stranger's home for the first time in her life.

Because it belongs to the same apartment building, the layout of this place is similar to her home, but the decoration style and layout are simpler.

The house was not what she had imagined. There were no clothes scattered everywhere, the corners and furniture were not covered with dust, and the trash can was not filled with suspicious paper balls. The whole room was so clean and tidy that it was almost sparkling.

"It overturned my imagination. I thought the rooms of boys living alone were always dirty and messy." She looked around, not missing a single corner.

"Sorry to disappoint you." Lin Hezhen opened the refrigerator, took out barley tea and poured two cups, just as making tea.

He likes to keep things neatly organized, and with handy little spells like "cleaning magic", keeping his room tidy shouldn't be too easy.

"Thank you." Sakurajima Mai took the barley tea.

The two of them were sitting on the sofa in the living room.

Mai Sakurajima calmed herself down and asked, "Can I tell you what's going on now?"

"Well, as I said before, I have something to show you."

Sakurajima Mai had a strange look on her face. No way, no way, he wouldn't really want to show me that, right?

Lin Hezhen stood up from the sofa and reached under his body.

Mai Sakurajima jumped up in fright, and in panic she used her schoolbag to block her face. She turned her head to look at the wall, her face as red as a boiling kettle.

"What are you doing? Disgusting, obscene, shameless!" she screamed.

Lin Hezhen: “Hmm?”

He bent down and opened the drawer under the sofa, took out yellow paper, cinnabar and a brush, and placed them on the coffee table.

"This is it."

Sakurajima Mai maintained her posture and closed her eyes tightly, saying: "What you are doing is against the law. I will call the police immediately. I hope you don't ruin your entire life because of a momentary impulse."

Lin Hezhen was confused: "What are you talking about? I just want to draw a talisman for you."

"Talisman?" Sakurajima Mai opened her eyes in surprise.

When she saw clearly what was on the table, she realized without a doubt that she had made a huge mistake. She was so ashamed and angry that she wished there was a crack in the ground she could crawl into.

Lin Hezhen nodded and said, "Although you refuse to reveal the truth, I guess you made a wish to a false god, causing your presence to gradually disappear."

Sakurajima Mai was shocked. With almost no clues, Lin Hezhen's guess was almost exactly the same as the actual situation.

"If you don't intervene, the situation will continue to deteriorate. Everyone will forget you, ignore you, and fail to observe you. Eventually, you will be abandoned by the entire human society. You will not receive medical treatment when you are sick or injured, and you will not receive assistance when you are in danger. You will survive alone and in difficulty until you die quietly in a corner. Are you willing to accept such a future?"

"I..." Mai Sakurajima was speechless.

The future that Lin Hezhen described was so terrible, completely different from her original wish.

Although her experiences in recent days had made her realize that the situation was a little bad, she never expected that it would turn out to be such a bad ending in the future.

Just when she was confused, Lin Hezhen continued: "If you want to solve the problem completely, you must find the false god you made a wish for and take back what you lost."

Sakurajima Mai smiled bitterly and said, "It's easy to say. The guy you keep denouncing as a false god is a powerful being that can easily interfere with reality, change human cognition, and deprive people of the concept of existence. What qualifications do we have to negotiate with it and take back what it has taken away?"

Hearing this, Lin Hezhen smiled slightly: "This is exactly what I want to prove to you."

After saying this, he spread out the yellow paper, picked up the brush, dipped it in cinnabar, and wrote the mysterious spell on the yellow paper with fluent strokes.

Spiritual power was injected into the yellow paper through the medium, the spell connected the laws of heaven and earth, the pen moved like a dragon and snake, and after writing the last stroke, a golden light suddenly appeared on the talisman.

Mai Sakurajima looked at this magical scene and could not hide her surprise: "What is this? How did you do it?"

Lin Hezhen explained: "This is a paper talisman, made with spiritual power and spells. Wearing it on your body can suppress evil spirits. Before the spiritual power in the talisman is exhausted, others can see you normally."

"As for how I did it, it's because I'm a cultivator."

"Cultivator?" Sakurajima Mai was extremely unfamiliar with this term.

"You can understand it as someone who possesses magical powers like an Onmyoji." Lin Hezhen didn't intend to go deeper into the topic.

Mai Sakurajima picked up the paper talisman on the table, and her slender white fingers stroked the spell on it, and she felt a faint warm current.

The originally fragile and ordinary yellow paper now felt like cloth, and the mysterious spell written in red cinnabar seemed to have a halo flowing on it.

Mai Sakurajima couldn't help but have the illusion that she was in a dream, but what she saw, heard, and felt reminded her that all this was real.

"Go and try it, you'll believe what I say," Lin Hezhen suggested.

Mai Sakurajima walked to the tram station with the talisman as if sleepwalking, and successfully bought a cream bun from the old lady who had long disappeared.

"Oh, little girl, I seem to have seen you on TV. Are you that Sakurajima Mai?" the old lady asked in surprise.

"Yeah." Mai Sakurajima felt mixed emotions.

It was obvious that this old lady had not been able to see me before, but I was recognized all of a sudden with this talisman. Could it be that this junior from the same school is really a master with magical powers?

Both a false god and a cultivator, Sakurajima Mai felt that the three views that she had built up over the past decade began to collapse, and the truth hidden in the entire world was slowly revealing itself to her.

Chapter 26 People from Different Worlds

"Thank you." Mai Sakurajima held the cream bread and a smile as bright as a rainbow after the rain appeared on her face.

Lin Hezhen replied calmly: "You're welcome, it's just a small matter."

The girl shook her head: "It may be a piece of cake for you, but for me it is a life-saving rope in the quagmire of despair."

During this period, she appeared calm and composed, going to and from school as usual every day. She even deliberately put on a bunny girl costume to test whether people could see her.

But in fact, when she is alone, fear, anxiety, terror, and confusion, these negative emotions will slowly erode her heart like crude oil leaking into the sea.

And Lin Hezhen, this unique boy, the only boy who can see himself when he is "invisible", is the only bright color in this gray world.

Now, he has shown his miraculous power again, using talismans to bring himself back into people's cognition and rescue himself from the collapsing world.

She was really grateful.

Lin Hezhen waved his hand and said: "Don't be too happy too early. The talisman is time-sensitive and will no longer work once the spiritual power is exhausted. Therefore, the radical solution is to find the false god as I said before. Take back what you lost.”

"Yeah." Sakurajima Mai nodded. Now she was sure that Lin Hezhen had the ability to change her bad situation.

Who else can I trust besides him?

So she cleared her mind and told the story from the beginning.

"At first, I saw an urban rumor on the city forum. There is a cat statue on the hill of Ipponsugi. It is called the Unsmiling Cat. It is said to have divine power. As long as you offer sacrifices to it, your wishes will be fulfilled and things you don't need will be taken away."

"I was in a state of distress at the time. Although I had completely retired from the entertainment industry, I was often recognized by people because of my high profile. I was treated differently everywhere, which made it impossible for me to integrate into the life of a normal person."

"At that time, I thought, why not give it a try? It's just a large wooden cat sculpture anyway, so it's okay to pray for it as a joke, just like visiting a shrine. Even if my wish doesn't come true, I won't lose anything."

"This thought kept turning over and over in my mind, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. Finally, on the first day of spring break, I went to the hill of cedars, and under the absurdly tall cedar tree on the top of the hill, I made a wish to the cat that never smiles."

"Afterwards, I found that the rabbit hairpin I often wore was missing. I was a little surprised at the time, thinking that I had accidentally lost it. I searched everywhere but couldn't find it. Now I think that it must have been taken away by the Smileless Cat as a sacrifice."

After letting out the secret that had been suppressed in her heart for so long in one breath, Sakurajima Mai couldn't help but feel a sense of relief, as if a heavy stone pressing on her heart had been lifted away. She felt light and her spirits were extremely high.

"Is that the Smiling Cat from Yibensugi?" Lin Hezhen seemed to be thinking, "Is the URL of that city forum still there? I want to see that post."

"I saved the original post on my phone and will send you the link."

The two took out their phones and realized that they had not added each other as friends, so they could not send the link at all. So, the two could only exchange email addresses and add each other as Line friends.

Lin Hezhen used to be just an unpopular otaku. His friend list was deserted with only a few relatives. His only male friend was Kamigo Yoshihiko, who was the one Lin Hezhen insisted on adding yesterday.