Memorandum by Tang Shuyu

The moment someone stepped in, the sphere glowed, floated up, drifted before the two intruders, and emitted a string of strange-sounding words. Tang Shuyu was no stranger to this room, so he was used to the odd sphere's behavior.

He Zhuoming, however, was startled and immediately hid behind Tang Shuyu, grabbing tightly at the Wuyi Sword at his waist.

Tang Shuyu tilted his head and reassured her, "Don't worry. This sphere is just a specially refined instrument. Its appearance is strange, and its speech is hard to understand, but it's completely harmless."

He was mid-comfort when he saw He Zhuoming poke her head out from behind him, staring at the sphere with a grave expression. After a moment, she spoke to it in the same odd language that Tang Shuyu couldn't understand.

The sphere spun around, its light brightening, and crackled with simulated firework sounds.

Amid the loud fireworks, the sphere split open from the middle, revealing a smooth, flat screen.

Tang Shuyu looked at He Zhuoming in astonishment. "You can understand what it's saying?"

It was the first time He Zhuoming had seen such an expression on Tang Shuyu's face—a mix of amazement and a hint of admiration.

After all, this was a realm completely beyond his understanding. He Zhuoming felt a little smug but kept her composure, saying, "Didn't I tell you? I took a language class. I know a bit of French."

The sphere had just greeted them in French, saying, "Welcome. Please enter a command." He Zhuoming had only tried a tentative "Hi, Siri."

She pulled at the newly appeared screen and saw a familiar tablet interface. Siri was still asking, in French, if she needed help.

The text on the screen was also in French. He Zhuoming fumbled around looking for the language settings to switch it back to Chinese, because her French wasn't good enough for written use. It was fine for casual conversation, but her written French was about on par with her English.

Both were at middle-school level.

But she couldn't find the language settings. She tried commanding Siri with some common words to switch languages, but Siri replied in French, "I'm sorry, that feature is not available at the moment. Please give another command."

He Zhuoming scratched her head, thinking, Could the Guye Immortal be French?

But the words on the door were Chinese... And come to think of it, since she'd transmigrated, everyone she met spoke Chinese too.

Tang Shuyu bent down slightly, bringing his head close to hers, and asked curiously, "What did it say? What does that writing mean?"

Cradling the sphere, He Zhuoming sat down right there. Tang Shuyu saw her sit and sat down beside her, his head still close to hers.

He Zhuoming said, "It says it can't switch to Chinese... That's not important. Let's see... There are so few apps. Oh, there's a photo album! And a memo."

She opened the photo album, but it was empty.

The memo, however, had some writing—though also in French. The previous owner's French was clearly far better than hers, because she spotted several words she didn't recognize.

Using context clues, she stumbled through a translation. "'For whoever might come here... If you wish to leave... world...'"

[If you wish to release your soul from the fictional world of the novel and return to your original homeland, you must complete the plot assigned to your character.

If you entered this world in person, as a passerby with no part in the story, you can try your luck at □□.]

He Zhuoming glossed over words like "fictional world" and "character plot," and just stared at that one place, trying to figure out how to translate it. She asked Tang Shuyu, "Is there any place here that's like Hell... I mean, like the underworld?"

Tang Shuyu thought for a moment, then said, "The underworld is a fiction of mortals; it doesn't really exist. But there are similar places. After death, souls gather and flow like a river toward the Abyss of Return, where they are reborn."

He raised an eyebrow and asked, "What? Does it say the Abyss of Return leads to your home?"

His skepticism was obvious.

He Zhuoming swiped the touchscreen and replied, "That's what the memo says..."

Tang Shuyu let out a derisive snort. "You believe everything he says? If he could really foresee all this, he wouldn't have had to borrow a body."

He Zhuoming: "So his attempt to borrow a body failed?"

Tang Shuyu changed the subject. "Let's see if any of the other things are clickable."

He Zhuoming tapped each of the other app icons one by one, only to find that almost none of them opened. They were just decorative.

The search bar, however, did work.

She typed in the pinyin for "Earth Immortal" just to try, and to her surprise, a row of search results appeared—except they all looked like book titles, which was a bit odd.

Tang Shuyu nudged her elbow. "What are these?"

He Zhuoming: "They look like book titles... Hmm."

She tapped one at random, and the sphere immediately made that crackling firework sound. A book flew out from the bookshelf and landed with a slap in front of them.

Tang Shuyu picked up the book and flipped through it. He Zhuoming hurried over. "What is it? What is it?"

Tang Shuyu handed her the open book. "Just sheet music from the Pear Garden."

He Zhuoming looked and, sure enough, it was sheet music—and the kind she couldn't read.

She tossed the incomprehensible sheet music aside and went back to studying the cracked open sphere. After she tapped the search bar seven or eight more times, and seven or eight more books dropped off the shelves, the sphere gave another flat, mechanical prompt: "You have reached the borrowing limit. Please return borrowed books before continuing."

Right after that warning, a narrow crack opened in the floor.

The crack was closer to Tang Shuyu, so he casually picked up a book and slipped it into the gap. The sphere emitted a clapping sound and said, "Book number 18783 has been returned."

Tang Shuyu asked, "What did it say?"

He Zhuoming: "It said we returned the book successfully... The Guye Immortal really liked learning—set up a modern library. Hey, you're closer. Put the rest of these in the crack too."

She stacked the books piled by her legs and handed them to Tang Shuyu.

He took them one by one and dropped each into the crack. "So you're going to the Abyss of Return?"

He Zhuoming nodded. "Yeah. The Guye Immortal might be from the same place as me. Whether his words are true or not, I want to give it a try."

All the books were soon stuffed into the gap. He Zhuoming quickly lost interest in the fully explored sphere, set it down on the floor, stood up, and started examining the rest of the room.

The bookshelves on all four walls stood tall, with book spines showing titles on display.

He Zhuoming didn't like reading. Seeing that many words made her head spin, so she gave them a cursory glance and turned her attention to the huge telescope in front of the tent.

The roof was open, revealing clouds and evening light.

He Zhuoming adjusted the telescope upward and was about to put her eye to it when Tang Shuyu suddenly reached out and covered the lens.

He Zhuoming often reacted slowly when there was no danger, so she didn't stop in time and her brow bone bumped into the back of his hand.

She froze for a moment, then looked up at Tang Shuyu. He had a smile on his face and said in a light tone, "It's still daytime. If you use this to look at the sky, do you want to blind yourself? Xiao He, your eyesight isn't great to begin with, but being completely blind would be too pitiful."

He Zhuoming: "...Ah."

She suddenly realized—you can't use a telescope to look at the sun during the day.

Even though it was evening, it was still technically daytime.

She rubbed her brow bone. "I saw the telescope and... I got too excited. Forgot."

Tang Shuyu: "Is that what you call it in your hometown? A telescope?"

"Mm-hmm—"

Tang Shuyu crouched beside her, moved his hand off the lens, and put his own eye to it.

He Zhuoming stared blankly at his profile as he leaned in. After a few seconds, she let out a yelp and shoved him hard, sending him tumbling to the ground.

Tang Shuyu: "...What are you doing?"

He Zhuoming: "It's daytime! You just told me not to look, so why are you putting your own eye up there—are you stupid?"

Even as she spoke, she knelt down and leaned in nervously to check his eye—the one he'd just pressed against the lens.

Tang Shuyu blinked. The skin around his eye was slightly red, but he seemed fine.

He tilted his head just a little, and then burst out laughing.

He Zhuoming, baffled and annoyed, shoved him again. "What's so funny?"

Tang Shuyu seemed to collapse at the slightest push, letting himself fall flat on the floor, his chest heaving dramatically with laughter.

He Zhuoming crawled to his side, looking at him with a mix of confusion and exasperation.

When Tang Shuyu had laughed enough, he squinted and said slowly, "Xiao He, didn't you forget? It's actually quite hard to kill me. Here—even if it were pierced through—I wouldn't die."

He grabbed her hand and pressed it against his chest.

His breathing and laughter made his chest rise and fall faster, and He Zhuoming felt the thud of his heartbeat vibrate through her palm, all the way up her fingers.

Her face grew hot again. She yanked her hand back. "What's there to laugh about!"

Tang Shuyu looked at her with a grin. "What I mean is, you don't need to worry about me so much. I won't die easily."

He Zhuoming turned her face away and scooted sideways to put some distance between them, pouting. "Oh—"

Tang Shuyu added, "But knowing that Xiao He cares about me—that touches me."

He Zhuoming: "...You're so annoying!"

She didn't want to talk to him anymore. Whenever she talked too much, her heart raced, and when her heart raced, she felt a near-suffocating discomfort. If this kept happening, she suspected she'd develop heart disease.

Even though he'd been called "annoying," Tang Shuyu didn't feel bad about it.

Oddly, he found he quite enjoyed fighting with Xiao He—the kind of argument where she wasn't truly angry.

During these small quarrels, he could even tolerate her saying mean things about him, and found himself feeling a kind of... light, floating joy from her grumbling.

Like now, after being scolded, he felt like laughing.

His eyes shifted slightly toward her, and he saw she had lain down too, folding one arm under her head as a pillow.

He Zhuoming asked, "There's no roof here. Can we see the stars at night?"

Tang Shuyu: "We can see plenty of things more interesting than stars."

He Zhuoming: "Hmm?"

Tang Shuyu smiled. "Wait until nightfall. You'll see."

This room had no windows, yet it wasn't hot. The temperature was just right.

Because it was so high up, some clouds drifted right through the room.

He Zhuoming lay there for a while and gradually grew drowsy. She told herself she'd only rest her eyes a moment, but as soon as her lids closed, she slipped into a hazy half-sleep.

In a daze, she seemed to dream. In the dream, she crossed the Abyss of Return and returned to the modern world. Her math teacher asked sternly why she'd missed the final exam, said she'd get a zero, and that she'd have to take the report card—with the worst grade in the grade level—home for her parents to sign.