Chapter 3: - Master, You’re Awake?

Am I... dead?

Zheng Fan believed he should already be dead.

And yet moisture, warmth, a long-forgotten comfort slowly moved across his body.

At first the sensation was faint, barely there, difficult to grasp. Gradually, however, the stimulus to his senses grew clearer and clearer.

Was this what death felt like?

It seemed... not quite as unbearable as he had imagined.

In fact, it was even a little comfortable.

The returning signals in his nerves were like fresh water being diverted back into a dried-up canal. First it soaked the cracked earth, then moistened it, and finally began to pool. It was a gradual process.

As all of this unfolded, Zheng Fan’s awareness of the outside world grew steadily sharper.

He could feel his hands. His feet. And the warm liquid dripping down across his chest.

A strange thought surfaced in his consciousness.

Zheng Fan began to wonder whether he had really died at all.

No one knew what things were like after death. The old companions from his studio had created plenty of horror stories about ghosts and monsters, but those had only ever been imagination.

After all, dead people could hardly write a few hundred words of reflections like elementary-school students and send them back to the living.

Zheng Fan began trying to do something. The first thing he attempted was opening his eyes.

It felt a little like the Foolish Old Man trying to move the mountains. Sensation was rapidly returning to every part of his body, yet no matter how hard he tried, his eyes simply would not open.

It was like being trapped in sleep paralysis. He wanted to resist, but all that remained was futile struggling.

Clang!

A sound rang out.

Immediately afterward, a wave of heat splashed across his face.

Under that sudden shock, Zheng Fan finally opened his eyes.

At first his vision was blurred. He could sense light, but could not form an image.

Then a shadow descended and began repeatedly wiping his face, blocking his vision over and over.

Like someone who had just awakened and washed his face with a hot towel, Zheng Fan genuinely did feel refreshed for a moment.

His sight gradually cleared.

The first thing he saw was a face: that of a girl around fourteen or fifteen.

She wore a plain long dress. In one hand she held a copper washbasin, and in the other a towel. She was staring at him anxiously.

So... had this girl just accidentally dumped a whole basin of hot water over him and woken him up?

And that warm, comfortable sensation from before had been her wiping down his body?

The girl was terrified. Through one careless mistake, she had splashed a basin of hot water over the distinguished guest Madam had warned her again and again to take good care of.

For the past half year, her job had been to wait on him. Even though he had remained unconscious the entire time, she had never dared slack off in the slightest. The clearest proof was that after half a year in bed, the man did not have a single bedsore.

Only someone who had truly cared for a bedridden patient understood how much work that required.

Yet the girl had never complained. If anything, she was grateful for the assignment.

Put another way, this man was her life.

If she made some serious mistake, then given Madam’s temperament, there was every chance she would be kicked straight into one of the red tents at the pleasure house and made to receive those foul-smelling customers.

Madam had a bad temper.

A very bad temper.

If Madam learned what she had done and discovered the bed soaked through, then she...

The girl did not remain stunned for long, because she suddenly realized something.

The man’s eyes were open!

The girl blinked.

Zheng Fan blinked.

Four and a half seconds of silence.

“AAAAAH!”

The girl let out a scream.

The sound made Zheng Fan’s newly awakened skull throb so violently that he almost blacked out again. It was honestly a waste that this girl had never trained as a soprano.

“Madam! He’s awake! He’s awake!”

The girl spun around and ran out of the room, shouting at the top of her lungs as she went.

At last, the room fell quiet.

Only Zheng Fan remained.

He tried moving his hands and feet. At first they still felt numb, but he quickly found a point of support and, with some difficulty, pushed himself upright on the bed. Bracing both hands against the bedframe, he lowered his feet to the floor.

His legs were weak. Fortunately, he had prepared himself in advance and managed to keep his balance instead of collapsing immediately.

He stood there panting for a while before finally letting go with his hands and supporting himself entirely on his legs. His back remained slightly hunched, his center of gravity lowered, and he was still carefully maintaining his balance.

The whole process felt like a newborn child learning to walk.

This body seemed to have become excessively weak. Sweat already covered him.

Only now did Zheng Fan have the attention to spare for the room around him.

The structure was wooden and somewhat old. The furnishings had an antique style. In one corner stood a dressing table with a bronze mirror on top.

“I’m...”

Judging from the room he was in now, unless one entertained the absurd possibility that he had somehow been sent to a Hengdian-affiliated hospital... had he crossed over?

As a creator, Zheng Fan was naturally familiar with the concept of transmigration. He had simply never imagined it would actually happen to him.

He staggered over to the dressing table and looked into the bronze mirror.

Almost everyone had heard of bronze mirrors, but very few people in modern times had actually seen or used one. They had been obsolete for far too many years. Even so, when Zheng Fan stood before it, he was slightly surprised by how well it worked.

It certainly could not compare with a modern glass mirror, but the reflection was much clearer than he had expected.

Zheng Fan stared at the mirror and touched his own face.

The face in the bronze was his.

Mm.

So this was not a soul transmigration.

And this face was somewhat different from the one he had worn at death. Before his euthanasia, illness had reduced him to skin and bones. Now there seemed to be a little flesh on his cheeks again. He was still thin and pale, but at least within the normal range for a living person.

Lowering his head, Zheng Fan only now noticed that he was completely naked.

Not merely shirtless.

He simply had not registered it in the confusion of waking up.

A person without clothes instinctively felt insecure, and in an unfamiliar environment, that unease became even stronger.

Thinking back, had that girl been wiping down his naked body just now?

What Zheng Fan did not know was that she had done almost exactly that every day for the past half year.

Until today, when one careless motion had dumped an entire basin of hot water over him.

To the right of the dressing table stood a chair, and on the chair lay a set of clothes.

The outfit was extremely familiar.

A hoodie and trousers, mostly black with touches of dark red. Beneath the chair was a pair of boots.

These were the clothes Zheng Fan had been wearing when he died.

He liked this style and had once designed and custom-ordered several similar sets. Hoodies gave him a sense of security, especially when he pulled the hood down low enough to hide most of his face. That little enclosure gave him the peace he needed.

With considerable difficulty, Zheng Fan put on the clothes and boots.

By the time he finished, he was exhausted enough that he could only sit on the chair, lean against the dressing table, and pant continuously.

His newly awakened body truly was too weak.

But no matter what, it was already much better than the diseased shell he had possessed when he died. At the very least, if he rested and recuperated for a while, this body should recover considerably.

At that moment, Zheng Fan suddenly sensed a figure standing in the doorway.

Still breathing hard, he immediately raised his head and looked over.

For an instant, his entire body went rigid as though struck by lightning.

A woman stood at the door.

She looked around thirty-five or thirty-six. She wore a long blue dress and a phoenix hairpin. Her lips were red, her eyes naturally seductive. She was at that ripe, peach-sweet age where a woman had both elegance in bearing and just the right fullness of figure.

But none of that was the point.

No matter how beautiful or voluptuous she might be, none of it was enough to shock Zheng Fan this badly.

What truly stunned him was one simple fact.

He knew this woman.

More than that, he had drawn her with his own hands.

“Feng... Feng Siniang?”

Zheng Fan felt as though he had to be dreaming.

Could it be that once a person died, he entered some endless dream?

If so, then perhaps death was not something frightening after all.

Perhaps it was liberation.

Freedom.

The woman stared at Zheng Fan standing before her.

Her lips parted slightly. Moisture shimmered in her eyes. Her red lips curved as if she were smiling, while tears slipped down her cheeks.

She had already lost control of herself completely.

At last, the woman folded both hands before her abdomen and bent both knees.

Crying, she said:

“Master... you’re finally awake!”

[End of Chapter 3]