Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

Lin Shen continued walking down.

On the first floor, he pushed open the metal door on the west side, and the hinges creaked loudly again.

Someone shouted from the direction of the main gate, "There's a sound from the west!" Footsteps rushed towards them, and the thud of boots on the concrete grew closer.

Lin Shen carried the young man through the narrow alley, the broken glass making a soft cracking sound underfoot.

Behind him, the metal door was kicked open, and a flashlight beam swept in from the alley entrance. The beam swayed wildly in the narrow alley, sweeping across Lin Shen's back and landing on the drooping arm of the young man in his arms.

"This is a dead end! There's nobody here!"

"Impossible, there was definitely a sound just now!"

The flashlight beam swept back and forth twice in the narrow alley before finally moving away.

"...It might be a stray cat. Move it back and clean the building thoroughly!"

The footsteps retreated inside the door, and the metal door slammed shut.

Lin Shen walked out of the alley. The van was parked in the morning mist, its dusty body resembling a gray stone.

He opened the back door, laid the young man flat on the back seat, and checked his carotid artery again. The pulse was still weak, but it was still beating.

Lin Shen closed the car door, walked around to the driver's seat, and started the engine.

The headlights came on, cutting through the morning mist. He stepped on the gas, and the van drove out of the alley and onto the main road.

In the rearview mirror, the outline of the old building grew farther and farther away, and the flashlight beam still flickered in the shattered windows, like eyes that couldn't find their way.

------

The van drove away from the alleyway of the old town of Chenxi City, and the morning mist seeped into the van through the gaps in the windshield.

Lin Shen's fingers would reach back every thirty seconds, his fingertips touching the skin on Shen Qinghou's neck. The pulse was weak, beating erratically.

The old red brick building in the rearview mirror grew smaller and smaller until it shrank into a blurry black dot in the morning mist.

Lin Shen stepped on the gas, and the old engine emitted an unstable hum. The tires crunched over the broken glass on the road.

The dark purple seed perceived deep within my consciousness grew fainter and fainter, like charcoal soaked in water, with only a faint red glow remaining beneath the ashes.

Lin Shen accelerated to the top speed, and the wind rushed in through the car window, blowing his bangs onto his forehead. The sweat-soaked fabric felt icy cold.

Forty minutes later, the van stopped in front of an abandoned biological research institute on the outskirts of Gwangyang City.

Lin Shen went around to the back door and carried Shen Qinghou out of the back seat.

The person in his arms was still unconscious, with tightly furrowed brows and chapped lips. Occasionally, he would unconsciously hum a soft sound, like the tremolo of a vibrato on a string about to snap.

He carried the person through the courtyard filled with fallen leaves, pushed open the metal door of the research institute's side gate, where the smell of disinfectant hadn't dissipated yet, mixed with a musty smell of dust.

Half of the corridor lights were broken, and the few remaining ones cast a dim, yellowish light, making the two people's shadows very long.

He went straight to the innermost lounge. The door number had been crossed out, and next to it were the three characters "Song Yuanming" written in a marker, the handwriting strong and powerful. It was his teacher's office and lounge.

The room was small, with only a metal bunk bed, a wooden table, and piles of professional books half a person's height in the corner. On the lab table by the window, there were still untidy beakers and test tubes covered with a thin layer of dust.

Lin Shen placed Shen Qinghou on the bed, pulled the blanket over him, and touched the other's forehead with his fingertips; it was frighteningly hot.

He turned around and went to the boiler room to boil a kettle of water, then soaked a towel, folded it into a square, and placed it on Shen Qinghou's forehead.

When the bandage on his left shoulder was untied, the skin around the wound was already burning hot, and pus and blood mixed with foul blood flowed out, sticking to the bandage. When it was torn off, Shen Qinghou twitched unconsciously.

Lin Shen repeatedly rinsed the wound with iodine solution, and used tweezers to hold a cotton ball and wipe it deep into the wound. Shen Qinghou's brows furrowed even more, and a muffled groan escaped his throat, but he did not wake up.

The wound on the fingertip was deeper; the cut from the steel string exposed the flesh, and several small fragments of the broken string were embedded inside, stained with blood and mud.

Lin Shen carefully picked out the fragments with tweezers. With each movement, Shen Qinghou's fingers would unconsciously curl, and drops of blood would drip down his fingertips, landing on the bed sheet and spreading into small, dark red dots.

It was late at night when all the wounds were treated. Shen Qinghou's fever had not subsided, and he began to talk nonsense, repeating only three words over and over, his voice so hoarse that it was almost inaudible.

"mom……"

"The zither..."

"Chen Zhiyuan..."

Lin Shen sat on the wooden chair by the bed, with a notebook and pen on his lap. He would occasionally look up at the person on the bed and write down the words that came out of his mouth intermittently.

The sound of the pen gliding across the paper was very soft, overlapping with Shen Qinghou's faint breathing, making it exceptionally clear in the quiet room.

At three o'clock in the morning, Shen Qinghou's body temperature finally dropped, his breathing became steady, and the rise and fall of his chest gradually became regular.

Lin Shen leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The intense tension and mental exhaustion from the past ten hours made his temples throb, and fatigue washed over him like a tide, making his eyelids heavy.

He didn't dare to fall into a deep sleep, checking Shen Qinghou's breathing every ten minutes until dawn broke outside the window and the sound of roosters crowing in the distance reached him, at which point he relaxed a little.

Shen Qinghou was awakened by pain in the early hours of the next day.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a yellowish wave pattern on the ceiling, with crooked lines, like his broken guitar string.

My gaze slowly moved down, landing on the dark brown water stains on the wall, on the rusty paint on the iron bunk bed, and finally on the face of the person sitting in the chair next to me.

The man had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His fingers rested on the edge of a notebook on his knee, his fingertips calloused from years of holding a pen. He was quietly watching him.

His body reacted faster than his mind. Shen Qinghou's right hand instinctively reached for his chest, where the broken pieces of his guqin should have been tied, but now there was only an empty blanket.

He suddenly sprang up from the bed, tearing open the wound on his left shoulder. Blood instantly seeped through the bandage, but he felt no pain.

His back slammed heavily against the wall, causing the waveform diagram hanging on the wall to rattle loudly, tearing off half of it which fluttered to the ground.

He huddled in the corner, his back pressed against the cold wall, his gaze like that of a beast driven to the brink of despair, sweeping across every corner of the room, searching for the zither, for weapons, for an exit.

His lips moved, and a hoarse single syllable escaped his throat: "Qin—"

Lin Shen remained seated in his chair, tapping the notebook on his lap lightly with his fingers.

Shen Qinghou's gaze fell on his lips, and he saw that his lips moved, but he could not hear any sound.

The world is dead.

There was no whistling wind through the window, no distant car engine noise, no sound of his own breathing, and he didn't even hear the dull thud of his back hitting the wall.

There was nothing there; it was as quiet as if it had been stuffed into a sealed lead box.

Shen Qinghou's pupils suddenly contracted.

He raised his hand and touched his ear.

The auricle is intact, without any wounds, and you can feel its temperature with your fingertips, but you can't hear any sound.