The Strange Adventures of Hearn the Believer

In a daze, He recalled the gentle words spoken on the coastline...

When He came to his senses, amidst the jailer's death wails like curses, in the comforting pale silver light, and in the dense chewing sounds like the tides... He tasted fear for the first time in the lake-bottom prison, and tasted the fulfillment/happiness brought by plunder.

He finally understood why that sea of ​​silvery light was originally born—it was His instinctive reaction against the [ ] rooted in His soul, just to alleviate the endless emptiness in His heart, just to fill the bottomless abyss-like void in His chest.

At the age of seven, while imprisoned, the "Granary Cave" in His heart transformed into the "Sea of ​​Azure Silver".

……

When He was ten years old, He brought home two creatures that had washed ashore from the sea of ​​images, along with the fox-faced creature that had lost its spirit.

It's said that I brought it home, but it's really just a matter of taking a step from the seaside back to my room.

He had little interest in that little beast, and after turning over the realm to dry its fur, he threw it aside and ignored it.

But the young girl posed a problem for Him, not because of the difference between men and women, but because her age and appearance were exactly the same as His.

Like a reflection in a mirror, it is indistinguishable from anything other than its expression.

Where did this counterfeit product come from?

This is a word He picked up from the half-demon shopkeeper after browsing the general store for a long time. It means fake, bad, or evil.

But He quickly chuckled.

Indeed, isn't He Himself just a fake who paints human hearts? How dare He criticize others?

Even His own heart was modeled after that sister, so it doesn't seem so unbelievable that a girl who looks exactly like Him suddenly appears.

Only the dead remain in the Sea of ​​Time. The fact that this person and the fox were washed ashore because of the fox mask indicates that they had been dead for a long time. The object that binds the soul, and even the murder weapon, is most likely that fox mask.

In any case, both of them were His predecessors on the path to defeating the Demon King.

If things escalate to the end, His form will also be from Xibei, while the real one will be this girl in front of you...

Doesn't that mean that He had already unknowingly painted the skin before painting the heart?

At the time, He thought the "painted skin" theory was just a joke.

Little did they know that their jest would come true many years later.

……

Both the fox and the young girl were devoid of consciousness, their eyes lifeless, resembling dolls.

He understood this perfectly.

He knew that the Sea of ​​Time had the power to transform the dead when He slaughtered those jailers at the bottom of the lake. He was already used to the puppets that walked at the bottom of the lake. These two were just more pleasing to the eye, but in essence they were no different from them.

However, the thousand-year-old demonic power that filled the Sea of ​​Time presented Him with a great gift.

He could vaguely guess that the vast demonic power originated from that little fox. Therefore, having accepted this favor, He gladly kept the little fox by his side instead of throwing it into the sea of ​​time to be swallowed and turned into numbers on the books.

As for the young girl who looked exactly like Him, He had other plans for her.

He gave her a name, Lengquanrun.

As for why the single name uses the character "Run," it is probably because it is the name of a scarlet hero in a book that He read while He was in the outside world.

Red and blue have been opposites since ancient times.

Since He is a demon that "has the fruit of green but no name of green";

So it would be quite interesting to give this young girl, who is like half of Him, a name that is "having the substance of red but not the name of red".

The mask was originally intended as a trap to ambush Him, but He easily defused it and it became a headdress that He often wore on the side of his head afterward.

He gained immense demonic power spanning millennia, the fox demon's myriad transformation techniques from her previous life, and a bizarre sword technique that seemed to be Xia Ji's Eight Cuts of unrestrained self-expression.

He vaguely guessed the origin of this Xia Ji Eight Cuts Technique—that young girl who had already been given the name [Leng Quan Run].

However, this did not diminish His desire to learn.

He accepts both refined and coarse grains, regardless of whether it is related to warfare or killing.

……

When he was eleven, a sign was hung at the entrance of the flower shop, and the shop's name was taken from the first pot of flower that he moved into the shop.

The Paradise Bird Flower Shop/Office was thus established, with members ranging from one to three people.

He had become accustomed to a life with one human and one fox by his side, even though in reality he was playing three roles all by himself.

Indeed, one person plays three roles, using one mind to control three different forms—a man, a woman, and a fox—to perform three different jobs, simultaneously engaging in three different kinds of thinking, calculation, reasoning, and argumentation, and rigorously demanding the correctness of the results.

Through persistent practice, He finally learned to overlook the scenery, to view the development of things on earth from a heavenly perspective, and to handle many tasks simultaneously in separate threads.

From initially drawing circles with the left hand and squares with the right, to later sitting opposite Run and applying makeup to each other.

He adorned her with powder and rouge, and she painted his cheeks with rouge;

He drew her eyebrows, and she drew silkworm-shaped eyebrows for him...

He was going to put on a flawless tale of a prince's revenge, and the difficulty of deceiving everyone was immense. Therefore, He would not miss any opportunity to improve Himself.

If one cannot live without being mad, then one should indulge in madness to the fullest.

He began to use this girl, who was like a reflection, as a mirror, to synchronize his thoughts, actions, every frown and smile with theirs.

Through interpretation and observation, He meticulously perfected every expression, every demeanor, every movement, and every spiritual charm.

If one gets tired of playing a male role, one can switch to playing a female role, change one's mood, change one's mindset, and change one's horizons—it is precisely because of the pursuit of flawless acting skills that one cannot be confined to a male-dominated world.

He obtained the ever-changing techniques and the alluring charm of the fox demon from the soul of that thousand-year-old fox demon. He was worried that he had nowhere to use them, but it would be a pity to discard them, so he simply used them on the half of his body, the Cold Spring.

From clothing, food, shelter, and transportation to joy, anger, sorrow, and fear, He incorporated this drama into every aspect of daily life and every matter, as the years turned and spring came and autumn went, until He could no longer distinguish between the play and reality, until His acting skills reached perfection and were flawless, until finally, He became an unparalleled actor.

……

Of course, in essence, He still seems to be the son of the beach, or rather, the son of the sea, still building sandcastles and sandmen on the beach, playing house with His sandman friends.

He still didn't have many ordinary friends. During festivals, he would visit the private school to help cook a meal, and he would casually go to chat with the phoenix or be approached by the phoenix to chat.

Actually, He was always quite happy that she came, except that every time she came, she would affectionately kick the flower shop door, which made Him feel especially sorry for her.

……

After the eleventh year, time seemed to pass a little faster.

After bidding farewell to his painful childhood, He stepped into his adolescence alone in this foreign land.

If the label for childhood is pain,

Therefore, the label for His "youth" was still "pain".

The pain of childhood stems from the alienation of being an outsider in the world, from the ups and downs of one's background caused by weakness, and from external conspiracies and tricks.

The pain of his youth did not lessen with his improved cultivation and clearer circumstances; on the contrary, it came down with several times the intensity of his childhood.

The pain of my youth stemmed from retribution, from the retribution of His "painted heart".

With the opening of the agency, He gradually began to participate in the mundane affairs of that land as a new force independent of the Demon King.

In His view, the so-called warmth and coldness of human relationships are simply a series of encounters, separations, picking up and letting go within the limited time we have.

The more one gets involved in worldly affairs, the more one becomes immersed in the mundane world, the more frequently one will face choices.

He seemed to have long forgotten the joking remark he made when he moved away from the Demon King's Tower: "Experience the mortal world, sever the mortal world." Instead, he was truly burdened by the mortal world and became one of the mortal beings.

In the mortal world, when faced with choices, the choice He made most often was to let go.

He knows what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is good and what is bad.

However, He never forgot His mission on this land—revenge.

In order to seek revenge, he could only keep letting go.

The process of letting go was something He was extremely familiar with, even almost instinctive—it was very simple. He just needed to rely on reason to suppress his emotions and make a choice at that moment, and then go home and find a secluded place to swallow the bitter pill.

Oh, and remember: never tell anyone else.

……

He had the habit of keeping a diary.

But how could a performer like Him, whose smiles are all fake, possibly have a single word of truth in his diary?

In fact, there really isn't.

You won't write your true feelings in a diary, and what you write in a diary won't be your true feelings.

A diary can be used to record crazy things, and it can also be used to write ironic things.

He wrote ironic things in his diary.

I still remember...

He once witnessed the undying love between a pair of star-crossed lovers in a mundane worldly affair. Their love began at first sight and was as beautiful as a dream.

He longed for it, but His reason told Him that emotions would only be a burden—an inconvenience that should be let go.

Therefore, on the night he returned home after finishing his business, he wrote in his diary a jest, such as "Ninety-nine percent of what people call love at first sight is just lust at first sight..."

He knew that His first friend was a woman who had fallen from the sky, and that He had indeed harbored vague feelings for her all these years, even though He did not yet understand the true nature of those feelings. But in order not to slow down His sword-drawing speed, His reason led Him to write in His diary joking things like, "Why is my childhood sweetheart a god...?"

He also once...

Whenever He sees something beautiful on earth and longs for it, His reason commands Him to abandon that longing and instead praise something that is not bad, but which He truly dislikes.

Everything was for revenge.

What was piled up in His study was never a diary, much less some embarrassing, childish history or joke that couldn't be told to outsiders.

It was just that the blood that dripped from His heart when He engraved it soaked the pages, and the pages piled up into a mountain day after day.

Whenever He witnesses something “good” on earth, He turns away from it and denies it.

Every stroke of the pen in the diary is like a knife etched into the heart.

That pen was the knife that carved into His heart, solely to remove the soft flesh that had quietly grown in that heart as hard as iron, solely to keep it as hard as ever.

All for the sake of enduring hardship and humiliation today, all for the sake of settling scores and getting revenge in the future.

He relinquished everything of the present to strive for a vague future.

……

But the process of letting go was so painful that He even wanted to alter His own memories, to artificially create a split personality, to turn one actor into three actors, to completely abandon that grudge, and to simply fly away.

But if I did that, it would be breaking my promise to the woman on the shore.

Therefore, He cannot.

He finally understood why the woman by the sea said, "She loves the sound of trains speeding away," and that "hearing that sound brings her a deep sense of peace."

Because a departing train signifies leaving one's place, transforming stagnation into flow, signifying travel, signifying freedom, signifying escaping predicament...

Only those trapped in constraints would be fascinated by that eerie noise!

Only those who constantly yearn to abandon everything and fly away, yet are forced to remain in the same place, seek solace in the distant whistle of departing trains!

Just like Him now!

He also wants to get rid of all this shit!

Jump onto a train whose destination is unknown, and leave!

Shout "I'll never see you again!" at this dog-shit-like land, and then fly away!

……

When he came to his senses, he had already written in his diary things like, "Escaping is the act of a coward, a clown's self-deceptive paralysis..."

He kicked the desk over with a sudden thud, then grabbed the diary and tore it to shreds.

He is already a great demon with a thousand years of experience, although he still wears an immature exterior.

He can do things that were impossible to him in the past with ease, but now he is increasingly trapped in his own limitations.

It turns out that He had already been poisoned by that woman. That poison was hidden beneath her strong exterior, hidden deep within her heart, and it was called weakness.

It turns out she wasn't strong at all.

It turns out that she could only understand the meaning behind everything that made her unhappy.

It turns out she just didn't want to become someone she wasn't, even if it meant living in a paradox.

It turns out she was simply someone who was good at accepting things, even if accepting things would change her beyond recognition.