A Little Story from the Past

On New Year's Eve in 1999, ten-year-old me and eighteen-year-old Sister Shen climbed White Peak Mountain. The fog was thick, and the mountain was silent. At the mountain god's temple, we encountered a shadowy figure. It could turn intangible and pass through things, and it ate live deer raw. It chased us all night. When we hid in a cellar, we thought we were safe. But when the flashlight flickered on for the last time, we saw it clearly: it had been there all along.

At daybreak, it retreated. We survived, but fate's pursuit did not end. My father died, my mother passed away, and Sister Shen got into Beijing Medical University.

Only later did I understand that it wasn't just a ghost from the mountain that had chased us that night. There was separation, too. And all the things we could never bring ourselves to say... (I don't write novels to help readers escape reality, but to help them understand the beauty in the real world, even in the midst of hardship.)