The Lost Tomb : Restart (The Sound Of Providence)

Chapter 131: Solve The Problem

After I fell into a deep coma, I dreamed of Pan Zi. He said a few words to me, but I couldn't hear a sound. Despite this, I felt that those words were information that my subconscious mind had neglected and was now trying to remind me of.

After waking up, I recalled it carefully, but the memory was so vague that I could only remember a few words.

What you do before is what you do after.

This was a sentence from my grandpa's notes which meant that you would eventually have to bear the consequences of whatever you did.

The things I did in the first half of my life had led to my present situation, which meant that I had been doomed for a long time. Even the things I did now would lead to different situations in the future. At this moment, people would normally try to address the consequences of their actions and start thinking about the future.

When coming up with a plan, you should think three steps ahead before you do something and then four steps ahead after you do it. But life was a series of tangled causes and effects, so it was useless to change anything from today onwards. Change was something that was constantly occurring. The more you wanted to change, the more you had to take everything into consideration.

I fell asleep again. When I woke up this time, a new patient was lying in the bed next to mine. There were fruits and a hot water kettle on my bedside table. Bai Haotian must have been here but was gone now. My cell phone had been fully charged and placed beside me on the bed, so I picked it up and opened it. There wasn't much news. The world would still run without me. I only had a few messages from Bai Haotian.

The first was an X-ray of my lungs. I couldn't make sense of it, but I could see a lot of shadows. After that was a detailed diagnosis stating that my lungs were damaged and failing.

Long-term inhalation of tomb gases and later taking snake venom had seriously damaged my lung function. Now my lungs only worked at a third of the capacity of ordinary people's lungs. I didn't know whether the damage was reversible, but the doctor advised me to undergo surgery and have the damaged part removed. Once that was done, I should get a lung lavage [1] and focus on recuperating.

Their advice was simple: I absolutely could not overburden my lungs again. I should find a place where the air was moist and clean and slowly get my lungs checked out while I thought about treatment plans.

What you do before is what you do after.

I was doomed from the beginning. Now, I slowly sat up and read the message Bai Haotian had sent while I was in my coma. She had already fumbled around and worked on settling the order. She was worried about me, but she wasn't in the hospital. Instead, she had gone to the village to receive the goods. She wrote at the end of her message: I thought for a long time that standing on Uncle Two's side was best for you, but I still chose to help you anyways. I know now that this choice was absolutely wrong. No one should help you hurt yourself. So, in the end, I decided that I would do this wrong thing with you.

I thought about this problem while you were in your coma and made my own decision without your input. I know it's very selfish of me, but I hope that when you see my decision, you'll realize what you've done. I'm hurting myself to help someone else hurt himself and you're the same.

Because I know that my help will hurt you, I must also hurt myself. That way, everything will be balanced.

My only response to that was: Absurd.

No one's decision had hurt me. It was simply the result of everything that I had neglected, treated arbitrarily, and avoided all finally coming together.

Now it was impossible to go back to that time and get back the things that I had missed. I could only use what was left to solve the ensuing problems.

It seemed as if the people around me wanted to freeze the causality of this moment by having me do nothing. But it was called cause and effect for a reason. At this moment, the only thing I was destined to do was to move forward.

I closed my eyes and quickly focused on what I should do next. First, I called the doctor and asked about my condition. They prescribed me some medicine to delay my illness and allowed me to be discharged. I left the hospital wearing a mask and out-of-season clothes. I was warned to guard against bronchial infection every day, not smoke, not go to places with heavy fireworks and smog, and take six different kinds of medicine on time every day. I also had to bring my own pillows and bedding if I went anywhere so as to avoid too much dust.

It didn't take long to find Bai Haotian. She had just bought three fakes, so I stopped her and silently took her around the area. We eventually used the remaining money to buy a Song Dynasty Jian Zhan [2]. After finally collecting three hundred thousand yuan, I asked Bai Haotian to stay in the village and continue shopping for goods.

When I quietly went back to Hangzhou and saw Fatty again, his complexion didn't look good. I thought he hadn't been able to borrow any money, but all he said was, "That Hong Ding guy isn't reliable and raised the price. Now he needs a million before he's willing to come out. I'm sorry, Mr. Naïve."

I looked at the calendar on my phone, my heart calmer than ever.

Solve the problem.

We leave in three days, I whispered to myself. Think about what to do now. 

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Notes:

[1] Procedure that uses saline solution to "wash out" the lungs.

[2] It's basically a tea bowl/cup.