Lao Sha gave Bai Yunfei a strange look as if realizing there was something amiss with him. It had been hoping to get at least two primal stones to eat! Why was it that Bai Yunfei hadn’t done anything yet…
It c.o.c.ked its head. What reason was there for Bai Yunfei to be in such a stupor? The creases on its face multiplied as it studied the male.
Then as if pouting, the dog leaped off the bed without a single glance. It would try his luck at getting the primal stones from the one named ‘Stone’.
“Eh?! Hold on, you can move! That’s great!!”
A loud voice shattered the silence Bai Yunfei was in whilst he was trying to figure out this newest conundrum he was in. Snapping his head up, Bai Yunfei watched as the same youth from before came running back into the room.
Uncle Wu said a few quiet words to Stone before he made his exit.
Stone grabbed a small wooden chair from the corner and propped it near the bed to smile excitedly at the bedridden person.
“Big brother, what did you say your name was?” Stone asked Bai Yunfei in excitement.
“My name is…Tang Long.”
“Oh, then I’ll call you big brother Tang then. You can call me ‘Stone’.” He laughed. It was an innocent laugh.
“Where you from, big brother Tang? Which village? I never knew this mountain had another village! Maybe you’re from far away? How’d you get here? How’d you get so hurt? Were you attacked? A tiger? Or a bear? How’d you get away then?”
The salvo of questions from the small boy left Bai Yunfei speechless almost. Blinking once in confusion on how to answer this, Bai Yunfei could only give him a single answer to answer them all.
“I…don’t remember…”
“Don’t remember?!” Cried the young boy. “How do you not? What do we do then?” He seemed even more excited at this.
Bai Yunfei didn’t respond. He too, was trying to think about what there was to do about this!
“Don’t ask him too many questions, Stone. Tang Long isn’t fully recovered yet. Wait for him to get better before you bother him.” Uncle Wu’s voice called out from outside.
“Oh…” The young boy grew dejected, but only for a moment. “You better rest up, big brother Tang. Don’t need ta worry about anything! You can live with us here in the village, we’re all nice people! We’ve never had guests before, actually! If you want ta get up, then you’re going ta have ta tell me what your home was like! I never heard of the ‘outside’ before…eh? What are you doing, big brother Tang?”
Something about how Stone was talking seemed to spark something in Bai Yunfei’s mind. He was staring down at his left hand, and then to his right hand. He looked to his chest and then touched at his head as if looking for something.
“I think there’s something…missing…”
He was muttering to himself. He felt like there should’ve been something there. He didn’t know what, but that feeling was there. And something that should’ve been on his left hand seemed especially important…
“Oh! Are you talking about those things you were wearing? They’re over there! We collected it for you! Lemme get it for you!” Stone suddenly leaped up from his chair to run towards a small corner where a bundle of cloth was. Grabbing it, he raced back to drop it onto Bai Yunfei’s side.
“You were wearing a lot! And heavy too. Why were you wearing all those things? It must’ve been tiring!” Stone asked. “But…there were a lot of pretty stuff too! I saw things even prettier than what the aunties and sisters wear in the village.”
Bai Yunfei didn’t say anything. He simply opened the bag in antic.i.p.ation.
As he thought, there were a lot of things there. The most noticeable thing was a black and gold piece of armor, two small arm bracers, a pair of violet shoes, a bracelet, rings…
His eyes glanced over the individual items until he reached a particular item with a soft white glow. His eyes lit up—this was the item!
His fingers took a small cloud-shaped ring into his hand. For some reason, Bai Yunfei felt his hand start to tremble. Whatever the reason, Bai Yunfei knew he had to put it back onto his left hand.
When he placed the ring onto his finger, it felt like a giant boulder had been lifted off of him. The trembling in his hand stopped.
He became suddenly aware of a warm flow of something enter his body the moment the ring was adorned. If a mind could grow brighter, then his certainly did. But Bai Yunfei wasn’t quite sure why this was the case.
A flash of suspicion crossed his eyes. He stared at the ring for several seconds longer to study it.
He found nothing and decided to look at the other things in the pile.
There were plenty of rings and two bracelets, but Bai Yunfei had no idea why he’d wear all those things.
Stone was right, wouldn’t it be tiring?
“Eh? This is…”
He took notice of a small square stamp of some kind.
Another feeling popped up in his mind. For some reason, Bai Yunfei knew this object was important to him.
There was a piece of string attached to this object, and Bai Yunfei found himself wrapping it around his neck to wear. He felt ‘safe’ once it was secured around his neck, but Bai Yunfei wasn’t quite sure why. He had no words to describe that reasoning, he just ‘knew’ it.
There was another pendant that had a white jade object on it, so Bai Yunfei took the opportunity to wear that around his neck as well. As for the other rings and bracelets, Bai Yunfei decided not to do much about those—it felt weird to wear all those things at once.
The armor he first laid eyes on was quite strange to Bai Yunfei. It looked like it was made from metal, but the object felt like silk to the touch. Turning it over several times, Bai Yunfei couldn’t find anything wrong with it and ultimately decided to put it on. He was only wearing a simple robe right now, wearing this piece of armor didn’t feel too out of place.
The next to be inspected was a long ‘strip’ of cloth. For some reason, he was about to wrap it around his forehead.
“You’re going ta wear this? Is it ta hide that scar on your forehead?”
Stone suddenly piped up to interrupt Bai Yunfei during his observational mood.
“Scar?”
“Yeah…” Stone pointed at his forehead, “It’s weird, how’d you get like that? I don’t think you ta hide it though, it looks cool!”
Blinking, Bai Yunfei felt at the s.p.a.ce where Stone pointed at. He couldn’t feel a thing. “Do you have a mirror?’
Stone took out a copper plate for Bai Yunfei to look at.
To Bai Yunfei’s surprise, there was indeed a small ‘scar’ there. It wasn’t very large, but it was at the very least quite noticeable and shaped like a water chestnut. It almost felt like he had fallen on top of something for it to leave behind such a mark.
“What…is this?” He rubbed at the spot in annoyance. No matter how hard he tried, no memory was coming out in regard to this.
In the end, he gave up. The Soul Sentinel Scarf was wrapped around his forehead to hide the ‘mark’.
Another strange but warming sensation flowed into his body the moment the strip of cloth was secured around his forehead, but Bai Yunfei didn’t think this was all too ‘weird’ now.
He gave the pile of objects in front of him another look and decided to wear the two gloves. The bracers were simply too heavy so Bai Yunfei placed them back into the cloth bundle.
Allowing Stone to clean up the place, Bai Yunfei waited for him to be done before laying back down onto the bed to rest for the night.
……
The skies were blue and the clouds were white. A large mountain with trees littering its surface was off to the side of the landscape when Bai Yunfei stepped out from the small hut he had been in. Looking up to admire the place, Bai Yunfei couldn’t help but find himself a little blown away by the scenic view.
A night went by since he ‘woke’ up. Strangely enough, Bai Yunfei felt completely fine and ready to move about after that night’s rest and so decided to walk around this morning.
This was a small village he was in. Over a dozen huts were built in close proximity to the one behind him and leaned towards the mountain, but there wasn’t anything else to be noted about them. If Bai Yunfei had to guess, then he’d wager that there were over a hundred people living in this village.
He knew that this was a village located within a mountainous forest. He also knew there was a large expanse of forest all around this place. From what Stone told him, the eldest person in the village was born here, and even the ‘people of before’ were here for a ‘very very very very long time’. How many generations that was, Bai Yunfei didn’t know.
Never had these villagers gone beyond the mountains before. They enjoyed to live in seclusion and live a nice and simple life.
With an isolated of a lifestyle as the ones these villagers lived, none of them knew what it was like to live in the outside world. They had no idea what was even happening outside.
That left Bai Yunfei rather speechless. That meant he wouldn’t have any information to be used as ‘reference’ or maybe to be used to help jostle his memories.
His body was perfectly fine but his memories were still not.
The only ‘memory’ that came to mind was that his name was probably ‘Tang Long’ and that he was probably from ‘Earth’. Everything else was a jumbled mess that seemed incongruent with the knowledge he knew of the people here. He had no way of knowing what was what no matter how hard he tried, so he was beginning to feel hopeless.
Maybe he’d get his memories back if he were to wait long enough…
Time was the only solace Bai Yunfei had. From here on out, he’d have to live on as he was and wait…