Do Not Cry
Light from the dormitory's incandescent lamp filtered through the gap in the bed curtains. Yingshi lay flat on her back, staring at the bed board of the upper bunk, motionless, not even blinking.
She could hear her roommates getting up one after another, the various sounds of them quietly washing up and changing clothes, and even their whispered conversations.
"Why isn't Yingshi up yet? Should we wake her?"
"Let her sleep for another five minutes. If she's still not up, we'll call her. She can't be late for the final exam."
"Let's just wake her. Yingshi usually gets up with my alarm; she definitely overslept today."
"She probably stayed up late last night. When I got up to use the bathroom past two, I still saw the light from her phone through her curtains..."
Listening to these familiar voices, the tears that had been blankly welling up in Yingshi's eyes rolled down in large drops, streaming quickly down her cheeks to the tips of her ears, soaking her pillow.
Everything was too real, so real that it made her despair!
Her hand gripped the pajamas at her chest, pressing hard over her heart, but no matter what she did, she couldn't stop its violent throbbing ache.
A sob slipped uncontrollably from her throat, and within two seconds, it evolved into a bitter wail.
"...Wuuu wuuu waah!"
Where was Shuangjian?
Could it be that everything that happened in the other world was just her illusion?
She instinctively tried to channel the spiritual energy in her body, but how could such a thing possibly exist here?!
Even though she had memorized all the cultivation techniques and mental mantras she had learned, she couldn't use them. She couldn't "look inward," couldn't "circulate qi," and even more so, she couldn't sense the blood pact that inextricably linked her to that other person!
This sudden outburst of crying startled the roommates who were still hesitating about whether to wake her up, and they quickly gathered around her bed.
They considerately did not pull open the bed curtains right away, only asking with concern from the outside: "Yingshi? What's wrong!"
"What happened? Did you have a nightmare, or are you feeling sick? Are you okay?"
"Don't cry, Yingshi. If something is making you sad, you can tell us!"
One of the roommates paused and quietly offered a hypothesis: "Could it be... she's being cyberbullied?"
"Cyberbullied? Why? Yingshi isn't an influencer, why would that suddenly happen!"
"Because the name Xu Yingshi has been trending on Weibo since early this morning. Could it be related to that?"
"No, that's a character in the book 'I See Frost and Snow.' Jing Fengliu is stirring up drama over there. It has nothing to do with our Yingshi; they just share the same name..."
"Who is Jing Fengliu?"
"Just a very dramatic novel author. Ever since he announced he was locking his chapters, he hasn't stopped all night. Look at him, he goes crazy on social media every little while..."
Before she could finish speaking, a girl with a tear-stained face emerged from the bed curtains in front of them.
Large teardrops still clung to her eyelashes, but her expression was incredibly serious, almost solemn. She grabbed the arm of the roommate who had just spoken and asked hoarsely, "Yaya, what did you say?"
"Eh, Yingshi, why are you so sad? Stop crying, your eyes are going to swell! It's just that Jing Fengliu posted a bunch of nonsense last night..."
The girl, somewhat flustered, quickly pulled out her phone. "Even now, it's still trending... My god, this washed-up author really got driven mad by his haters. He just posted a new update: 'If Xu Yingshi sees this, please contact the number 135XXXX1234, or come directly to find me at X Center, Floor XX, XX Building, B City! You know who I'm talking about...' Help, what is all this nonsense? Does this really have something to do with you, Yingshi?"
Yingshi was trembling all over. She desperately wiped away the tears blurring her vision and, using the phone her roommate handed her, scrolled up to see the posts made over the past day by the account verified as "Author of 'I See Frost and Snow'"—
15 hours ago:
@JFL: "I See Frost and Snow" will be completely locked. I've disappointed everyone, I'm sorry.
—This was also the notification Yingshi had seen right before going to sleep, the culprit that led her to read the book.
7 hours ago:
@JFL: Who is Xu Yingshi???
Most of the comments under this post maintained a mocking tone: Stupid author, pretending you don't know the character in your own book? Hurry up and unlock "I See Frost and Snow"!
5 hours ago:
@JFL: Who knows Xu Yingshi? Will her family and friends please contact me immediately!
Beneath this one, besides the mockery, there were more questions about Jing Fengliu's mental state: Is there something wrong with this author's mind? Looks a bit like a precursor to schizophrenia!
The subsequent content Jing Fengliu posted was even weirder. He acted almost like a marketing account thriving on drama, sometimes calling out @top-tier celebrities, stepping on someone to say they weren't as good-looking as someone else, and sometimes jumping into the bloodbaths of shipping super-topics, recklessly spamming provocations that the rival ship was the real one.
At first, commenters suspected his account had been hacked, then they couldn't help but curse him out, and finally, they grew numb, unwilling to give him any more attention. They guessed this dog of an author might have joined an ad revenue-sharing program, because even trying to replace a lost ID card wouldn't justify using this kind of method!
Even if he got the engagement, did he not care about his dignity anymore? He was, after all, a well-known, veteran top-tier author.
Until 1 hour ago:
@JFL: I tried my best. I never thought about dragging another person into these bizarre events. Maybe from the very beginning, I shouldn't have written this sinful book!
Under this post, people were already mentioning official accounts of psychiatric hospitals in various regions, asking someone to come and take Jing Fengliu away.
And just 30 minutes ago, a new post was published:
@JFL: If Xu Yingshi sees this, please contact the number 135XXXX1234, or come directly to find me at X Center, Floor XX, XX Building, B City. You know who I'm talking about.
...
As Yingshi scrolled through Jing Fengliu's social media with trembling hands, her roommates carefully gathered around her to read along. Everyone was completely baffled. They didn't know why Yingshi was crying, why she was paying such close attention to this crazy author, or what that name-drop of her exact name truly meant.
"What is this author doing, searching for Xu Yingshi?" one roommate wondered aloud. "Is he trying to cast a role like in 'Searching for Ziling'?"
"I haven't heard any news about 'I See Frost and Snow' getting a screen adaptation."
"...Thank you, Yaya." Yingshi, her voice thick with tears, shoved the phone back into her roommate's hands, turned back to her bed to grab her own phone, and then everyone watched as she ran out the door while dialing a number—still wearing her pajamas!
Although it was summer, and her pajamas weren't much different from a casual little dress, they had certainly never seen Yingshi look so distracted and frantic. Sensing something was wrong, they hurriedly tried to stop her.
"Yingshi, where are you going? We have an exam soon!"
"I'll wait and take the makeup exam next time..." Yingshi said hastily.
"No way, are you actually thinking of going to XX Building to find that crazy author?"
—Yes.
Jing Fengliu's brain clearly wasn't working right; the number he provided had long been blown up by nosy onlookers.
Fortunately, Yingshi was right there in City B. Taking a taxi to the XX Building would take her less than an hour. Whether the call went through or not, she was going there!
Only Jing Fengliu knew what on earth had happened!
With her phone in hand, Yingshi felt a bizarre sense of unfamiliarity while using the ride-hailing app.
She hadn't touched this kind of "high-tech" in months. Good thing her muscle memory was still there. Now, her roommates were continuously sending her messages, worried that she had fallen for some scam and that her IP address would soon change to northern Myanmar in a couple of days.
Yingshi's mind was a complete mess right now. She could only mechanically text everyone that she was safe. It wasn't until she got into the car that she felt her racing heart settle down a tiny bit.
She kept telling herself that this parting absolutely did not mean a final goodbye. Maybe Shuangjian could find another way out, or perhaps he was already out?
She shouldn't push herself into despair just yet; she absolutely had to maintain a positive mindset and wait until she met Jing Fengliu before jumping to conclusions. However, upon actually seeing the author, her emotional defenses completely crumbled.
"If you hadn't stopped us, Shuangjian and I would have already come out together!" Yingshi wailed, breaking down.
She crumpled up the tissue she had used to blow her nose and threw it at the man in front of her, who looked to be around thirty-five or thirty-six years old.
The meeting place Jing Fengliu had chosen had a relatively robust security system. A crowd of idle onlookers hoping to catch some drama was kept outside. The staff checked Yingshi's ID and appearance, and only after confirming she matched the description did they take her upstairs to meet the novel's author, Jing Fengliu, whom she had cursed countless times over the past few months.
If she could, she even wanted to rush up and punch and kick him, but she had no strength left in her body.
Because Jing Fengliu said, "In his dreams! He's already committed suicide and destroyed the world, and now he wants to break the fourth wall? How could I possibly let him do that?! You have no idea how dangerous he is!"
Shuangjian was left behind in that alternate world, while she was brought back to reality all alone by Xiangxiang, who acted as a soul-guiding beast.
Yingshi could not accept this ending.
"How is he dangerous?! He just wanted to come home with me!" Yingshi cried out in devastation.
"What do you know? This isn't the first time he's lost control. Over a decade ago, the first time I abandoned a story, it was because he stopped listening to me. One day, I looked at the chapters I had written, and the continuation suddenly changed to the protagonist committing suicide. Do you know how panicked I was?"
Jing Fengliu grew increasingly agitated as he spoke. "My biggest, absolute biggest mistake was letting netizens urge me into filling that massive plot hole! I revised the text and rebooted the story, thinking the suicide plot I saw back then was something I wrote unconsciously due to too much stress. But history repeating itself later proved that the problem wasn't me; it was this incredibly cursed book! This time, Han Shuangjian simply destroyed the world. I didn't even dare to publish it. Good lord, I could feel his hatred for me right through the screen! He is a pure sociopath. This is the third time. If you brought him out, what do you think he would do? Who could control him?!"
"Aren't you the author? How can you talk about the person you created like that?!"
Yingshi listened with burning fury. How dare he say Shuangjian was a sociopath? No one was better than Shuangjian!
"So what if I'm the author? An author isn't a god! And even then, is a god really all that amazing? A god might just be an author too!"
Jing Fengliu's emotions also boiled over. The unspeakable depression and terror of encountering paranormal events over the years perhaps all surfaced at this moment. He strained his voice and began to spout some bewildering concepts. "You think our world is very real right now, but how do you know it isn't just another book? The universe is endless, whether horizontally or vertically. Who dares to say they've grasped its boundaries? Haven't you heard of all those crazy hypotheses? The Earth Prison Theory, the Nuwa and Pangu are Aliens Theory—maybe none of them are true, or maybe one of them is infinitely close to the truth. I'm saying all this just to tell you that the entire universe is too bizarre. None of us has an absolute top-down perspective! Even a god might not...
"For example, the Domain—who can clearly explain what that is? Even though I wrote about it, it doesn't mean I created it. I gave it the name Domain, but that doesn't mean that's what it's actually called. Do you understand?
"Han Shuangjian is a person I wrote, right? But I can't control him! His coming to reality might look like crossing from a lower dimension to a higher one, but in truth, we create lower-dimensional worlds using imagination rather than technology. That world filled with imagination is way too overpowered compared to ours. If Han Shuangjian really came here, it would actually be a devastating higher-dimensional strike against us, do you get it? Do you know what kind of consequences that would bring?"
Jing Fengliu started crying too.
"Do you know how hard it's been for me? Ever since you transmigrated into it, I had to garner enough popularity just to be able to tweak some minor details. I've been cursed at more than I ever have in my entire life!
"If I hadn't inserted Zhubao in there to save you, you would be dead, you know that? And I would be ruined too! A real life would have been lost in my book!
"You girl got so close to Han Shuangjian and even delusionally tried to bring him back to reality with you. If my psychological endurance was any weaker, I would have dropped dead last night! I wouldn't have had the time to meet you, let alone save you! Haven't you ever considered that he might be using you? Han Shuangjian's character setting is that of a deeply scheming person; that point will never ever change!"
"You, Jing Fengliu, don't know a thing about Shuangjian!" Yingshi stood up frantically, wanting to tear the sofa apart. "Being scheming doesn't mean he's hollow inside, it doesn't mean he's a sociopath, and it doesn't mean he only knows how to use people! You keep standing here saying 'do you know this, do you know that'—do you even know anything yourself?!"
Jing Fengliu grew anxious too. He slammed the table and said decisively, "Then want to make a bet? Let's take a look at the auto-generated title right now. If it's not some extremely malicious, world-destroying kind of title, I'll go streak outside!"
"You're on!"
Yingshi and Jing Fengliu sat down in front of the computer together.
The faint blue glow reflected in their pupils.
"..."
The young woman, her face flushed red from anger and devastation, suddenly couldn't hold back a whimper from her throat.
Beside her, the scruffy, pale-faced man was also stunned, his fingers curling slightly.
Both pairs of eyes witnessed the three small characters gradually generating at the title of the new chapter.
—Don't cry.
Yingshi felt as if a hand had reached out across the void to gently wipe away the tears beneath her eyes.
But this only made her cry even harder.
Shuangjian really didn't know how to comfort her.
Every single time, he was just this clumsy.
