The Creatures that We Are

Gao Yang bought everyone barbecues. Then they went to a karaoke and sang until eleven at night.

Afterwards, Gao Yang took Gao Xinxin home. In the taxi, his sister stayed silent and looked out of the window. Gao Yang was thinking about something as well, and the siblings stayed quiet in their bemusement.

They were close to home. Gao Xinxin suddenly spoke up in a faint voice, “I have something to tell you, Brother.”

“Go ahead.”

“Guang Huan and I are just friends. We lied to you.”

“I could tell at first glance.” Gao Yang smiled. “But why?”

Gao Xinxin puffed out her cheeks before letting out a sigh. “I don’t know. It just bothered me that you got a girlfriend, and I felt competitive.”

“What is there to compete over? You’ll start dating once you enter college too.”

“True.” Gao Xinxin nodded and smiled. “Watching Mom and Dad today makes me long for a relationship too. I want to find a man who’s as good as Dad.”

“You must treat Sister-in-Law well, brother.” Gao Xinxin pouted. “Although I still don’t like her that much, I can tell that Sister-in-Law really cares about you. It’s all in the way she looks at you. She adores you.”

Gao Yang paused.

Two seconds later, he put on a natural smile. “Of course she does. You don’t have to tell me that.”

“Tsk.” Gao Xinxin threw him a disapproving glance. “The fact that she likes you now doesn’t mean she’ll like you tomorrow. Women change, I tell you!”

Gao Yang ruffled her hair. “You’re too young to say that.”

Two minutes later, the taxi parked at the entrance to the gated community they lived in. Gao Yang was going to walk Gao Xinxin home, but Gao Xinxin stopped him. “You don’t have to, Brother. It’s close. I’ll walk home on my own.”

“Alright.” Gao Yang lied that he would return to school, when in truth he was heading to the Shanqing Hospital.

He had helped his father with his dream. Now, he and Qing Ling would help Officer Huang protect Su Xi until she gave birth. No more accidents.

It would take twenty minutes to drive to the Shanqing District. Gao Yang decided to take a short rest to restore some strength. Through meditation, he quickly fell into a shallow sleep.

He dreamed, which was unusual for when he was only resting.

It was a lucid dream. He didn’t rush to wake himself up, but instead allowed himself to stay immersed in the ocean of his consciousness, allowing the flow to take him away.

At some point, he had turned into a butterfly.

He remembered having a similar dream once.

Gao Yang had thought it was merely a messy projection his subconscious conjured while he was in a coma, but now it seemed the dream could have a deeper connection to the real world than he had thought.

He was back to the place with two walls seemingly standing in the cosmos, one black and one white, between which was a gray marsh floating with eyes of different sizes and countless bobbing pale hands.

At the heart of the river before him was a giant tree reaching into the sky, the branches wrapped by living gray hair and bearing lives—on the outside, at least, they looked like human girls.

Gao Yang flapped his wings and reached the bottom of the tree. A complicated webs of giant roots covered the surface of the flowing marsh, and every divot was big enough to be a dark brown shoal.

On the shoal sat three naked young women, their torso covered by their long hair. Their skin was fair like snow and glowing faintly, making them look holy like angels.

Behind them on the side, Gao Yang could see their slim figures and a third of their profiles.

The black-haired girl had her legs pressed together, sitting on the left. She was pretty and broody, expression cool as she looked down at the gray marsh like she was pondering something.

The auburn-haired girl sat at the center with one leg propped up on her other leg, leaning backward with her hands behind her head like she was bored.

The blond girl was the youngest, about eleven or twelve, and she was cranky.

Pale hands continued to reach out from the marsh not far from them, forming dense twisted white waves nonstop, rushing insistently upon the three of them.

“Get away from me! Don’t be a bother!”

The blond girl shouted, and sensing her thunderous rage, the pale hands shuddered and shook, crashing back into the marsh river like white foams.

Not long after, though, the pale hands reemerged and came rushing again like they wouldn’t tire of it.

“Haha, the last sister from the previous attempt died too.” The auburn-haired girl laughed carelessly. “It’s going to be our turn soon.”

“Are we the last attempt?” the black-haired girl asked faintly.

“I think so. There are no other sisters on the tree.” The auburn-haired girl crossed her calves, her toes wiggling mischievously. “Ah, I can’t wait! I wanna go to school now and date the hottest boy…”

“Lame.” The blond girl scoffed.

“The one who talks about Master all the time is lame,” the auburn-haired girl retorted. “Be patient, girl. You’re still underaged by human standards, and you can only have a child after you turn eighteen.”

“I don’t need you to remind me,” the blond girl said proudly. “I know what to do.”

“Aren’t you afraid of death?” the auburn-haired girl questioned. “We’ll die after bearing a child with a human.”

“That’ll only happen to you.” The blond girl was confident. “We only die when we fail, and I’ll succeed. I’ll be a mother.”

“Haha, since you’re so pumped up, I can rest easy and have fun.” The auburn-haired girl laughed.

“Aren’t you going to give birth?” The black-haired girl turned to the auburn-haired girl, cocking her head.

“Of course I’m not.” The auburn-haired girl didn’t even have to think. “I have a long life ahead of me, and I can do whatever I want to do. If I feel lonely, I’ll find a man. If I feel bored, I’ll get a child to raise, or kittens or puppies. I want to be free, unbound and unbothered by anyone…”

“Lame,” the blond girl commented to express her disapproval again.

The auburn-haired girl ignored her and turned to the black-haired girl. “What about you? What’s your plan?”

“Dunno.” The black-haired girl watched the waves of pale hands roll toward her. With a wave of her hand, the waves dispersed into white foam.

She said honestly, “I haven’t thought it through.”

“Thought what through?” The auburn-haired girl blinked.

“The purpose.” The black-haired girl smiled faintly. “What’s the purpose of our existence?”

“Whoa! I know what you can do, sis.” The auburn-haired girl’s eyes glinted. “There’s a job humans do. What’s it called again…a philanthropist?”

“A philosopher,” the blond girl corrected.

“Yeah, a philosopher. It’s perfect for you!”

In the dream, Gao Yang didn’t think too much of the real life elements they had mentioned. He simply thought they were quite interesting and would like to listen to them talk for a little longer.

Boom!

Then an explosion woke him up.

…

Gao Yang opened his eyes and jerked up. The taxi driver had hit the brake.

He looked out of the window on his side. From a road not far from him, fire and smoke had risen to the sky like a missile had landed. Gao Yang realized with a start that it was the inpatient building of the Shanqing District.

Whoosh. He couldn’t afford to hesitate before he teleported out of the taxi and made a mad dash toward the site of the explosion.

This late at night, there weren’t many people on the road. Gao Yang ran into an alley and leapt after teleporting, landing on the roof of a seven-story apartment building. Running and jumping between rooftops, he managed to reach the site of the explosion in less than half a minute.

Gao Yang was stunned to see that half of the inpatient building of Shanqing Hospital had crumbled, like a giant had stomped on it. Fire and smoke ran amok, and some elemental particles could be detected amid the ruins of the building.

Smoker! He triggered a large-scale elemental explosion!

Gao Yang jumped down from the tall building and ran.

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