Daomu Biji: A Thousand Faces

When Liang Yanyan put on her white coat again, she had been on leave for four months. She originally planned to take more time off, but Ah Tou’s case had worn her out so she decided to return to being an ordinary person. 

When she returned to her office, a new batch of interns had just been assigned to her (she always had a large number of interns under her). After she assigned them some work, there was still time left before rounds, so she sat down and checked her bank account on her phone.

Xie Yuchen had always paid her on time, so her main reason for checking her bank account wasn’t because of him. It was just that she had worked too hard this time so she needed a reward. 

Tu Dian’s flowers had been delivered a while ago. Even though it was obvious that this man was showing false affection, she was still quite happy to see flowers on her desk so early in the morning. Unfortunately, Tu Dian showed up in her office just as she was putting the flowers in a vase.

She didn't want to deal with difficult people early in the morning, but Tu Dian had coffee and breakfast in his hands.

"The breakfast shop in front of the hospital closed down. You didn’t know that, so I'm sure you didn't get to eat. I brought some steamed dumplings from Xing Long Bao. You definitely won’t lose out if you try them.”

"You always have a way of making it impossible for people to dislike you to your face," Liang Yanyan took the food from him.

"Playboys also have to live too,” Tu Dian smiled. "I heard you’ve sorted it all out?"

"I don’t really deserve the credit, and there's still one more thing we didn't figure out," Liang Yanyan took a sip of coffee and found that it was exactly how she liked it. She suddenly felt a chill. When did Tu Dian learn her preferences? 

“Ah Tou’s cat also had the stone in its brain, but it never left her house and there weren’t any attacks before. There's still a big mystery behind the whole thing, but Ah Tou's crisis is over. I slept with her for two nights in a row, so Boss Xie should pay me for it."

"It’s obvious that you’ve benefited from this. You basically dealt with your private affairs and earned money at the same time, right? No wonder they call you the hospital’s Gypsy Witch Doctor,” Tu Dian said. "I don't get these things. What exactly was going on? Was it really haunted?"

"Certain things exist in this world to drive people crazy. My teacher didn’t tell me exactly what these forces are, I just know that some objects possess them."

"How would you explain what you saw?"

"Have you heard the story of a hundred monkeys?" Liang Yanyan asked. "One of the monkeys on an isolated island in Kyushu, Japan found that sweet potatoes tasted better after washing them in seawater. So, whenever this monkey dug up sweet potatoes, it would wash them in seawater before eating them. Other monkeys on the island saw it doing that, so they all followed suit. Soon, hundreds of monkeys started washing their potatoes before eating them. At this time, something magical happened. A research team from Kyoto University observed that another group of monkeys on a neighboring island suddenly learned this potato-washing behavior. The monkeys on the two islands couldn’t see each other, but the monkeys on that neighboring island just suddenly changed their behavior. And this change eventually swept across the entire population.” (1)

“Oh. So what does that mean?”

"The subconscious minds of those in the same species are all interconnected. When a certain amount of the population possesses a powerful enough subconscious force, the entire species will be affected. No matter how geographically apart they are, their knowledge and skills can all be shared," Liang Yanyan said. "That stone might have connected us to someone's subconscious."

"This person’s subconscious must be very evil then."

Liang Yanyan was stunned; what Tu Dian had said just now had always been one of her own theories. She had always believed that there was a force in many parts of the world that looked very evil, but was actually just a depiction of people's evil subconscious that was brought to the surface. 

Had she and Ah Tou really been connected to someone's subconscious through a stone that made them see hallucinations and get attacked? Then who was the person that connected them to the stone? There was no way she would believe that Long Immortal’s subconsciousness was evil. Was it possible that the second long immortal didn’t die either?

That man was a complete demon!

Tu Dian smiled, "I don’t get it. I’m just going to take your explanation to mean that everything was haunted.”

"The subconscious mind can attack people,” Liang Yanyan didn't bother to explain further. She actually appeared to be quite distracted by her own thoughts.

“Tell me about your new friend,” Tu Dian said. “You still remember what I told you, right?”

"She's pretty ordinary. I don't know why you’re always staring at her." Liang Yanyan instantly became alert.

"I have a case,” Tu Dian said. “I want her, you, and me to collaborate on it."

"She's not a doctor," Liang Yanyan said.

"I know she’s not a doctor,” Tu Dian replied. “But she’s an artist, so she can draw human faces. Her memory is very good, so she can draw the faces of every single person she’s met. I want her to draw them and then let my patient to choose from them.”

“What do you mean?”

"My patient’s head was smashed in. His face was completely destroyed, so I want to make him a new face and rebuild his entire skull. I want Ah Tou to draw a face with enough details, and I need you to rebuild the skull. I’ll wrap everything up with a facial skin graft. I gave you the files already, have you not read them?"

"Facial reconstruction requires certain skills.” A case like this fell under plastic surgery—which Liang Yanyan was very good at—but a surgery like this was too ambitious.

"My patient has already chosen the face he wants. I’m sure Ah Tou can restore all the details." Tu Dian took out a photo of Xie Yuchen.

Liang Yanyan didn’t realize it at this time, but there was an extremely tall man in a wheelchair just outside her door. He was about two meters tall, had particularly long limbs, and his face was completely covered in bandages.

His spine appeared deformed, and he was looking straight at the window at the end of the hall where a street cat was sitting in a tree outside. 

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Postscript:

"A Thousand Faces" is a good story.

I was quite busy when I was writing it, so there were a lot of oversights.

In the future, I’ll complete Liang Yanyan’s childhood story as well as how Xie Yuchen and Black Glasses appeared on the scene.

I personally like this story a lot, although it’s quite sketchy. 

That’s it. I'm done here. It’s late at night. I left a pit for you to think about, but really, it’s not a pit because it's not hard to guess what will happen next.

I’ll write a second part to “A Thousand Faces”, which will have some discussion about superficiality and human hearts. 

I still failed at writing about girls but I’ll continue to observe and improve on it. I’ve been walking in a weird posture recently, so I’m afraid that something's wrong with me.

Thank you, everyone.

Nan Pai San Shu

By the way, here are the photos you wanted:

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TN Notes:

(1) More info here.

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Merebear note: That's it for now! Super duper congrats to Yvette for finishing her first novel! Woohoo! (She did fabulous if I do say so myself).