Chapter 157 - Floating Light (1/2)
Can light float?
Lin Luoran discovered that light could float when she was a little girl. Back then, her family lived in a tile-roofed house. Sometimes, the tiles would break and the roof leaked whenever it rained.
Her dad would pick a sunny afternoon and use a bamboo ladder to get on the roof. He would replace the broken tiles with new ones. This was every man living in the countryside had to do. It was called “house-gathering”.
Lin Luoran didn’t care much about “house-gathering”. However, every time her dad moved away the broken tiles, light would pour down on the ground… The floating light was so breathtakingly beautiful.
Seven-year-old Lin Luoran believed that light could float. She kept this to herself as a little secret — actually, the Lin family was the outsider of the Li’s village. Kids at her age all looked down on her. Lin Luoran didn’t really have someone to talk to.
Then, Lin Luoran started elementary school. She realized that the floating light poured down from the roof was a delusion caused by the floating dust in the air.
The floating light was actually dust — the younger cousin of Eighth Sister Li pointed out Lin Luoran’s mistake. Lin Luoran’s family was poor so she never got to wear new clothes. Lin was malnourished and her hair was thin and her skin was sallow. n.o.body in the elementary school liked her. The entire cla.s.s laughed at Lin Luoran when Tenth Sister Li pointed out Lin’s childish idea.
Lin Luoran didn’t forget her cla.s.smate’s mockery for years.
Lin was born lively, however, life made her silent.
She became taller when she was in junior high school. She was slim and comely, but she never had enough confidence in herself. Lin Luoran and Li Anping were admitted to the same university, and Li started to pursue her. He sometimes sent her roses he bought from the vegetable market and poems he wrote in English. Li Anping even made soup for Lin when she got sick… Li Anping won Lin Luoran over with his complaisance.
Lin Luoran, who was self-contemptuous, believed that this was love. She was so happy being with Li Anping that she ignored all the other boys who created opportunities to “run into” her — Lin Luoran was always an elegant and fragrant orchid. She was the only one who saw herself as a worthless weed.
The incident of “floating light” has influenced Lin Luoran’s entire life… If the mysterious bead didn’t bring Lin onto the path of cultivation, she would be a forbearing, self-contemptuous and quiet girl all her life.
Time has pa.s.sed. Lin Luoran is no longer an innocent child. In a daze, she sees the “floating light” again — this time, it is really flas.h.i.+ng and dynamic light in front of her eyes.
Lin Luoran is kicked into the blood pool and she immediately disappears.
Thousands of lost souls rush at her. Lin Luoran can feel that her body is torn apart and her flesh is eaten… The pain makes her want to end her own life.
Does she want to kill herself?
She doesn’t even have the strength to chew off her own tongue.
Light pours down on Lin’s eyes. The floating light protects her eyes from being gnawed by the lost souls.
Are her cleared eyes doing this?
She is in so much pain. Lin Luoran thinks about death. Every time she thinks about death, the lost souls become fiercer.
These things bully the weak and fear the strong?
I can’t just die… If I die now, my parents, Luodong, and all my close friends will be in danger! She must hold on.
The world of cultivation is not so harmonious as it seems to be.
Lying on the bottom of the blood pool, Lin Luoran is sometimes in a coma and sometimes wide awake. Her flesh is gnawed by the lost souls, yet she is reborn with her faith and Reiki.
The bead seems to be out of touch, yet it infuses a stream of Reiki to help Lin’s rebirth every time when she is at the line of death.