After posting that comment, Mo Xi returned to the first chapter and started reading from the beginning. He had to admit that “Draw Bird” had written a much better opening than “Drawing My Sword, I Look Around in Bewilderment.” After all, the opening he had written in his mathematics workbook back then had gone like this:
“Feather-soft snowflakes were drifting down from the sky. With two strange diu-diu sounds, a man standing two and a half meters tall transmigrated into the world of The Legend of the Immortal Sword. He possessed a luxurious appearance so breathtaking that his first glance could topple Earth, and his second could topple the universe. His skin sparkled like Swarovski diamonds. This chosen son of Heaven was none other than the world-famous wealthy overseas returnee, Gu Mang. Gu Mang was remarkably calm about his transmigration. After all, he was a mature man, so the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Hah. I knew it. The chosen one would definitely be me.’”
And twenty years later, the opening Gu Mang wrote went like this—
“Toward evening, a fine, hazy snow began to fall along Chonghua’s border. A layer of immaculate white gradually accumulated on the ground. Wheels rolled over it, pedestrians walked across it, leaving behind several lines of tracks of varying depths…”
It seemed pretty normal.
Mo Xi accordingly settled down and continued reading at an unhurried pace.
Perhaps it was because working nonstop had exhausted him, or perhaps the alcohol had relaxed his taut nerves somewhat. As he read, the light from the screen before his eyes gradually grew hazy.
It seemed as though fine flakes of the season’s first snow were actually falling before him. He could see two parallel wheel ruts stretching forward along the ground… farther and farther…
Mo Xi thought he must have fallen asleep and was dreaming.
In the dream, he seemed to be walking forward with his head lowered, following the two wheel ruts. His gaze remained fixed on the tracks. The sounds of bustling traffic rang out around him, yet he could not raise his head. It was as though some invisible force was pressing him down, preventing him from seeing the faces of the passersby around him. He could only keep moving forward amid the clamor of the crowd.
Suddenly, the sharp clang of a cracked gong rang out.
“Come one, come all! Selling flatbreads!”
The shout seemed to shatter the force that had been restraining Mo Xi. All at once, he could see clearly—
He was in a marketplace. Most of the people there wore brown clothes and leather-padded jackets, with their hair gathered into buns and secured with hairpins. They all looked like people from ancient times. They busied themselves in the fine snow: some arranged the merchandise on their stalls, while others held brooms and swept the snow from the ground in front of their shops. Everyone went about their work at an unhurried pace, seemingly unaware that a man in a dress shirt and suit trousers had suddenly appeared among them.
“Brother Ermao! Give me back my bamboo dragonfly!”
“If you’ve got what it takes, chase me down and snatch it back! Nyah-nyah-nyah!”
Two young children with their hair tied into little tufts came running out of a tavern adorned with fluttering red banners, arguing as they went. The boy ran in front, while the girl followed behind him in tears. They were about to crash straight into Mo Xi, but in the blink of an eye, they passed through his body one after the other.
“…”
Mo Xi raised his hand, his expression dark.
Had he become transparent?
Just as he stared at his hand in a murderous daze, a mass of indistinct black mist drifted toward him. The mist coiled and writhed, taking the shape of two hands in midair. Then it began to clap. After it finished applauding, a voice brimming with barely contained excitement emerged from within the black mist.
“Oh my goodness, Lord Xihe! I really, really never imagined you would read this book!”
People had called Mo Xi “Mr. Mo,” “Captain Mo,” and “Officer Mo,” but no one had ever addressed him as “Lord Xihe.”
At this point, Mo Xi was nearly certain he really was dreaming.
Since it was a dream, there was no need to be overly surprised by the absurdity unfolding before him. So he stared at the mass of black mist for a while before answering bluntly,
“You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
“I haven’t mistaken you for anyone! You’re Lord Xihe, Marshal Mo Xi!”
“…”
Mo Xi had no intention of wasting his breath arguing over whether he was Lord Xihe or not. Instead, he asked, “Then what are you?”
“Hard to say,” the black mist replied. “The author’s thoughts, the readers’ resentment, the characters’ unwillingness to accept their fate… I’m the product of a whole bunch of things mixed together. So I call myself the Wealthy Overseas Returnee.”
“…Is there any causal relationship between those things?”
“The Wealthy Overseas Returnee is also a product of the author’s thoughts—and an ancient one at that.”
Mo Xi closed his eyes briefly. Apparently, even his temper was somewhat better in dreams. Faced with such a disjointed answer, he did not curse. Instead, he asked, “Where am I?”
“You’re inside the book.”
“…”
“Inside Gu Mang’s last book.” The Wealthy Overseas Returnee transformed into a mouth, opening and closing as it spoke. “I don’t know why you’ve come to this world. This book is on the verge of collapsing. Gu Mang once tried very hard to write it properly, but in the end, he actually chose to abandon it halfway.”
Mo Xi said nothing. Even in a dream, he did not think he would come up with such an outlandish idea. Besides, he had no idea what “abandoning it halfway” meant.
But the Wealthy Overseas Returnee seemed capable of reading his mind.
“Abandoning it halfway means writing half the story and then stopping. You don’t understand, right? No problem. I understand you. Let me use a literary classic as an example. Dream of the Red Chamber: the author wrote half of it, then rode a crane westward to the afterlife. In the truest sense of the word, it’s an abandoned story. It doesn’t matter if later generations continued writing it. As far as the original author is concerned, he still abandoned it halfway.”
True to form for a police officer who had seen the world, Officer Mo could still maintain his composure at this point. Though perhaps that was because he would rather believe he had suddenly acquired an extraordinary imagination than believe anything he was seeing was real.
After remaining silent for a while, he asked the question that showed the greatest foresight.
“How can I get out?”
“You might not be able to get out…” The Wealthy Overseas Returnee paused. “There’s no point glaring at me. You’d better start thinking about how to survive in this world.”
Mo Xi nearly sneered. He felt that every sentence in this dream was more absurd than the last.
“Even if what you’re saying is true, I know my own ending. It has nothing to do with dying.”
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee sighed. “But that ending is seriously OOC.”
“…”
“OOC means out of character,” it explained to Mo Xi, who knew nothing about internet slang. “For example, imagine Lin Daiyu barging into a wedding, clutching a handful of Grandmother Jia’s hair, and rushing over to Jia Baoyu to say, ‘You little brat! Your ancestor is in the hands of the Sea Patrol Yaksha! You must come with me today. You can’t marry Miss Xue!’ Or imagine Tang Sanzang seeing the Queen of the Women’s Kingdom and saying, ‘Oh my God, this chick is gorgeous! Monkey, tell your junior brothers to get lost. Master is going to consummate the marriage with the queen right now!’ That’s OOC.”
It seemed the Wealthy Overseas Returnee really did understand Mo Xi very well. It knew Mo Xi had only ever read literary classics, so its examples were exceptionally considerate.
“Do you have a specific recollection of Marshal Mo’s character setting in Forbidden/Book?”
Mo Xi thought about it. The only thing he could remember was the description of the “icy-cold B” in the outline of The Little Police Blossom, so he replied, “No impression.”
“That’s fine, that’s fine. Let me refresh your memory. In this novel, Mo Xi is also known as Lord Xihe. He comes from the prestigious Mo family. The Mo family has four generations of generals: Mo Xi’s maternal grandfather, his paternal grandfather, and his biological father—”
“That’s three,” Mo Xi interrupted silently in his head.
“—and Mo Xi himself. With such a bloodline, it’s only natural that Mo Xi possesses powerful and domineering spiritual abilities. He became the Supreme Commander at the age of just twenty-five.”
“…”
Mo Xi was not Gu Mang. He had no particular interest in being a Mary Sue male protagonist. Hearing that Gu Mang had given him such an exaggerated character setting in Forbidden/Book, he was momentarily at a loss for words.
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee seemed to have a mind-reading device built into it.
“You don’t need to feel awkward. These days, the second male lead is often more impressive than the first male lead. Besides, you know how Gu Mang writes. This level of praise is already considered restrained. After all, his starting point was a two-and-a-half-meter-tall boy made of diamonds.”
Seeing that Mo Xi’s expression had finally become a little less unpleasant, the Wealthy Overseas Returnee continued.
“Because of his family background, Lord Xihe has a cold and stern temperament. He commands his troops with iron discipline and never tolerates contradiction. His father repeatedly warned him, ‘A hero’s ambitions are buried in the land of sensual pleasures. Keep away from women and focus on your duties.’ So Lord Xihe has always been ascetic, with impeccable morals. You could say that in all these years, he has hardly ever made a major mistake.
“Except for Gu Mang.”
“What happened with Gu Mang?”
“The original text says: ‘To Mo Xi, Gu Mang was like ink on paper, mud in the snow, and that provocative streak of blood staining the sheets that a gentleman would expect to remain neat and white. He was the stain on Mo Xi’s life.’”
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee had expected Mo Xi to find those words disgusting. Yet, unexpectedly, Mo Xi fell silent.
Beneath his long eyelashes, his gaze flickered. It was a complicated look, one that seemed dim, full of hatred, and perhaps even heartbroken.
“There’s a saying circulating throughout Chonghua: If the traitor Gu Mang should ever fall into someone’s hands, the best possible ending for him would be to slit his own throat. At least he would die quickly. The next-best outcome would be to be captured and brought back to the city, where he could at least die successfully. The worst possible outcome would be to fall into Mo Xi’s hands during a battle between the two armies.
“That would be a disaster. It’s said that Mo Xi has prepared three hundred and sixty-five kinds of torture, enough to try one on Gu Mang every day of the year without repeating a single method. That would be more than enough to make Gu Mang wish he were dead while remaining unable to die.”
Mo Xi closed his eyes and suddenly let out a derisive laugh.
“He thinks I would treat him like that?”
“Draw Bird thinks the novel would be more—”
But Mo Xi did not pay the Wealthy Overseas Returnee any attention at all. He shared almost exactly the same stubbornness and arbitrary certainty as the Marshal Mo in the story, and he continued venting his anger and resentment without regard for anything else.
“He can stop being an idiot. I’m a police officer! He’s the one who insisted on rotting all the way to the bottom, yet somehow he turns around and blames me for forcing him, for taking revenge on him, and claims I’ll make him wish he were dead…”
A flash of scarlet appeared in Mo Xi’s eyes. His voice was almost a shout.
“After all these years, who exactly has made whose life a living hell? Doesn’t he know that himself?!”
“…”
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee seemed to realize that it could not go on describing the sordid history between Gu Mang and Mo Xi in the novel in greater detail. The real-world Mo Xi and the fictional Mo Xi did not seem very different after all. Both appeared calm on the surface, while inwardly they were more or less consumed by obsession. If this continued, one of them was going to lose his mind.
So the clever, mysterious mixture of gases known as the Wealthy Overseas Returnee promptly cut its losses and brought the topic to an end.
“In any case, now you know. He’s more or less like you. Would you have eight children with your wife?”
Mo Xi was still seething with anger. Through gritted teeth, he replied, “No.”
“See? OOC, right? There are also other things that would be rather complicated to explain. Anyway, the ending of this story is OOC in every possible way. Draw Bird deserves every bit of the abuse his readers are giving him. He put his heart into writing the beginning and the middle, and in doing so, he brought this real world into existence. But for some unknown reason, at a certain point, his story suddenly went off the rails. In the end, he practically committed literary suicide by finishing it in a way that insulted his own characters.”
Mo Xi was still furious. Out of habit, he tried to loosen his police uniform’s tie, but when he raised his hand, he remembered that he was wearing a casual white shirt and that his collar was already undone.
He said dejectedly, “Maybe Gu Mang already knew he was about to be caught at the time and had no interest in writing anymore.”
“I don’t know. I’m just a mass of resentment.” The Wealthy Overseas Returnee transformed into two little black hands and spread them helplessly. “All I know is that his actions have had a devastating impact on this world. Every character with flesh and blood is going to die. If he had simply abandoned the story halfway, that would actually have been fine. The characters would merely have fallen into a long sleep.”
It paused, then suddenly exclaimed with delight, “But fortunately, you’ve come!”
Mo Xi’s expression darkened. “What’s so fortunate about that? I still have to go to work tomorrow.”
“No, no. There’s a good chance you’ll never be able to return to your own world. Very few people who transmigrate into books ever manage to go back.”
Mo Xi abruptly snapped, “This is fake!”
“…”
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee fell silent for a moment, then suddenly said, “No. This is real.”
Mo Xi’s words were practically forced out through clenched teeth. “You must be insane.”
“This is real. Draw Bird placed many thoughts in this book that he couldn’t express in words. I don’t know what he encountered in real life, but I can sense that he wasn’t writing this story casually. This world is real. It contains his secrets and his hopes. Have you read the blurb he wrote? He promised from the very beginning that the two protagonists would have a happy ending.”
After a brief silence, the Wealthy Overseas Returnee asked cautiously, “…Have you calmed down now?”
Mo Xi replied coldly, “I think it’s about time this dream ended.”
“If you insist on believing that this is a dream, then changing the ending may be the only thing that can make you wake up.”
Mo Xi sneered. “How amusing. He wrote his novel with his eyes closed, and now I’m supposed to change it for him?”
Officer Mo had clearly meant that sarcastically. Who would have thought that the Wealthy Overseas Returnee would have the nerve to give him a thumbs-up in agreement?
“Brothers help brothers fill in the plot holes!”
“…”
This was utterly absurd. The thin smile at the corner of Mo Xi’s mouth vanished. He snapped, “Then why don’t you just go find Gu Mang?”
“Draw Bird…” the Wealthy Overseas Returnee murmured. “Suddenly, we lost contact with Draw Bird’s brain waves.”
Mo Xi stiffened abruptly.
In the real world, Gu Mang… really was lying in an operating room…
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee seemed deeply troubled. Although it had no facial features, Mo Xi could still sense its distress.
“We don’t know what exactly happened to him in the real world, but we can’t find him anymore. If you hadn’t suddenly left a comment beneath the article, we wouldn’t have been able to connect with your brain waves either.”
“…”
“Draw Bird himself doesn’t know this, but from the moment he typed the very first word, deep in his subconscious, there was only one person besides himself whom he believed had the right to revise this story: you. That’s why you’re the only one who can reverse the course of Forbidden/Book.”
It sounded a little like the opening of The Legend of the Immortal Sword: The Rich Overseas Returnee, where the two-and-a-half-meter-tall Gu Mang became the chosen one.
The Gu Mang in that story had accepted his new identity as the chosen one with remarkable calm. Officer Mo, on the other hand, was clearly still deciding between “I’m dreaming” and “I’ve gone insane.”
The Wealthy Overseas Returnee said, “I’ll take you to see the beginning of the story.”
“…How?”
“We’re in the first chapter right now. Just keep walking forward.”
“Clang, clang, clang!”
At that moment, the same harsh, cracked-gong sound that Mo Xi had heard at the beginning rang out again. The Wealthy Overseas Returnee led the transparent Mo Xi toward it—