Volume 1. Let the Game Begin
I did not delve into the remaining words.
On one hand, there was no need to.
On the other hand, it was because my Evil Spirit Form could not leave the body for too long for now.
As for why the Evil Spirit Form needed a period of recuperation, I had also roughly figured out a pattern.
The main reason was the "Devouring Desire".
Simply put, it was appetite.
For some reason, although my cause of death was not starvation, the main desire of my Evil Spirit Form was eating.
Before thirty minutes of separation, the appetite would not overpower normal rationality, but I still needed to endure the intense urge to stuff something into my mouth.
Once it exceeded thirty minutes, I could lose control at any moment.
Moreover, this thirty-minute limit did not occur every day.
It basically required a period of nurturing.
As for how to nurture... it was through eating.
Since the Evil Spirit Form required appetite, then in the state of the body being alive, I should eat as much as possible, eat more, and eat delicious things that I found tasty, thus filling part of the Evil Spirit Form’s appetite.
However, even if I ate five meals a day, each meal lasting three hours, it was still impossible to completely fill the Evil Spirit Form’s hunger.
Thus, the Evil Spirit Form could not stay separated for too long.
On another note, eating also helped maintain the Evil Spirit Form.
Unlike equivalent exchange, the soul seemed not to follow normal physical laws.
For example, part of the food I ate would become nourishment for the Evil Spirit Form.
Yet the Evil Spirit Form would not return this nourishment to me, but rather convert it into its own nutrition.
Conversely, what the Evil Spirit Form ate could feed back into my body.
Simply put, when I ate with my body, the excess nutrition would fill into the Evil Spirit Form.
But no matter how much food I consumed, it could only maintain the Evil Spirit Form without further consumption.
Conversely, what the Evil Spirit Form consumed could not only replenish itself but also benefit the body.
Yes... the Evil Spirit Form was in a state of constant consumption.
It was just that the consumption speed inside the body and outside the body was not the same.
The flesh acted like a protective layer, limiting the natural disintegration speed of the Evil Spirit Form to an almost undetectable degree.
Normal human bodies were the same.
Once the soul left the body, the disintegration speed would rise geometrically.
A soul that could remain stable inside the body for over a hundred years might not last even ten minutes outside.
Moreover, for some unknown reason, the natural disintegration speed of my Evil Spirit Form exceeded that of normal people, even while inside the body.
Thus, I needed to eat large amounts of food to ensure that even under natural disintegration, the Evil Spirit Form could be maintained.
The consequence of the Evil Spirit Form leaving the body was becoming a vegetative person.
The Evil Spirit Form itself was a dual-consciousness soul composed of the main consciousness and the subconsciousness, while the instinctual consciousness remained inside the body.
Although it might just be my own judgment and speculation, I felt that the so-called Heavenly Soul, Earthly Soul, and Human Soul corresponded to subconsciousness, instinctual consciousness, and main consciousness, respectively.
The Heavenly Soul was the subconsciousness.
The Earthly Soul was the instinctual consciousness.
The Human Soul was the main consciousness.
Of course, all of this was just my own speculation.
Currently, the only soul I had come into contact with was myself.
As for whether the Goat-headed Monster counted as a soul, that was still uncertain.
I had no way of knowing.
It was even more impossible for me to experiment directly by killing someone.
I was not one of those crazy scientists who could disregard everything for the sake of knowledge.
The above observations were knowledge I had gained while experimenting with the Evil Spirit Form and observing some wandering souls drifting around the hospital.
These wandering souls were basically harmless and extremely short-lived existences, similar to... a very thin cluster of electrons.
The soul of an ordinary person could still maintain a human form the moment it separated from the body.
But soon after, the soul’s form would begin to gradually shrink and evolve toward a spherical shape.
Eventually, it would completely turn into air.
The entire process would not exceed twenty minutes.
Of course, during the observation process, those souls were almost scared into scattering everywhere by me.
Honestly, I felt quite embarrassed too.
But to get to the bottom of things, I still forcibly endured the urge to eat those wandering souls, and continued observing their states.
All these things had been discovered a few days ago.
Now, I was just recalling them.
It was better to hurry back into the body.
Looking at the two policemen leaving the elevator, I carried my doubts and returned to the body.
At this moment, the body was equivalent to a vegetative state, or a deep sleep state.
All bodily functions had dropped to the minimum level required to sustain life.
The brain had no thoughts, only the basic functions required for normal operation were still working.
That was the instinctual consciousness at work.
I slowly pressed my Evil Spirit Form onto the body.
I had to admit, seeing people in the state of the Evil Spirit Form indeed felt very different.
At the very least... my Evil Spirit Form was three meters tall.
I had to lower my head to look at anyone.
The Evil Spirit Form’s overall appearance was like a stretched but not widened human figure.
The proportions were extremely bizarre.
However, when the Evil Spirit Form returned to the body, it would shrink strangely.
It would contract to match the size of the human body and merge into it.
Lying above my body, it felt like returning to a kind of shell.
A slight wrapped feeling appeared all over my body.
Then, my vision gradually fell into darkness.
At the same time, the body's senses gradually returned to my control.
The first thing to recover was vision.
When sunlight shone through the window, a little red appeared before my eyes.
Gradually, hearing began to recover.
Then came the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and finally... the sense of touch from the neck downward started to appear little by little.
The whole process seemed slow, but in reality, it was very fast.
It only took about one second.
In the state of the Evil Spirit Form, my consciousness speed was extremely fast.
It was several times faster than the reflexes and thinking speed of ordinary people.
In this state, the movements of ordinary people appeared like slow motion to me.
I slowly opened my eyes.
I had to admit, more than ten minutes of deep sleep indeed had a very good effect on the brain's rest.
At least when I opened my eyes, I could feel a clarity in my mind and was very refreshed.
"You’re awake?"
As soon as I opened my eyes, Aunt Zhao’s voice came to my ears.
I responded with a hum and sat up.
I turned back to glance at Aunt Zhao and found... she was packing luggage.
"Aunt Zhao, you are... what are you doing?"
When I first entered the room, I did not pay attention to what Aunt Zhao was doing.
Now at a glance, I saw that she was packing both my and her luggage piece by piece.
From the looks of it... it seemed we are preparing to be discharged?
"I just called your mom. I told her everything about the hospital. Sister Gong was worried, so she called again to ask your attending doctor. He said you can be discharged now, but you need to rest. So she told me to pack up immediately, and we will leave the hospital today."
Aunt Zhao explained very patiently, packing clothes while speaking to me.
"My mom... means for us to leave the hospital today?"
A major criminal case happened at the hospital.
Although the murderer had become a vegetable and was under police surveillance, it was normal for the hospital to be in panic.
It seemed Gong Lianyu was also very worried.
However... based on my understanding of Gong Lianyu these past few days, with such a big incident happening, shouldn’t she have come to see me?
"Yes, Yunyan, don't blame Sister Gong for not coming. Actually, I know you are aware of Sister Gong’s feelings for you. Sigh... child, don't be so stubborn in the future. Even if you are dating someone, don't be so hard on your parents. Look, you had an accident this morning, and Sister Gong almost canceled her flight to Europe. She should be on the plane now. We will pack up. Later Sister Gong will send someone to pick us up."
One "Sister Gong" after another...
Honestly, Aunt Zhao, you should be several years older than my mom... older than Gong Lianyu, right?
Liu Wanqian was thirty-five, Gong Lianyu was thirty-three, and I was fifteen years old.
In other words, Liu Wanqian was twenty and Gong Lianyu was eighteen when they had Liu Yunyan...
This was really, tsk tsk.
Sigh, people of that era really married early.
Unlike me, laboring into my thirties, still a damn single dog.
A few years ago, Liu Yunyan’s younger twin siblings were born.
Speaking of which, Gong Lianyu really maintained her figure well.
She didn’t look like someone over thirty at all.
Standing next to Liu Yunyan, she just looked like a slightly older sister.
Later Sister Gong will send someone to pick us up?
Oh right... Gong Lianyu seemed to be the CEO and Chairwoman of some multinational company...
As for exactly what kind of business she was doing, Liu Yunyan actually knew nothing...
It really made me speechless.
This family didn’t really count as a "clan".
A real clan should be huge.
But this family... at most went up to the great-grandfather’s generation.
The whole big family started with the great-grandfather’s efforts.
It began to improve after he joined the army and after the founding of the country.
Before that, this family was the kind where distant relatives could barely be connected by eight poles.
And the great-grandfather had only one son.
This son was Liu Yunyan’s grandfather, a retired mayor.
It was from his generation that the family finally grew a bit.
The family members were also harmonious.
There was no messy family infighting like in some dramas.
The eldest aunt and second uncle were both officials now.
The second uncle was the head of the police department.
The eldest aunt was a mayor.
Liu Yunyan’s father, Liu Wanqian, did not go into politics but entered business, working in real estate.
The fourth aunt married a man who was a senior engineering researcher, said to be working on civil aviation aircraft engines.
The fifth uncle studied abroad and now worked as a university professor.
Put it this way... Liu Wanqian’s generation had five children, and each one was an elite.
As for Gong Lianyu... according to what Liu Yunyan remembered her saying, her Gong family had been merchants since the Ming dynasty.
During the Qing dynasty, they moved to Singapore to escape wars, and after the Republic of China period, they returned to develop domestically.
They had gone back and forth several times until now.
Thus, under this kind of upbringing, Gong Lianyu also became a successful businesswoman.
However... there was an old saying, "Wealth does not pass three generations. Honest officials rarely finish well."
From the great-grandfather’s generation, starting from the great-grandfather, to Liu Wanqian’s generation, there were three generations.
Counting from the great-grandfather, every generation was filled with talents.
But by Liu Yunyan’s generation, it had started to decline.