Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 622 - 563: Landing
"Chai..."
Li Ang paused for a moment. Vague memories surfaced in his mind of a girl who used to joke and laugh with him on the way home from school, who had since moved away and lost contact.
"Right, right, I got it."
Li Ang replied vaguely, offering a few non-committal responses until he finally got his mother to hang up the phone.
After washing up and changing his clothes, he dragged out a suitcase from under the bed that had been packed and ready.
"Wallet, check. ID card, check. Passport, check..."
Holding his keys, he muttered to himself as he moved to the door, his gaze pausing briefly on the wooden plate above the shoe cabinet.
On that plate lay a meteorite fragment he had accidentally found while walking along the beach to clear his mind. It must be one of those nickel-iron meteorite fragments mentioned on TV.
One of my classmates is still studying for his doctorate at Yin City University. Should I turn it in? Nah, I’ll decide when I get back.
He straightened the tilted meteorite, adjusting it to an angle that pleased his eye, before dragging his suitcase out the door and accidentally bumping squarely into a girl passing through the hallway.
"Uh, sorry."
Li Ang instinctively took half a step back and apologized, but the girl didn’t seem to mind. She blinked, looking puzzled, and asked, "Mr. Li, are you going out?"
"Yes, I am."
Li Ang looked at the girl before him. She wore a dark brown beret, a white blouse with lotus-leaf trim, a blue knit cardigan, and a khaki midi skirt, and was holding a box of cake. He nodded and said, "I’m heading to Tokyo, Japan, on a business trip."
"Oh? How long will you be gone?"
"About ten days."
I can actually complete the boss’s assignment in a week, Li Ang thought. Being a corporate drone, I took an extra three days off. Naturally, I’ll use them to fulfill my adolescent wish of exploring places like Akihabara.
Li Ang exchanged a few more words with the girl as she returned to the room next door. He faintly heard another pleasant female voice from inside, "Yay! Cake! Long live Le Ling!"
"Lin Lang, you haven’t washed the dishes again, ugh."
"I’ll wash them right away! Ah, I’ve just been busy browsing Tao Bao. Say, should we buy a dishwasher during the shopping festival?"
The voice belonged to Li Leqing. She had an exquisite appearance and a gentle temperament, the type to instantly become the center of attention in any crowd.
Moreover, her family was in the real estate business and very wealthy—she had two Porsches and a Ferrari parked in the underground garage of the apartment complex.
I wonder why she chooses to live in this ordinary apartment, Li Ang mused. Perhaps this is the legendary ’experiencing life’?
Shaking his head, Li Ang left the complex and took a car to the airport.
The boarding process was unremarkable. As a corporate drone for several years since university graduation, he was already used to frequent business trips. He couldn’t use his phone while the plane was taking off, anyway. Might as well write something.
He took a palm-sized notebook from his pocket, placed it on his lap, and stared blankly.
The pages of the notebook contained the outline for a novel he had recently started drafting. Aside from being a corporate drone, he was also an amateur author, sporadically uploading Chapters of his novel—not very popular, more for his own entertainment.
"There was a boy named ** who accidentally transmigrated to an otherworld with an Ancient China setting. Orphaned, he and a young maid named ** relied on each other for survival. Later, by a stroke of luck, he came into contact with the extraordinary aspects of this world, befriended individuals named ** and **, and encountered confidantes named ** and ** in the Jianghu."
The names in the notebook were all replaced with asterisks. It couldn’t be helped; Li Ang had always struggled with naming his characters, so he had to leave them blank for now.
The faction the protagonist belongs to... it should be an institution specializing in teaching Extraordinary Power...
As he watched the wheat fields flash by the window, he thought of the name Jixia Academy, then deleted ’Jixia’ and filled in ’Academic Palace’.
As for the main villain of the book...
His mind went blank. Seeing a neighboring passenger wearing a "Death Stranding" T-shirt, he thought of the Nether Beach from the game’s setting and casually jotted down ’Zhao Ming’ in his notebook.
The plane gradually lifted its nose, climbing in altitude, then leveled out into a smooth flight after some turbulence.
Drowsiness washed over Li Ang. He put away his notebook, which had barely any new words in it, donned an eye mask, and leaned against the seat’s headrest.
In a hazy, dream-like state, the plot of the novel naturally unfolded in his mind.
How the protagonist navigates the initial challenges after transmigrating, how he comes into contact with the strange Mutated Object named Mo Si, how he encounters the villain, how he crawls out of the abyss, finding a path to survival in a seemingly hopeless situation...
"Director, the patient is convulsing again!"
"Increase the dosage!"
"Young Master..."
A familiar yet strange female voice, filled with urgency, drifted from a great distance.
"Wake up!!"
The voice suddenly amplified, exploding as if right beside his ear.
Li Ang’s eyes snapped open. He instinctively tried to stand, nearly hitting his head on the overhead luggage compartment.
Everything was fine; he was still on the airplane.
Li Ang came to his senses. He embarrassedly apologized to the startled passenger next to him and sat back down. He scratched the back of his hand, which was slightly itchy, and felt his brain still buzzing.
He hesitated for a moment but then took out his pen and paper again, jotting down fragments of information from his dream.
Sword Immortal Tomb, Mo Si, Six Paths of Reincarnation, Plague, Li Yuan...
The shattered memories were hazy, as if Li Ang had truly experienced a grand, tumultuous adventure through the protagonist’s eyes.
The only two strange things were that he couldn’t, for the life of him, recall the final predicament the protagonist faced, nor could he figure out what those bizarre voice clips he’d heard just before waking up were all about.
A nonsensical nightmare?...
"Ladies and gentlemen, the plane is now descending. Please return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts, and stow your tray tables..."
The safety announcement for the plane’s descent came over the PA system, broadcast cyclically in Chinese, English, and Japanese.
This sense of ongoing, everyday stability gradually eased the faint unease in Li Ang’s heart.
He let out a soft sigh, put away his pen and paper, rubbed his ears—somewhat blocked from the pressure change—and scratched the back of his hand, which was still inexplicably itchy, as he waited for the plane to land.
The massive fuselage of the Boeing 787 slowly descended, glided along the runway to decelerate, and finally came to a stop.
Li Ang followed the crowd off the plane, claimed his luggage, and walked out of the arrival corridor.
Outside the corridor, many people were holding pick-up signs. One of them read "Li Ang welcome" in English, with the name of Li Ang’s company and his flight number below it.
"Hello?"
Li Ang pushed his luggage cart forward and greeted the young man holding the sign. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
"Hello? Are you Mr. Li Ang? I am Abe Takano, the specialist sent by the Japan Trading Company to receive you."
Abe Takano bowed and said in Chinese with a slight northeastern accent, "Mr. Li, you’re much younger than I expected! I can’t believe you’re already part of the management of a top 500 company in Yin City. It truly makes me envious of your talent and ability!"
Dude, I think you used that idiom wrong...
Li Ang’s eyelid twitched. "Mr. Abe, you speak Chinese?" he asked, curious.
"I learned it during my time at East University from a roommate from your country. I helped him buy manga and figurines, and he taught me conversational Chinese."
Abe Takano laughed heartily. "The most common greeting he taught me was ’Nǐ chǒu shá?’ which, he said, means ’You’re looking well recently.’"
Alright then. What a gem of a roommate.
Li Ang smacked his lips, deciding not to dwell on the matter any further.
