Oracle bone fragments

Chapter 26

Sun Jing looked at him, somewhat puzzled.

Ouyang Wenlan suddenly smiled and said, "You're very smart, be careful."

After saying that, he closed his eyes and stopped breathing.

Death is an end—that is certain for those who are unfortunate enough to encounter it; but it is also a beginning—and many things change as a result.

end

A cold mountain wind blew in from behind.

“You’re right about one thing: those few dozen seconds after jumping off the cliff are incredibly thrilling,” Xu Xu said.

“Nonsense, it’s six or seven hundred meters deep here. You’d better open the parachute within ten seconds, no, eight seconds. Otherwise, if the main parachute malfunctions, you might not have a chance to open the reserve parachute,” Sun Jing said.

"I know, I've been parading for just as long as you have."

"How many times did you jump in the winter?"

This is a small platform perched on a precipice somewhere in the western Tianmu Mountain range. Looking out from the cliff, the peaks of the Tianmu Mountain range rise and fall behind the clouds, most of their summits already covered in snow. Even where they are standing, there is three inches of snow; ordinary tourists would never come here.

Looking down, there are wisps of clouds that haven't been blown away by the mountain wind, and the huge trees that we saw along the way, as thick as wheels, are now indistinguishable dots in the expansive greenery, blending into the giant rocks and streams, rushing towards us.

"Are you still preoccupied with something, still thinking about their last words? It's all over, why think so much? Honestly. I'm jumping first. Whatever worries I have, jumping will make them all disappear, haha."

After slowly finishing his explanation, Xu Xu ignored Sun Jing, took a few steps back, jogged forward, and leaped into the air.

Sun Jing looked down and saw the sun slowly and rapidly plummeting, piercing through the thin clouds, yet it still hadn't opened its umbrella. After waiting another three seconds, Sun Jing's heart tightened, but suddenly he saw...

An orange umbrella-shaped flower bloomed beneath the clouds.

Sun Jing breathed a sigh of relief. Xu Xu was right. Even on the way up the mountain, he was still thinking about the strange last words of the two people.

He had some clues, but the final mystery remained unsolved.

The last messages left by the two deceased seem to vaguely point to the same meaning.

Wen Zhenhe said he liked beautiful women, but Han Shang and Xu Xu were both undeniably beautiful, yet he killed one and was preparing to kill the other.

Ouyang Wenlan claimed to be friends with Sun Yu, yet he wanted to kill Sun Yu's great-grandson.

The two men's final words contradicted their actions. Yet Sun Jing was certain that their words before they died were sincere.

This means they had no choice.

At this moment, Sun Jing had already jumped off the cliff. The mountain wind whipped at his face like a knife, and the clouds, thin as mist, were right before his eyes.

Wen Zhenhe said he wasn't in the underground hall in 1969, meaning he joined the experiment later. Sun Jing originally thought Ouyang Wenlan was the one who recruited Wen Zhenhe, but it seems that wasn't the case. Behind them, there was another person...

What Sun Jing couldn't understand was why, in their final moments, they chose such a roundabout way to express their meaning. They could have simply stated directly who the person behind them was.

As Xu Xu watched Sun Jing fall past her like a shooting star, she yelled, "Open the umbrella! Are you crazy? Open the umbrella!"

Sun Jing felt that he was about to come to a realization.

They didn't speak out because they couldn't, but people should be fearless before they die. So they didn't remain silent because they were worried about anything; they truly couldn't speak.

Sun Jing was falling like a stone, reaching the maximum speed a person can reach in a fall—fifty meters per second. At his current altitude, he only had one chance to deploy his parachute; if the main parachute malfunctioned, there would be no opportunity to deploy the reserve parachute.

Sun Jing still didn't pull up the umbrella.

He was facing a mysterious phenomenon beyond ordinary experience, so perhaps he should break away from conventional thinking when considering this issue.

Want to say it but can't?

"Sun Jing!" Xu Xu cried out in despair, tears welling up in her eyes. They were immediately swept away by the wind. Then, she saw Sun Jing's main umbrella finally open.

The purple umbrella, which opened more than a hundred meters below Xu Xu's feet, reminded her for some reason of the pairs of cat's eyes in the air-raid shelter that day.

“One day, you’ll ruin yourself,” Xu Xu murmured.

Sun Jing laughed; it turned out to be hypnosis.

Perhaps it shouldn't be called hypnosis; it might be a more advanced form of mind control, a kind of allure that inspires worship. Therefore, only at the very last moment of life does one's true personality begin to awaken, wanting to resist, but only able to mount a feeble struggle. They reveal messages in an indirect and roundabout way, requiring the recipient to be sufficiently intelligent to decipher them.

Behind Wen Zhenhe and Ouyang Wenlan, there is indeed a person. The ability he has acquired allows him to control another person, or rather, brainwash them, under certain conditions.

Such control could not be easily achieved. A considerable number of the experimenters who dispersed after 1969 must still not be under his control. Therefore, he had to maintain the illusion that the wizard's skull was still in Dongbo to avoid becoming a target of public criticism.

He must have been observing from the shadows, perhaps even in one of the tunnels of the air-raid shelter when Ouyang Wenlan died.

When the time is right, this venomous snake will silently slither out. If you are bitten, you won't die, but you will never be the same person again.

Sun Jing looked up and shouted to Xu Xu diagonally above, "One hundred and fifty meters, three seconds. The real thrill is only at the very end."

He had just finished shouting when Xu Xu suddenly fell down.

She cut the parachute lines!

She opened her backup parachute twenty meters below Sun Jing.

She screamed excitedly, "Do you know where hell is? It's just ten meters below my feet!"

“You’re a madman,” Sun Jing cursed.

“Only a madman would be with you,” Xu Xu replied.