Food Supplements - Chapter 7

For someone who had lived in despair for a long time, even the faintest uncertain hope was like a distant glimmer seen while lost in the dark.

You did not know whether you could walk that far. You did not even know what the light was.

It was hope, but also torment.

It all depended on how you chose to see it.

Although years of illness had left Qin Cheng far more dispirited than before, she was, by nature, a woman of action. Once she adjusted her mindset and made up her mind, she no longer hesitated.

Besides, she had recently enjoyed a rare night of deep sleep—even if that sleep had not occurred within the passage of real-world time. The improvement in her mental state was undeniably real.

So despite it being only a little after four in the morning outside, she had no intention of returning to bed. Instead, she switched on the room’s overhead light and prepared to continue working.

The first thing she needed to do was simple. At least it required no thought whatsoever.

She had to clean up the chaotic mess on the floor.

Why start with the floor?

Wasn’t it obvious?

There was a huge pool of blood there that looked like the aftermath of a murder. If she did not clean it soon, it would dry into the floorboards.

Although most ordinary people had little experience cleaning blood, an adult woman was surely a little more practiced at it than a man.

Qin Cheng changed into another top, then tossed the damaged pajama shirt directly onto the bloodstained floor and gently wiped it back and forth.

The cotton fabric quickly absorbed most of the sticky, dark-red liquid. The garment became more heavily stained with every pass, turning into a blood-soaked shirt in the truest sense.

After the initial cleanup, Qin Cheng had no intention of washing it.

Quite the opposite.

She found a thick plastic bag and carefully sealed the bloodstained pajama shirt inside.

Based on her current experience, she might need to mix lake water with blood every time she wanted to leave that place. Until she found a better method, every drop of blood was naturally precious.

While wiping the floor, Qin Cheng even entertained a rather wicked thought. If her menstrual cycle had not become irregular after years of illness, perhaps she could also use—

But on second thought, no.

Traditionally, menstrual blood was considered unclean and inauspicious. The Taiji Bagua lake might be mysterious and supernatural, but it was still rooted in traditional concepts.

Better to respect such taboos.

If she accidentally ruined everything, she would truly have no tears left to cry.

Her mind wandered, but her hands never stopped moving.

After collecting the excess blood, she filled a small basin with cold water, mixed in some detergent, and wiped the floor twice. Then she cleaned and sorted every scattered object one by one.

At last, the room no longer resembled a murder scene.

Looking at the spotless floor, the woman wiped away her sweat and sat down tiredly. While resting, she began handling the belongings she had cleaned and arranged on the table.

Everything from the bag was there except for one thing: the jade ornament that had once been set into the silver hairpin.

It had only been a low-quality piece of melon-rind green jade, but it was still jade. Even if it had shattered, surely it could not have disintegrated into dust.

Its disappearance was rather suspicious.

With that thought, Qin Cheng picked up the silver hairpin from the table.

This was actually the first time she had examined it carefully.

Without the jade ornament at its head, the entire hairpin appeared slightly shorter, only about twelve or thirteen centimeters long.

Most of the blood had rubbed off onto her pajama shirt, so it now looked much cleaner, revealing intricate patterns carved into the silver shaft.

Unfortunately, a fair amount of dark, dried blood remained trapped inside the engravings, giving it a rather unsettling appearance.

Qin Cheng did not clean it further, nor did she attempt to analyze the complicated designs yet.

She merely examined the hairpin for a moment, then opened her jewelry box and took out a pendant cord. She threaded it through the small hole that had originally held the jade ornament and secured it in place, transforming the delicate silver hairpin into a somewhat punk-style pendant.

She did this so she could carry it with her easily.

And she had decided to keep it close because Qin Cheng was nearly certain that the object was connected to that strange little realm.

She did not yet know exactly how they were connected, but anything that might be an important key had to be kept safe.

After putting on the pendant, the woman stopped studying it.

Before conducting a full investigation, she had prepared several precautions for herself, just in case.

First, Qin Cheng put on shoes and socks and tidied herself slightly. Once she was certain nothing looked unusual, she quietly opened her door and stepped out of her small room.

She did not lock it, leaving a narrow crack open.

Only after entering the stairwell did she truly feel that it was indeed four or five in the morning.

The narrow old wooden staircase was dark. Only a small night-light at the corner cast a dim glow.

The entire building was silent.

The landlady next door and the young couple on the second floor were probably still deep asleep, completely unaware of everything that had happened that night.

The end and destruction of your life was no more than a tiny episode in someone else’s.

No matter who vanished from this world, the sun would still rise tomorrow.

The thought surfaced unexpectedly.

Qin Cheng gave a bitter smile and quickly shook it away.

She did not need such reflections now. They would only weaken her resolve.

Since she had decided to do something, she would do it thoroughly.

Qin Cheng had always been stubborn that way. Otherwise, she would never have done all those things after falling ill years ago.

Now that she had decided to prepare properly, she naturally intended to use every means available.

She crept down the stairs and entered the storage room on the ground floor.

Calling it a storage room was generous. It was merely a tiny space beneath the staircase where the landlady kept unused belongings.

Nothing inside was valuable, so there was no lock. The small door slid open with a simple pull.

Of course, whether something was valuable depended on the person and the circumstances.

Qin Cheng had secretly come downstairs specifically to steal—

No.

To borrow one of the unused objects inside.

The room had a light, so she found it easily.

It was an old black truck inner tube, slightly worn but basically intact.

Despite the landlady’s age and plump figure, she went swimming several times every summer. For someone of her build, even the newest inflatable ring was not as durable as this.

It was still spring, far from the season when everyone went swimming.

Borrowing it for a while should not matter.

Qin Cheng silently apologized. After checking that the inner tube was still fully inflated, she carried it away without hesitation.

She also took an old-fashioned washboard with her.

Panting with effort, she brought both items back to her room.

Then she found some thin rope and tape, secured the washboard across one end of the inner tube to cover the central opening, and created a crude raft that a person could straddle.

Once that was finished, she placed the sealed bloodstained shirt into her small backpack.

She also packed a spare set of clothes wrapped in a plastic bag and a pair of rubber gloves used for laundry.

After some thought, she adjusted the charging phone to the real-world time but did not take it with her.

Instead, she brought the digital alarm clock.

Once all preparations were complete, Qin Cheng put on the backpack and sat on the floor, leaning against the modified inner tube.

Still uneasy, she gripped the rubber firmly with one hand. Then she used the other to pick up the silver hairpin hanging from her chest.

She had reluctantly found a method of leaving, even though it was troublesome.

Now, the most urgent question was how to enter.

Although she had never tested it directly, Qin Cheng was not completely without theories.

At present, the key seemed to involve only a few things.

The common factors during both entrances had been blood and the silver hairpin.

The floor was now clean, but some blood had inevitably gotten onto her hands while she was tidying up.

Qin Cheng rubbed that blood onto the hairpin and waited.

Nothing happened.

Did it require fresh blood?

She muttered inwardly, then rejected the idea.

The blood she had used to leave had not been fresh either.

Then perhaps blood was not the crucial object.

Thinking carefully, what had she been doing the second time she entered?

There had been no special movement. She had merely turned and walked toward the table.

In her hand, she had been gripping the silver hairpin, just as she was now.

Of course, she had also been holding her phone and some pills, but those two things clearly could not have held any mystery.

What other detail was there?

Oh, right.

At the time, she had wanted to take medicine and drink water. She had compared the water in the glass to the lake water, and the thought of that dark-blue water had made her shiver.

That water…

As though by conditioned reflex, after being immersed in the freezing lake twice, Qin Cheng felt a chill seep outward from within her body the moment she remembered it.

She was about to release the hairpin and rub her hands when her vision suddenly went black and the familiar sensation of weightlessness swept over her.

So the key to entering might have little to do with blood.

Perhaps she only needed to grip the hairpin tightly and think about the lake?

The moment her senses and thoughts returned, Qin Cheng hurriedly summarized her findings.

Then she opened her eyes.

Sure enough, she was back on the enormous white stone.

The difference was that the stone now felt rather crowded.

The black inner tube she had kept firmly grasped in one hand, along with everything fixed to it, had also been brought inside.

Excellent!

Qin Cheng felt an immediate surge of excitement.

Not only had she successfully discovered a way to enter and brought in everything she intended to carry, but this also meant she would not have to foolishly swim through freezing water for a third time.

The saying went that nothing should happen more than three times.

The first two swims had been unavoidable. The whole point of all her preparations was to spare herself further suffering.

The thick inner tube was large and sturdy.

If it could support the landlady’s full, rounded figure, then someone as thin as Qin Cheng had nothing to worry about.

The test results were also satisfying.

She carefully pushed the modified swimming ring into the water, and it floated steadily.

The washboard secured across it was equally stable.

Although it was not especially comfortable to sit on, placing it in the center preserved the raft’s balance and stability. It also blocked the central hole of the inner tube, preventing most lake water from splashing up through it.

Despite the success of her careful preparations, Qin Cheng did not immediately leave.

Instead, as planned, she began walking around the white stone once more.

The swimming ring was only a temporary solution to her predicament.

Given the choice, Qin Cheng naturally did not want every visit to begin with her trapped in such a tiny place.

If she looked and thought carefully enough, perhaps she could find a permanent solution.

Perhaps this was what people called overlooking what was right beneath one’s nose.

Of the entire lake realm, aside from the dense fog around its edges, the round white stone was probably the place Qin Cheng had examined the least.

When she first woke there, she had frantically looked around, but all her attention had been directed into the distance.

As for the smooth bald “monk’s head” beneath her feet, it was both too small and too clean. There was no grass, not even a wrinkle or crack, so she had assumed there was nothing worth examining.

But when she observed it seriously, as she did now, it did not take long to find traces that did not belong there.

Near one edge of the white stone were several faint brown stains.

Looking closely, they appeared to be blood.

This was exactly where Qin Cheng had first awakened.

She remembered lying facedown at the time, so it was not strange that blood from her clothes had rubbed onto the stone.

After thinking briefly, however, she crouched down, took a wet wipe from her pocket, and carefully scrubbed away the faint brown stains.

Her intuition told her that if blood was necessary to leave, then perhaps it was somehow involved in entering as well.

Why did she always arrive directly on this stone?

Could it be because there was blood on it?

After all, this stone was extremely inconvenient.

Even if this strange realm was mystical, surely it had still been created by someone.

There was no reason for every visit to begin on an inconvenient rock unless some condition caused it.

As for what that condition was, the action-oriented Qin Cheng had a simple answer.

Since no instruction manual had been left behind, no one could blame future users for testing everything one by one.

Knowledge came through practice.

After wiping the blood from the white stone and confirming that no trace remained, Qin Cheng carefully climbed onto her homemade raft.

She sat astride the washboard in the center, put on the laundry gloves, then bent forward and gently paddled the surface with both hands.

Using her hands as oars, she steered the crude black inner-tube raft away from the stone island.

At first, the method worked quite well.

For a lightweight woman, the load-bearing capacity of a truck inner tube was more than sufficient, especially for an emaciated patient like Qin Cheng.

As long as her paddling movements remained small, the water did not even reach the wooden washboard. Only a few scattered droplets splashed onto her clothes, bringing a slight chill.

The coldest parts of her body were her hands, which were submerged as she paddled.

However, the thick rubber gloves greatly reduced the chill, keeping it within a tolerable range.

Yes, at first, she glided across the water fairly smoothly.

But in the end, it was not a real raft.

After some time, its lack of stability began to show.

Feeling her center of gravity gradually tilt, Qin Cheng had no choice but to change from sitting cross-legged to straddling the inner tube, placing one leg on either side to maintain her balance.

Only then did the raft stabilize enough to avoid capsizing.

The price was that her lower legs were once again immersed in the freezing lake water.

This immediately changed her plans.

She had originally intended to paddle around and explore the lake, but now she decisively chose to reach shore as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, she had not been far from the bank to begin with.

She paddled hard several times, watched for an opportunity, and successfully jumped onto the shore.

Then she turned and dragged the inner tube out of the water.

By the time she finished, her lower legs were nearly frozen stiff.

Qin Cheng quickly stamped her feet several times, then found a dry stone slab and sat down before removing the backpack from her shoulders.

Thank goodness she had planned carefully and prepared in advance.

As she silently congratulated herself, she opened the bag.

First, she removed the plastic bag containing the bloodstained shirt and set it aside.

Then she took out the spare clothes she had packed earlier.

She removed her wet pants, shoes, and socks and replaced them with clean, warm clothing.

Even after changing, however, the chill did not immediately fade.

If it became unbearable, she could soak her feet in the warm-water section later.

Feeling the stabbing cold deep in her bones, Qin Cheng helplessly rubbed her legs and comforted herself with this small pleasure amid the suffering.

As she thought, she took out the silver hairpin hanging against her chest and examined it.

Surely it could not constantly sense every thought in her mind.

Otherwise, would using such mysterious lake water as a footbath count as disrespect?

She really had miscalculated.

Had she known, she would have brought a few adhesive heat packs. Sticking them to her legs would have felt much better than this.

Speaking of which, where had she put the heat packs?

Were they in the second drawer of the bedside cabinet?

Or in the storage cabinet on the left side of the room—

Wait.

This feeling!

What Qin Cheng never expected was that even a wandering thought while resting could summon that peculiar dizziness.

Her vision went black before she could do anything.

When she opened her eyes again, she was already back inside her room.

What happened?

The woman sprang to her feet in surprise.

For an instant, she truly wondered whether she had been expelled for disrespecting the place.

But surely not.

She looked down suspiciously at the pendant on her chest.

The silver hairpin still hung there intact and had not been taken away.

There was a very simple way to determine whether she had been rejected or whether something else had caused her return.

She only needed to enter again immediately.

If she could still enter successfully, that would at least prove she had not been completely expelled.

But…

Qin Cheng looked helplessly around.

This time, only she had returned.

The backpack, gloves, inner-tube raft, and everything else had disappeared, probably because she had not been physically touching them.

They must have remained behind.

That also meant that if her next entrance placed her on the white stone again, she would have to—

Swim through the freezing water once more.

So much for nothing happening three times.

No matter how annoyed she was, she had to accept reality.

There was no point making another raft.

Fine.

If she had to suffer, then she would suffer.

At the very least, she needed to find out what had happened.

The woman gritted her teeth, tightly gripped the hairpin, and closed her eyes.

She stood silently in place for a moment.

Then her entire body abruptly vanished from the room.

The small room remained brightly lit but utterly silent.

The alarm clock had been taken away, so even its ticking had disappeared.

The air seemed frozen.

Two or three minutes later, the silence was suddenly broken.

The frail body that had vanished reappeared in the same place.

But Qin Cheng’s expression had become even stranger.

She looked around in disbelief, gripped the pendant against her chest, and vanished again in an instant.

Over the next short while, the little room became the stage for a human disappearing act.

She vanished.

Returned.

Vanished again.

Returned again.

The final time she reappeared, a backpack was strapped to her back and the homemade inner-tube raft was in her hand.

She checked the phone charging nearby.

Only seven or eight minutes had passed in the real world.

Since it was still early, she should dismantle the inner tube and secretly return it downstairs.

No one would probably notice.

In any case, she likely would not need it again.

Investigating something without an instruction manual was truly exhausting.

After all that trouble, nearly all her work had been wasted.

At the thought, the already haggard woman looked even more exhausted and let out a sigh.

Weakly, she untied the ropes, removed the secured washboard, and checked that nothing had been damaged.

Then she hoisted the black inner tube onto her shoulder and resigned herself to another trip downstairs.

As though joining in the commotion, just as Qin Cheng opened the door, a soft sound suddenly came from her abdomen, accompanied by a faint discomfort.

She nervously pressed a hand to her stomach and waited.

The discomfort did not intensify.

Only then did she realize that it was not another attack from her illness.

She was…

Hungry.

Hungry.

What a long-forgotten sensation.

For a moment, Qin Cheng stood in a daze.

A new day had truly begun.