After I fell into a deep coma, I dread of Pan Zi. He said a few words to , but I couldn't hear a sound. Despite this, I felt that those words were information that my subconscious mind had neglected and was now trying to remind of.
After waking up, I recalled it carefully, but the mory was so vague that I could only rember a few words.
What you do before is what you do after.
This was a sentence from my grandpa's notes which ant that you would eventually have to bear the consequences of whatever you did.
The things I did in the first half of my life had led to my present situation, which ant that I had been dood for a long ti. Even the things I did now would lead to different situations in the future. At this mont, people would normally try to address the consequences of their actions and start thinking about the future.
When coming up with a plan, you should think three steps ahead before you do sothing and then four steps ahead after you do it. But life was a series of tangled causes and effects, so it was useless to change anything from today onwards. Change was sothing that was constantly occurring. The more you wanted to change, the more you had to take everything into consideration.
I fell asleep again. When I woke up this ti, a new patient was lying in the bed next to mine. There were fruits and a hot water kettle on my bedside table. Bai Haotian must have been here but was gone now. My cell phone had been fully charged and placed beside on the bed, so I picked it up and opened it. There wasnt much news. The world would still run without . I only had a few ssages from Bai Haotian.
The first was an X-ray of my lungs. I couldnt make sense of it, but I could see a lot of shadows. After that was a detailed diagnosis stating that my lungs were damaged and failing.
Long-term inhalation of tomb gases and later taking snake venom had seriously damaged my lung function. Now my lungs only worked at a third of the capacity of ordinary peoples lungs. I didnt know whether the damage was reversible, but the doctor advised to undergo surgery and have the damaged part removed. Once that was done, I should get a lung lavage (1) and focus on recuperating.
Their advice was simple: I absolutely could not overburden my lungs again. I should find a place where the air was moist and clean and slowly get my lungs checked out while I thought about treatnt plans.
What you do before is what you do after.
I was dood from the beginning. Now, I slowly sat up and read the ssage Bai Haotian had sent while I was in my coma. She had already fumbled around and worked on settling the order. She was worried about , but she wasnt in the hospital. Instead, she had gone to the village to receive the goods. She wrote at the end of her ssage: I thought for a long ti that standing on Uncle Two's side was best for you, but I still chose to help you anyways. I know now that this choice was absolutely wrong. No one should help you hurt yourself. So, in the end, I decided that I would do this wrong thing with you.
I thought about this problem while you were in your coma and made my own decision without your input. I know its very selfish of , but I hope that when you see my decision, youll realize what youve done. Im hurting myself to help soone else hurt himself and youre the sa.
Because I know that my help will hurt you, I must also hurt myself. That way, everything will be balanced.
My only response to that was: Absurd.
No ones decision had hurt . It was simply the result of everything that I had neglected, treated arbitrarily, and avoided all finally coming together.
Now it was impossible to go back to that ti and get back the things that I had missed. I could only use what was left to solve the ensuing problems.
It seed as if the people around wanted to freeze the causality of this mont by having do nothing. But it was called cause and effect for a reason. At this mont, the only thing I was destined to do was to move forward.
I closed my eyes and quickly focused on what I should do next. First, I called the doctor and asked about my condition. They prescribed so dicine to delay my illness and allowed to be discharged. I left the hospital wearing a mask and out-of-season clothes. I was warned to guard against bronchial infection every day, not smoke, not go to places with heavy fireworks and smog, and take six different kinds of dicine on ti every day. I also had to bring my own pillows and bedding if I went anywhere so as to avoid too much dust.
It didnt take long to find Bai Haotian. She had just bought three fakes, so I stopped her and silently took her around the area. We eventually used the remaining money to buy a Song Dynasty Jian Zhan (2). After finally collecting three hundred thousand yuan, I asked Bai Haotian to stay in the village and continue shopping for goods.
When I quietly went back to Hangzhou and saw Fatty again, his complexion didnt look good. I thought he hadnt been able to borrow any money, but all he said was, "That Hong Ding guy isnt reliable and raised the price. Now he needs a million before hes willing to co out. Im sorry, Mr. Nave."
I looked at the calendar on my phone, my heart calr than ever.
Solve the problem.
We leave in three days, I whispered to myself. Think about what to do now.
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TN Notes:
(1) Procedure that uses saline solution to wash out the lungs
(2) Its basically a tea bowl/cup. More info here.
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Happy 1 year translating anniversary to () (I really didn't think I'd be doing it this long. I had no idea what I was getting myself into lol). Shout-out to you darlings for putting up with my ramblings, shitty translations (until Tiffany fixes them), and long-ass TN notes (what can I say, I get overzealous after researching and want to share my finding lol). Hopefully we can wrap things up in this next year so I can get my life back, but who knows. The author still appears to be going strong with his unfinished extras *sigh*
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