Daomu Biji: A Thousand Faces

Liang Yanyan still remembered the feeling when she woke up during the skin graft surgery. She had originally been in a state of complete nothingness, but she had a sense that she still existed deep in her subconscious. Her mind was unable to form thoughts and she couldn’t understand the situation, but she could feel a sense of discomfort on her back. All of her limbs and skin felt cold. It was an unspeakable and extremely unbearable coldness.

The discomfort in her back gradually began to magnify until it broke through the dark fog that had been oppressing her thoughts. She suddenly felt as if she was waking up from a deep sleep. Then, the discomfort began to turn into pain, which became so excruciating that all of her thoughts rushed through her body and instantly woke her up.

Since she was being treated like a corpse, she didn’t have any ECG monitoring or anesthetics. There was only a ventilator. When Liang Yanyan opened her eyes, everyone stepped back in terror. She couldn’t move at all, but she could hear frantic sounds and see a spot of light chaotically moving around.

She thought that she was being resuscitated. Her fighting spirit flared up when she was attached to an ECG monitor and realized that she wasn't dead. She had been a defiant person since childhood, so she gritted her teeth, only to hear someone say, "The two operations are going on at the same time. They’re already suturing over there, so what should we do? We can’t take the skin back and give it back to her. It'll be dead.”

"Tell them to keep going. Just say that the donor woke up after the operation,” another voice said. “Save one first.”

"So much skin has already been taken, this girl will—"

"It stands to reason that if the donor didn’t die and actually woke up, she can decide for herself whether she wants to veto the organ donation. Even if she wants to take back the skin that will later fail to function, she has the freedom to do so. But before we receive the second order, all we can do is fulfill the first order to the best of our ability,” a voice said.

"But she seems to be fully conscious."

"Sedatives! Dr. Qi, continue the surgery. I’ll take care of the rest," the voice said. "Give her sedatives while I go back to the scene."

There was a long silence in the operating room, and then another voice said, "What a pity. It’s such a beautiful tattoo. I heard that her parents were reluctant to donate the skin at first, but someone offered them a lot of money. Her father finally decided to sell his dead daughter’s skin. I sense an ethical disaster coming—”

"Shh, she can hear you. Maybe," a voice said. Then, the entire operating room fell silent.

Nobody realized that Liang Yanyan was fully conscious, but she clearly knew who the person who had made the decision and gone back to the scene was. He was her father’s former manager. That manager wanted Liang Yanyan to marry his son, so she got tattoos all over her body in order to avoid him pressuring her.

She didn't fully understand what was happening until she woke up again. Her parents hesitantly tried to reassure her, but she immediately screamed that she wanted to see her back.

From then on, she never saw her father again. Her mother passed away a few years later, but her father had still been alive at that time. She didn’t know if that was still the case now, though.

It was the first time in her life that she understood what consequences offenders deserved, and that real villains existed in this world. She understood overnight what might take the average person ten years to understand.

When she woke up from the operating table, she thought she had escaped death, but in fact, the nightmare had just begun.

From that day on, she was terrified of all the feelings that made her feel like it was "over" and that she had "succeeded" or "escaped". When that happened, she would be so frightened that she would stay up all night, not knowing what was going to happen next. This fear taught her to never enjoy success. Rather, she should stay on the brink of pain and pressure, making herself intolerable to it so that she could deal with it. She couldn’t escape or temporarily avoid it.

It seemed that when people lived to a certain age, they would all become like this. She had seen such fear in everyone except for Xie Yuchen. Maybe he had it before, but he had already overcome this nightmare. This was the reason she was willing to make friends with him.

Now that she and Ah Tou were helping each other out, she knew that they had to go back to the house, because that was where all chances of victory were. But at this time, they suddenly heard the sound of a car. When they turned around, they saw a speeding car’s headlights appear in the darkness a few dozen meters behind them. They watched as the car pulled over on the side of a road, its headlights illuminating two girls who were holding onto each other. They appeared to be greeting the person getting out of the car.

Liang Yanyan had good vision, so she immediately discovered that the two girls were themselves, and the person getting out of the car was Xie Yuchen. The latter walked towards those two girls and began to talk with them.

"They’re fake!" Ah Tou immediately shouted, but it was as if Xie Yuchen couldn’t hear her at all. As he let those two girls get in the car, the “Ah Tou” over there suddenly turned towards them and smiled. 

Liang Yanyan hadn’t broken out in a cold sweat for a long time, but this time, she definitely sweated a little.

This was torture.

Whatever that thing was, it was torturing them.