I was escorted like a walking corpse by the guardians through Shadow Village's winding streets. The surrounding scenery blurred before my eyes as Xiao Yu's heartbreaking words echoed repeatedly in my mind.
Finally, we arrived before an unusually expansive body of water. This water body was shaped like a crescent moon, its surface perfectly still like a giant mirror, clearly reflecting the incomplete cold moon in the night sky and the shadowy outlines of Hui-style buildings along the shore. Moonlight scattered across the water's surface, creating a hazy, sacred silver radiance.
"This is Moon Pond." The teacher had somehow appeared beside me, his voice particularly clear in the silent night. "Shadow Village's most mysterious place, where spiritual energy converges most densely. Here is one of the closest nodes between yin and yang worlds."
Looking up, I saw that many Shadow Village residents had already gathered along Moon Pond's shore. They stood quietly with solemn expressions, casting complex gazes toward me, this uninvited guest. I spotted Xiao Yu in the crowd, head lowered, hands tightly gripping her dress hem, not daring to meet my eyes.
"What's special about Moon Pond?" My voice was dry and hoarse.
"It reflects truth." The teacher said slowly. "For the departed, it reflects their deepest obsessions from life; for the living, like you, it clearly reflects the most crucial moments in your life—those choices that shaped who you are now, and... your deepest desires and fears."
He gestured for the guardians to release me: "Go, Lin Yuan. Walk to Moon Pond's edge and see your past, see the consequences you created with your own hands."
My legs felt heavy as lead. Under countless watching eyes, I shuffled step by step to the water's edge. Cold air mixed with moisture hit my face, making me shiver involuntarily.
When I looked into that mirror-still water surface, ripples began spreading from the center. The ripples dispersed, the moon's reflection in the water began to distort and transform, finally condensing into a clear moving image—
It was a dawn thirteen years ago, just breaking. In the scene, I stood with my back to the camera, stuffing simple luggage into a worn backpack. My wife, that gentle, kind woman, red-eyed, pleaded with me repeatedly not to leave, for her sake, for our young daughter's sake.
"I will succeed! Once I take good photographs and make money, I'll come back for you!" The me in the scene didn't look back, my tone cold and resolute.
Three-year-old Xiao Yu seemed to sense something. She toddled over, reaching out her small hands to hug my legs tightly, calling in her baby voice: "Daddy, don't go... Daddy..."
And I—that young, hot-headed me intoxicated by dreams—heartlessly pried open my daughter's small hands, pushed her into my wife's arms, then shouldered my pack and walked out that door without looking back. Behind me were my wife's suppressed sobs and my daughter's heart-wrenching cries.
"No... no!" I collapsed painfully beside Moon Pond, covering my face with both hands as scalding tears poured through my fingers. "Don't make me see this! Please!"
"You must face it, Lin Yuan." The teacher's voice was like a cold chisel, mercilessly cutting through my pretense. "Avoidance solves nothing. Only by confronting your mistakes can you find the possibility of redemption."
The images in Moon Pond continued flowing mercilessly. Like a fast-forwarded documentary, it showed my trajectory over these thirteen years after leaving home: initial ambition and constant setbacks, mid-period confusion and increasing degradation, and finally self-abandonment and numb indifference. The image split, the other half beginning to show my wife and daughter's difficult life after I left—my wife working in factories during the day and doing handicrafts at night to supplement income, single-handedly raising our daughter, her face marked with exhaustion and hardship; Xiao Yu growing from an innocent, cheerful little girl into a silent, withdrawn teenager. From initial eager anticipation to later disappointment to final resentment, those once-clear eyes gradually clouded with cold shadows.
"Enough! Please, enough!" I could no longer bear this assault, prostrating on the ground and weeping like a helpless child. "I know I was wrong! I was wrong! I'm a bastard! A coward! I failed them! I'm sorry!"
Just as I reached the edge of emotional collapse, Moon Pond's image suddenly froze. On screen was a girl about sixteen years old—the grown-up Lin Xiao Yu. She stood alone beside the living world's Hongcun Moon Pond, also on a full moon night. She gazed silently at her reflection in the water, her expression complex, full of hatred yet mixed with a trace of inseparable longing. She whispered to the water's surface in barely audible words: "Daddy... if you could come back... even just... to see me once would be enough..."
A crystal tear slipped from the girl's eye, dropping into the calm Moon Pond surface, creating small ripples. In those ripples' center, a small figure in a blue old dress slowly emerged from the water—that figure was unmistakably the "Xiao Yu" who had been helping me!
I was struck as if by lightning, jerking my head up to stare in shock at the girl in the crowd who kept her head down, body trembling slightly. In this moment, all clues connected, all mysteries dissolved. I finally, completely understood her origin, her identity!
"Now do you completely understand?" The teacher's voice sounded beside my ear with a sigh. "Your daughter, Lin Xiao Yu—she appears to be filled with hatred toward you on the surface, refusing to mention you, but deep in her heart, that love and longing for her father has never truly died. This suppressed emotion was so intense that on a full moon night, borrowing Moon Pond's spiritual power, it condensed into this consciousness fragment and came to Shadow Village."
I staggered to my feet, step by step approaching Xiao Yu in the crowd, my voice trembling with excitement: "So... the person you've been waiting for... was actually... me?"
Xiao Yu slowly raised her head, tears already blurring her eyes. She nodded vigorously: "Yes... I am the part she won't acknowledge, doesn't dare face... the love for you hidden in her heart's deepest place, and that unwillingness to give up... faint hope. She's too proud, too hurt, so she won't forgive you. But I know... I know how much she hopes you could come back..."
"What about the teacher... the agreement between you two... what exactly was it?" I asked urgently.
The teacher stepped forward with a solemn expression: "In life, I was a teacher in Hongcun. After death, unable to let go of this place's scholarly heritage, I voluntarily remained in Shadow Village to guard the balance between worlds. When Xiao Yu's consciousness fragment came to Shadow Village, she found me and begged me to use Moon Pond's power to let you see all this truth, to give you a chance to make amends. I was moved by her obsession and agreed. But the condition was that she must follow Shadow Village's laws, not directly interfere with living world affairs, and especially not actively lure you into Shadow Village."
"But... she still used her song to draw me here." I understood instantly.
"Yes." The teacher's gaze turned to Xiao Yu with some severity. "She ultimately couldn't restrain herself and violated the agreement, taking advantage of the full moon night's passage gap between worlds. Child, have you forgotten the price of violating the agreement?"
My heart clenched tightly, an ominous premonition enveloping me: "What price? What exactly is the price?"
Xiao Yu wiped tears from her face, surprisingly showing a tragically beautiful smile: "Consciousness fragments are rootless duckweed by nature, shadows existing through attachment to the main body's intense emotions. Once their carried mission is complete, or emotions change, they naturally dissipate. And fragments like me... who violated the laws, once dissipated, will... will be unable to return to the main body."
"Unable to return to the main body?" I felt dizzy, barely able to breathe. "What... what does that mean?"
"It means... I will completely disappear." Xiao Yu's voice was light yet struck my heart like a heavy hammer. "Disappear forever. And the love and longing for you that I represent will also be... completely stripped from your daughter's soul, never to exist again."
This cruel truth pierced my heart like a poisoned blade. I staggered backward several steps, feeling the entire world spinning. No! How could this be? I would rather be trapped here forever than accept such an ending!
"No! There must be another way! There must be!" I shouted incoherently.
"There is no other way, Lin Yuan." The teacher shook his head, his tone unquestionable. "Laws are laws, inviolable."
"Then let me stay!" I roared almost hysterically. "I won't return to the living world! Let me bear all this in her place!"
"No!" This time, both the teacher and Xiao Yu refused in unison.
"The living absolutely cannot remain in Shadow Village—this would cause complete collapse of the order between worlds." The teacher explained seriously. "Moreover, you still have responsibilities you must bear. Your daughter—the real, living Lin Xiao Yu—she's still in the living world. She needs you to make amends, to atone. This is the true meaning of your journey here."
I collapsed powerlessly on the cold ground, tears mixed with despair pouring forth: "But... if Xiao Yu disappears... if her love for me completely vanishes... then what meaning is there in my return? Facing a daughter who completely hates me, I... what should I do?"
"The meaning lies in choosing to love her even if she no longer loves you, to make amends for the wrongs you committed." The teacher's voice seemed to carry a power that penetrated hearts. "Lin Yuan, redemption was never about obtaining forgiveness, but about fulfilling inner responsibility and repentance. This is the only path you can walk."