Chapter 2: Mental Torment

Rescue efforts on Mount Niutou concluded after three weeks with a tragic outcome. The promising 24-year-old Ji Yuan could not be saved. His primary cause of death was dehydration, meaning he died of thirst.

According to the two rescue team members who found Ji Yuan, it was dim and hard to see at the time. However, when they first discovered him, he was still able to speak. He soon collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, but he passed away en route and could not be revived.

This incident significantly impacted both Mount Niutou and Ji Yuan's company, but his parents and family suffered the most devastating blow.

Ji Yuan, however, was no longer there to witness any of it.

***

His entire body ached intensely... he couldn't move. These were Ji Yuan's first sensations upon regaining consciousness. His mind was muddled, his thoughts sluggish. The few thoughts he managed were overwhelmed by a needle-like pain that pierced his entire body. He couldn't move, speak, or see. Even his perception of the outside world was hazy, only punctuated by an intensifying agony.

He had no idea how much time had passed, but the tormenting pain finally began to recede. After this ordeal, Ji Yuan lay on the ground, limp as a rag, gasping for breath. After a brief moment of relief, he began to feel that something was wrong.

The surface beneath him was hard, cold, and flat—definitely not a bed. It felt more like a floor. The ambient temperature was low, and occasional cold drafts made him shiver uncontrollably. Yet, he could only shiver instinctively. Ji Yuan realized he still couldn't move; besides breathing, he couldn't even open his eyes. This sensation was somewhat like the legendary "sleep paralysis," but with a difference—he didn't feel any particular pressure on his body.

As his thoughts became clearer and his sense of touch returned, Ji Yuan entered a state of panic. He was clearly not at home or in a hospital. There were no human sounds around him, only the chirping of insects and occasional bird calls. He could smell a faint musty odor. This made Ji Yuan wonder if he was lying on a deserted road somewhere, or perhaps an even worse location. It was even possible he had been kidnapped, drugged, and left in an abandoned house or warehouse.

He lay there, restless and anxious, for an unknown amount of time. No one came, no cars passed—only an unchanging silence.

Gradually, Ji Yuan noticed that his hearing seemed to have become incredibly acute. The varying sounds of insects and birds became remarkably clear. Sometimes, if Ji Yuan wasn't distracted by extraneous thoughts or inner turmoil, he could accurately pinpoint the location of the chirping insects and singing birds, even vaguely estimating their distance from each other. However, despite the miraculous nature of his enhanced hearing, Ji Yuan felt increasingly panicked and agitated.

Ji Yuan didn't know how much time had truly passed, but it felt like an eternity. No one had appeared beside him during this time. He wished even kidnappers would come! Coupled with his inability to move or open his eyes, this sensation was more terrifying than being confined to a dark room. To keep himself from going mad, Ji Yuan constantly forced himself to think, replaying events in his mind and pondering what had happened.

Skipping past the period of his unconsciousness, his last memory was encountering two people by the stream. He could still hear their exclamations of surprise just before he passed out. The two had mentioned they were searching for a missing person and had been doing so for over half a month. Their uniforms suggested they were rescue workers. But if so, why wasn't he in a hospital? Why was he here? Did something happen in between, or was there something wrong with the rescue workers themselves? Ji Yuan could only ponder and speculate on these questions, then shifted his thoughts elsewhere.

Before all this, the most crucial and undeniable factor was, of course, the strange chessboard. None of this would have happened without it. If Ji Yuan had been an atheist before, he had clearly changed his views now. The disappearance of the company's campsite after he emerged, the words of the two rescue workers, and the rapid changes his body underwent at the time were all facts Ji Yuan experienced firsthand. While the first two might be fabricated, the changes to his body were undeniably real. This meant that, in the eyes of outsiders, he had indeed been missing for over half a month, while for him, only a few minutes or even less had passed.

This made Ji Yuan recall a story his grandfather used to tell him when he was a child:

Legend has it that in ancient times, a woodcutter went up the mountain to chop wood one day and stumbled upon two elderly men playing chess. The woodcutter placed his firewood and axe beside a tree and stood by, intending to watch the two elders play for a while. One elder even smiled and broke half a peach for him to quench his thirst and hunger. After watching for what felt like half a day, one of the elders suddenly turned to the woodcutter and said, "It's time for you to go home." Only then did the woodcutter realize it was late. He reached for his firewood and axe, but to his shock, the dried wood was gone, and the axe handle had rotted away, leaving only a severely rusted axe head. Astonished, the woodcutter hurried down the mountain path, which felt both familiar and strange. The village had changed considerably, and familiar faces were nowhere to be seen. Upon asking around, the woodcutter discovered he had been on the mountain for sixty years. His family had believed he was killed by wild beasts, and his parents and elders at home had long since passed away.

This was one of Ji Yuan's favorite stories as a child. The elders in the tale were said to be two immortals, and the story's origin was linked to a famous mountain called Lan Ke. While Ji Yuan and his colleagues had gone camping on Mount Niutou, not Mount Lan Ke, the ancient tree, chessboard, and rusted axe he saw all corresponded perfectly with the legend of the Lan Ke chess game. Given this, it was not difficult to understand why Ji Yuan felt only a short time had passed, while over half a month had actually elapsed in the outside world.

Ji Yuan's luck was both better and worse than the woodcutter's. It was better because he emerged relatively quickly, less than a month having passed outside, so his life hadn't been too severely impacted. It was worse because no immortal had given him any miraculous elixir, meaning he had gone over half a month without food or water. It was a miracle he hadn't died completely.

As Ji Yuan pondered this, he was unaware that his original self had, in fact, already died.

Even so, piecing all this together didn't take long. Ji Yuan was soon overwhelmed by feelings of loneliness, dread, and irritation. Even forcing himself to think more and ponder various issues couldn't alleviate the growing sense of oppression.

No one spoke, no footsteps, no one came... Time stretched endlessly. No one, still no one... With growing anxiety, Ji Yuan had lost all concept of time, unsure if an hour or a day had passed. He could no longer force himself to calm down.

No wonder solitary confinement was considered a severe punishment in some Western prisons; it was a profound form of psychological torture. Ji Yuan's state had shifted from worrying about who might have kidnapped him to desperately wishing for his captors to appear, even if it meant hearing their curses or getting kicked.

Still no one. Still no one came!

'Someone, please come! Anyone! Please!' Ji Yuan screamed countless times in his mind. His greatest fear was that there were no captors at all, and he was simply lying paralyzed and alone in the wilderness, with no one but wild animals, snakes, and insects ever coming near.