"I … I want to know about your brother's recent situation, especially his illness!"
Li Yao was overjoyed. He held back his excitement and asked, "Miss, what's your surname?"
"My surname is Dong."
Dong Xuebing seemed to have made up her mind. She said, "Where should I start? Our family is on the side of a mountain in the central region. Although our family was poor when we were young, my brother showed a talent for studying when he was very young. He is not only the pride of our family, but also the pride of our town. Back then, he had the best score in the city and was admitted to a very famous key university.
"After he graduated from university, my brother found a very good job in the provincial capital. He was highly valued by the leaders. In just a few years, he became the head of a department. He even bought a house in the provincial capital, found a girlfriend, and is about to get married. What I mean to say is that my brother is on the rise in his career. Whether it is his future or his love life, everything is perfect. There is nothing that can stimulate him.
"Moreover, he has been very cheerful since he was young. He likes to study and exercise. He doesn't have any bad habits. He doesn't eat, drink, gamble, or smoke. He doesn't even smoke or drink. If he were in our town, he would be a freak.
"As for our family, although we are poor, we don't have anything to burden him. My brother and I may have had a bad environment when we were young, so we didn't have much money when we were studying. But ever since he went to university, he had scholarships to support himself. My parents bought the orchard for the past two years, and our living conditions gradually improved. I graduated from university two years ago, and I also found a stable job. Anyway, you understand? Our life is getting better day by day, and we don't have anything to worry about.
"But my brother went crazy. That was last year.
In the beginning, he often called me to complain. He said that someone was following him and that someone had installed a bug in his office. At that time, I thought it was a business dispute or internal strife in the office. What can a fresh graduate like me do? I could only ask my brother's colleagues in the company to take care of him. But my brother's close colleagues in the company all said that my brother was the most important middle-level cadre in the company. He was in the prime of his life, so who would follow and bug him?
"After one or two months, my brother's condition became worse and worse. Gradually, he started to have hallucinations and auditory hallucinations. He called me and said that he found the person who was following him. So, it was his shadow! He said that there was some mysterious power that could manipulate his shadow, and even use it to interfere with and harm him!
"It was only then that I realized that something was wrong with my brother. I scrolled through my brother's social media and his comments on the Internet, and I saw … strange articles like 'Dream Traveler.' When I contacted my brother's colleagues, one of my brother's best friends said that my brother has been using kitchen tin to make a hat and covering his entire head. He said that this can prevent his brainwaves from being transmitted out and prevent some evil existence from locking onto his coordinates.
"Speaking of my brother, the leader in the company who valued him was really kind to him. Even after something like this happened, he still didn't fire him. But once, during a meeting with a certain important business partner, my brother actually pointed at the tip of the other party's boss's nose and shouted that he saw that the other party was a vicious murderer in his previous life. Just like that, he ruined a very big business plan.
"With such a thing happening, I naturally couldn't stay in the company anymore. I should have sent my brother to a big hospital in the province for treatment, but in a small place like ours, it wouldn't be nice to hear that someone in the family had a mental illness. Besides, my parents and I still had some hope that my brother was under too much pressure at work and that he might be fine after resting for a while at home.
"So, we brought my brother back to our hometown from the province and let him recuperate at home.
"In the beginning, my brother's symptoms did improve a lot. He no longer had those weird dreams, and he no longer pointed at people on the street and said that he was in his previous life. We were all very happy and thought that my brother was about to recover.
"In the end, one day, my brother seemed to have seen some news about a novelist who died in an accident on the Internet. His illness acted up again. He found the stainless steel pot at home that he used to cook and put it on his head. He kept mumbling something that no one could understand, and his ten fingers were twisted into a ball to make some strange gestures.
"Then, we had no choice but to send him to the hospital.
"If you say that my brother isn't crazy, please believe me. As his family, we hope that he isn't crazy. But with the way he is, with his head wrapped in tin foil and a stainless steel pot on his head, saying that he was in his previous life whenever he sees people, and he's even afraid of his own shadow, what is he if not crazy?"
Li Yao turned on the speakerphone and listened to the other party talk with Daniel Zhang. The two of them looked at each other for a long time and thought for a while before carefully saying, "Miss Dong, thank you for being honest with me, but there are many things that you can't just look at on the surface. Well, your brother said that ever since he accidentally drowned while swimming in the reservoir when he was in the third year of primary school, he gained the ability to travel through dreams and see his previous life. Did you know about this before?"
"You're talking about the answer he posted on 'Know Not', right?"
The other party laughed bitterly. "Do you really believe what he said?"
"I don't know."
Li Yao said, "So, I'm asking you for confirmation. Be bold and be careful when you verify it!"
"It's fake."
The other party said straightforwardly, "It's all fake. He made it up."
"Why are you so sure?"
Li Yao said, "Even if your brother's current mental state is really … unstable, you can't say that what happened to him when he was a child is definitely fake!"
"Because my brother didn't drown at all. Do you understand?"
The other party said, "I'm two years younger than my brother. When he was in the third year of primary school, I was in the first year of primary school, and I already remember a lot of things. I never knew that my brother had the experience of being in a coma for half a month after he drowned.
"Even if I'm too young and have a bad memory, my parents are both less than sixty years old, and their minds are very clear. They can't forget that their own son drowned and was in a coma for half a month when he was young, right?
"Also, many of my brother's elementary school classmates were our next-door neighbors, and they still live in town. After my brother fell ill, I went to these neighbors to verify. None of my brother's elementary school classmates remembered that he drowned.
"The most crucial evidence is what my brother wrote in his answer. He said that he drowned because he went to the reservoir behind his grandmother's house to play, but my grandmother passed away before we were born. Our place is considered a mountainous area, and it's very dry. There's no reservoir within a hundred miles!"
"This …"
Li Yao was dumbfounded. "There's … there's such a thing?"
"Yes," the other party said.
"Most of the people in our place can't swim, and my brother is no exception. He can't swim at all, so what chance did he have to drown in a reservoir that doesn't even exist behind his grandmother's house?"
Li Yao was speechless, and he broke out in a cold sweat.
"I'm sorry, Miss Dong."
He stammered, "I-I didn't know. Your brother wrote it too realistically, and it was too immersive. Wait, his answer was posted not long ago, and you said that he had been ill for a year. In other words, he wrote this answer, including many of the previous articles, while he was … in a state of schizophrenia?"
"That's right," the other party said.
"At that time, his mental state was still good, and we were afraid of agitating him, so we didn't dare to take away his phone. He held his phone and wrote desperately, and many of the posts were posted at that time.
"I can't blame you for this, because … because it's not right to say that there's nothing strange about it. When my brother was first hospitalized for treatment, a very strange thing happened."
Li Yao raised his eyebrows. "What strange thing?"
"It's what you said about your grandmother's house, the reservoir, drowning, and the dream traveler," she said.
"When I first saw his answer, I also thought it was nonsense because I knew very well that my brother definitely didn't drown. But once, when I went to see him, he secretly told me that drowning was real, but it wasn't in this life, but in his previous life.
"He told me that in his previous life, he lived in a small county called Liaojiang in Jiangdong Province. There was a large reservoir not far from the county. He also told me a lot of the unique topography, landforms, and even the local habits. He even said a few words in the local dialect. The accent that came out of his mouth was completely different from the dialect of our hometown, and it shocked me.
"My brother asked me to go to Jiangdong Province to find this place called Liaojiang. Although finding this place might not prove that he wasn't crazy, at least it could prove something!"
Li Yao was entranced by the story, and he couldn't help but ask, "You went?"
"I went," she said.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have gone. I shouldn't have wasted my time because of the crazy words of a lunatic, but he was my brother, and we had a very good relationship. He even paid for most of my university tuition fees. As long as there was a glimmer of hope, I was willing to try.
"I went to Jiangdong Province, but I didn't find Liaojiang. Based on the topography my brother described and the few words he recorded, I found a county called Liaochuan.
"Did you know? The appearance of that place was very similar to what my brother described, including the reservoir southeast of the city, the lone Buddhist pagoda on the mountain west of the reservoir, and the dialect of the locals. I played the few words my brother said to the locals, and they all said that he was a native of Liaochuan.
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