Chapter 29: Truman's World

After his IQ surpassed 300, Wen Xiaocheng finally understood this truth: the world is not simply black or white, nor can people be easily divided into good or evil. Those who appear illustrious and powerful may conceal unspeakable filth behind their public faces, while murderers deemed monstrous by the masses might harbor hidden hardships. Matters may have clear rights and wrongs, but people are not so easily defined.

Only those who have utterly extinguished their conscience, whose sense of right and wrong is wholly inverted, can be categorized as “evil.” Even underworld figures abide by rules outside the law, such as the codes of their world. To follow rules is to prove they possess some boundaries—though labeled bad, their depravity is not absolute.

Moreover, that man called Tiger Tai owed Wen Xiaocheng’s father a debt; even if he were wicked, he would not harm Wen. For now, that was enough.

Visiting hours passed swiftly. Father urged his son to study hard; the son replied that his father should reform well. Smiling, the boy waved goodbye, and both hearts were left awash in conflicting emotions.

The figure clad in prison garb was not particularly tall, yet even locked away, fatherly love could still be felt. Bearing a criminal’s burden, there was little point in debating right or wrong; the debts of the father would be repaid by the son.

Wen Xiaocheng confirmed the next visitation date with the prison administration, collected the family registration booklet, grabbed a visitation reservation slip, and, escorted by a guard, exited the prison with the other families. The iron door slammed shut behind them, sending a tremor through everyone’s hearts.

...

Even with a hand of threes, fours, and fives, no matter how skilled one is, they cannot beat the landlord’s two jokers and four twos. High intelligence is not a universal solution; sometimes, the advantage of intellect cannot overcome the disparity in power.

Problems at school that once seemed daunting become trivial when thought through. Zhang Peiyue was in the same class; if Wen wanted to hit him, no one could stop him—he could retaliate whenever he was cornered. Qiu Hui, the school’s boss, had been battered and humiliated in the recent targeted fight. As graduation approached, he likely could not stir up much trouble anymore. Lü Qi could knock down grown men one-on-one, but Wen’s feud with him was the lightest; his father suffered the least injuries and was the only one among the families to abandon civil compensation. Lü Qi had become involved almost entirely at Zhang Peiyue’s instigation. As for Ding Sina—a girl—what threat could she pose?

Only after crossing that threshold in his heart and looking down upon himself did Wen realize that what he had feared and worried about was insignificant. “It’s nothing,” these five words are not whispered from the heavens, but must be found by quietly reflecting on the past.

They were merely a group of children bullying him—if he must fight, then so be it. How much worse could things get? At least he had transformed from a pushover into a warrior who would not admit defeat. He had beaten Zhang Peiyue and overturned Qiu Hui in the gutter; perhaps, now, no one at school would dare underestimate him as they once did.

...

The rattling minibus leaked air from all sides; even with the windows open, the smell of gasoline lingered. At a certain stop, the conductor shouted for passengers, reciting a string of station names that rivaled the rapid-fire delivery of a comedian. Wen Xiaocheng sat in the last row, where one’s seat lifted off the bench with every bump. He closed his eyes, feeling the speed of the vehicle and recalling the scenery along the road. Every three to five minutes, he opened his eyes to check outside, comparing it to the images in his mind—the similarity was over ninety percent.

When he closed his eyes again, Wen Xiaodao appeared beside him.

The shabby minibus transformed into a dazzling convertible supercar. Wen Xiaocheng sat in the passenger seat, while Wen Xiaodao drove.

“This kind of scene feels a bit better,” Wen Xiaodao remarked.

Wen Xiaocheng didn’t answer, instead asking, “I don’t know how to drive—why do you?”

Wen Xiaodao took his hands off the wheel, leaned back, and replied, “I don’t know either. After all, I’m not really driving; it’s just a figment of your imagination.”

The supercar faded, and the scene returned to the rundown van. Wen Xiaodao still sat beside him, lip curled in mockery. “You don’t understand life!”

“You’re just practicing mental self-consolation.”

“Simple food and drink, people enduring hardship yet never abandoning joy—what do you think Yan Hui relied on to amuse himself? Wasn’t it mental self-consolation?”

Wen Xiaocheng was somewhat speechless at the character he had conjured. “If you really could imagine this broken van as a supercar, then you’d lose the motivation to strive for the real thing.”

“Well said, I’m at a loss for words,” Wen Xiaodao shrugged. “Is that why you don’t indulge?”

Wen Xiaocheng felt the urge to strangle him.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” Xiaodao suddenly said.

Wen Xiaocheng did not deny it. Such emotion could not be hidden from his virtual persona. What frightened him wasn’t the troublemakers at school, but the bizarre scene from fifteen years ago, right after his birth.

...

“People can’t have memories from birth, right? Memory starts only after they learn to speak.”

Wen Xiaodao dropped his irreverent demeanor and frowned. “In most cases, that’s true. But there’s another possibility—infants simply have nothing worth remembering.”

During infancy, a person’s main tasks are growth, eating, drinking, excreting, and sleeping—repeated endlessly. This simple repetition holds little value for memory, and as language acquisition begins, most mental energy is devoted to mastering speech, so earlier memories are deemed ‘unimportant’ and forgotten. Or perhaps, before learning language, people lack the means to store memories, which is why infants don’t remember.

Of course, this is merely one theory; no scientist has yet verified it. Wen Xiaocheng’s case was unusual: he had been injected with some mysterious agent, so his memories from infancy remained intact, preserved in the depths of his mind as images and sounds before he mastered language. Only after his brain was activated and his memories awakened did he understand the meaning behind those sounds and images.

“That scene—was it real?” Wen asked.

“It probably wasn’t false, or there’d be no explanation for why you suddenly had a breakthrough, nor would I exist,” Xiaodao answered.

This was the source of Wen Xiaocheng’s fear. He had been made an experiment subject right after birth. Who was this mysterious organization that developed the agent? What did they want? If it was like those films where genius children are created, then he should be living in a laboratory. Or—was he really in a lab, much like the world of Truman?

“In fact, we could verify it, remember? In your memory, a baby girl died in the nursery!”

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The figure clad in prison garb was not particularly tall, yet even locked away, fatherly love could still be felt. Bearing a criminal’s burden, there was little point in debating right or wrong; the debts of the father would be repaid by the son. The more one pondered these words, the deeper their flavor. In most web novels, the protagonist becomes stronger and stronger—the story never ends like Lu Xun’s Ah Q, who lost his head. Yet most tales of success focus on wealth, career, or love, seldom on a man’s great responsibility.

The prison garb’s silhouette, familial affection behind bars—at home, the family speaks of reunion; the nation, of law without leniency. What, then, is true responsibility?

I was about to call myself a poet, but suddenly realized I resembled a philosopher even more.