Episode 1: Soul of the Handsome Man in the Painting
Chapter 1: Descending into the Underworld

My name is Lin Mi. I’m a fourth year student at the art academy, about to face the confusion and predicament of graduating and stepping into society.

And right during this turbulent period, the news that my boyfriend of three years had suddenly cheated on me felt like salt in the wound, and my spirits sank.

I suffered from insomnia for a whole week, and I felt like I was in a daze the entire time.

My good friend, Su Mo, seeing how haggard I had become, tried all sorts of ways to help me emerge from the shadow of this heartbreak. One evening a week ago, just as I was leaving the art studio after tidying up, she stuffed a USB drive into my hand.

I looked at the USB drive in my hand and asked her quizzically what it was. She said it was a recording she got from a mysterious netizen, which was supposedly hypnotic.

After thanking her, I took the USB drive back to my dorm. There were several audio files. I copied them all to my phone, put on my headphones before bed, and listened to the smooth, soothing light music, gradually relaxing as instructed by the deep male voice in the recording.

To my surprise, I actually fell asleep and slept soundly until dawn, without even a single dream. So, I listened to the recordings for a week, rotating through them and changing to a new one every two days, until I got to the last one…

That recording was very different from the previous ones. I was already in a half asleep, half awake hypnotic state when the man’s voice, clearly not the same one as before, came on.

I wanted to wake up, but the man’s voice held a certain magical power, compelling you to follow his commands and thoughts into a new world.

Walk forward, keep walking forward, don’t look back…

Suddenly, you see a cave ahead. Walk towards the cave, move forward.

There is a light in the cave. You walk into the cave. It’s very dark inside, with only a single light source ahead.

The further you walk, the stronger the light becomes. It grows intense. Pass through that light!

Open your eyes and see the world you are in, your surroundings, the people around you. This is the past life you are searching for.

I opened my eyes and found myself in a large house, one that resembled an ancestral hall from the early Republican era. I remembered that the old Zhang family house back in my hometown also had one.

My father told me that when he was a child, the entire village lived in that ancestral hall, which housed many ancestral tablets. After the economic reforms, people gradually moved out, leaving only one family living inside.

That family had three sons. Everything was fine until one day, for some unknown reason, the second son killed his older brother’s wife. The eldest son then stabbed his younger brother to death and was subsequently executed by firing squad. The third son went mad not long after.

No one could say why it happened. Soon after, the man of the house suddenly hanged himself right at the main entrance of the ancestral hall. The remaining woman disappeared with her insane third son.

In the nineties, when the village land was redistributed, the ancestral hall was torn down to build new houses, leaving only a large stone stele as a trace of what had been. But even to this day, the families living there have not fared well they either fall ill, fall apart, or die. People said the ancestral hall’s yin energy was too heavy, and later generations gradually moved away.

I’ve digressed a bit. Let’s get back to the scene of the old Republican era house I was in under hypnosis.

It was a bit hazy, like a dream. I couldn’t see their faces clearly, but in my heart, I knew who they were and what they were doing. At that moment, for some reason, I was incredibly sad, crying hysterically.

A bride and groom, dressed in bright red wedding attire, began to bow to each other to complete their marriage ceremony. I screamed at the groom, “You can’t marry her! You can’t marry her! She doesn’t truly love you, I’m the one who truly loves you!”

My heart ached so much I couldn’t breathe. I desperately reached out, trying to snatch the groom back, but my existence was like a phantom I couldn’t grasp or touch anything.

As a loud voice announced, “Escort them to the bridal chamber,” the bride suddenly lifted her large red veil, turned her head, and gave me a strange, eerie smile. Her blood red lips, pale face, and hateful eyes were utterly terrifying.

I saw the bride’s face with perfect clarity it was my face! Identical to mine.

In that instant, all my thoughts were in chaos. The world constructed in the illusion burned to ashes in a great fire, then the scene rapidly reformed in the darkness. The next second, I was in a landscape of green mountains and lush ridges.

I turned around. The cascading waterfall was magnificent. In the pool at its base, a man was bathing, his body bare. He suddenly turned his head and smiled at me, but I still couldn’t see his face clearly. I only felt that his features were handsome, and he gave off a clean and bright impression.

The adoration in my heart burned more intensely than I had ever felt possible in this dream. I yearned and desperately wanted to embrace and kiss him.

He slowly walked out of the pool, extended his hand toward me, and said one sentence.

“Lian Qiu, I’ve been waiting for you here.”

Who are you? Why are you waiting for me? I wanted to ask him, but a man’s voice suddenly sounded in my ear, announcing that the hypnosis was over.

I woke with a start from the hypnotic illusion, desperately searching for something. I was trembling all over, my face covered in tears.

Instantly, I angrily ripped off my headphones, taking several deep breaths to calm myself down.

Lian Qiu, Ji Lianqiu. This name had since taken root in my mind. I didn’t know where it came from, or why I remembered it.

As for all this past and present lives stuff, it was too absurd! I didn’t believe it at all. It was purely because I was hypnotized; those conscious thoughts were completely meaningless.

I gave Su Mo a harsh lecture. She just loved to dabble in this superstitious nonsense. This crap about past and present lives even elementary school students didn’t believe it anymore!

Su Mo apologized profusely. She said she meant no harm; it was just that a few girls in the dorm were bored and had tried the hypnosis together. They thought it was fun, so she downloaded it for me too.

She said that after being hypnotized, some people saw their past life as a fish. Others were even funnier, seeing themselves as a flower or a rock not even human. And some people saw nothing at all after passing through the light.

I cut her off, telling her to stop messing with this superstitious stuff. She looked at me with a slightly awkward expression, and only then did I realize how intense my reaction had been.

But from that day on, it was as if I had been poisoned. In my midnight dreams, the image of the man walking out of the waterfall pool, saying to me, “Lian Qiu, I’ve been waiting for you,” would always appear.

I even searched for the name “Ji Lianqiu” online, but nothing came up. Did this person, Ji Lianqiu, really exist? In the hypnotic illusion, the scene I saw was probably from the late Republican period.

Even if Ji Lianqiu did exist, if she wasn’t some famous person, there wouldn’t be any record of her online, right?

As if guided by some unseen force, I typed in the words “past life, present life, hypnosis” and found a forum post.

What we call seeing our past and present lives through hypnosis is known in Daoist terms as ‘descending into the underworld.’ When we pass through that cave and see scenes from a past life, we are actually in the mirror of reincarnation in hell.