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Chapter 61




“I think it’s fine.”
In the ward, when Chen Hao asked, Lin Shiheng smiled as he picked up the teacup, pulled it to his lips, and gently took a sip of it. “The doctor said that my symptoms haven’t been alleviated, but they have increased much more, despite my mood always being stable. It’s probably because I don’t reject myself as being someone else.”
The thought of split personalities crossed Chen Hao’s mind. “Shiheng, what are you thinking? How can one person becoming another person be a good thing?”
“Why not?”
Lin Shiheng slightly looked up, his pair of narrow eyes looking at Chen Hao. When he looked at people like this before, it would appear somewhat intimidating. Now, it looked gentle.
Even when he spoke, he always spoke in an unhurried tone, “My memory is still intact, so I will still be the same me.”
“Just, although it may be strange to say so, Yi Qing is indeed better than me, no matter from which aspect.”
Chen Hao gawked at this brother in front of him. Instead of dissuading further, he himself felt persuaded back by his brother, and even a feeling of ‘Shiheng is right, it seems that this was absolutely true’ appeared in his heart.
“But, but
 You are yourself. Yi Qing is just a character written by the screenwriter
”
“But he is well written, isn’t he?”
Lin Shiheng put down his cup of tea, the corners of his lips always remained in a polite smile. Even though he wore modern clothes, with his hair short, when he was sitting upright, Chen Hao almost thought he was looking at an ancient nobleman.
“In the past, would you one day imagine that I would get up at 6 and then go for a 2-hour run every morning?”
Chen Hao was at a loss, “
 How can anyone do that?”
Even if their jobs required them to be in decent shape, getting up at 6 for a run or something would be an absolute nightmare.
“Can you imagine that I now cook and make breakfast for myself?”
“
 I remember you tried cooking once 3 years ago, and you ended up destroying the kitchen of our rented apartment. We were evicted together by our landlord in the middle of the night and became homeless.”
“Hmm. ” Lin Shiheng responded with a cool smile. “My ability to blow up the kitchen hasn’t faded, but now it’s just a matter of cooking up some congee. It’s a pity that I can’t cook with my own hands, but it’s okay. A gentleman stays clear of the kitchen.”
Chen Hao’s mouth twitched. No matter how satisfied his brother looked with the current situation, he was still very unwilling to cooperate with him. “You say gentlemen stay clear of the kitchen, but you still cook porridge
”
“The gentleman staying far from the kitchen is Mencius’s praise for Prince Qi Xuan’s inability to take the life of a living creature, not to say that a gentleman doesn’t cook at all. I just cooked porridge, what does it matter to be far away from the kitchen?”
(TNote: –a nobleman stays clear of the kitchen (idiom) = fig. a nobleman who has seen a living animal cannot bear to see it die, hence he keeps away from the kitchen. — Mencius/Meng zi= (c. 372-c. 289 BC), Confucian philosopher second only to Confucius.)
Chen Hao was speechless again. Not only were the corners of his eyes twitching, but the corners of his lips were twitching up too.
“Where did you read this from? Don’t tell me you also dreamt this up.”
“Ah, I didn’t.”
Lin Shiheng then walked over to pick up the books on the bedside table and patted them as he handed them to Chen Hao.
“This is Mencius. I just finished reading it. I saw the phrase from here. You can take it if you want. There’s a lot of wisdom to be learned in it, and after reading it, I did figure out a lot more about what happened in the past.”
Chen Hao’s eyes were turning dull as he accepted the book.
He turned a couple of pages and fell into a trance.
“Brother
 This seems to be in traditional Chinese characters, and it’s also written in a literary style
”
“It is an ancient book after all. Of course, you have to read it in the original version to get the feeling. Would you rather have the vernacular version instead? I don’t have it here right now, but there are many people interested in Mencius around this area that I found in a group I joined. I’ll buy you a vernacular version, or you can read this one first and ask me if you don’t understand anything.”
“No, no, no!!”
Chen Hao waved his hand again and again as he stuffed the book back into Lin Shiheng’s arms. “Don’t you know that my liberal arts have always been bad? Memorizing lines is distracting enough, just spare me!”
Lin Shiheng smiled good-naturedly and collected the book dearly, returning it in the drawer.
Chen Hao looked at his appearance of being more intimate with the books than his own mother and felt chills. “Are you sure you’re really all right? In the past, you would rather do pull-ups than read books.”
“Before, I kept thinking reading was meaningless. Recently, for treatment, I had to cut myself off from the Internet. Then, reading books certainly was a different feeling.”
Lin Shiheng put away his book and sat back with a gentle smile on his face. Chen Hao, who was smiling, was stunned.
“Are you really my brother? Some ancient person didn’t transmigrate into you right?!”
The handsome man sitting across the table looked upwards slightly, and the corners of his mouth hooked up slightly, “Children should not talk about unusual forces.”
“Oh God
”
Chen Hao simply had to shake off all the goosebumps on his body.
“Can you talk properly? I feel that I am talking to an ancient person, it’s weird and creepy.”
“It’s just a change of lifestyle, and your tolerance is greatly impaired.”
Lin Shiheng finished with a positive tone. As if suddenly thinking of something, he added, “In fact, you are right to say that I am an ancient person. According to the doctor’s words, I do have Yi Qing’s influence in my body right now.”
“But you said before, it’s just a fictional character. Since it is fictional, that means, he never existed, and there was no such ancient or modern person.”
Chen Hao was confused but soon replied with a strong sense of duty to his brother.
“He is an ancient person in the script. Although you said it’s fine, why do I still feel that it’s weird? Brother, let’s go through with the treatment properly, okay?”
Lin Shiheng looked the same, but with the same soothing gesture, he reached out his hand to push the cup of tea to Chen Hao’s hand.
“He was created by others, and I am the only one who truly understands him. Whether on the Internet or in people’s memory, Yi Qing is me, and I am Yi Qing. Just like Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream, whether it is Zhuang Zhou’s dream of being a butterfly or the butterfly’s dream of being Zhuang Zhou, who can tell clearly? Since Yi Qing is me and Lin Shiheng is also me, what need is there to be so clear about it?”
(TNote: Zhuang Zhou = an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BC during the Warring States period.)
Chen Hao was already stumped.
As he said before, his liberal arts were poor. Let alone reading classical Chinese, what Lin Shiheng said to him was enough to make his head spin.
“But, if you don’t treat it, what if it gets serious in the future? Don’t forget the news about that foreign artist who got depressed before!”
“Didn’t Qiaoqiao say that the problem was the role itself? I’ll pay attention to the scripts in the future, and try to choose good characters to avoid that.”
“But, but
”
“By the way, this time, I actually learned how to play the guzheng. Do you want to listen? After learning it, I’ve been playing a little every day. I feel that my mind calms down every time, and it’s a very effective stress reliever. If you’re interested, I’ll introduce my teacher to you.”
Chen Hao stuttered, “
 I can’t.”
If he remembered correctly, Yi Qing was supposedly especially good at playing the guzheng.
“I remember you couldn’t play the guzheng before, and when shooting, the director especially looked for a teacher who would just teach you the gestures.”
Lin Shiheng smiled and stopped moving, slowly putting down his hand as he looked at his brother with a gaze full of warmth.
“Yes, the guzheng teacher I had is the very same one as before. He is a very good teacher.”
Chen Hao’s mind immediately recalled Lin Shiheng complaining to him after the guzheng teacher left the set. He said the teacher was old-fashioned and seemed to have traveled here from ancient times. If his movement wasn’t done right, he would stare at him with an angry glare and looked like he couldn’t wait to lift his sleeves and hit him.
It’s only been a few months and Lin Shiheng now calls him a very good teacher?
Sure enough, it’s just crazy, right?
Chen Hao recalled the guzheng sound he had heard with trepidation. Although he felt that his brother was crazy in his heart, he had to say that Lin Shiheng played really well and seemed way better than what he would expect from a person who had just studied for a few months.
At the moment, his crazy brother was still looking at him with expectant and reserved eyes.
“How was it?”
Chen Hao clapped his hands and praised, “It’s nice to hear, it’s great! Brother, you play really well!”
Lin Shiheng looked down and smiled with satisfaction, appearing very embarrassed.
When Chen Hao just breathed a sigh of relief, he suddenly opened his mouth, “The song I played just now is to express the broad mountains and rivers, its meaning is
”
His voice was very nice, warm, and magnetic as if it contained infinite tenderness, and his words were much more structured and unhurried.
As the saying goes, your ears could get pregnant.
But in Chen Hao’s ear, all the words morphed into ramblings of the unknown.
Bla bla bla bla bla 

Bla bla bla bla bla 

He bowed his head in pain, unbearably bored.
It was as if he had returned to listening to Chinese lessons in high school, with the teacher talking and he was listening carefully but in futility!!
If Lin Shiheng had done this before, he would have slapped him on the back of his head, but now, when faced with such a ‘mentally unbalanced’ Lin, who thought he was Yi Qing, Chen Hao endured it by relying on his brotherhood.
After waiting until Lin Shiheng was satisfied, he gently coughs a little, trying to make his expression normal.
“Now, apart from getting up and running in the morning, cooking by yourself, and learning to play the guzheng, what else do you do differently?”
Under the sun, the man who looked more and more handsome frowned slightly as he gently shook his head.
Chen Hao was relieved.
Not bad
 This brother of his might still be saved!
However, to be on the safe side, he asked again, “The ones that Yi Qing knows, such as swordplay, chess, and medicine
 You don’t know how to do it, do you?”
Lin Shiheng shook his head and looked at Chen Hao gratefully as he let out a sigh of relief.
“You reminded me. I am Yi Qing, how can I not know this?”
Chen Hao’s smile gradually stiffened. “Wait, what?”
“It was getting pretty boring just practicing guzheng every day recently. So, I’ll study what you said just now.”
Chen Hao froze.
It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter

He tried to hypnotize himself. Even if his brother’s brain was abnormal, it was his best friend.
“By the way, I recently ran for 2 hours every morning, feeling energetic. Didn’t you always feel weak before? Why don’t we start doing this together?”
Chen Hao remained silent.
You go away! You’re not my brother

Just when he was in a trance, Lin Shiheng picked up his mobile phone and sat behind him, snapping a photo.
“Now that I’ve recovered, it’s better to let the fans know. It’s not good to keep them worried.”
Chen Hao didn’t understand his action. “You are going to tell your fans right? Take a picture of yourself then. What are you doing taking my picture?”
“I want you to help me repost ah
”
When ‘ancient person’ Lin was acting like a ‘noble’, he sat upright in the most formal sitting posture. His slender fingertips were skilled at pointing at the screen.
“The assistant said that I haven’t appeared for too long, so my fans are probably mostly zombie fans. It just so happens that you are here now, so help me with the mood, will you.”
(TNote: zombie fans/ zombie followers = inactive accounts.)
Although this wasn’t polite at all, at least it wasn’t so immortal-like and unlike a normal person. Chen Hao was nagging a bit but didn’t feel the rudeness of the ‘mood’ in his mouth. He picked up his mobile phone to forward a repost for him.
Yet, as soon as he opened the photo, he saw that his own face was bad.
Although the features are still handsome, his big pancake face is enough to make him break.
Looking at Lin Shiheng behind him in the picture, it was clear that he planned to have himself at the very back, his face small and cheerful.
In a word, the contrast was tragic.
This familiar way of getting a head start on his brother

What a familiar prank.
Chen Hao rose up and gave his friend a thump on the back of his head with a slap.
“How the hell did you become Yi Qing, this brat!!”
He was irritable on the surface but completely relaxed in his heart.
The sea can wither, the stone can rot, but Lin Shiheng’s mischief would never change.
Even if he becomes Yi Qing and changes his personality

That was still his brother!