Amnesia Chapter 35: Blank Picture Book

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: SpringBreeze

 

“Is Daddy okay?” The little golden dragon plucked up the courage to come forward, scratching Suther’s pants with his claws, asking back with a worried face.

The intimidation of the dragon was still there, but Daddy had just entrusted him and his younger brothers to this dragon kin, and he had to bow his head. FanFan and Xiao Shui also came over, eyes watery, looking at Suther as if he was the only hope.

To be honest, Suther was in a state of complete confusion. He heard the click of the lock, Brother Man went back to bed and locked the door.

As the only adult in the current space who understood, he felt he couldn’t mess up first. It was his duty to stabilize the children. He scratched the back of his head and changed the subject, “Maybe the story I told was too hypnotic… Brother Man suddenly got sleepy.”

The children pondered this with doubt.

“He’s gone to bed, so let’s go watch TV.” Suther remembered how he had been effectively distracted by Brother Man when he was a kid.

So without further ado, he picked up the children and moved them to the fluffy sofa, so that the system could turn on a sub feed to the animation and start playing.

Because it was at home, the children were not very alert. Their attention was quickly diverted successfully, and they sank into the cartoon.

 

“ZhiZhi, we’re home.” Mu CangZhou finished his emergency midwifery work and went home with the second child in his arms.

ZhiZhi nodded, their eyes falling on the long flowering branch in their right hand, pouting and not too happy.

It had only been a few days, and their flowers were popping up again, so they were afraid they would make Big Bear allergic to pollen again and wouldn’t be able to play with him. Pushing open the door of the house, Mu CangZhou was puzzled when he heard the unfamiliar noises.

ManMan didn’t like to show this kind of cartoon to his children, so why did he change his mind today? When he walked into the living room, his eyes flashed.

There was a strange silver-haired boy sitting on the sofa with his back to him. The children were gathered around this teenager, but Jing Man was not around.

“Who are you?” Mu CangZhou approached quickly. His tone was cold, like the wind in an ice cellar, cold and solemn wafting into Suther’s ears.

Suther shrank his neck and turned around while rubbing the goose bumps on his arms, smiling awkwardly, “Brother Zhou, it’s me, Suther!”

His affection for Brother Man was one of dependence and affection, while for Mu CangZhou it was one of respect and a hint of fear. In his memory, Mu CangZhou and Jing Man often played the role of the villain and hero in front of him.

The friendly and gentle one was Jing Man, while the one without a trace of emotion was Brother Zhou…

He remembered that he could not absorb the gem energy when he was a child. Brother Zhou always grabbed him upside down by the feet and rolled in the pile of gems, forcing him to absorb.

It was horrible!

Suther? Mu CangZhou squinted his eyes to identify.

From the face of this silver-haired teenager, the shadow of the silly embroidered dragon could indeed be captured. The golden-green eyes were his unique mark.

With a slight nod, Mu CangZhou walked over and put ZhiZhi into the pile of babies. Sitting on the other side of the sofa, he opened his thin lips and asked directly, “How did you remember to come here in good time? Did something happen in the Dragon’s Realm?”

“No, no, I’m here on vacation.” Suther waved his hand and cowered his neck.

Mu CangZhou caught the key point at once. His gaze was like a torch, his expression was not rippled, and his tone was bland.

However, the words that came out made Suther’s heart panic for ten points.

“The Quick Transmigration Bureau has not yet established a branch office in Sky Blue Star, and no organizations or individuals from other realms can come here. Is your system buggy, how did it smuggle you here?”

Suther turned pale, “I don’t know! I applied for off-world travel, and my system arranged it for me!” In response, he plucked up the courage to lunge at Mu CangZhou’s arm and shook it frantically, “Brother Zhou! Save this child, don’t report me! Please, please!”

Mu CangZhou speechlessly pushed him away and rubbed his hand twice on his silver hair, “Go back now before anyone finds out, the sooner the better.” He looked around the room and wondered, “Where’s ManMan?”

Mu CangZhou thought Jing Man had gone to another room and didn’t ask, but it turned out that he had been talking for half a day and hadn’t seen him come out.

Suther pointed upstairs, “Brother Man is sleepy, he is sleeping now.”

This was not in line with his daily routine, Mu CangZhou’s eyes sank. He asked in a serious tone, “Did you arrive at Jing Man’s house directly or?”

“Aiya, it’s not that good…” Suther told the whole story of strolling around for delicious food for a week again.

The more Mu CangZhou listened, the more his blood rushed to his brain, and his brain buzzed with pain. Suther, this kid, told Jing Man everything in one breath, how can this end? Jing Man had lost his memory! Memory loss!

He did not dare to mention a word of the matter, this person’s lips touched and exposed everything out?! All the strings he buried with great difficulty were all disrupted. This kid went on a vacation, patted his butt and slipped away, then what about him? What about the kids?

What nonsense!

The more Suther spoke, the more he felt that Brother Zhou’s mood was getting worse and worse. He thought that maybe he had stayed at Sky Blue Star for too long, and a thin layer of sweat formed on his forehead. However, Brother Zhou didn’t say stop, he didn’t dare to stop either, so he had to keep on blah blah blah-ing.

He heard how Suther showed Jing Man all of his achievements in the past few years, and then Jing Man suddenly wanted to sleep.

Mu CangZhou threw a murderous gaze, gritted his teeth and said word for word, “You, go back to the Dragon’s Realm now immediately, do not wait for me to finish my long vacation to give you a record.”

Suther, “???”

This was not what was promised! He thought he could get a lighter sentence by confessing! He was punished for taking leave of absence at Sky Blue Star, great! Seeing that Brother Zhou’s attitude of expulsion was confirmed, he also strained his neck. He twisted around and hugged the children sitting around eating melons, and put on a non-violent non-cooperative attitude.

Suther’s eyes were red at the corners and he shouted loudly, “I’m not leaving! I- I- I haven’t seen you guys in eight years! I’m not going to leave! Not going! Not going!”

Anyway, Brother Zhou had not brought the system back, so he cannot be dealt with immediately.

If he wanted to settle the score, he would have to wait for two more years!

In two years he would be eighteen, and by then he would not be afraid of Brother Zhou!

Seeing his appearance, the gloom in Mu CangZhou’s heart was getting deeper and deeper, and his starry eyes were fixed on Suther, “You have one hour to think it over before you speak.”

 

Unaware that Mu CangZhou had returned with ZhiZhi, Jing Man returned to his bedroom with a headache so severe that his body could not support him to the bed. Once the door was locked, he slid to the floor and passed out completely.

Immediately after passing out, the headache disappeared and he realized that he did not lose consciousness, as if he had gone straight into a dream state.

Jing Man found himself in a place with mountains, water and plants.

His mind was like a clear dream, could hazily feel what was around, what there was, but it was also like watching a movie, the surrounding things were not under his control. He took two steps forward and a huge picture book suddenly appeared in front of him.

The album was as big as a bed, the cover was pure white, floating up and down in the air.

“What is this?” He strained to turn the pages and took a brief look. There was not a single word in the picture book, all broken, blurred and distorted pictures. There were many, many blank pages, and the ones with patterns seemed to be related to the treehouse-type gem lair Suther had shown him.

However, these broken scenes alone could not be connected to a story. He didn’t know which page to turn to, the image of this page was very distinct. Without waiting for a closer look, a blindingly bright light appeared in front of Jing Man’s eyes, and his consciousness was sucked into the picture book.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that he was painted on a paradise world-like cliff, and in the picture was the tree house-shaped jewel nest. No wonder he considered the jewel nest so pleasing to the eye, so it was his own design…

Feeling a weight on the back of his feet, something was lying next to his feet. He made a strong effort to resist the will of his body itself and controlled his head to look down.

It turned out that there was someone squatting at his feet as big as Big Bear, and as Suther said, it was a small, vivid, malnourished, damaged scaled dragon. The color of the iris of the eyes, like Suther, were golden green.

When Suther grew up, only the scales on his fingertips and toes were colored. However, he was really like a non-mainstream Suther dragon as a child, with the colorful scales in an open, messy arrangement. Tsk, the expression on his face was still absolutely very silly.

Jing Man felt like he was talking, but what was said, he could not hear. Basically, he said three sentences, Suther only reacted a little, but was very good and sticky to him.

This picture ended, skimming over many blurs, and he was sucked into another page. The moment he entered the picture book, Jing Man felt strange in his body. It seemed that he was not a person, his vision was high and wide, and he could feel the nerves of the torso like “wings”, “claws” and “tail”.

He glanced at the outstretched claws and guessed that he was also a western dragon. The color of the scales was lighter than Xiao Jin’s, and it was a dragon that looked… like a very tasty light cream-colored dragon.

At this moment, Jing Man was flying along with another solid gold dragon. He heard his own voice saying, “How long will we fly?”

The golden dragon in front of him gave him a cold glance, his tone unable to conceal disdain, “If you are tired, go behind me and wave your wings with the wind I fan out.”

After that, there was the image of shuttling between the clouds, two dragons in a hurry. The scene shifted and the destination arrived. It looked like a long-abandoned mine, with scattered digging tools and scaffolding that had very thick rust.

Jing Man waved his tail and put away his wings, wondering whether there was a mine inside or not.

The golden dragon seemed to see his doubts.

In a cold tone, he said, “Suther needs a lot of gems to be wise, and we can’t afford to pay for them, so we have to mine them ourselves.”

After that, the golden dragon, high and cold, assigned him a piece of gemstone mine, a very rich mine, to teach him how to dig. He went deeper into the mine.

Jing Man could feel his body, but could not control it. He saw himself scratching hard with his claws on the cave, and the cave instantly cracked open and a number of splendid broken gems fell down. The ground slowly accumulated a large pile of cold, light, colorful ore.

Looking at such a dazzling picture, usually only criticizing this as earthy aesthetics, but in his heart, he unwarrantedly had born desire. Engraved in his genes, the dragon race’s thirst for the power within the gem was calling to him.

Thinking of Xiao Jin’s previous unproductive performance in the microclimate’s gem lair, Jing Man said, “No! It’s too fatal!”

Yet, he was only a spectator of these images.

The body did not listen to his command, he gave a fierce dive over, tumbling and wandering in the sea of gems… He was under the influence of the dragon body and actually felt that rolling in it, the physical sensation was really very, very good. However, because his sanity survived, he was extremely ashamed, the same as looking at his own dark history as a child.

Until a mechanical voice sounded in his head –

[Golden Dragon has completed half of the task, ask about the progress.]

Only then did he come back to his senses, picking and choosing the gems, and loading them into the system backpack. Then, he continued to wave his claws and scratch the wall as a gold miner.

At the end of the day, the two dragons poured out the gems in their backpacks and compared their harvest, which was about even.

But Jing Man knew in his heart that the golden dragon gave himself a share of the rich mine, he went to the poor mine. He did a much more difficult job than himself, the claw tips worn out a layer of white foam with attrition.

Many pages later were images of digging for gems in abandoned mines in various places, and Jing Man quickly flipped through the picture book.

The picture was finally not a blur, and at last had a slight change. Seeing the clear picture, Jing Man’s heart beat fast. He quickly put his hand on the picture book and was sucked in.

The story was very coherent and the experience of watching a movie was great.

After entering the picture book, Jing Man found that he was with the golden dragon, along with a small dragon with damaged scales at the foot of the mountain.

Around a tree, he built and painted a jewel nest in the shape of a treehouse, decorated with large flowers.

By this time, Suther had gained a circle of fat.

Also much smarter, if he called his name, he would pay attention to him. When the adults were busy, he would be good and stay on the edge.

The foothills did not seem as safe as the wilderness where they had been digging, and there were always other dragons around. Most of the dragons were very bad and tried to take their gems without working. So, they protected Suther from being bullied, while preventing other dragons from stealing the gems they dug that were used to strengthen Suther’s body and develop his brain.

During the construction of Suther’s nest, they encountered a very serious obstacle.

The gems they dug were so broken that the little dragon had a hard time absorbing them and often turned his face red. The two big dragons had to work hard to use the ability to put together the broken stones into large pieces of stones.

The golden dragon had a lot to say about this, and his attitude was not very good, which scared Suther to tears. He had to reconcile the two dragons, although his instincts told him that the golden dragon didn’t even like him very much.

Piecing together the big gems was a difficult task, progress was super slow, and Jing Man felt tired. He flipped backwards and found many more pages of repeated images.

This work was maintained for a constant period of time.

Finally, they built a treehouse jewel nest similar to the one in Suther’s image. Jing Man found himself unable to enter the picture book world and was mercilessly thrown out.

Later, there were many blank pages, blank with no marks at all.

On the last page of this section was the image of separation.

This page was clear, but still inaccessible.

Jing Man looked at this picture. In his own human form, cupped in his hand were broken gems assembled into a hand-made jewel nest, just like the first painting.

Suther had grown up quite a bit, and his scales did not shatter.

He looked the same as a normal young dragon, and even a little fatter, because his scales were rich in color and more beautiful.

Intuition told him that this book had no more images. Jing Man frowned and flipped through the pages with disbelief.

On one page, he found the image that had once appeared in his mind, the white bear and red tiger together. He knew that this was him and Mu CangZhou. Then he turned to the back, there was really nothing.

The moment he closed the picture book, his consciousness was pulled out of the landscape world where the picture book existed.

Jing Man woke up from his dream, the cone of pain in his head dissipated a bit. He supported his body to stand up and walked over to lie down on the bed.

Looking up at the ceiling, eyes wide, trying to rationalize the logic of the images in his mind, trying to remember the story he just saw.

Thanks to the page of the white bear and red tiger, Jing Man followed this pattern and ventured a guess that the golden dragon could be Mu CangZhou…

Only, why?

Mu CangZhou’s attitude towards him was so icy cold?

It was even more condescending than when the two of them first met, and seemed to be disgusted with him and with Suther. Jing Man remembered that in this picture book, the golden dragon would rarely open his golden mouth to talk to them except when he had questions.

Most of the time, he wouldn’t spend time with him and Suther. If that was something that happened in the past, it would be excusable that people were not familiar with each other.

But if that’s what happens in the future, then Mu CangZhou was really great.¹

Jing Man hooked up his peach blossom eyes and looked out the door, pulling up the corners of his mouth, thinking about whether to tell a certain Mu about this intermittent dream.