Serenity. It was a concept foreign to Zhao Huang in his new life. In the silence of the night, while Hu slept with regular breaths beside the dying campfire, his mind was noisy. The questions assaulted him again, more persistent than any enemy he had ever faced.
He stood at the mouth of the cave, looking out at the forest bathed in silver moonlight. His bony "hand" felt his own skull, tracing the smooth, hard curves and cavities. The most fundamental and disturbing question rose to the surface of his consciousness.
I can still think. But... where?
He no longer had a brain. No grey matter, no neurons, no synapses. It was an undeniable biological fact. Yet, here he stood, aware of himself, remembering his past, planning his future. This consciousness had to reside somewhere. Was it his soul? A soul trapped in bone? Or was it some kind of magic? Or perhaps, an unknown natural phenomenon of this world that allowed consciousness to persist without a physical vessel?
If I have no brain, then what processes my thoughts? What stores my memories?
He raised his hand, turning it under the moonlight. Every command to move was executed, albeit stiffly and noisily. There was a connection between his will and this bony body, yet that connection wasn't through nerves. It was more direct, more primal. As if his will itself was directly moving these bones, like a puppeteer manipulating a puppet.
Survive... he thought. He had managed so far. But survive for what? Just to wander the forest forever as a lonely skeleton? That sounded like a hell worse than the death he had experienced. He needed a purpose. He needed understanding.
His eyes—his eye sockets—turned to the leather pouch inside his armor, where the unreadable book was stored. That was the key. He was sure of it. The book was a window into this world, into the mystery of his own existence. But that window was shut tight, locked by a foreign language.
How can I, who has no brain, learn a new language? It was another paradox. Learning required memory, required neuroplasticity. Things that required biological matter he no longer possessed. But he could still remember. He remembered his childhood in Shenzhen, remembered his parents' death, remembered every street fight, remembered the feeling of cancer in his lungs. Those memories were clear and intact. So, something within him was storing them.
Perhaps, he thought, this consciousness of mine operates by different rules. Maybe it's not about biology anymore, but about something more fundamental—the essence of who I am. Soul, pure consciousness, or whatever it's called, that happens to be bound to a skeleton.
If that's the case, his resolve hardened, then there's no reason I cannot learn. I am still Zhao Huang. I learned how to survive on the streets of Shenzhen. I learned how to build an empire from nothing. I will learn this damn language.
The next morning, as Hu went hunting—now with increasing agility despite its limp—Zhao Huang sat by the small stream and took the book out of its pouch. He opened it carefully, the yellowed, brittle parchment pages spread before him.
He "stared" at the first page. The symbols were lined up neatly, curving like snakes, sharp like claws, intricate like knots. They meant absolutely nothing. It was like trying to understand the sound of the wind or the pattern of cracks in a stone.
But Zhao Huang was not a man who gave up easily. He had one advantage: time. He had no other demands. No need to eat, drink, or sleep. He could spend days, weeks, even months on just one page.
He decided on his approach. He would treat this like cracking a code. Like the old days, when he had to break the codes used by rival gangs to communicate.
First, he needed to find patterns. He flipped through the pages, his sharp "gaze" scanning every line. He noticed symbols that appeared frequently. There was one symbol that looked like three vertical lines with a horizontal bar across the top (like a 'T' with three legs). It appeared very often. Another symbol resembled a circle with a dot in the center. Then there was one like an inverted triangle with a curved line beneath it.
Alright, he thought. Let's assume this is a phonetic language, like Mandarin or English. These symbols represent sounds.
But without sounds to associate them with, it would be incredibly difficult.
Then, his gaze fell on the diagrams at the back of the book. There were clear pictures: a sun, a tree, a fish, a sword. And beneath each picture, was a word—a sequence of symbols.
This is it! he thought, a surge of virtual "excitement" flowing through his consciousness. A pictograph dictionary!
He compared the symbol under the picture of the sun with the text on the previous pages. He found its frequent occurrence. He now had the word for "sun". But that was just one word. He didn't know how to pronounce it, or the rules of its grammar.
He focused his efforts on the pages with diagrams. There were about thirty basic pictures. Sun, moon, star, tree, water, fire, stone, human (a simple stick figure), sword, shield, bird, fish, and so on.
He began making a mental catalog. He would "see" a picture, then "record" the sequence of symbols beneath it. The process was slow and tedious. Without a brain to easily store short-term memory, he had to repeat each sequence over and over in his mind, scanning it with his "gaze" until it was embedded in his consciousness.
He noticed that some symbols appeared in several different words. For example, the symbol that looked like "three lines with a crossbar" (let's call it Symbol A) appeared in the word for "sun" and also in the word for "day". That made sense. Perhaps Symbol A represented the sound or concept of "day".
He found another symbol (Symbol B) that looked like a "circle with a dot" which appeared in the word for "moon" and "night". It was likely related to lunar concepts or darkness.
This was a small breakthrough. But he was still very far from understanding a sentence. He only had a collection of isolated nouns, without verbs, adjectives, or structure.
After several hours—or perhaps a full day—of struggling with the book, frustration began to creep in. He had identified about twenty basic nouns, but it felt meaningless. He tried looking at the running text on the first page again. The symbols were just as meaningless as before. He couldn't see where one word started and another ended. There were no clear spaces. The symbols just flowed into one another, connected by small lines and curves.
This is impossible, he thought, nearly giving up. I'm wasting my time. Even if I could learn every word, I would never understand its grammar. I need a teacher. I need someone to speak to me.
But who would teach language to a skeleton? Who would even approach him without fear or hostility?
He looked towards Hu, who had just returned with a fat wood rat in its mouth. Hu placed its prey in front of Zhao Huang, then sat down, waiting faithfully.
He doesn't care who or what I am, Zhao Huang thought, his frustration easing slightly. He just accepts me.
Yet, Hu could not teach him to read.
The doubt gnawed at him. Perhaps it was better to focus solely on physical survival. Practice his "Blind Shark Eyes From Shenzhen", explore, find a safe place. Trying to read was an act of arrogance, a futile pursuit for a dead man pretending to be human again.
But something in him refused to give up. It was the part of him that had taken him from a homeless youth to an underworld king. It was the same determination that made him refuse cancer treatment, choosing to die on his own terms. He was a stubborn man.
He picked up a stick and drew on the soft earth by the stream. He drew the symbols he had learned. Sun. Moon. Water. Fire. He wrote down their sequences, trying to connect them to the images in his head.
He noticed that the sequence of symbols for "tree" and "forest" shared the same symbol at the beginning (Symbol C, resembling a branching line). Then, the symbols for "water" and "river" also shared a common symbol (Symbol D, a wavy line). So, there might be root words or prefixes.
This was another clue. Small, but significant. He was beginning to see patterns within patterns. He was no longer seeing them as a series of random symbols, but as a system with an internal logic.
He flipped to the page with the picture of a human (stick figure). Beneath it were three words. One for "human". One for "man" (with an added symbol resembling simple male genitalia). And one for "woman" (with an added symbol resembling female genitalia). So, there were modifications for gender.
He felt like an archaeologist excavating an ancient city, one piece at a time. Every small discovery was a victory.
He realized he wouldn't be able to learn everything at once. He needed a methodical and patient approach. He decided to focus on basic vocabulary first. Nouns for objects around him, verbs for basic actions (though that would be harder without pictures), and perhaps numbers.
He spent the following days—however long, time had lost meaning—with the book. He would walk with Hu, and whenever he saw an object he recognized from the book, he would stop and "pronounce" the word in his mind. Seeing a tree: Symbol C, then Symbol E. Seeing water: Symbol D. Seeing a stone: Symbol F.
He also found the page with numbers. That was relatively easy. The system was base-ten, with different symbols for 1 through 9, and then for 10, 100, and so on. He quickly memorized numbers 1 through 10. It gave him a little confidence.
Hu, curious, often approached him while he was "reading". The wolf would sniff the book, then look at Zhao Huang with its head tilted, as if asking what was so interesting about that old-smelling thing. Sometimes, Hu would lie down beside him, watching him loyally, providing a comforting presence in his intellectual solitude.
One afternoon, Zhao Huang realized that just memorizing symbols wasn't enough. He needed to involve his "body" in the learning process. He needed to write.
He took a sharper stick and found a large, flat area of soil near the stream. He decided to copy the book. Not to understand the meaning—he was far from that—but to train his bony hand to form these symbols.
His first attempt was a disaster. His stiff hand, lacking fine motor muscles, was not designed for writing. The "sun" symbol, which should consist of three vertical lines and one horizontal, turned into formless scribbles, like dying worms. The lines were wobbly, not straight, and the proportions were a mess.
This is harder than practicing swordplay, he thought irritably.
But he persisted. He would look at a symbol in the book, memorize it, then try to imitate it on the ground. He did it repeatedly. Ten times, twenty times, a hundred times for just one symbol.
The sound of the stick scraping the earth became a new constant soundscape, interspersed with the faint creaking of his wrist trying to imitate the subtle curves. Hu, bored, would often go crashing through the bushes to find something more interesting, but always returned, as if to check on the progress of its strange master.
He focused on writing first. Reading was a passive process. Writing was an active process that required a deeper understanding of the form and structure of each symbol. By forcing himself to recreate the symbols, he began to notice details he had missed when just reading: the varying line thickness, the precise angles of intersection, the subtle curves at the end of a stroke.
He treated each symbol like a small sword movement. A vertical thrust for a straight line. A controlled horizontal sweep. A flexible turn of the wrist for a circle. With this approach, the process became slightly easier. It was a matter of coordination and repetition.
After... he didn't know how long, perhaps days spent just writing, he could finally produce the basic symbols with a rough level of legibility. They were still ugly, still shaky, but at least now recognizable.
He had created his own "slate" by the stream—an area of several square meters covered in repeated scrawls of symbols. It was a strange and surreal sight: a hooded skeleton sitting in the middle of the forest, surrounded by mystical writings on the ground, with a watchful gray wolf nearby.
Progress came gradually. The movements of his hand became slightly smoother. The symbols became more consistent. He even began to be able to write simple sequences of words. He wrote "sun" and "moon" side by side. He wrote "tree" and "water". He wrote the numbers 1 through 10 in a row.
It was a monumental achievement. From absolute inability, he had now acquired the basic skill of writing in a foreign language from another world. He still couldn't read a sentence, but he had unlocked the door.
He looked at his primitive "slate", then at the old book in his lap. A deep sense of accomplishment, a quiet satisfaction, flooded him. It might only be a small step, but it was a step he had taken himself, by his own will. It proved that even without a brain, without a proper body, he could still learn. He could still grow.
He stood up, his body creaking. Hu, lying nearby, immediately rose, its tail wagging slowly, ready to move.
Zhao Huang looked around the forest. The world was still as mysterious. But now, he had a tool to unravel its mysteries. A key he was slowly beginning to understand.
He stored the book back inside his armor. He would keep practicing. Every day. Until one day, the symbols on the page would no longer be a puzzle, but a story waiting to be read.
He swung his foot, erasing part of his writing on the ground with his metal boot. It was fine. He would write it again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.
With Hu by his side, and a new purpose in his "mind", Zhao Huang stepped back into the forest, leaving the stream and his temporary writings behind. The journey was still long, but now, he wasn't just walking aimlessly. He was a student. And for a student, every day brought a new lesson.