Chapter 1 Zhao Shi
2023, August , sunny!

Seventh day of stopping medication!
My name is Zhao Shi!

Thirty-something
Zhao Shi was just about to continue writing when he suddenly frowned and thought for a long time but could not remember anything. So he turned to the previous page of the diary before continuing writing.

"Thirty-nine years and 84 days old. Today is the hottest day in the city of Shanghai in a year. The temperature outside is degrees, just like a steamer. Today I helped a child find his mother and met a new friend, Chen You. Huh? What does Chen You do? Where did we meet? I can't quite remember."

"The disease is getting worse. I used to forget the memories of the previous day the next day, but now even the memories of the current day have become blurry."

"I don't know when I will become like a fish, with a memory of only seven seconds."

"I just checked my memo. I delivered 17 orders today."

“I don’t remember anything after that.”

"Forget it, I'll just stop here. There's nothing else to write."

Devil!

In a rented house, Zhao Shi closed his diary and let out a long sigh.

The condition is getting worse and worse, and now my memory can only last for ten hours.
I can only know my past through my diary every day.

Painful?
Zhao Shi didn't think so.

Without memory, there is no personal experience.

The memories gained from reading a diary are actually more like a novel, or a boring, account-based novel.

The diary wrote that he had visited many hospitals for his illness, but in the end there was no cure and he just took medicine to slow down the loss of his memory.

But in recent months, his memory loss has become more and more serious, resulting in the inability to deliver food normally and a sharp drop in income.
Without income, you can’t afford medicine.

Vicious circle!
Finally, he stopped taking the medication seven days ago.

After stopping the medication, I was able to remember things from seven days ago, but now I can only remember things for ten hours.

Maybe tomorrow, what happened one second ago will be forgotten the next second.

"Haha, forget it, I don't want to think about it anymore. There's no point in thinking too much anyway. I'll forget it all in ten hours!" Zhao Shi said with a wry smile.

The place Zhao Shi rented was a basement of more than ten square meters.

He can only afford to rent a place like this in Shanghai.

I also thought about returning to my hometown.

However, the lack of memory made him feel unfamiliar with his hometown.

In other words, if he hadn't had the diary, he would have long forgotten where his hometown was, his parents? According to the diary, his parents seemed to have gone to work in other places, and he didn't know where exactly.

Other relatives have already been completely forgotten.

Never been in love, no wife or children.

The only good thing about his illness over the past decade is that no matter how hard or difficult it is, to him, it is just lines of text.

It's just plain, dry text without any embellishment, so naturally it doesn't feel bitter.

Maybe he was scolded the first day, but for him, the second day was a brand new day.

Zhao Shi curled up on the sofa.

In a daze.

It was as if he heard whispers echoing in his mind.

"Father!"

"You can accept incense, you must be dead!" "Please, show your spirit!"

"My mother said that our Zhao family doesn't have an ancestral temple, and you are the only one who can be counted as an ancestor."

"If you don't show up, my mother and I will be eaten by those weird monsters."

Hearing this voice, Zhao Shi frowned.

This was not the first time he had heard this voice.

The sound has been heard every day in the past two days.

This is also what made him feel strange. He had forgotten all his memories, but he still remembered this whispering voice.

And it rings on time at nine o'clock every night.

He could even vaguely see a girl of about seventeen or eighteen years old, dressed in ancient costume, kneeling in front of a tablet with her hands clasped together, and kneeling down continuously.

In front of the girl was an incense burner with three incense sticks.

Cigarettes are everywhere.

What was strange was that the incense smoke all floated towards the tablet not far away and was absorbed by the tablet.

At this time, Zhao Shi saw the content on the tablet: "First, the tablet of Zhao Shi!"

Well.
Although Zhao Shi's memory has been lost, he had already memorized the name Zhao Shi when he just read the previous diary.

this.
Is it his tablet?

By the way, what is a tablet?
Zhao Shi was confused again. When he saw the wooden plaque in a trance, he knew it was a tablet, but he seemed to know the function of the tablet vaguely, and yet he seemed not to know it.

“Is the Father’s spirit not responding again?”

The girl looked at the burnt-out fragrance with a look of disappointment on her face.

This incense is called "inviting incense!" It was bought from the government at a high price. It is said to be a special kind of incense that can communicate with the spirits of ancestors, allowing them to appear and protect the family.
She has purchased it three times, but she can communicate with her father's spirit every time. However, no matter how she asks, her father's spirit never appears.
Forget about not being able to communicate, she won't think about it anymore.
But they can communicate, but they are not holy.
This made her embarrassed.

At this time, a beautiful young woman who looked to be in her thirties walked into the ancestral hall.

Looking at the burning fragrance, he sighed slightly.

"Failed again?"

"Yan'er, give up!"

"I told you before, this damn guy is nothing. He was seduced by that vixen and has already abandoned us. Now, even after his death, he refuses to show his true colors among us!"

The more she talked, the angrier the young woman became. "Mom, stop talking. I believe Dad had his own reasons for leaving us! Now that he's dead, stop talking."

The girl grabbed the young woman's arm and shook it coquettishly.

“Hardship!”

"What a fart!"

"Your grandma took him in out of kindness, but who could have thought that he would leave without saying goodbye after just seven days and die outside!"

"You can die if you want! It's ok to leave behind the family tree and the names of the ancestors! At least the ancestors of his Zhao family can be worshipped with incense and sacrifices!"

"Now that the world has changed, even if your father doesn't show up, other ancestors of the Zhao family may show up!"

"Now it's good. You only have one ancestor, the dead ghost, and I don't even know who your father is."

Although the beautiful young woman's expression had eased, she was still chattering.

Where is the girl?
He listened with a helpless look on his face.

She had heard these words a thousand times.
According to her mother, her father's name was Zhao Shi. He seemed to be a young man in distress. He was rescued by her mother and grandmother. They got married three days later. Four days after the wedding, her father disappeared.

There is no other information at all.

Her father said she had amnesia.

Of course, this is nothing. Apart from the fact that I don’t have a father, I still have to live my life. According to my mother, this is the fate of the women in her family.

Her mother had lived with her grandmother, who ran a small tavern, since she was a child, and she was doing the same thing now.

But who could have thought that the sky would change, and at some point, all the demons, ghosts, and monsters would come out.
People lived in fear for several years, and the imperial court created a magical art.

Summon the ancestral spirits!

Spirits of ancestors!

The ancestral spirits can protect the family from being harmed by monsters and demons. Even if they are defeated, they can buy time for the living to escape.

Unfortunately, her family has no ancestors, her mother doesn’t know who her father is, and her father has amnesia and left no information about his ancestors. There are no ancestral tablets in the house.

"mother"

Seeing her mother getting more and more excited, the girl stepped forward, grabbed the young woman's arm and started to act coquettishly.

no way.

This is the only way to stop my mother's nagging.

"Forget it, forget it, let's not talk about that dead ghost anymore."

The beautiful young woman could only shake her head helplessly in the end.

The two came out of the main room. The young woman took out a few pieces of silver from her sleeve and handed them to the girl, saying, "Here, this is the only ten taels of silver we have at home. It's only enough to buy three sticks of 'incense sticks'. No more."

"I know, mother!"

Although the young woman didn't finish her words, she knew what they meant.

No money!
The family invested decades of savings in it.
This also shows the difficulty of summoning ancestral spirits.

Her family was actually relatively well off. They had been offering sacrifices to her father's tablet for so many years, and her father was the only one enjoying the incense. Although her mother said that she did not leave any ancestral tablets or anything, she knew that with only her offerings, even if there were ancestral tablets, the chances of miracles appearing would be even smaller.

Summon the ancestral spirits!

One of them is incense.

If a person has not offered sacrifices to his ancestors' tablets for many years, it is impossible for him to summon his ancestors to appear by offering sacrifices now.

Incense!

It is the basis of summoning.

Please pray for the gods!
A tool for communicating with ancestral spirits.

Both are indispensable.

As the three incense sticks went out, the images in Zhao Shi’s mind also disappeared.

familiar!

He felt a sense of familiarity from the two of them.

But I don't know where this familiar feeling comes from.

After thinking about it, Zhao Ting took out all the dozens of diaries, hoping to find useful information.

just
He looked through all the days but found no relevant records.

The earliest diary he wrote was after he learned that he had amnesia.

The memories from that time are still three months old, and only the memories from three months ago will disappear.

As for what happened three months ago, he had no memory of it and there was no record of it in his diary.

If his family hadn't called him, he wouldn't have known they existed.

The scene that appeared in his mind this time was the first time he felt a sense of familiarity after he suffered amnesia. Everything else, even the repetitive things he saw in his diary, did not make him feel even the slightest bit familiar.

Very important!
For some reason, Zhao Shi felt that the two people in the picture were very important.

I thought about it.

He wrote down everything he had just seen in his mind in his diary, marked the key points, and wrote a sentence: "This memory has an inexplicable sense of familiarity. Even when I returned to my hometown, my parents and every tree and grass in my hometown did not give me this feeling!"

After finishing writing, Zhao Ting didn't think much about it and went straight back to his room to sleep.

It’s not that I don’t want to think about it, but it’s useless.

For him, tomorrow is another brand new day and his memory is blank. He has to rely on his diary to obtain everything about himself.

And what we get is just a series of bland and boring stories.

(End of this chapter)