Chapter 7: Dreamland (10)
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Needless to say, the sudden appearance of the little wooden carving shocked Lin Nan to his core.
This thing had clearly disappeared for many years. Why today of all days?
Truth be told, Lin Nan had never quite forgotten about its existence. After all, it scared him silly back then, but it mysteriously vanished later on and hadn’t shown its face since. After all these years, he unconsciously began to believe it would never return.
But here it was, right in front of him.
Well, isn’t this interesting?
At this moment, Lin Nan felt a sense of disillusionment with reality. This time, when he held the icy little carving in his hand, the initial fear and panic had evaporated.
Because apart from its ability to change expressions and its fondness for hiding in his pockets, it didn’t seem to affect him much otherwise.
For the next few days, Lin Nan just sat in his study, staring into space.
The diligent days of writing had become a distant memory; typing seemed to have become part of his very bloodstream. If he went a day without writing even a few words, he felt off-kilter.
But luckily, his notebook was completely kaput, and he didn’t plan on buying a new one.
Wang Xue peeked in on him a few times and, seeing him merely reading without any of his previous impulsive behavior, breathed a sigh of relief.
But really, reading was just a cover-up; Lin Nan’s left hand held the little wooden carving tightly, feeling its eternally cold surface.
“Hey, little carving, what’s your deal? Why do you always stick around me?”
“Besides laughing and crying, what else can you do?”
“If you have any unfulfilled wishes, I can help you out!”
Lin Nan clutched the carving, treating it as his personal sounding board, babbling on without even knowing what he was saying—just a string of idle chatter.
But just then, a soft white light enveloped the little carving.
Startled, Lin Nan instinctively tossed it onto the table, clueless about which of his words had triggered the little carving’s mechanism.
The white light grew brighter.
Fortunately, it was daytime, and the sun was shining outside, so it didn’t draw the attention of passersby.
However, Lin Nan in the room squinted and turned his head away, as the white light was too close, like a mini sun, making his head spin.
After a while, the light gradually dimmed.
When Lin Nan finally reopened his eyes, he was astonished to discover a small floating window appeared above the little carving’s head, just like a projection, though the clarity was not great.
“Whoa, didn’t expect you to be a high-tech gadget! But the video quality is pretty atrocious; if you want a glowing review from me, that’s a hard pass.”
Lin Nan blurted out casually.
He couldn’t be sure if it was high-tech, but it was definitely something out of the ordinary—after all, just the fact that it could vanish and appear at will signified an unusual origin.
The content of the projection kept changing, gradually capturing his attention.
“Hey? Isn’t that the hotel I stayed at the last time I vacationed by the beach?”
Wow, time flies.
Lin Nan recalled all the horrific things he did to the little carving at the hotel and felt a twinge of regret.
Was it trying to get him to apologize?
He immediately put his hands together and bowed deeply to the little carving, “My bad! Back then, I was just a reckless youth, and I was too ignorant to treat extraordinary things with a little kindness. Instead, I went to extremes and caused you no small amount of harm. Here, I sincerely apologize.”
The projection continued uninterrupted.
Lin Nan propped his chin on his hands, staring closely at the blurry images.
Was the little carving trying to tell him something?
Finally, some bizarre details emerged.
As the camera panned over the hotel exterior and entered the lobby, every person or animal inside seemed frozen in place, not moving an inch.
Lin Nan furrowed his brow slightly.
The camera was mobile, yet everyone inside remained still.
Perhaps it was some special filming technique, something you’d often see in science fiction movies.
The protagonist possesses time-freezing abilities, or maybe the director added a freeze effect for dramatic flair—whatever the case, at a certain moment, everything froze, while the camera could still move.
Didn’t expect this little carving to have such filming skills.
But soon, Lin Nan sensed something was off.
The projection kept changing, moving away from the beach hotel towards the city center.
Along the way, every transportation vehicle, car, human, seagull, even the sidewalk trees and flowers, all manifested in the little carving’s projection in a frozen state.
If these were all computer-generated effects, that must’ve cost a fortune!
Or maybe the little carving just had a built-in player, and the projected content was a previously recorded special effects sequence.
After all, the world is so vast; he’s just a writer—how could he know everything?
But the next moment, an even more astonishing scene emerged.
The camera arrived in the city center, where the bustling streets and vibrant shopping plazas teemed with life—a picture of a big city.
Yet all the people shown in the camera remained frozen.
It didn’t look like a performance; as the camera zoomed in, Lin Nan could even see droplets flying from an old lady haggling over prices, frozen in mid-air.
If they wanted the whole city to look like a still life, how much would that special effect cost?
Tsk tsk, he had no idea which company had that kind of deep pockets.
Or was this a city promotion video? Only the government could pull off something so grand yet memorable!
The projection above the little carving continued to move relentlessly.
Lin Nan was glued to the scene.
It wasn’t until thirty minutes later that the projection vanished with a “click.”
A whole thirty minutes of freeze-frame effects; not only humans but even the flowers and grass by the roadside were frozen, as if completely unaffected by the wind.
Interesting.
Lin Nan pulled out his phone and typed the name of the seaside city into the search bar, hoping to find a similar promotional video.
But, disheartened, he scrolled through page after page, finding nothing remotely similar.
That can’t be right—logically speaking, with such impressive long shots and high-cost effects, there must be some trace of it online.
Why couldn’t he find any relevant content, no matter how he adjusted the keywords? Not even the words!
Could it be his phone?
He immediately ordered the latest model of a desktop computer.
The merchants were efficient; two hours later, they installed it in his study.
However, the search results were the same as his phone—completely devoid of any related clues.
Lin Nan sat there in front of the computer, his frown deepening.
