Perhaps because of a secret sense of escape, when I was in college, I didn't like to go home during the winter and summer vacations. I always hung out with some overseas Chinese students who couldn't return to their homes and applied to the dormitory supervisor for accommodation.One of the conditions is of course to pay the full dormitory fee, and the other is to move out of the original room and share with a few foreign students from Vietnam or Burma.I have no problem with overseas Chinese students, but once I move in, I will form a force that invades their small society.So one of the Burmese students who was in charge of the night access control management later discussed with me: If I promise not to move there, he can accommodate the power supply for the dormitory I live in (actually the four rooms in our corner) at night, so that For one thing, I don't even have to make a formal application for accommodation at all, and I don't have to pay any fees.I only need to make another key before the end of the semester, and I can enter and leave the dormitory at any time during the vacation.The only inconvenience is that I have to paste a layer of black paper on the transom window above the door and the inside of the sliding window facing the tennis court to prevent the indoor light from leaking out; and I can only put a sixty Small lamps with tiles, and try to move around at night—moving without making any noise.In other words: act like a mouse.

I officially became a mouse during the winter vacation between the second and second semesters of my sophomore year. I felt that the accommodation money I paid for the previous two vacations was a waste of money, and I didn’t know at the time that those overseas Chinese students didn’t like me breaking into them. The real reason for living is that they think my feet smell bad - and there's really no excuse for that, because no one else thinks other people's feet smell good or bad.In short, although the vacation of living a life like a mouse was only one month, it had an extremely profound impact on me.Looking back, it seems to be more than a month, more than a severe winter; it seems to sum up my college life, the end of my teenage years, and my golden years.It was also the first time in my life that I began to enter a real, complete and solitary life.Rats are worse than rats—at least rats don’t have to hide when the same kind appear, but live like thieves in a Catholic university known for its moral education. I’d better not get in touch with anyone, because once in contact, It was bound to make me aware of my state; an illegitimate existence.You can definitely imagine the scene: at a certain moment when walking in the cold campus, someone shouted: "Zhang Dachun, why are you here? Didn't you go home? What's the matter?" or: "You still live in the dormitory in?" Then I would have to lie.Anything you say is a lie.

Yes, I still live in the dormitory.Every day, only at dusk, at the moment of six o'clock in the afternoon, when the Burmese overseas students turn on the power for me, the whole world has a little connection with me.Only at that moment, I felt that someone still knew and recognized my existence.Besides, that kind of life is boring even when describing it; I get up at about six o'clock every morning, tiptoe out of the dormitory, go out through the small gate on the east side of the campus, and walk seventeen minutes to a restaurant called Manyuan. Chun’s bakery bought half a loaf of toast, three boxes of milk, and 100 grams of ham slices. On the return journey, a small shop that specializes in selling cooked food in the nearby cafeteria just opened the iron rolling door, where you can buy hot braised Eggs and cabbage; if the proprietress is in a good mood, she will put a spoonful of chili cucumbers in a plastic bag.These are my meals for the day—except Sunday, when there is no cooked food, because the cafeteria is closed.I usually take a passenger car for an hour and a half to go home on Sunday morning, have lunch, pick up pocket money and fruit for six days, and then go to the bookstore to pay all the unpaid dormitory fees and the saved food money. spend there.

I did read quite a bit, and this is one of the effects of what I said earlier: Living alone like a mouse "had a profound effect on me".But I know better than anyone that reading in that way is neither for academic performance, nor for the pursuit of knowledge and exploration of truth, but just an extension of the escape consciousness I mentioned.In retrospect, there really was no other motive or purpose; it was purely escape.Every day I hold a pile of food, sneak into the dormitory, and remove the black paper on the inside of the window on the tennis court to let in the light from the sky (because the Burmese overseas students cut off the power supply after 7 o’clock in the morning), and then I So I got back under the covers and picked up a book scattered on the bed to read.I don't have to get up when I'm hungry, because the food and a large pot of water boiled by electricity during the night are placed on the table within reach of my backhand.Except for brushing my teeth and going to the toilet, I hardly leave the bed, and I can go without a shower for a whole month.One night, when I was squatting on the toilet in a toilet to defecate, I heard a Burmese overseas Chinese student and a fellow countryman urinating while saying, "That Zhang Dachun must have been here just now." "How do you know?" "Summer vacation He shared a room with us, and he smelled strange." "Really?" "Really. So I know where he goes." So they laughed together.Afterwards, I hid back in the bedroom and sniffed the clothes in the closet, the pillows on the bed, and the quilt that was raised high, hardened and still generally hollow. Except for the bad smell of the socks, the rest There is nothing special about it.This frustrates me quite a bit. An antique treasure that Fangbo took good care of was smashed to pieces in an instant.Think about it: I have tried my best to keep a distance from this world and lived a life that is not as good as a mouse, yet I still left a clue of scent, a trace of life, and a proof that I could not completely escape to that Burmese overseas Chinese.Afterwards I had no choice but to pick up the book again and escape into another world.The world in those books is the only salvation and redemption for this depressing feeling that there is no escape between heaven and earth.

What I'm going to say next has a lot to do with my reading habits.To this day, I can't be sure whether it happened during a school mouse-out or an afternoon in a bookstore on a weekend; more honestly: I don't even remember if it was my college days. an experience ofFor the convenience of narration, I think it is better to start with the way I read when I was a mouse. To put it simply: I'm the kind of person who doesn't recognize my relatives when I read a book.Read from opening a book to closing your eyes.Between sleep and sleep, my only real existence was in a book.Why is it called "the only real existence"?That's because when I'm in a book, even the "I" is apparently forgotten; to forget myself—that is, to allow myself to escape completely, unrecognized by any perception (including myself) Truly a perfect state.And this state will not be different due to different types of books.For example: Once I read a book called "Smoking is Harmless to the Body", the author is an Australian retired physician William T. White.He firmly believes that the statement that "smoking is harmful to health" is "one of the greatest hoaxes in human history".In this book, he wrote: "Injecting a very small amount of mineral elements into dogs will almost without exception cause lung cancer. Professor Baser, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Leeds, has used mice for five consecutive years to conduct experiments. The rats were divided into two groups—one group that smoked and one group that did not; and it turned out that none of the rats in the smoking group developed lung cancer.” This is a passage I read so many times that I can still recite it to this day.It's not a novel, and it doesn't have a story context, but like the hundreds of thousands, millions of other fragments in the book, it brought me into a world that I've never lived or imagined—where perhaps In a laboratory, many scientists in silver-gray uniforms are busy. One of them is carrying a translucent plastic bag in his hand. Inside is a mixed-breed shepherd dog who has just been diagnosed with lung cancer and has been administered cyanide to death.Behind the man with the bag there were fellows blowing cigarettes through several blowpipes at a group of rats in a glass box marked in English print: "Smoking Group."Next to it, of course, is the "non-smoking group".The mice in the latter group were much whiter and brighter than the former group, but none of them developed lung cancer.Has this scene ever appeared in any corner of the earth?I don't know.But it did stay in my head.Besides—and more importantly—I know for certain that there is such a corner, and that "I" is not in that corner.When that corner disappeared, I fell asleep and escaped into dreamland.

After I wake up and finish the necessary washing, shopping, and eating, another brand new world is waiting and welcoming me.There was a philosopher who drank very thick soup twice a day, mutton in oil four times a month, and salmon twice a month, a species finder with hunting boots by his bed, a An economist who firmly believes that nature has its own order and leads to the theory of free economics. There is a poet who emphasizes childhood as "precious imperial wealth" (how could he think of using imperial wealth to compare childhood? It is really weird) , there is also a female Christian who obtained suet from begging in Tibet, added a little raisins, brown sugar and flour, and actually made two puddings, and a Swiss who told me that "cold food takes twice as long as hot food" A doctor of physiology, an expert in sports medicine, and a great writer who left a book of proverbs, he said in the fifth hundred and fifty-seventh of his proverbs: "No matter what we have experienced, we will leave it behind. Traces. Every contact with things has an influence on the formation of our character-albeit unconsciously. But it is very dangerous to overestimate these influences."

I believe: If "there is one more" continues out of control, I will never even think about mentioning the incident that happened in the bookstore for the rest of my life.All in all: It is not so much that I know these people because of reading, but that these people were originally discovered by me inadvertently in the world created by books.Sometimes, different people in different books will quarrel over the same issue, but their respective time and space are too far apart to quarrel with each other.But once my reading is involved, it will naturally make two kinds of thoughts, two attitudes, and two beliefs that I have never met in my life come into conflict.On the other hand, even guys who have the same name and seem to have had the same life history are often eager to bicker and even fight when they appear in different books.I once thought that the reason why Descartes and Voltaire, and even Nietzsche and Nietzsche did not agree, was probably caused by the intervention of my own reading behavior.But it would be bad to think about it that way, me?Reading any book has a sense of intervention like moving into the dormitory of the Burmese overseas student and his friends from the same country—or can it be called the self-consciousness of existence?

So I came up with a method—more precisely, a method that came out and bumped into me: I deliberately didn't finish any book in one reading.Doing so can at least make me have a more reserved attitude towards the books I haven't finished reading, and the "I" who has entered the world of books will be less likely to be stubborn and provoke wars between different books.Doing so would of course make each book look like an incomplete world, but my escape was so thorough that it minimized my sense of existence, at least myself. Such as convinced. As I said just now: I don't remember exactly when the incident in the bookstore happened, but what is certain is that it happened when I got into the habit of opening a book and reading it for a while, then throwing it down and reading another book. After the habit of reading a book, my reading speed also unknowingly became much faster at that time, and it was still surprisingly fast.In one afternoon, I can flip through about forty to sixty or seventy books—of course, I skip the last chapter, last section, or last paragraph of each book as much as possible (several times I accidentally finished reading several detective novels, and the moment I closed the book, I suddenly felt ashamed to stand naked in the crowd).In this way (also unconsciously), I started to read with a method I call "continuous reading"-every time I am about to finish a book (the palm of the hand holding the book can feel As the pages get lighter and lighter towards the back cover] I would naturally search or recall some questions throughout the book that seemed to me rather puzzling, and try to distract (i.e. use another area of ​​the brain) Cells) to analyze, speculate and judge: what other book will the answer to this question be hidden in? Every time I skip the end of the book in my hand, I already have a well-thought-out plan and know where to find the next one. This intimate game is interesting because it can be played forever; and it is no longer scattered and broken from one book to another, although it still has However, it is much more interesting than lying on the bed in the dormitory like a mouse and catching what is what. Once "connected reading" becomes a long-standing habit, every time I go to the bookstore, the purpose is no longer to buy , but there are corners that are wider, more complex, and more capable of accommodating my escape, hiding, and feeling of disappearing.

Now I can relate what happened in the bookstore.It was a place called "Sanmin Publishing House", located somewhere in a multi-story building on the east side of Section 1 of Chongqing South Road in Taipei City.I stood in front of a row of bookshelves sitting north on the second floor and flipped through a book titled "An Outline of Qimen Dunjia".The reason why I read this book is because I just read another martial arts novel called "Thunder in the Seven Seas", which mentioned this "Qimen Dunjia". If I hadn't read this "Summary", I would only understand Qimen Dunjia literally, thinking that it was a heretical martial art.After reading it, I realized that it is actually a kind of divination.Just like many mystical and prophecy studies in ancient China, the origin is set in Hetu Luoshu and Jiugong Bagua, which are similar to some fortune-telling books I have read such as Ziwei Doushu and Xingmen Gongshen.I casually flipped through a hundred or two pages, but I didn't find anything novel, and I even sniggered twice because of the poor typesetting printing and several obvious typos.I was about to put the book back on the shelf and start a new game of connecting reading, when suddenly a deep voice came from behind——

"Wait! Young man, what is your attitude?" It was an old--and a very old fellow, you might say.On his head was a wool cap that looked like cow dung, but there was no trace of hair on his temples, so he couldn't tell if he was bald.But his eyebrows are all white, and they are that kind of silvery white, as if each one has been brushed with a brush.The root of the nose is bulged between the eyebrows, the straight bridge is straight down, and there is a nose with a slightly pink luster hanging down, which is called hanging gallbladder.There are two tufts of white beards at the bottom, with the tips of the beards raised upwards, as if to meet the two eyebrows hanging down from above.The old man spoke very rudely, but there was a slight smile on his face.For a moment, I didn't think he was talking to me, but the smile on that old face was clearly directed at me.Looking back now, there must have been such a brief second and a half that I would have thought he was an old pervert who ran out from the new park across the street to catch Brother Rabbit.Anyway, I ignored him and continued to look for a random book on the bookshelf to read.

"Little brother, are you a fast reader?" The old man didn't relax, and continued: "But if you don't read the last chapter, what knowledge can you gain?" I really wanted to say to him: "I don't know what to do with your old ass!" But then I thought: This person deliberately strikes up a conversation, and if he replies, he can't stop talking.Immediately, he turned around and walked behind the pillar next to him.Unexpectedly, the old man appeared in front of me again, and said: "Just now, at the back of that book, there is an article "The General Preface of Qimen Dunjia" written by Liu Bowen in the Ming Dynasty; you scoff at it before you read it, don't you think it's a bit reckless? How many are there?" At this point, I can almost conclude that the old guy is a lunatic, if not a pervert.In such a big room of strangers, if you teach an old madman to hang around for no reason, even if you are right, who can you tell it to?I was secretly anxious when the old guy suddenly said again: "Before this "Summary of Qimen Dunjia", you read "Seven Seas of Thunder". Before that, you read "Secret Society Presidents Since the Early Republic of China". Spectrum". Before that, it was "The History of Shanghai Small Knife Society and the Study of Hongmen's Secret Book". Before that, it was "Medical Skills, Medicine and Medical Way of Tiandihui". Before, it was "Food Virtue and Painting". Am I right?" If you want to ask me how I felt at that time, I can only tell you with trembling teeth: "It's horrible!" It's horrible.Someone has been paying attention to you, observing you without anyone knowing, and can go back step by step, recording a starting point, a source that at least seems like a birth certificate-if you insist When I describe this horrible feeling, I can only use an analogy: as if a mouse bumped into a cat that could tell it where the mouse's nest was. "Wonderful! Wonderful!" The old guy actually said this: "You can read the writings of seven of my brothers in a short time, and you can be called a genius. It's a pity ——Ah! It's a pity that every book can't be completed, and I don't know if it's because the talents, knowledge and education of the seven brothers are not enough to show others? Or is it because the fate between you and us is not close enough?" I took out a business card from the inner pocket of the flannel suit jacket and handed it to me, and then asked, "May I ask you a question, brother: When is your birthday?" It was definitely because the feeling of horror was too overwhelming, I told him without even thinking: "May tenth of the lunar calendar in the forty-sixth year of the Republic of China—" Before I finished my words, the old guy shook his head violently: "Come on! Come on! Come on!" At this moment, I was looking down at the business card in my hand with densely printed titles - those titles included "China Director of Fortune Association", "Vice Chairman of Chinese Numerology Research Society", "Honorary Supervisor of Asian Society of Heaven and Man", "Consultant of World Astrology and Divination Promotion Association"... and so on. three words.I raised my head again, and saw Zhiji holding the woolen cap on the top with both hands, and then gave me a fist (it was the word "Ming" that I just read from a study of some Hongmen secret book not long ago. Xingshi) said: "We will meet later. Definitely." At this moment, I suddenly thought: Isn't the author of the "Summary of Qimen Dunjiashu" just now Zhijizi?Immediately, he involuntarily turned around and glanced at the bookshelf on the north side, and in a split second, where is Zhijizi? It would be an exaggeration to keep this peculiar experience of insignificant importance a secret, but I have never spoken of it publicly.There is only one person with whom I have shared this experience: the historical novelist Gao Yang.At that time, I had no reason to enter the field of fiction. I had published some works, won several awards, and published a book or two.By chance, I took the place of a friend who had no resources to spare and participated in the "Writers and Readers Traveling to Japan Together" tour group organized by a certain literary magazine.My friend was selected as a long-term subscriber of the magazine, and became a lucky reader who could travel with the writer.It's a pity that she was busy getting engaged, so she gave up the spot to me.In other words: Although I am a writer, in the tour group, I am actually just a lucky reader—or even a substitute for a lucky reader.That's fine, and fits well with my mouse-like habit of keeping a low profile.However, the organizer deliberately introduced me to Gao Yang, the writer representative in the tour group (probably out of a kind of flattering good intentions). Responsible for waking Gao Yang up every morning.Gao Yang has a bad temper, and he might get stared at by casual magazine editors or readers telling him to wake up.Since I have the status of a fellow writer, I should not be able to take his lead;Unexpectedly, during that seven-day and six-night trip, Gao Yang and I actually made a friendship between teachers and friends.The reason for this is of course related to the matter of knowing the machine. In short, Gao Yang was writing a serial novel for a certain newspaper at the time, and he had to pass the manuscript back to Taiwan day by day during the trip, so we had the opportunity (on the long-distance bus) to discuss the research he was doing at the time, and to share it with him at any time. The entered manuscripts are Yin Yang and Five Elements, Feng Shui and Numerology.One day, I suddenly mentioned the name Zhijizi.Because I still remember: In his book, he talked about the restraint of stars and stars, and there was a saying that "the sky is soaring, the carp climbs the tree, the white tiger comes out of the mountain, and the monks gather in groups". , or it may even be the wrong planting of "increasing groups".Gao Yang was shocked when he heard the words, and said: "No, no, no! You got it wrong. "Monks in groups" is definitely not a mistaken planting, in fact, there is another allusion." But he didn't explain the source of the other allusion, but diverged The topic asked me: "Why do you read Zhijizi's books?" So I told the truth about what happened that day.Unexpectedly, Gao Yang immediately clapped his palms and punched his fists, and sighed repeatedly: "What a pity! What a pity!" Then he fell silent, and I didn't dare to say more, so I could only accompany him with a dejected look, eating weird sushi from Beijing cuisine frequently thing. A few years later, Gao Yang was admitted to the hospital due to lung disease, and I went to visit him.But seeing his haggard face and claws, like a living skull.But on the sick bed, he still forced himself to be relieved, talking about his fortune, saying that he "still has thirty years of life to squander, and he will say whether to stay or not after another sixty years."Just talking about this, Gao Yang's eyes suddenly lit up, and said: "Zhao Taichu, did you meet later?" "Who?" I was stunned for a moment, and I thought Gao Yang was already dying and in a coma. "Didn't he say that he will meet you later?" "Who?" I asked again. "Wow, Zhao Taichu, Wuxiang God's divination machine! Didn't you see it in that bookstore?" Gao Yang showed a very obvious impatient expression, and then said: "There is a strange case on the seven of their sworn brothers. I I have inquired about it for decades, but I know one or two, and there are still many reasons why I can't tell. If you see Zhao Taichu next time, tell him: Gao Yang wants to have a good talk with him." I have to retreat.On June 6th of that year, Gao Yang passed away.On July 13th, I received a package from the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine that hosted the Japanese tour group.The editor-in-chief told me: "Gao Yang said: If he can get out of the hospital, he will pay him back; if he can't, he will hand it over to you." The package contained seven books and a stack of half-photocopied, half-handwritten manuscripts.Facing the seven books that I have "watched", I was not surprised at all, as if Gao Yang had already announced to me that he and I met and knew each other a few years ago at a restaurant in Kyoto. It is closely related to these seven books.What really surprised me is that the title page of each book, and even the blank space of almost every page, are densely packed with textual details about the things described in the book.The one that impressed me most was inscribed on the back cover of "Thunder in the Seven Seas": "Only a superficial person can regard this book as a work of martial arts." , I still read "Thunder in the Seven Seas" as a martial arts novel. As for other books; for example, "Chen Xiumei", the author of "The History of the Small Knife Society of Shanghai and the Research on the Secret Version of Hongmen", drew a big "X" on the three characters, and changed it to these three sentences: "This book is true. For Qian Gongjing’s private education, he poured his money into teaching his apprentices, and it is because of his selfishness.” The author of “Secret Society Since the Early Republic of China” also drew a big “X” on the three characters “Tao Daiwen” ", another note next to it said: "This is also the work of Li Shouwu. Li Daitao is stiff, and Fangtuo's surname is "Tao". The former Shu Xue Zhaoyun's <Xiaozhongshan> poem: "Dancing clothes with red ribbons" shows that the belt is the ribbon. Yiwu Congwen, Gu Hide your aspirations; don't feel sorry for your husband!" In addition, on the covers of "Tiandihui's Medical Skills, Medicine and Medical Way" and "Food Virtue and Painting", five big characters "this is a true novel" were written.And on the cover of "Fang Fengwu, a wonderful painting of a genius doctor", there are three small characters written in vermilion brush: "to be examined in detail".The most inexplicable thing is that there is such a passage written on the butterfly page of the "Summary of Qimen Dunjiashu": Everything has an appearance and an inside, and everything has death and life.The exterior escapes from the inside, the interior escapes from the exterior; the dead escapes from life, and the living escapes from death.It is the epitome of the book, Huanghuang almost uniquely developed the unique technique, knew the book when he saw it, and enlightened him; however, she suspects that this book is not about life and death, but has another escape.I am afraid that it is actually the secret code calendar for the Wan family's disciples to coordinate and contact. The word "Wan's" in this passage immediately caught my attention—by coincidence, the author of "Fairy Doctor and Wonderful Painting Fang Fengwu" is surnamed Wan, named Yanfang, styled Zhengxuan, and nicknamed Zhuying Diaosou.What's more interesting: I immediately thought of this name mentioned in many biographies or anecdotal legends I read: a gangster who was once rich and powerful.According to legend, he was assassinated decades ago, and no one knew what happened, and no one dared to investigate it. However, I gradually found some clues from the eyebrow comments on the seven books Gao Yang left me, and the six-inch-high manuscript. Is it a set that forces a person like me?The clues that people who dare not approach the end of reading have to face, led my curiosity with a strong sense of escape into worlds that I never knew existed around me. Unexpectedly, these magical, supernatural, and violent worlds-whether we call them rivers and lakes, martial arts or underworld-are unknown or unknown because they are too real for the sake. Only a rat like me understands that such a world is a reflection of our lost selves.