Book 1 - What Is A Genius - Chapter 2 - Fortuitous Encounter Inside The Lake

The color of the radiance was strange; He Yiming, in the end, couldn’t even name this color.
He Yiming faintly opened his mouth and tried to shout, however, no sound came out. He reached out with his hand and tried to touch the radiance but then realized that he was too far away from it.
He didn’t know why, but he suddenly had an urge; he wanted to touch these light rays. He had to touch regardless of anything.
This was a shout coming from his instinct. Although he hadn’t shouted with his mouth, in his mind, he was repeatedly shouting that he must touch this beam of light.
He Yiming took a step forward; one of his legs entered the lake, and the night’s ice-cold water soaked his lower garments, taking away all of his leg’s heat. If it had happened in ordinary times, he would have already cried out in fear and jumped back by now. However, the current him, as if being unable to perceive, stepped his other foot inside the lake as well.
In his trance-like state, he didn’t even realize that both his feet had already entered the water. Subsequently, his entire being slowly entered the water.
A bizarre coloring was faintly discernible on the surface of the lake. He Yiming slowly moved downwards and arrived at the core of the lake.
It was only a small lake. The fishes, that were previously inside it, had immediately dispersed after seeing the bizarre-colored radiance. He Yiming was alone as he slowly swam towards that bizarre colored patch in the water.
He Yiming had gained all of his swimming abilities in this lake. Since his childhood, he’d practiced here every summer; his swimming abilities were pretty much self-taught. Although they were not top-notch, making this distance was not a problem.
Slowly but surely, He Yiming approached the bizarre radiance.
The more he got closer to it, the more he could feel this thing’s intense attractive force. Just like a little boy in front of a candy, or a playboy in front of a naked woman, Hi Yiming was incapable of putting up any resistance in front of this radiance.
He lightly reached out with his hand to touch the radiance; so lightly as if he was holding a priceless treasure, as if he was holding onto his own life.
The radiance was forming a ball of light, which didn’t seem to have any mass. However, as He Yiming’s hands made contact with it, his mind was immediately filled with countless unimaginable images and sounds.
The first thing that appeared was a completely empty scenery. It was a complete vacuum. The only thing besides the vacuum was, the vacuum. And surprisingly, he himself also appeared as a kind of nothingness.
Free of all the anxieties, grievances, happiness; free of everything. He was like an unborn embryo inside a mother’s body. He was thoroughly experiencing the meaning of word ‘void’ for himself.
This was not just a spiritual nothingness but was rather…….the true void.
After an unknown period of time, an extremely small radiance appeared in the emptiness. Something akin to the first light ray of the sun was born out of this void.
However, this light ray didn’t have a smooth journey. After a momentary flicker, it died out, and the world was again plunged into an endless darkness.
The light ray appeared once again. The radiance illuminated everything and removed the darkness.
Subsequently, light appeared, disappeared; appeared, disappeared.
It was a cycle. And after every cycle, the radiance of the light was getting increasingly stronger. In the end, light prevailed over the darkness, releasing a huge burst of radiance which engulfed everything.
He Yiming’s spirit also seemed to have awakened at this moment. Like a spectator, He Yiming looked at this bizarre transformation in a daze. For him, who was not even a youngster, these transformations were completely indiscernible; the only thing he could discern out of this was that he’d come across an extremely serious stuff.
It seemed that the darkness was unable to obliterate the radiance after it had completely blossomed. However, the darkness had not disappeared at all, instead, it was closely tangled alongside the light. Ultimately, the two vastly opposite forces formed a bizarre appearance.
An image that seemed like the picture of Yin-Yang Eight Divination Diagrams appeared inside He Yiming’s mind. The thing to notice was that the two extremes, the Ying and Yang, were continuously spinning at the center. It seemed as if this spinning center wanted to engulf everything inside it.
Apparently a loud explosion occurred inside He Yiming’s brain, and his spirit was irresistibly sucked into the explosion.
The continuously spinning center of the two extremes, the Yin and Yang, faintly emitted out many inconceivable pictures, which continuously flickered in He Yiming’s mind.
At this moment, He Yiming seemed to have flown off high above in the air. Standing at a height of tens of thousands of meters, he was experiencing the sun’s scorching fury and also the swift and fierce gigantic astral winds. He seemed to have arrived in the deep sea. He saw the inconceivably beautiful sight of the sea bed and also felt the fright of hundreds of meters high, gigantic, and intensely turbulent tidal waves.
While he was dumbfounded, he suddenly arrived in the deepest parts of the earth’s crust. There, he saw all kinds of bizarre ores, moreover, he seemed to know every ore he saw like the palm of his hand. The very next moment, he had directly entered the earth’s core. That red floating liquid capable of melting everything almost caused his spirit to disperse away.
His vision blurred and he left the eternal and unforgettable world of earth’s core that was beautiful yet frightening. He found himself in a canyon. He raised his head and saw an infinite stretch of boundlessly high summits. Standing below a summit, he seemed as minute as a speck of dust.
In a flash, his figure had been raised high above in the air. The whole world seemed under his feet.
This was a beautiful world filled with countless exotic flowers and rare grasses. Originally, the forest was brimming with life. He suddenly felt as if the life force of the whole world had begun to leak away. Suddenly a white mist began to spread in the every corner of this word at an extremely fast rate. Nearly in a split second, everything in the world turned still, and the whole world froze over. He could see the beautiful flowers that had turned completely still due to being frozen over, and seeming like an ice sculpture made by an expert artisan.
He Yiming was extremely shocked. If there was even a little bit of possibility, he would have pulled himself back from this world long ago. However, at this moment, as if not being in control of his body at all, he was powerless to leave this world.
For the current him, even his spirit and consciousness seemed incapable of moving due to being frozen inside this world.
Suddenly, a gigantic clap of thunder echoed in the sky.
The completely white world suddenly started to darken. Gigantic thunderbolts of unimaginable size began to flash everywhere in the sky. These thunderbolts seemed boundless and inexhaustible.
Thick lightning, while streaking through the sky, arrived over the frozen world and exploded. Everything turned into a pile of debris.
Gigantic thunderbolts were fluttering in the sky, and in accordance with them, He Yiming’s spirit and soul were also shuddering.
Eventually, after a huge thunderbolt struck at his front, He Yiming saw a ray of light suddenly appearing in front of him.
This was the most primitive ray of light, which consisted the most basic source of energy inside it.
He Yiming extended his hand without the slightest hesitation. The light ray tightly tugged at the center of his hand. It seemed as if his body and mind had completely integrated with the light ray.
Everything in front of his eyes began to sway, and the entire world began to crack.
He Yiming suddenly shuddered once and regained the authority over his body again.
The cold air attacking every corner of his body reminded He Yiming that he was definitely not in a wonderful situation. He glanced at his surroundings and saw water all around him. Subsequently, he realized that he’d unwittingly entered the lake’s ice cold water.
He Yiming immediately began to panic. Although his physique was much stronger than that of his peers, he was, after all, only a thirteen-year-old child. One can’t expect him to not be frightened after he suddenly discovers himself surrounded by ice cold without having a single clue of how he ended up there.
Not only this, He Yiming still felt short of breath, as if his chest was a bomb that could explode anytime.
Perhaps due to a survival instinct, both of his hands began to stroke on its own, and his body began to rise upwards like a swimming fish.
He didn’t realize that his current swimming ability seemed to have completely transformed; as if he’d shed his mortal body and had been born anew. His arms were light and dexterous like that of an ape, however, in just a few strokes, he’d already reached the surface of the water directly from the bottom of the lake.
“Huff…”
His head emerged out on the lake’s surface, and he began to greedily suck in the fresh air. He was enjoying the air with a passion; it was a feeling that only a recently drowned person could understand. It seemed as if he wanted to breathe a lifetime of air within a time span of a single day.
He Yiming reached the shore after a short duration. He set both of his hands on the edge of the shore and nimbly jumped onto the shore.
His heart was filled with fear as he turned around and looked at the gloomy lake. In his memory, all he remembered was washing the clothes and seeing a bizarre light. Everything that occurred after that was fuzzy to him; all he knew was that he’d seen a lot of bizarre, vague, and inconceivable scenes.
Even though these scenes looked extremely real, he knew these were nothing more than delusions. Because if these scenes were real, he wouldn’t be standing here alive.
He glanced at his completely drenched clothes; drying them in a short while was not possible, moreover, this place was filled with strange things, thus, he was truly unwilling to stay here any longer.
He turned around and frantically sped off towards the He Family Estate on the other side. However, this lake had already imprinted a permanent shadow in his mind.