That Dropped Chinese Novel’s Useless Me Says No to the System

Chapter 119 Think Inside the Box

The courtyard was empty, moonlight spilling across the ground and making the gravel path glare white. The wooden automatons were nowhere to be seen. The water bucket lay on its side, the well mouth was bare, and not a drop of water had been drawn.

A wave of panic rose in my chest. I hurried toward the room where Senior An usually received guests, pushed the door open, and called out, “Senior An? Senior An!”

No response.

Only a single silver box sat on the table, lonely and cold under the moonlight, gleaming faintly like an eye fixed on me without blinking.

My scalp tingled. I turned to Hua. “What do we do? Senior An… he can’t be in trouble, can he?”

Hua came over and bent down to inspect the box, his brows knotting together tightly. He shook his head and was about to speak when a sudden pressure slammed into my chest. A wave of dizziness washed over me.

The world flipped upside down. It felt as though countless unseen hands were dragging at my ears, and the room blurred in front of me.

I struggled to lift my head. A silhouette appeared instead—someone was walking slowly toward us from outside the courtyard. Against the moonlight, his shadow stretched long across the ground. I couldn’t see his face, only those steady, deliberate steps, as though he were stepping out of a dream.

I tried to shout, but no sound left my throat.

“Who… is it?” That was my final thought.

Then everything spun. Darkness swallowed all. It felt like a cold hand pressed me down into the depths of water.

When I woke, a ringing filled my skull. My chest was weighed down as if by a thousand catties. The wind howled around me, and somewhere close by came the sound of running water. I pushed myself up with effort—and saw a bridge.

The river beneath it had dried long ago. Cracked mud stretched in jagged lines, abandoned and lifeless. The bridge was weathered and blotched with age; weeds sprouted from the crevices, swaying in the wind.

A chill crept through me. I was inside the silver box again.

Just moments ago I had been in Senior An’s courtyard. The box had been sitting on the table. Hua had opened his mouth to say something—and then everything went black. How had I ended up somewhere this desolate the moment I opened my eyes?

I raised a hand to my forehead. My palm felt cold. Before I could gather my thoughts, a voice drifted from the bridge above, lazy and teasing.

“Little Gong, you’re awake?”

I snapped my head up. Hua was leaning over the railing, the moonlight falling across his face. His expression looked cheerful at first glance, yet something in it made the back of my neck prickle.

“Hua?” I murmured.

“Who else?” He arched a brow. “Looks like we’ve really fallen into the silver box’s world again. We’re back.”

My chest tightened. I scrambled to my feet, brushed the dust off my clothes, and asked urgently, “But how did we get here this time? We didn’t drink that tea, didn’t light any incense. How did we just—”

I broke off. A feeling of unease was already rising.

Hua shrugged with open palms, smiling. “No idea. But if that red-robed person is really Lian, then this time we might finally get some answers.”

I stared at him, half convinced, half doubtful. If this was an illusion, it felt far more like someone was guiding us here on purpose.

We followed the path off the bridge, and the outlines of the marketplace gradually emerged.

I was just about to speak when something caught my eye. I froze.

A figure draped in red was moving through the market. His steps were light, almost buoyant, yet there was a faint confusion in his movements. His expression—familiar, painfully so—carried a strangeness that made my heart tighten.

“Lian,” I breathed.

But the man only tilted his head slightly, as if puzzled, as if he didn’t truly recognize me.

A jolt went through me. Doubt crept in. Was this really him? Or some echo crafted in his likeness?

Before I could stop myself, I rushed forward, half stumbling, half reaching toward him. Lian was caught off guard. A flush rose swiftly across his cheeks, his posture shrinking inward like a shy bride startled on her wedding night.

A wicked impulse stirred. My fingers brushed against him lightly. His body jolted. I suppressed a grin and reached lower. My hand touched something cool and smooth. I pulled it out—it was the purple jade I knew so well.

I stared for a heartbeat. Relief surged through me.

It was him. Without a doubt.

“You two…” He blinked, as though trying hard to recall something but failing each time. After a long pause, he managed, “I feel like we’ve met.”

Hua and I exchanged a glance. The unease between us was unmistakable. Whether this truly was him, we had no way to know yet. But refusing the opening would only cut us off further.

I braced myself and introduced myself again, giving a brief account of what had led us here. Hua embellished the tale extravagantly, painting us as his long-lost old friends.

But Lian only gave a soft nod. His face remained calm—neither surprised nor particularly close to us—as if we had no deep connection at all.

The air grew heavy. I finally ventured, “What are you looking for?”

Lian thought for a moment, his gaze stubborn and unyielding. “I keep feeling that two spots on this street look familiar. But no matter how I try, I can’t remember why. If I walk it a few more times, maybe I could…”

He didn’t finish. He simply turned and started forward.

I stared after his back, an odd taste rising at the bottom of my chest.

We followed him for half the day. Lian kept looping through the same streets, stopping the longest at two places in particular—a bookshop and a tavern.

I paused at the corner and studied the scene. Something felt off.

“Hm… this setup…” I murmured. “Why does it look more and more like the layout outside in Heling City?”

Hua leaned in, his mouth quirking. “You noticed too? The two places Lian keeps circling—one’s a bookshop, the other’s an eatery. But look closely: the arrangement is reversed from the outside.”

“Reversed?” A thought clicked sharply in my mind.

“Outside, Spring-Come Inn is packed wall to wall with tables and chairs, loud and bustling. The bookshop, on the other hand, has scrolls tossed everywhere, hardly anywhere to sit.” Hua lowered his voice. “But in this silver-box world, the bookshop looks more like a teahouse—tables neatly lined up, scrolls spread cleanly on the desks as if meant for browsing. As for the tavern, it’s down to two or three lonely tables, utterly deserted. More like the bookshop outside.”

Understanding hit me, cold and sudden.

“No wonder it felt familiar… so that’s it.”

But what made my scalp prickle wasn’t the furniture.

Behind the counter of the bookshop stood a chubby, pale-faced middle-aged man, smiling obsequiously, flanked by several eager shop boys. He looked exactly like the proprietor of Spring-Come Inn outside.

And in the deserted tavern, the only people inside were a sober-faced middle-aged man in a plain blue robe and a lone assistant—both of them unmistakably the owner and clerk of the bookshop from the real Heling City.

The world looked flipped. People and settings had been swapped, everything inverted. The more I compared, the colder my gut became.

I stiffened, about to speak, but Hua had already narrowed his eyes. His voice dropped. “Gong, have you considered this… The silver box was a treasure we found in the tomb. Logically, it should reflect something from the tomb’s past. Yet the moment we step inside, we see Heling City.”

His gaze settled on Lian’s back ahead of us, his voice almost a whisper. “This isn’t a simple misplacement. It’s a kind of… reflection. Inside and outside exchanged, lining up piece by piece. Even the people may have had their temperaments swapped.”

A dull roar went off in my chest, like being struck hard beneath the ribs.

Lian kept walking with that same dogged persistence, pacing between the two locations again and again, as if trying to stitch together whatever memories he’d lost. There was something lonely about his silhouette, something that pulled faintly at me.

My fingers curled without thinking. Only one thought formed clearly:

This world inside the silver box is no mere illusion. It feels like a mirror—warped, inverted—and what it reflects is the truth outside, shown in another shape.