Mystery of the Letter

To the naked eye, all of it appeared as a big joke. The first time he received the letter was when he was just a high school kid. He didn't have as much power and money as now.

At first, he thought it was another hacker who tracked him, which was still shocking considering that there weren't many on his level. Better than him? He wasn't aware of anyone. However, he underestimated how profound was the letter.

Only three years ago when his company became a tech giant, he examined the paper with the best technology available. The paper held a shocking truth!

It consisted of every element of the periodic table, and that was not the end. There was something that went beyond. He didn't fully understand it! He tried countless times to track down the sender, but there was not a single hint left.

He had many hacking identities on the Internet; all of them were legendary. No one related him to any of his aliases, and the sender casually wrote five of them! It was as if he couldn't hold any secret in front of that mysterious person.

What was his goal? Who was he?

Li Lang even suspected he was an alien from another planet! The technology used in the letter was apparently on the higher level that was known to Earth. On the Internet he was like an unstoppable machine gun, conquering everything with ease, but in front of this letter, he was hopeless for the past nine years.

At this point, the letter became his biggest obsession in life. It was also the main reason why his company developed so fast. All the technology he invented was for this letter. He didn't care about money nor fame. Only things that could arouse his curiosity were important.

"If I could exchange the secret of this letter for my company, I wouldn't blink twice," thought Li Lang to himself.

In the blink of an eye, fourteen days passed. Li Lang was leisurely lying on the grass in the local park, observing the movement of clouds. If someone noticed him right now, they might think that in front of them was a homeless person, not a billionaire.

Last time he ate? Three days ago.

Last time he slept? Forty hours ago.

Shower? Before he came here, one week ago.

Working in the lab was pointless; what he needed right now was a spark of inspiration. He had a thesis that this white sheet of paper was a device. In the past, when thirty-three days deadline had passed, the structure of the paper entirely changed, and it became just a simple sheet of paper, without a single trace of it ever being unique.

"There should be some mechanism inside it that triggers the change, or maybe some external force manipulates it. It's so advanced to the point that it feels like magic," thought Li Lang.

That thought pierced through his mind as a clap of thunder.

"Maybe that's my problem? I'm trying to solve it using typical scientific methods. What if it's the same as with objects and atoms? Each of them has its logic. Newton's Laws don't work at the atomic level, and atomic laws don't apply to objects. Maybe this device is similar? Do I need another kind of law to solve it?" Li Lang had a feeling that this way of thinking was the correct one.

He needed to look at the problem from a different perspective. His first thought was quite an absurd one. Is it actually magic? Even though he was a scientist, he wasn't ignorant to the point of denying such a possibility. By his understanding, "magic" was a science of a soul. If this device requires the soul's power to solve it, how can he achieve it?

Time slowly passed. There were only two days left until the deadline. An odour of old books filled the room. Li Lang was lying casually on his sofa with the book in his hands, surrounded by thousands of books. Even though the room was quite spacious, it was still hard to move inside it. They were all sort of; new one and very old one too; there was even a four-hundred years old book.

It was probably the biggest collection of esoteric books ever collected. It was impossible to read all of them in such a short time, but Li Lang still decided to collect every single one of them. It couldn't hurt his finances anyway.

In the last two weeks, he was only reading. He started from stuff about meridians, through acupuncture and ended with some absurd theories about Reptilians and how they want to conquer the world through transforming and acting like humans. Reading them page by page would take way too much time. Instead, he used the method of selective reading, setting fifteen minutes per each book.

Even for him, it was still not enough time to selectively read them all, not to mention becoming an esoteric expert, but it was enough to create a general picture in his mind. Now it was practice time! He sat down, crossed-legs with his spine straight.

"Oh, God! It hurts" thought Li Lang; his body was slightly trembling.

He had always treated training a body as a waste of time, and now he started regretting it! It was tough for him to keep his spine straight for a long time, but he didn't give up. He decided he will use every possible method to solve this mystery!

"The next step is to feel the energy inside my body. There are seven main chakras, according to one of the books I read. They are located in Astral Plane and serve as main energetic places, but it's possible to feel their sensations in the body." recalled Li Lang, lightly frowning.

Just after a few minutes of trying to feel them, he noticed that something was happening inside his body. Warmth filled the places he focused on. In some areas, there was a little bit of resistance as if the energy was stuck there, but it didn't affect much the pleasant feeling. He still wasn't sure if it was real. He thought about a placebo effect, the human brain was a tricky beast, but at this moment, it was not significant, the feeling was just too excellent.

His mind drifted away.

His thoughts and emotions started slowly separating from himself. They were just as a train leaving the station.

As time passed by, they were farther and farther away, until they just disappeared in the horizon.

The pleasant feeling quickly transformed into a rapture, filling every cell in his body. His awareness became crystal clear. The letter in his hand started resonating.

The pressure surrounding him felt as if all-stars in the universe were going to collapse. His body was getting warmer and warmer, just as steel slammed by a thousand meters big hammer over and over again.

All of his veins couldn't hold it; they were burning!

The delight was too overwhelming!

Then his body violently trembled and…shattered!

In the place where Li Lang was sitting, only remained a vast pool of blood.

Just as that Li Lang died!