Ma Qianle's second awakening after the incident by the lakeside was, physically speaking at least, considerably less pleasant than the first one. His chest ached fiercely, and there was a sharp antiseptic scent that made him want to sneeze.  An assortment of tubes and wires connected him to various beeping monitors and an oxygen cannula lay beneath his nose. 'A hospital room,' he thought. "So I really am alive.'

The room was fairly private and softly but clearly lit.  Light filtered in from between the slats of the blinds; from the angle and color, it was either not long after sunrise or getting on towards sunset.  Much of the space in the room was taken up by medical equipment, but there was also a tall cabinet on one wall, a rolling table that could be moved to hang over the bed, and a pair of comfortable chairs. A young man in his early 20s sat in one of the chairs, playing a game on his phone.

As Ma Qianle shifted in the bed, the young man looked up.  Seeing that Ma Qianle was awake, he hurriedly set his phone aside and rushed over to the bedside.

"What the hell Ma Qianle!" he exclaimed.  "If you weren't feeling well you should have said something! Nobody would have been upset if you didn't show up or left early! We've been taking turns here, we're all worried sick. Ge is blaming himself, you know!"

Ma Qianle winced at the youth's sudden outburst. It was just like Xie Hongmu to blame himself, just because he'd been the one to organize the party. "Xie Hongya," he croaked, his voice rasping as though he hadn't used it in years. "How long was I out?"

"Almost a day," Xie Hongya replied, frowning at his friend's seeming lack of concern for everyone else's concern. "The party was last night and it's just about sunset now.  How are you feeling?"

"Awful, what do you expect?"  Ma Qianle coughed as the effort of speaking tickled his throat.  'Like shit' was honestly probably a bit of an understatement. Aside from the ache in his chest, his limbs felt heavy and he had barely any energy.  The light, though not bright, glared in his eyes, and every little sound echoed in his head as if right next to his ears.

"What happened, Ma Qianle?  You said you wanted some air and went to sit by the lake, and the next thing we all knew there was a splash and you were passed out in the water."

"I was talking to someone.  He was wearing the sort of old fashioned robes you see in dramas.  I thought he was one of your reenactor friends, but…" '...but what?  It turns out he was actually the heavenly appointed guardian spirit of the city? Nobody is going to believe that!  I'm not even sure I believe that!'  "Anyway, we were chatting. We introduced ourselves and then I started to feel super dizzy.  You know what happened after that.  Honestly, I felt fine up until then, I swear.  Right, did he say anything to you guys?"

Xie Hongya's forehead creased as his frown deepened. "There was nobody there, Ma Qianle. I don't know who you're talking about."

'That motherfucker just walked away and left me to drown?!'  "No way, I was talking to him when I passed out.  He really wasn't nearby?" Ma Qianle asked, but he was pretty sure he knew what the answer was going to be.

As expected, Xie Hongya shook his head. "There really wasn't anybody anywhere nearby at all, we checked cause we were afraid somebody pushed you in.  Are you sure you were feeling ok?"

"Hmm," Ma Qianle hummed distractedly.  He was questioning the strange experiences he'd had more and more.  Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. 'The tablet!'

"Hey Xie Hongya, where's my stuff?" Ma Qianle asked, looking around the room.  He didn't see any of his belongings anywhere.

"Hmm? Oh, it's in the cabinet, let me get it for you."  Xie Hongya moved over to the cabinet and retrieved a plastic bag with a few items in it and placed it on the rolling table so Ma Qianle could look through it.  'Phone, wallet, keys...no mysterious wooden tablet.'  Ma Qianle frowned, wondering more and more if he had just had an extremely strange dream.

Xie Hongya grimaced, misunderstanding the reason for the frown.  "Your clothes got pretty wrecked by the paramedics.  I think your phone is probably dead too. If you let me take your keys, I can grab you some fresh clothes at least?"

Ma Qianle nodded distractedly, mind elsewhere.  He was about to ask if maybe they had seen anything else around, but before he could speak a nurse entered the room.

"Alright you two, visiting hours are almost over and your friend needs to rest," she said, mostly addressing Xie Hongya.  "Go on and let the rest of your friends know he's awake."  Her manner was direct and professional, but not unfriendly. She turned to Ma Qianle.  "Now that you're awake, the doctor will be by to do another exam and ask you a few questions in a little while."  As the nurse moved around the room marking down numbers from various monitors and drawing a vial of blood from one of the tubes in Ma Qianle's arm, the two said their farewells and Xie Hongya promised to return the next day.  Finally, the two of them left, and Ma Qianle was left alone in the room.

Had the strange things he experienced been real, or all some strange fever dream brought on by nearly drowning?  His friends hadn't seen Ruan Ye, but what did that mean?  If he really was some sort of spirit, it stood to reason that he could have used some sort of magic to leave or simply make himself invisible, but it was also perfectly plausible that he had never existed in the first place. Ma Qianle honestly wasn't sure which option he'd prefer, at the moment.

As for the strange waiting room and the meeting with Lei Guanting, he was even more puzzled.  He couldn't imagine having come up with the bizarre mix of architecture and interior design the room employed, but at the same time it wouldn't be the weirdest thing he had seen in a dream.  The strangest thing about the whole meeting was that he had simply accepted everything he had been told at face value, never questioning if it had been real until after the fact. Again, if it had been a dream that made sense, but what if it hadn't been?  And if it indeed was real, what did it mean for his life what he was now a mortal agent of hell?  And where had the tablet gone?

Ma Qianle wasn't left to stew in his thoughts for long, for, true to the nurse's word, the doctor appeared not long after Xie Hongya left. She was a motherly looking woman getting on towards middle age, and her nametag read Dr Chen.  She performed a few tests to check Ma Qianle's reactions and physical ability, and then asked what happened before he fell into the lake. He told the story again, this time leaving out Ruan Ye's presence.  After Xie Hongya's reaction, he figured that they'd already reported there was nobody nearby, and didn't want more people thinking he'd been hallucinating on top of everything else.

"Well, so far you seem to be recovering quite well considering the state you were in when the paramedics arrived on the scene," Dr Chen said, consulting some charts on a tablet pc she carried with her. "So far as we've been able to tell, you passed out due to severe dehydration, but there's nothing that suggests why you were unconscious for as long as you were. If your numbers continue to improve, we'll be able to transfer you to a general ward tomorrow, but we'd like to keep you in the hospital for a few more days to run some more tests and make sure there's nothing we're missing."

Ma Qianle assented to the doctor's proposal and answered a few more questions about how he was feeling. Dr. Chen listened thoughtfully and made some adjustments to his medications on her tablet.  "Don't worry too much about your current state. We haven't found anything worrying so far, and if there is anything troubling the tests we're doing will catch it.  Your job is just to focus on recovering."  With this, she gave a light pat on Ma Qianle's shoulder and left the room, dimming the lights as she went.  At last, Ma Qianle was left alone with his thoughts.

~~~~~~~~

Just as Lei Guanting had predicted, Ma Qianle was released from the hospital on the fifth day after his accident.  He was subjected to various scans and tests that all found absolutely nothing wrong that wasn't expected from someone who had survived a near drowning.  In between, various friends came by when they were free and kept him company.  Eventually, he was discharged with a sack of pills and instructions to return if he developed a fever or shortness of breath.

Ma Qianle slowly sank back into his regular life, never forgetting the strange things that happened before he woke up in the hospital. He never did find the wooden tablet he'd marked with his thumbprint, even after trying several outlandish ways of making it appear that he came up with after thinking about fantasy books he'd read. After taking a couple of weeks off to recover, he returned to his job as an electrical engineer and soon had no time to worry about something that may or may not have happened.

Months passed. As time stretched on with no sign of either a trainer from hell (literally) or Ruan Ye, Ma Qianle had almost convinced himself that it was really just a bizarre dream.  If not for one small part of him that was sure, absolutely certain that it had all been real, he'd have forgotten entirely about it.

One friday, while enjoying a beer after dinner following a long week at work, there came a knock at his front door.  Assuming it was one of his neighbors, since nobody else would have been able to get into the building, he went to open it.

The woman standing there in the hallway was definitely not one of his neighbors.  She was tall and athletic looking, and dressed in martial attire.  A rich yellow sleeveless robe that fell to just above the knees was belted at the waist, and beneath it were pants and an under robe of pale jade green that tucked into boots and armguards of black leather.  Her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, and the...yes, that was in fact the hilt of a sword, peeked over her shoulder.  She looked Ma Qianle up and down once, then grinned broadly.

"Hey kid," she said.  "Ready for some training?"