《Watching the Waves at Night》

It is already three-quarters past midnight, suddenly, my long-dormant phone 📱 vibrates, and countless messages emerge in the dim light, as if schools of fish have awakened from a deep pool. Is $BTC breaking 100,000 again?!!!

"It has risen again! It has risen again!" Countless exclamation marks bounce on the glass screen, resembling the paper scraps scattered by firecrackers during the New Year. Those things called "big cakes" and "Ether" now seem more formidable than Guan Yu on the stage, the red face has broken through the ten-thousand barrier, and the green dragon knife has split two thousand silver armors. With each increment in the number, new smoke signals rise in the group, more raucous than the onlookers at a beheading in the Qing Dynasty.

I sit alone in front of the computer typing words, watching the numbers rise and fall like tides. Drawing some talisman-like curves in the void could drive thousands mad. This madness is tinged with a sinister joy, akin to the phosphorescence of wild grave mounds, where every flicker reveals scenes of devouring.

Some shout to pawn their ancestral homes, while others cry out to mortgage their wives and children. The red and green numbers in their eyes clearly resemble the ledger of life and death in the underworld. But who remembers how many people hung themselves on the nooses of soaring highs and crashing lows this time last year? The grass on the gravehead must be three feet tall by now.

I rise to turn on the light, casting a huge shadow on the wall—sometimes the shadow resembles a greedy Pi Xiu, and sometimes it looks like a frightened monkey. The numbers continue to surge, but the lamp oil will eventually run out. When dawn breaks in the east, I wonder where this screen full of revelry will turn into the wails of desolate graves.