When Sheng Muxue returned to the Xie mansion, it was already dark. He hummed a tuneless little tune and stepped through the door, carrying two sticks of candied hailstones, a piece of zenggao rice cake, a small plate of peanuts, and a whole sweet and sour crucian carp.
As soon as he reached the entrance, he saw Xie Jinghong sitting in the night, watching him with an inscrutable expression.
Sheng Muxue still had a candied hailstone in his mouth. He spoke to Xie Jinghong with muffled, unclear speech: “Don’t worry, nobody suspects my identity.”
Xie Jinghong said, feeling frustrated by his lack of caution: “I shouldn’t have removed the restrictions on those spirit stones for you.” He added quickly: “Do not let this happen again.”
Sheng Muxue was too busy eating to bother replying. He simply waved his candied hailstones at Xie Jinghong and walked straight toward his room. Since the night was deep and there was no one else in the courtyard watching, he could not be bothered to keep up the act. He walked with the relaxed, dashing air of a young master.
This made Xie Jinghong wonder to himself: I hope I have not just invited an ancestor into my home.
Back in his room, Sheng Muxue was full and satisfied. He finally remembered the System, which was still in a coma.
The System had once said it relied on his soul to charge and replenish its energy, otherwise, it would power down from energy depletion. It would also power down if it overexerted itself. However, it had never explained how to charge it, only claiming that he was its wireless power bank. Since it was wireless and had been beside him charging for half the day, it should be ready to boot up, right?
Sheng Muxue took the jelly-like body of the System out of his storage bag. After tinkering with it for a long time, he found it was still in a powered off state. Could it be that it really would not wake up? Or was wireless charging just slow, requiring several more days?
A while later, the System seemed to have enough power to turn on. Its previously blank face displayed an “( )” expression, yet it remained motionless.
Was charging alone not enough? Did it need artificial respiration? Sheng Muxue could only think of this crude method. He leaned toward the portion of the System’s “( )” expression and planted a kiss on it.
Sheng Muxue had not held out much hope, but to his surprise, the System’s “( )” face instantly changed to a “(＾3＾)” face. It actually tried to kiss him back!
Sheng Muxue immediately gave it a resounding headbutt, knocking a large bump onto the System’s bald head.
“Ouch, wuwuwu,” the System wailed skillfully while clutching its head. “Big brother, why are you hitting me again?”
Sheng Muxue asked: “What exactly are you?”
The System did not understand the question immediately: “Huh?”
He did not know if he was being overly sensitive, but Sheng Muxue always felt that this System was eerily sentient, unlike the cold, emotionless systems that only issued tasks in the novels he used to read. Moreover, this System was not related to him, and he bullied it constantly, yet why was it so good to him, helping him at every turn? Clearly, its superior, the Main System, did not want him to succeed. Therefore, it definitely could not have been ordered by the Main System to help him.
After pondering for a while, Sheng Muxue asked again: “Why can my soul charge you?”
“Uh, this.” The System scratched its head with a chubby little hand. “I don’t know either.”
“Perhaps it is because I am the system assigned to guide you, so the Main System gave me a setting that requires me to rely on you.”
“But my mission has already failed, and you have left my original body. Why does our binding still exist?”
This question stumped the System. It took a full thirty seconds to react: “I don’t know.”
“Why do you know nothing?” Sheng Muxue was speechless.
If he called the System useless, it was sometimes quite helpful. If he called it useful, it was sometimes ignorant of everything.
“One last question,” Sheng Muxue asked. “How do you usually contact the Main System, or rather, how does it monitor you?”
“I don’t,” the System answered truthfully. “The Main System is just a concept to us. It is equivalent to a path of heaven that cannot be seen or touched, capable of changing the entire world.”
Well, it had suddenly become metaphysical. This forced Sheng Muxue, who had championed science for over twenty years, to lament: Physics no longer exists.
Lying in a strange bed in a strange room, Sheng Muxue slept very poorly that night. It seemed that ever since his rebirth, he had not slept well at all, except when he was forced into it. The biggest reason was that he kept having recurring dreams of Yun Zheng.
Last time, he dreamt of the young apprentice Yun Zheng giving him a birthday gift. This time, he dreamt of the mature Divine Lord Yun Zheng thrusting a sword into his abdomen and shattering his demonic core. The fury and the despair of betrayal overwhelmed him completely.
The sharp pain dragged him out of the dream. When he woke up, his clothes and the bedding beneath him were drenched in sweat. Sheng Muxue gasped for air in the darkness, shocked that the dream had been so real. It was far more realistic than the last one. It was something that had never happened, yet it felt as if he had experienced it personally. In particular, the Yun Zheng in his dream had said to him: “I have never loved you. I only used and toyed with you. It is you who were too naive to sink so deep into it.”
Used, toyed with.
Sheng Muxue stretched out his hand in the darkness and, by the faint moonlight, clearly saw his own slender fingers. His gaze fixed on his palm, but his thoughts drifted out the window. So, Yun Zheng wanting to marry him must be for the sake of using and toying with him, or perhaps it was revenge. He should never have liked him, whether it was the current Yun Zheng or the Yun Zheng he had raised himself. Those attendants in the Cloud Palace with his face must have been meant for humiliation. Taking his corpse back must have been for whipping it. Even the jade pendant he gave him was probably just to repay his nurturing grace. Furthermore, the pendant was gone now; it might have been shattered by lightning the moment he died in his previous life.
After being jolted awake by the nightmare, Sheng Muxue suffered a rare bout of insomnia. He tossed and turned for a long time, unable to fall asleep. Outside the window, the moonlight laid a layer of silver frost on the ground. Sheng Muxue lay on his side, staring at the silver frost for over ten minutes before suddenly calling out: “System.”
The System had been sleeping at the head of Sheng Muxue’s bed, purring softly and sound asleep. As soon as it heard its master’s call, it woke up immediately and floated to the top of Sheng Muxue’s head like a little lackey: “What orders do you have, big brother?”
Sheng Muxue did not look at the System; his gaze remained on the silver frost on the ground as he said faintly: “I can’t sleep.”
“Can’t sleep? That’s not like you.”
“I had a nightmare.”
The System immediately reacted and consoled him: “It’s okay, it’s okay. How about I tell you a funny joke?”
“Go ahead.” Sheng Muxue’s voice betrayed no emotion.
The System began to tell the joke with high-pitched excitement: “A hunter shot a fox, but the hunter died instead. Why is that?”
“Because it was a reflex arc! Hahahaha!”
Sheng Muxue: …………………
This was a funny joke? Wasn’t this just a brain-dead dad joke? And it just happened to step on his own professional territory.
After a moment of silence, Sheng Muxue refuted the System seriously: “First of all, I am a fox. Are you trying to curse me to be shot dead by telling me this? Secondly, in physics, reflection refers to the phenomenon of energy waves returning at an interface, whereas in biology, it is an automatic response mechanism regulated by the nervous system. The two cannot be confused.”
This time, it was the System’s turn to be silent.
The System felt a bit aggrieved and rubbed its jelly-like body against Sheng Muxue’s shoulder: “I was just trying to coax you into being happy, why are you being so serious?”
Sheng Muxue, of course, understood this very well. In the end, he still flashed a warm smile at the System, patted its bald head, and whispered: “Thank you.”
The System froze for a moment, remaining motionless as if it had crashed. Sheng Muxue held the System in his arms and found that it felt somewhat warm. Of course, it was still far from Yun Zheng’s body temperature.
Actually, the reason he could not sleep just now was that he felt a bit cold, even though it was late spring and early summer. He had been afraid of the cold since he was a child. His parents had joked that he must have been born in the freezing northeast in his past life, frightened by the ice and snow, which was why he was so sensitive to the cold.
The System, curled up in Sheng Muxue’s arms, was a bit shy and was about to speak, but it heard Sheng Muxue’s fragile request: “Let me hold you for a while. I am cold.”
The System said nothing more. It stayed quietly in Sheng Muxue’s arms without moving, allowing the silent moonlight to solidify everything.