Yuli ended up leaving with Sai'en after all.
The two of them stopped in front of a small villa enclosed by an ironwork fence.
The villa had a castle-like appearance. Its walls looked somewhat worn, as though they had not been maintained for years, but its overall design and exquisite architectural details still hinted at the elegance and luxury it had once possessed.
It gave the impression that its owner had fallen on hard times and could no longer afford to maintain their former standard of living.
The courtyard, however, was lush with flowers and greenery. There was even a small vegetable patch enclosed within it, clearly tended with care. The elegant little castle had suddenly become an approachable countryside retreat.
Yuli had already grown accustomed to the jarring contrast in styles throughout this world by the time they arrived from the Sentinel Tower.
What was growing vegetables in a castle compared to the shock she had experienced when she first walked out of the Sentinel Tower?
The moment she stepped outside, Yuli was hit full in the face by windblown sand.
Outside the Sentinel Tower was a deeply rutted road of yellow mud, resembling a barren wasteland.
The advanced technology visible everywhere inside the Tower, the floors that stretched high into the sky, and all kinds of intelligent equipment had vanished the instant she left. All that remained were the yellow-mud road and several men in worn work clothes standing beside it.
They carried shovels and buckets of cement, apparently preparing to repair the road.
If they had not been wearing light-brains around their wrists, Yuli would have thought she had returned to the modern world—to some small rural town or village with underdeveloped roads.
Inside and outside the A07 Watchtower, there was an intense sense of disconnection between futuristic technology and backward modern conditions. They were two entirely different worlds, yet they blended together in a strange and harmonious way, with neither side finding the other unusual.
It was as though one person cheerfully told another, “I built an aircraft carrier today.”
And the other proudly replied, “Really? That’s amazing. I grew a scallion today. That’s pretty impressive too!”
Seeing her bewildered expression in the wind, Sai'en unexpectedly offered a lengthy explanation. “The Sentinel Tower is far from residential areas. There are few people living nearby, and there isn’t much demand for construction.”
Although he had no idea why she would care about such a trivial matter as the environment outside.
Sentinels had exceptionally sharp senses. To protect those senses, the area around the Sentinel Tower had to be enclosed by a soundproof barrier that simulated white noise, separating it from ordinary residential districts.
“Mm, understood!” Yuli nodded emphatically to show that she understood.
Resources were scarce after the disaster, and constructing the Sentinel Tower had been the top priority. The A07 Watchtower had been built according to the layout and structure of the Central White Tower. It was not merely a “tower”; “A07 Watchtower” was simply its name. In reality, it was a large military base.
During the construction of the Sentinel Tower, any surplus materials were distributed to the residential district. Reconstruction there also followed a priority system, beginning with the densely populated “city center.”
Unless the people in charge had rocks in their heads, they would not build suburban villas before they had even finished constructing the homes that were actually needed.
Judging from the construction taking place outside, Yuli guessed that over these four years, the city center of A07 had probably been rebuilt. They now had enough spare materials to do a little work on the yellow-mud roads in the suburbs.
This castle-style villa, however, had not been built from leftover materials.
Before the disaster, the original owner’s aristocratic parents had purchased it as a suburban vacation villa for her. It had originally been intended as her eighteenth-birthday gift. They had hired the best decorating team A07 had possessed at the time, and every piece of furniture was to be selected with care.
But before the renovations could be completed, the Great Contamination broke out.
When the disaster occurred four years ago, the original owner had been only sixteen. At the time, she had been living with her parents in their aristocratic estate in the prosperous center of the base.
A week after the contamination broke out, several high-level mutated entities breached the base’s defensive barrier. They rampaged all the way into the center and slaughtered people throughout the estate. The original owner’s parents died on the spot. Some of the servants died, while others fled. In the end, the only person left at her side was a personal maid who had grown up with her.
Later, the male leads arrived and eliminated the mutated entities. Song Xuanye personally led people to seal off the estate. After that, the original owner moved to the suburban villa with her maid, Lingling.
Afterward, the original owner awakened as a Guide and began working in the Sentinel Tower……
All of the above were memory fragments Yuli had just received.
Once the slight headache passed and the memories had fused with her own, she inexplicably felt a sense of familiarity toward the flower garden, vegetable patch, and dilapidated little villa before her.
Every plant and blade of grass here had been bought with the original owner’s wages. They were all precious assets!
“I’m home now, Captain Sain. Thank you for bringing me back. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
Yuli politely bid him farewell and extended her right hand. He was still carrying her medication bag.
“This doesn’t count,” Sai'en said.
“You didn’t want to fly just now?” He thought for a moment before completing the question. “Why didn’t you want to?”
Yuli fell silent.
A small black eagle with pitch-black wings and powerful bones was perched on Sai'en’s shoulder. It flapped its wings twice, opened its sharp beak, and let out several short cries.
Then it tilted its head and stared at her with its sharp, bead-like eyes, seemingly expressing its displeasure.
Yuli fell even more silent.
Meeting Sai'en’s long, dark eyes, she realized that both the large and the small one were being serious.
No, seriously, she had to ask!
The whole journey was less than a kilometer, and walking would take no more than ten minutes at most. What was the point of riding an eagle?
An eagle! It wasn’t a bicycle! Did this world really have no other, more normal means of transportation?
Just a few minutes ago, this little black eagle had been an enormous creature as large as a spaceship, circling down from the sky with overwhelming grandeur and imposing might—and scaring her half to death.
Especially when it had not even finished shrinking and had already enthusiastically tried to press its sharp, pointed beak against her cheek.
Of course, Sai'en had coldly scolded it and stopped it.
When Heiying had shrunk to a size capable of carrying two people, Sai'en squeezed the air with his motorcycle glove, which was covered in cold metallic plates. Reins materialized on the spirit entity’s body. He gestured toward Yuli. “You first.”
Yuli pretended not to hear his invitation to ride the eagle, stepped out of the Sentinel Tower ahead of him, and hurried briskly toward the villa.
“……”
Sai'en removed his gloves and followed silently behind her.
Along the way, the two of them maintained a distance with one in front and one behind, barely exchanging a word.
The miniature little black eagle, on the other hand, made a spectacular show of its presence. Perched on Sai'en’s shoulder, it occasionally cried out at Yuli from behind. At other times, it simply grew a little larger and flew above Yuli’s head to shield her from the evening sun’s not particularly intense ultraviolet rays.
Weren’t spirit entities supposed to be manifestations of a Sentinel or Guide’s spirit? Why was this little eagle nothing like Sai'en at all?
“I……”
Yuli was wondering whether it would be better to say “next time for sure” or simply claim that she was afraid of heights when she suddenly heard a cheerful voice.
“Miss! Miss!”
A cute, round-faced girl was running toward them from another direction, her face filled with delight.
Yuli was even more delighted. Her eyes nearly began to shine. “Lingling!”
“Whew—not wasn’t I supposed to wait for you at the Sentinel Tower? I was going to buy groceries and then go pick you up. There was fresh meat at the market today, so I—Captain Sain!”
Lingling quickly bowed to Sai'en.
She wore the classic long-apron uniform of a maid from an aristocratic estate. Her short, slightly curled hair reached her ears, and she had a vegetable basket hooked over her arm. It looked as though she had made quite a haul.
“Mm.” Sai'en gave a slight nod and handed the medication bag to Lingling.
It was like meeting an old friend in a foreign land!
“Well then, see you later, Captain Sain. I’ll see you in the Silent Room in a few days!”
Yuli had no time to worry about anything else. She grabbed Lingling, who was preparing to invite Sai'en in for dinner, and pulled her into the house.
After making sure the door was closed, she lowered her voice and began to sing, “Your childhood and my childhood were just the same.”
“……”
The Commander had been right. Miss’s brain really was broken.
“Miss, our childhoods weren’t the same.” Lingling looked at her with the concern one might show a mentally disabled child while efficiently taking the ingredients out of the basket and walking into the kitchen. “For example, during my childhood, I helped prepare food in the kitchen. During yours, you read books in the study upstairs.”
“By the way, why didn’t you invite Captain Sain to eat with us? Also, did you fail to check your messages again?”
“Huh? Sorry.” Yuli opened her light-brain.
To be honest, she still was not used to using the thing.
After searching around, she found a message from Song Xuanye in her inbox. It said that she could spend some time at the hospital and that her family would come pick her up later.
Lingling’s voice came from the kitchen, calm and entirely accustomed to the situation. “Also, Miss, please accept the friend request on your new light-brain.”
“Okay!”
This time, Yuli quickly opened the friend-request list. There were several little red notification dots, and she had no idea which one was Lingling’s. She simply accepted them all, then scampered after Lingling into the kitchen, still refusing to give up.
“Whether it’s a dragon or a worm hasn’t been decided yet. You and I could both be dark horses.”
This was the code phrase she and Wang Lingling used before every exam.
Lingling looked at her with even greater concern and said sorrowfully, “Miss, there aren’t any normal horses left in this world.”
“But that doesn’t matter.” She suddenly began cheering Yuli on. “I heard that the Red Falcon Sentinel squad obtained a pure chicken from a contamination zone this time. Work hard at getting better, Miss. Later, use your merit points to exchange for that chicken, and I’ll stew you a bowl of authentic chicken soup!”
“……”
Yuli really did need some chicken soup. In one last desperate struggle, she shouted the universal slogan of fellow transmigrators, “Odd changes, even stays the same!”
“Even? If I see some lotus root at the market next time, I’ll buy you some.”
After saying that, Lingling washed her hands, patted Yuli on the head, and sent her out of the kitchen with an expression of loving kindness.
“All right. The Commander assigned me some tasks. You can go upstairs and look at the room I prepared for you, or you can rest in the living room. I’ll come call you when dinner is ready.”
Yuli whimpered inwardly. Her final hope had been shattered.
She was now one hundred percent certain that they were not the same person.
Lingling was Lingling. She truly was the original Yulier’s personal maid, not her best friend Wang Lingling from the modern world. The two of them merely happened to look exactly alike.
Though perhaps it was not necessarily a coincidence.
Yuli obediently ran up to the second-floor bedroom. Looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror—a girl with the appearance of an aristocrat—she realized that she actually looked exactly like the original owner too.
Her features, height, build, and even the small, pale mole hidden beneath her clothes between the ribs on her left side were all identical.
Yuli pondered that perhaps the two of them came from parallel worlds.
If that was the case, then perhaps, once she found the key factor, she could return home!
Clinging to that thought, Yuli carefully searched every corner of the villa after dinner.
She kept at it until ten o’clock, when Lingling supervised her into taking a bath and going to sleep.
After lying in a hospital bed for three days, Yuli returned to a warm, cozy girl’s bedroom filled with the feeling of daily life. She slept unexpectedly well.
In her dream, she felt something wet lick her cheek.
It was soft and ticklish, with a slight sting, like the tongue of a kitten with a rough patch on it.
Then, still half-asleep, she felt her entire body being picked up in someone’s jaws.
By the time Yuli rubbed her eyes and fully awoke, she found herself in a wasteland overgrown with weeds.
This was land that had been contaminated. The weeds had grown to an abnormal height, nearly reaching Yuli’s shoulders.
Most importantly, standing directly in front of her was a giant mutated dead-leaf mantis.
Red light glowed from the mantis’s oily eyes. In only a moment, it had already locked onto her. It raised its steel-hard scythe-like foreleg high into the air, and its sharp, cold edge was about to slash down at her!
Yuli’s pupils trembled violently.
“Ah!!!”
The instant she recovered from her stupor, the girl erupted into a shrill scream.
Then her vision went black, and she fainted.
The motion was astonishingly clean and decisive. Her entire body went limp as she collapsed to the ground, the whole process taking no more than one second.
“……”
The mutated mantis whose blade-arm had struck empty air, and the spectator watching from the shadows, both fell silent.
A gust of wind swept past. The young man in the shadows disappeared without a trace, while the mutated dead-leaf mantis’s thick white blood spurted from its severed limb onto the hem of the girl’s nightdress.
Unexpected.
What to do? Even a noobish Yuli was cute.