Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Did she hear herself?

She thought her best friend was a rare gem of a girl, so she wanted to pair her off with her own “ex-boyfriend”?

“Zhou Qingyan is gentle and polite. She may not have much of a mind of her own, but she won’t cause any major trouble.”

“She’s kind, beautiful, and from a good family. Her parents are reasonable, educated people.”

“She’s studied dance and painting since she was four. She plays the piano beautifully.”

“Most importantly, she’s her parents’ only child. They love her dearly, respect her opinions, and talk things through with her.”

Zhang Xueya gave a self-mocking laugh, neither happy nor sad. “Saying all this makes it sound as if I’m trading goods, telling you to marry an urban family’s only daughter and take everything they have.”

“But Qingyan really is the best girl I’ve ever known, both as a person and by worldly standards.”

Zhou Qingyan hadn’t known she was so wonderful. Unsure what to say, she replied, “You’re the amazing one, Xueya. You do well in school, you’re nice, and you’re so pretty.”

“There are so many things I can’t do properly, but you handle them all so well.”

“You’ve helped me with so much. That time someone groped me on the subway, you were the one who yelled at him. You never bully me. You always protect me.”

Zhang Xueya lowered her head, avoiding her gaze.

Zhao Xiuming didn’t really understand these feelings of hers. He found her strange.

Both kind and wicked.

She could protect Zhou Qingyan in every way, yet discard cannon fodder like him and even Li Zhehan as though they were worn-out shoes.

She could show mercy by arranging an ending for him and Zhou Qingyan, yet ignore what would happen to ordinary people after the anomalies invaded.

She could make her child’s early birth part of a bargain, yet deceive herself and indulge the instance consciousness’s lies.

Many thoughts ran through his mind, but putting them into words was difficult. “Uh… thanks?”

Zhang Xueya looked up and rolled her eyes. “You’re my ideal love, you know. But you… What’s with that expression? Is being my ideal love so embarrassing?”

“I’m not trying to do anything to you. I’m not even burdening you with my feelings. You don’t have to avoid me.”

He nodded repeatedly. Then the System’s voice sounded in his head. [Your ideal love…]

The youthful, wheedling tone was full of teasing.

A sound came from the dissection room door. Pu Yuanliang emerged in a mask and white coat.

Sticky blood and flesh covered his gloves. He gestured to the humans outside. “Done.”

Zhao Xiuming stood and went in to look. A figure lay on the bed in the dissection room: Assistant Li, still recovering.

The anomaly nurses had pulled off his clothes. He lay naked and motionless on his back.

Black stitches covered his torso. Only a closer look revealed that they were tendrils. No veins were visible beneath his skin; instead, something alive seemed to be crawling there.

He opened his eyes. His expression didn’t change. He showed neither pain nor joy.

Assistant Li now had Li Zhehan’s face. There were no surgical marks. Neither the junction of face and neck nor that of neck and chest showed anything unusual.

“His condition is still unstable,” Pu Yuanliang explained. “He’ll occasionally lose his reason. He needs regular maintenance. Once his power grows, he’ll be able to control his body completely.”

Zhao Xiuming waved a hand in front of his eyes. Only then did he react, his gaze focusing intently on Zhao Xiuming.

Then his eyes began spinning and bouncing wildly, like rubber balls thrown down a corridor. His mouth opened, several tendrils extending from it. “You… you smell so good…”

Zhao Xiuming raised an eyebrow. The biker, who’d followed him in, punched without hesitation.

A large hole appeared in Assistant Li’s chest. No blood flowed. Buds of flesh merely grew and knitted together, soon restoring it completely.

The blow had some effect. The tendrils shrank back into his body as if frightened, and his eyes stopped moving.

About two minutes passed before he came to himself. “I’m still alive?” he murmured.

He quickly grew ecstatic, looking as though he’d been given a new life.

Getting up from the dissection table, he examined his body and instinctively reached to adjust his glasses. His raised hand froze.

He was in excellent condition now. His vision was perfectly clear.

He asked the doctor beside him, “Could hospitals outside detect anything abnormal in my body?”

He should have asked before the surgery, but hadn’t.

He’d already decided that, whatever the answer, he would choose to become Li Zhehan.

So asking hadn’t mattered. If they could discover he wasn’t human, he’d be careful. There would be a way to live in the real world.

If their tests showed he was human, that would merely be more convenient. He wouldn’t have to go to such lengths to hide.

Pu Yuanliang treated him much better now that he’d become an anomaly. “Current human medical equipment will detect abnormalities in your body. But DNA tests won’t be a problem.”

“They’ll only find that your flesh can move on its own, your blood has a life of its own, and you occasionally lose your reason and attack humans. You may have a tendency to eat people.”

“Once you grow stronger and find anomalies with the appropriate abilities to devour, you’ll be able to suppress it and retain your reason.”

As long as the DNA checks could be handled, that saved a great deal of scheming. Assistant Li was satisfied.

He didn’t forget to demonstrate his loyalty to Zhao Xiuming. “In return, I’ll handle the police outside for everyone.”

“If there’s anything you need me for in the real world, just ask. We can help each other. I need your help a great deal.”
He meant to continue cooperating with Zhao Xiuming. After all, he had no idea what he might encounter in the future.

He also vaguely sensed that he might be subject to this hospital instance’s control, but deliberately left that unsaid.

Zhao Xiuming didn’t mention it either. He smiled warmly. “Sure.”

Outside in the corridor, the two girls were discussing something else.

Zhou Qingyan was curious about Zhao Xiuming. She hesitated. “Xueya, were you actually pregnant?”

Zhang Xueya immediately shook her head. What had been in her belly was a ghost infant, a condensed manifestation of the instance consciousness.

“Then you didn’t cheat, and you didn’t… sleep with Li Zhehan.” Zhou Qingyan was too embarrassed to be more explicit.

“We did sleep together,” Zhang Xueya explained.

Zhou Qingyan couldn’t keep up. How did sleeping together not count as cheating?

Perhaps her expression was too obvious, because Zhang Xueya laughed. “Just sleeping. We didn’t do anything. I wanted to kill Li Zhehan. Putting on an act was one thing. How could I really do anything with him?”

Her face was full of disgust. Zhou Qingyan asked cautiously, “Then… then you didn’t cheat.”

“What are you going to do when we’re back in the real world? So many people are attacking you online. And there’s your relationship with Zhao Xiuming…”

“You said he was your ideal love. Is he really that good? Why do you like him? And aren’t you going to pursue him?”

Every thought in Zhou Qingyan’s mind was plain to Zhang Xueya, who was inclined to take her side.

So she advised her, “Qingyan, I can’t always have things my way. You and Zhao Xiuming have minds of your own. At least you do now.”

“Besides, I wouldn’t call what I feel for him love. Do you think love means pushing someone toward somebody else?”

Zhou Qingyan shook her head.

“Would you deliberately let them get hurt?”

She shook her head again.

“Would you choose yourself over them without hesitation?”

After hesitating, she still shook her head.

Zhang Xueya sighed. “So, I admire him. That doesn’t mean I want anything to happen between us.”

“It’s like… everyone likes beautiful things.”

“Oh…” Zhou Qingyan considered that. “So you think of him like a celebrity you like?”

She pressed further. “But why do you feel that way? There must be a reason.”

Zhang Xueya remembered her hometown: gloomy rainy days, a dark, damp basement, the pain of blows landing on her body.

That feeling of having nowhere to escape was like a nightmare. Her life clearly hadn’t been in danger, yet she’d still been afraid.

Something unseen had seemed to surround her in that village, forever trying to swallow her.

In those days, only Zhao Xiuming had been calm. Like a lifeline.

Unable to tell Zhou Qingyan about the village, she answered vaguely, “Probably because he’s capable. Different from everyone else I’ve met.”

“It’s like watching a movie. You know the characters on the screen aren’t real. Then suddenly one of them looks straight at you through the screen and interacts with you. That sort of feeling.”

The description frightened Zhou Qingyan a little. She couldn’t see what was romantic about it. Surely that was fear.

Across the destroyed instance, broken buildings lay scattered everywhere. The morning sun rose, illuminating a road to the outside world.

Still thinking about Zhang Xueya’s words, Zhou Qingyan followed the others in a daze. At the hospital entrance, they got into the car they’d arrived in, and Assistant Li drove them back.

There was no endless rain, no eerie shop clerk.

As though they’d crossed an invisible barrier, noise suddenly sprang up around them.

Zhou Qingyan and Zhang Xueya couldn’t hold out any longer. Facing the sun, their eyelids grew heavier until they fell asleep in the back seat, their heads resting together.

Assistant Li glanced sideways. In the passenger seat, Zhao Xiuming propped his chin on his hand. He looked like an ordinary human again.

Noticing the look, Zhao Xiuming gave him an almost-smile. Then his entire demeanor changed, shifting from lazy to cold, his expression growing ever more detached.

Eyes slightly narrowed, fingers tapping lightly on his knee, he asked, “May I call you Li Han?”

Assistant Li’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Yes.”

Just as he’d said, once they returned to the real world, he handled everyone’s real-world problems.

To the people who knew him there, the current Assistant Li (or rather, the current Li Zhehan) was very different in both personality and behavior. Much steadier.

With DNA tests as proof, neither the Li family nor the police raised objections.

As for the missing “Assistant Li,” the bodyguards, and the driver, the police didn’t pursue the matter further.

The Li family said it had been a kidnapping, the result of trouble Li Zhehan’s parents had attracted abroad.

Of course, if the police investigated, there would be plenty of leads and evidence.

A family that could get guns could naturally arrange a few other things as well.

The male lead’s halo disappearing didn’t mean the romance world had returned to normal. Its irrational aspects still existed.

In any case, after a few glances at the documents the assistant, Li Han, handed him, Zhao Xiuming could only stare in disbelief and remain silent.

Well…

A foreign hitman had slipped into the country, approached Li Zhehan’s girlfriend Zhang Xueya, and falsified pregnancy records.

Using that as bait, he’d kidnapped the young master and his fiancée. While fleeing, he’d encountered pursuers from the Li family, resulting in a gunfight. The family’s assistant, driver, and bodyguards had died.
The hitman was now missing. The damaged vehicles, statements from Mr. and Mrs. Li overseas, and pressure from above were enough for the authorities in this romance world to bury the matter.

Besides, Li Zhehan’s parents hadn’t been with him when he’d disappeared. The Li Zhehan who had once been Assistant Li flew abroad, and everything was soon settled.

All was peaceful again. University life continued as before.

Public opinion didn’t require much effort. The assistant now living as Li Zhehan handled it with ease.

To protect Zhao Xiuming and Zhang Xueya, the PR team he’d hired went to considerable trouble.

The main issue was that they dared not offend either side. They could only issue a clarification on behalf of a “party involved,” stating that he’d used his financial resources to investigate the truth.

Soon they uncovered a “criminal” who’d used Zhao Xiuming’s identity in an online romance. They exposed how he’d spied on Zhang Xueya through social media, created multiple alternate accounts to chat with her, and impersonated Zhao Xiuming to cheat her out of love and money.

That reversed the roles of everyone involved. Apparently there had been no villains in the viral confrontation video. Everything was the fault of that malicious “criminal.”

Some believed the news and some didn’t. In the end, amid the flood of information and the work of paid online commenters, most chose to believe it.

Zhao Xiuming still lived in his rented apartment. His lease hadn’t expired.

Reports and videos filled his phone screen, with a lively assortment of comments. “The clarification is real. Our university even held a lecture on online fraud because of it.”

“Wait, so that viral hot pot restaurant video with the big twist was all a misunderstanding?”

“The girl wasn’t two-timing anyone? A criminal impersonated her childhood friend to date her online, then threatened and manipulated her. Her best friend and the rich guy pursuing her couldn’t stand it, so they went to expose him, only to discover that the childhood friend and the girl weren’t actually a couple?”

“That’s what I said. If they weren’t even dating, how did all those rumors start? She marched in so righteously to catch him cheating. Wasn’t she embarrassed? I knew there had to be more to it.”

“No wonder the childhood friend looked so confused. He genuinely had no idea when he’d acquired a girlfriend.”

“If that rich guy hadn’t paid for an investigation, they might not have found the truth so quickly.”

Those who didn’t believe it found the whole thing absurd. How could anything so ridiculous happen?

What if this clarification had been fabricated to clear the girl’s name?

But on reflection, that seemed unlikely. If the wealthy heir merely wanted to rehabilitate her reputation, he wouldn’t need to go to such lengths.

He could simply bury the male childhood friend in blame. Why help clear his own “romantic rival” too?

As for the pregnancy, the clarification said the student hadn’t been pregnant. It was a misunderstanding.

She’d been dating the criminal impersonating her childhood friend online. To force her childhood friend to acknowledge the relationship in real life as well, she’d faked the appearance of a pregnancy.

With the online chat logs as evidence, he’d have no way to explain himself and would have to marry her.

But the real childhood friend knew nothing about his supposed online romance or the impersonation.

Naturally, he thought this woman was inexplicably sending him pregnancy news, perhaps carrying the wealthy heir’s child and trying to pin it on him. That was how the misunderstanding had begun.

Reading all this on his phone, Zhao Xiuming laughed helplessly. He had no idea where Assistant Li had found a PR team capable of inventing such a rehabilitation story.

He forwarded the video to their four-person group chat: himself, Zhou Qingyan, Zhang Xueya, and the assistant version of Li Zhehan.

After watching it, Zhou Qingyan sent a crying meme. “No one at school is talking about what happened anymore. They’re all focused on that criminal.”

“No one knows the Li family arranged for him to play the criminal.”

Zhang Xueya replied too. “Some people are even saying the whole scam was aimed at Li Zhehan.”

After all, the internet carried plenty of stories about rich kids being kidnapped or lured into rigged gambling schemes to extort money from their families.

A few years earlier, a woman had accused a celebrity of sexual assault and sought compensation. He’d countersued for extortion, only for it to emerge that a scammer in the middle had been cheating both sides.

The world was full of strange things. So this bizarre clarification and unexpected twist completely overshadowed the original story and became accepted fact.

While the group chatted animatedly, the assistant now called Li Zhehan sent a headache meme. “Busy.”

No one replied. Zhao Xiuming was just about to take pity on him and respond, sparing him the embarrassment and displaying his nonexistent conscience.

Then someone knocked. He’d just ordered food, but how could it have arrived so quickly?

After they left the instance, the biker had disappeared again. The System had said only [Upgrading] before falling silent too.

Zhao Xiuming had exchanged points for a potion. His body looked normal again, but his constitution was entirely different.

His footsteps made no sound. He came to the door and stood still.

The knocking outside was loud. He smelled blood and something unusual. The person outside began swearing, then shot the lock apart.