Chapter 61
Chapter 61
Liu Ruyan lay awake in the darkness.
She was not asleep. This had been going on for a long time now. She could not sleep at all.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw her son’s adorable face. He smiled at her and sweetly called her Mommy.
“Niannian…” she whispered his nickname. Sinking into some illusion, she smiled blissfully.
Darkness flowed through the window like rippling water and flooded the room.
A pitch-black figure slowly took shape within it.
Zhu Yin looked at the female lead sitting vacantly in a corner of the bed.
Her mental condition was terrible, and her physical state was no better.
Just as the plot had said, even if she did not commit suicide, she would slowly wither in her current state and would not last much longer.
Liu Ruyan did not notice the extra person in the room. Zhu Yin called her name. “Liu Ruyan.”
Liu Ruyan reacted slowly. Only after a long while did she seem to receive the sound and look blankly toward Zhu Yin.
Her empty eyes would not focus. Zhu Yin thought she might not even have recognized her yet.
Zhu Yin’s voice grew heavier. “Liu Ruyan, wake up!”
The woman on the bed jolted. Her unfocused gaze gradually sharpened.
Immense pain instantly drowned her. Liu Ruyan stared at Zhu Yin.
“Doctor…” she murmured. Her eyes suddenly lit up. “Doctor!”
She scrambled over and lunged for Zhu Yin’s hand, but Zhu Yin avoided her.
“Doctor! How did you get in? Can you take me out? Li Nanfeng locked me in here and won’t let me leave! I need to find Niannian!”
“Your son is already dead,” Zhu Yin said coldly. “His heart was dug out and transplanted into someone else.”
She bent down and fixed Liu Ruyan with a steady gaze, her tone grave. “Your husband personally made the decision.”
“Ah–” Liu Ruyan covered her ears and released a piercing scream.
Li Nanfeng lived downstairs, and people had been assigned to guard and care for Liu Ruyan. Only because Zhu Yin was here did the scream fail to disturb them in the slightest.
“Liu Ruyan, do you hate him?” Zhu Yin’s voice brimmed with temptation.
Of course Liu Ruyan hated him. She clenched her teeth until her gums nearly bled.
“Do you want to avenge your child?” Zhu Yin asked. Barbara nervously warned its host beside her ear, but Zhu Yin signaled for it to relax.
“Re… venge?” Liu Ruyan looked lost.
Zhu Yin coaxed, “Yes. He’s the one who truly made the decision and took your son’s life. Don’t you want to repay him in kind?”
Repay him… in kind?
Liu Ruyan sank into thought.
Zhu Yin quietly watched her. In the darkness, a dark-red glimmer appeared in her eyes.
Barbara felt that tonight’s host was somehow different from usual. She seemed exceptionally dangerous.
Zhu Yin waited quietly for Liu Ruyan to decide. She had already formed an almost certain prediction in her heart.
Sure enough, Liu Ruyan’s expression filled with agony and tears poured down her face. “No… I can’t do it… I can’t…”
She suffered, struggled, and fell into a wretched state.
Zhu Yin gave a low sigh, not surprised in the least.
In the female lead’s heart, the male lead would always be the most important. Her parents, who had raised her for more than twenty years, could not compare. Not even her own flesh and blood, whom she had carried for ten months, could compare.
Fortunately, Zhu Yin had prepared for this long ago.
She laughed softly, the sound carrying a strange rhythm. Liu Ruyan was gradually drawn in. For a brief moment, her mind forgot its pain, and she gazed up at Zhu Yin as if entranced.
“Liu Ruyan, are you in so much pain that you don’t want to live anymore?”
Two clear trails of tears slid down the face of the woman on the floor. She choked back a sob and nodded.
Zhu Yin sighed softly. “But if you die, Li Nanfeng is still so young. He’ll meet a new woman, start a family with her, and have new children.”
“When that happens, he’ll forget you and forget your child. What are you going to do?”
“Host…” Barbara shuddered. “W-we really shouldn’t–”
Zhu Yin tossed a silencing spell at the system and forbade it from interfering with her performance.
As Zhu Yin spoke, Liu Ruyan’s expression gradually turned deranged.
“He can’t… He can’t forget me.” She muttered at first, but her voice grew louder and more obsessive. “Nanfeng loves me. He loves me. He’s mine!”
“That’s right. He’s yours.” Zhu Yin clapped softly. “You’re so perfectly matched. You should be together forever, shouldn’t you?”
A dreamy smile appeared on Liu Ruyan’s face, and she nodded vigorously.
“But…” Zhu Yin frowned as though troubled. “You’re going to die. What will you do?”
Liu Ruyan abruptly reached out and gripped the hem of Zhu Yin’s skirt. Her mind was too deranged to notice that the fabric in her palm had no substance at all. It was a mass of icy mist.
She cried out:
“Doctor! Help me!”
An icy talisman was placed in her palm, and Zhu Yin’s gentle voice sounded beside her ear. “Wear it and never take it off. It will bring you everything you desire.”
Liu Ruyan clutched the object like the greatest of treasures.
Zhu Yin rose. “Then I’ll see you next time.”
The darkness receded like a tide, and the clear song of cicadas outside flowed into the room.
Zhu Yin walked beneath the dim night sky, the streetlights stretching her shadow to a great length.
She stopped. “Why are you hiding in my shadow? Come out.”
On the ground, a small pitch-black thing split away from her shadow and floated in midair. It was only the size of an adult’s head.
Had the male and female leads been there, they would certainly have recognized their dead son, Niannian.
He had become an infant spirit. The once plump, fair-skinned baby was now a ghastly bluish white, his eyes fixed, dark, and terrifying.
“Did you hear that? Neither of your parents is any good. Well? Will you consider my suggestion?”
The infant spirit did not seem very willing. He sidled closer, trying to cuddle up to her.
Every hair on Barbara’s body stood on end where it perched on Zhu Yin’s shoulder. It arched its back and bared its teeth at the spirit.
The infant spirit trembled in fright.
But only Zhu Yin knew that although the system looked fierce on the outside, the paws planted on her shoulder were shaking.
Naturally, she could not expose her own system’s bluff.
She stroked Barbara soothingly. “Follow me? No. I’m very busy. I have work, and no time to look after a child.”
“Stay with your parents in this life. Repay kindness and avenge the wrongs done to you. If you want to reincarnate, take off the bracelet I gave you.”
“If you leave it on, then once the debts and grudges of this life are settled, it will take you somewhere else. Little infant spirits like you are very popular there. You can work to support yourself, earn energy, and slowly grow up. I’ll find you a boss who isn’t too wicked.”