“Come with me, no work today! I’ll call our director on the way and get us both a leave of absence.” Zhang Yu grabbed her younger brother off the sofa and pushed him into his room. “I’m taking you to see Dad, to ask him directly! Hurry up and change your clothes, we’re leaving right away.”
After saying this, Zhang Yu ran back to her own room, leaving Zhang Cheng staring blankly.
Why does my sister seem more excited than me? And why does she want to ask Dad about this? Could he be hiding something from me?
A thought flashed through Zhang Cheng’s mind—he might have been deceived before. Judging by his sister’s reaction, she probably knew far more than he did.
With that in mind, Zhang Cheng no longer hesitated. He grabbed a set of clothes from the wardrobe and put them on. No matter what, once he saw Dad, everything would become clear.
*****
Sitting in the car and watching the scenery pass by, Zhang Cheng’s heart was anything but calm.
It was the complete opposite of last time. This time, Zhang Cheng was the one pressing Zhang Yu for answers, but she remained silent, only saying that once they got home, he would understand everything.
Hearing this, Zhang Cheng’s doubts only deepened, but he forced down his curiosity and didn’t ask any more questions. Closing his eyes, he tried to rest. After a while, sleepiness crept over him.
From the front seat, Zhang Yu heard the steady breathing from the back and sighed softly.
She had felt a deep sense of regret over Lu Qiuchen’s death before. The three of them had always been close, and she knew how much her brother cared about Lu Qiuchen, so she never mentioned the matter in front of Zhang Cheng.
The last time they returned home, she had secretly overheard a conversation between her brother and father with her mother. That was when she finally understood why Zhang Cheng had changed so much in the past two years.
She never expected that all the pressure weighing on her brother’s heart came from Lu Qiuchen’s death—and that the investigation had gone so deep.
When she learned in the early morning that the mad laughter came from Zhang Cheng, for a moment she thought he had gone insane. She secretly blamed their father for hiding things from him and forbidding her from revealing the news, especially since Zhang Cheng was already showing signs of mental instability.
Later, during their conversation, she realized Zhang Cheng’s mind was still clear, and only then did she feel relieved. After hearing about his latest discoveries, Zhang Yu grew excited.
Their father had never told her about this!
*****
Zhang Yu opened the car door and lifted her brother from the back seat. Despite her delicate, refined lady-like appearance, holding the tall and broad Zhang Cheng felt effortless. She strode swiftly toward the villa’s gate.
After her eyes verified their identity, the gate automatically opened. Zhang Yu carried Zhang Cheng inside, just as Zhang Guang was about to step out and found himself blocked in the living room.
Seeing his daughter rushing in carrying his son, Zhang Guang said nothing and returned to the sofa. He watched as Zhang Yu put Zhang Cheng down and asked, “You two know everything?”
“Dad~ Why didn’t you tell me about something this big earlier? You’ve been hiding it all along, making me think Lu Qiuchen was really dead… And brother’s behavior today was terrifying!” Zhang Yu sat beside her father, holding his arm and shaking it coquettishly.
Zhang Guang chuckled, “You’re already grown up. Acting cute now is a bit too late. Go on, get out of here!”
With one hand, he gestured to chase his daughter away, but when his eyes landed on his wife appearing at the staircase, he cleared his throat, “Xiao Yu, go with your mother…”
Before Zhang Guang could finish, Liu Qingzhu lightly snorted and descended the stairs slowly, holding the railing. “Go with me? You were the one who insisted on hiding things from Xiao Yu. Don’t use me as a scapegoat now.”
Knowing he was at fault, Zhang Guang didn’t argue. Instead, through Zhang Yu, he glared at Zhang Cheng, who was lying on the sofa pretending to sleep. He flicked his forehead and said, “Stop pretending to sleep!”
Zhang Cheng’s head was flicked, almost hurting enough to jump up. Knowing he was caught, he sat up awkwardly and scratched his head. “Dad, how did you know I was faking? I thought I was doing a great job hiding it.”
Both Zhang Guang and Zhang Yu just smiled and said nothing. At this moment, Mom chimed in, “Your sister has known for a long time. With your acting skills, even a three-year-old wouldn’t be fooled.”
No way! I easily fooled Lu Qiuchen in the game’s side story… Zhang Cheng scratched his head again and looked down at the floor.
“The three-year-old Mom’s talking about isn’t human.” Zhang Yu moved closer to Zhang Cheng and cupped his face in her hands, looking at him seriously. “Watch carefully.”
Zhang Cheng had no idea what Zhang Yu was up to until her appearance suddenly shifted before his eyes, leaving him stunned. He stared at his sister’s pointed ears, voice trembling, “This is… an elf!”
Right before his eyes, Zhang Yu’s face quickly transformed. Her round ears became pointed, her black hair at shoulder length shifted to pale gold, and her pupil color changed from dark brown to light blue.
Zhang Cheng was dumbfounded, unable to react. Then Liu Qingzhu, who looked just like Zhang Yu’s transformed self, appeared before him, gazing warmly and embracing him.
Looking at the two elves before him, Zhang Cheng turned to Zhang Guang only to see that he remained human. He asked blankly, “Dad, why don’t you change?”
Zhang Guang was amused by the silly question and folded his arms. “Why would I change? Your dad’s human.”
Zhang Cheng glanced back at his mother and sister, reached up to touch his own ears, and found them still round. He didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.
What is going on? His mind was on the verge of crashing. His mother and sister had suddenly transformed into the legendary elves.
A possibility suddenly came to Zhang Cheng. Swallowing nervously, he spoke haltingly, “Mom, you’re an elf from the Eternal Realm?”
Seeing Liu Qingzhu smile and nod in confirmation, Zhang Cheng looked back at Zhang Yu. “Sis… you’re an elf too?”
Zhang Yu laughed at his expression. She had wanted to see this moment for a long time. Shaking her head, she said, “No, Dad’s human, so I’m a half-elf.”
“Stop obsessing over that. You’re a half-elf too; your bloodline just hasn’t manifested yet.” Zhang Guang, unable to stand the mother and children fawning over each other, spoke from the side.
“Now that you’ve seen your mother’s true form, think again about the Eternal Group…” Zhang Guang trailed off.
Zhang Cheng broke free from Liu Qingzhu’s embrace and caught on immediately. He blurted out, “Mom is an elf from the Eternal Realm, and the Eternal Group was founded by people allied with her!”
“That’s right. The Eternal Group was established exactly like that. It’s already been 34 years…” Zhang Guang recalled the past.
“In the Eternal Realm, with human civilization developing rapidly, human influence kept expanding. The natural resources of the Southern Continent were almost depleted, and survival conditions there grew increasingly harsh… Eventually, the major empires united and began raiding the Northern Continent, sparking the start of the war…”
“Wait, Dad, I have a question…” Zhang Cheng interrupted his father’s recollection.
Though a little annoyed, Zhang Guang gave his son a chance, seeing that his wife was still here. “Go ahead.”
Zhang Cheng cleared his throat and asked, “About the depletion of resources in the Southern Continent, I’m a bit confused. From what I’ve observed in the game, the overall level of the Eternal Realm is still quite backward. If the resource reserves are roughly comparable to Earth’s, even the scarcest resources wouldn’t be exhausted for tens of thousands of years. Meanwhile, Earth’s population has surpassed ten billion, but through constant scholarly research, many nearly depleted resources have gradually recovered. Besides, the Eternal Realm has magic…”
“Knock knock!” Zhang Guang curled his fingers and rapped twice on the tea table, cutting Zhang Cheng off.
“I knew you never read the backstory of Eternal while playing the game! Otherwise, I’d have saved myself some trouble explaining this! The technology level in the Eternal Realm is low compared to Earth, but what I’m talking about happens ten thousand years later.
“The Southern Continent’s major human empires launched attacks, and the Northern Continent naturally didn’t just sit by. That’s how the world war started.
“The war escalated, and midway, the demon race got involved. The Church was forced into the conflict, and the war spread to the Divine Realm and the Demon Realm. Eventually, the Dragon Race was also dragged in.
“At the war’s end, the Divine and Demon Realms were pulled back into the Eternal Realm by the Dragon Race, but the Dragon Race itself was pushed to the brink of extinction… This was a war with no victor. When the last survivors came to their senses, the world was uninhabitable—viruses and poisonous gases spread everywhere, and almost everyone was infected.
“The survivors gathered, selecting the last uninfected. They sacrificed their energy to initiate a space-time journey.
“But unfortunately, they didn’t return to the past. Instead, they were caught in a temporal vortex and pulled into another dimension.”
Liu Qingzhu’s eyes brimmed with nostalgia as she continued, “Fortunately, the temporal vortex didn’t separate us, and there were still humans in this new world. Using magic, we deciphered the language of the native humans.
“Although the magical power here was weak, causing many people’s abilities to plummet, cognitive alteration could still maintain disguises. After learning the local language, the non-human races used cognitive alteration to hide their true appearances and settled in this dimension.
“As we mingled with the local humans, we found that this world’s development path was completely different from the Eternal Realm’s, yet it contained legends of magic and other energy systems. This excited us greatly.
“But our hopes were soon dashed. Although there were many legends, there were no actual supernatural abilities here. Even more despairing was the discovery that newborns of various races born here couldn’t use magic.
“This is a cursed world, so we could only study its ‘technology’ instead. Fortunately, most of us were intelligent and, with the help of memory magic, even starting from scratch, we could quickly master the knowledge.
“That’s how we founded an organization to study alien civilizations, aiming to use technology to find our original world. This was the precursor to the Eternal Group.
“Years passed, and our exploration of the Eternal Realm yielded no results. Just when we thought we’d never see hope of returning home again, we detected an abnormal fluctuation…”