In the southern part of the city, inside a residential complex hidden among the buildings.
Xia He looked through the car window at the dusty, bustling market in front of her.
The vendors’ shouts carried far into the distance.
The oily smoke was sealed outside the window. Even though she couldn’t smell the greasy odor inside the car, Xia He still frowned slightly.
She didn’t like this place.
Crowded. Noisy.
The vendors downstairs had been hawking coarse, rough food all year round, as if they would never finish selling it.
The Maybach sat quietly parked by the roadside, completely out of place with everything around it.
“Miss.”
Uncle Lin in the front seat called out to her.
Xia He turned her head and saw a person standing outside the car window on the other side.
The man stood respectfully outside the door, head slightly lowered.
Although she didn’t know why his face was bruised and swollen, he still stood there perfectly straight.
Uncle Lin rolled down the window.
Xia He’s expressionless face appeared behind the glass.
“You messed up?”
The man’s body trembled. The bruise on his left cheek moved along with it.
“Yes…”
Xia He closed her eyes and slowly drew the cold air into her chest.
An indescribable sense of pressure gradually brewed inside the car.
“Why?”
“There was a small accident…” the man explained awkwardly. “The plan was going smoothly at first, but…”
“I don’t like ‘but’.”
Xia He cut him off.
She opened her eyes and glanced sideways. An inexplicable coldness appeared around her.
“Was the task I gave you that difficult?”
Uncle Lin in the driver’s seat stared straight ahead, as if he hadn’t heard anything.
The man lowered his head deeply.
“It was my incompetence,” he said. “I didn’t expect someone to suddenly appear… She took Jiang Yueming away…”
“Who?”
“Su Xiaoyue.”
The temperature inside the car seemed to drop several degrees.
“Su Xiaoyue?”
“Yes…”
Xia He’s eyebrows sank almost imperceptibly.
“How did she get involved with Jiang Yueming?”
“I don’t know…” the man said.
Xia He clicked her tongue and cursed, “Useless.”
The man didn’t even dare to lift his head. He could only endure it.
On her phone, Jiang Yueming still hadn’t replied to any of her messages.
Everything she sent had sunk like a stone into the sea.
Thinking that Jiang Yueming was currently with another woman, Xia He felt an unknown rage surging in her chest.
What could they possibly be so busy with that he couldn’t even reply to messages?
Some unsettling thoughts rose in her mind for no reason.
She tried her best to suppress them, but these thoughts kept surfacing again and again.
Each time one appeared, her grip on the phone tightened a little more.
“Where did they go?”
She had already been waiting downstairs at Jiang Yueming’s house for an hour. She couldn’t wait any longer.
The man’s head lowered even further. He seemed somewhat embarrassed to speak.
“I… I don’t know.”
Uncle Lin, who had been silent the whole time, glanced at the man through the rearview mirror and shook his head slightly without making a sound.
Xia He was silent for a moment before finally turning to look at him directly.
“Lu Renjia.”
The man trembled and raised his face.
His skin was dark, and he had short hair. It was indeed Lu Renjia.
However, at this moment, his face and hair were covered in dust. Combined with his swollen left cheek, he looked extremely disheveled.
“How long have you been following me?”
“Half a year…”
“Half a year already,” Xia He repeated. “In this half year, has the Xia family ever mistreated you?”
Lu Renjia pressed his lips together. “No.”
“Then why can’t you even handle such a small matter?”
Lu Renjia lowered his head and stayed silent. He couldn’t deny it.
He still remembered half a year ago.
The day his family’s house was sealed and their company was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Xia He had appeared for the first time at the company entrance.
The moment that Maybach slowly drove up carrying the life-saving subpoena and contract, he had made up his mind.
He would go through fire and water for this person who could save the Lu family from desperation.
But Xia He had only given him some simple tasks, and he hadn’t been able to complete even those.
“I told you to block him and wait for me to come, and you still got intercepted,” Xia He said. “What use are you at all?”
Xia He’s words made this one-meter-eighty-eight man want to bury his head into the ground.
Yet she didn’t care in the slightest.
Just as she finished scolding Lu Renjia and was about to arrange the next task, an untimely voice suddenly interrupted her.
[Ding—— Host is about to receive harm. Hazard assessment: Level 2. Emergency Protection Protocol activated.]
[Emergency Protection Protocol executed. Harm avoided. Host is safe.]
Cold. Mechanical.
Like some kind of system notification from a virtual world.
Uncle Lin and Lu Renjia showed no reaction at all, as if they hadn’t heard anything.
Xia He’s gaze suddenly sank in that instant.
…
“Virtual world?”
Jiang Yueming was pinned down by Su Xiaoyue. He couldn’t move at all.
Her hands clearly looked extremely slender, yet no matter how much strength Jiang Yueming used, he couldn’t break free even a little.
“Mm. Didn’t you just hear it?” Su Xiaoyue said while pressing down on his hand. “That ‘ding’ sound.”
The Ferrari was parked by the roadside. The engine had long since been turned off.
Only the faint whirring sound from the air conditioner vent remained inside the car.
Jiang Yueming stared at Su Xiaoyue, thinking that she must be crazy.
“Are you making excuses for trying to smash me with the thermos just now?”
“I’m saying,” Su Xiaoyue’s tone was unhurried, “the world you’re currently in is fake.”
“……”
The car fell silent for a moment.
Jiang Yueming opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He looked at Su Xiaoyue’s face, trying to find any trace of joking in her expression.
But there was no smile on that face. At least not now.
Those eyes quietly watched him. His own face was reflected in her pupils.
“Are you crazy?” Jiang Yueming said.
“I’m not crazy.”
“You just tried to smash me with a cup, and now you’re telling me this world is fake?” Jiang Yueming’s voice rose slightly. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“You’re not stupid,” Su Xiaoyue said. “But right now, you really don’t remember anything.”
“Remember what?”
Su Xiaoyue didn’t answer immediately.
She let go of Jiang Yueming’s hand and leaned back into her seat.
Her gaze fell on the night scene outside the windshield.
The light from the streetlamps filtered through the gaps in the parasol tree leaves and cast mottled shadows on the hood, like a mirror shattered across the ground.
“Have you ever thought about it,” she spoke, her voice softening, “why your memories are always getting messed up?”
Jiang Yueming froze. “How do you know that?”
The image of Xia He flashed through his mind.
It seemed that ever since the first day he met Xia He, this kind of situation had started happening to him frequently.
“Because all of this is fake,” Su Xiaoyue said. “The first time you met Xia He was when she came to return your Chinese textbook, right?”
Jiang Yueming recalled that afternoon.
Xia He had stood at the classroom door holding a Chinese textbook, smiling as she said, “Hello, Jiang.”
Jiang Yueming stared at Su Xiaoyue’s face, frowning, and slowly nodded.
“All of that was designed by her. She’s a thief! A liar!”
Su Xiaoyue’s tone suddenly became gritted with hatred.
Jiang Yueming couldn’t understand where her resentment toward Xia He came from.
After venting those two sentences, Su Xiaoyue suddenly fell quiet.
Then she turned her head and looked at him with a gaze Jiang Yueming had never seen before.
Time seemed to stretch under that gaze.
The trajectory of the moonlight falling became visibly slower.
A wave of watery sadness suddenly spread out and silently seeped into Jiang Yueming’s body.
He saw the moonlight land on her eyelashes like pollen, every grain countable.
“That book was supposed to be returned by me…”
Su Xiaoyue’s voice sounded sorrowful and aggrieved.
“…She stole you away from me.”
The moment she finished speaking, Jiang Yueming felt like a bomb had gone off inside his head.
A familiar pain appeared without any warning and instantly swept through his brain.
An enormous agony engulfed him.