Chapter 134
10.1 – You guessed right, he is Wen Ruoyi
editors: alamerysl, BlueBug & celtic
Xue Ling woke up in another body and felt drained in body and spirit.
His power had been emptied out. In the midst of attempting to balance out his powers, his consciousness had been focused within his body, and he had been completely clueless regarding everything happening around him until he woke up just now in a new body.
He was still a little confused.
The system was circling around his head. When it discovered that he had woken up, it lowered his head to rub against its host.
“Is host awake?”
Xue Ling massaged his forehead and frowned slightly. “Where am I?”
“We’re already in another world.” The system raised its paw and pressed it lightly against Xue Ling’s cheek, saying, “Some unexpected situations arose in the previous world. It was no longer suitable for host to continue staying there, so I brought you back to the system space ahead of time.”
“What about now?” Xue Ling looked around, and found that he was in a room. The décor and furniture were all very standard, neither high-tech nor antique. Was this a relatively more normal world?
“Host fainted after successfully integrating the energies. In order to calm you down as soon as possible, I chose a relatively common world for you to transition into.”
Xue Ling nodded. He did not want to move, and quietly lay on the bed. It was rare for him to be able to lie in bed after transmigrating into a new world, and it was great if he could just rest for a while first. It had to be said that he had never received such good treatment from the system ever since they had become even vaguely familiar with each other.
However, Xue Ling also wouldn’t be silly enough to believe the system’s deceptive words. He still remembered the last world that the system had told him he could relax in – he had entered the world on his wedding night and an entire series of events had broken down. The system had even dared to say that world was suitable for resting!
Although he didn’t want to know about the world and his current body’s troubles at all, at the end of the day, there were some things that Xue Ling couldn’t just put down. He lay there for a while, and then opened his mouth to ask the system, “That’s not right… If I’ve left, then what happened to the task in that world? What’ll happen to Chi Jian and Shaofeng…”
“Host can rest assured. Your body remained alive after you left… Um…”
Seeing the system’s hesitation, Xue Ling raised his eyebrows and pressed, “Why did you stop? Is it something related to the man?”
“Well… He took a strand of the host’s soul and placed it in that body. Everything happened too suddenly, and there was no other way…” The system was rather hung up over the matter of its host’s soul having had a sliver drawn away. After all, it wasn’t sure whether or not its host would be bothered by such a thing.
Based on his reaction, it appeared that Xue Ling did not mind. He nodded and said, “As long as it won’t cause any problems, this is indeed one way to deal with it…”
“Only, there is a small side effect…”
“Hm?”
“Host’s soul is now incomplete… Likewise, if that person also followed you over, a strand of his soul will also have remained behind in that cultivation world.” Although the system was a little delighted with their misfortune, its expression was still as innocent and helpless as ever. “Because your souls are incomplete, there is a very high likelihood that he will recognize the wrong person…”
Xue Ling: “…”
Once he understood what the system was trying to say, Xue Ling raised his eyebrows and appeared to have gained some interest in the system’s words. “For you to say that, does it mean that you already know who he is in this world?”
“I promised host in the last world…” The system snickered and continued, “So in this world, I had a conversation with the Lord and tried to arrange an identity that was suitable for you to bully and abuse.”
Xue Ling’s interest was piqued, even though he understood that the plot of this world was very likely to be full of traps.
“In that case, give me the plot. I’ll remain lying down while I accept it so that I won’t end up in a position where I’m unable to deal with anything unexpected.”
Seeing that its host really had no opinions about their circumstances, the system nodded and passed on the story.
The world selected by the system was really well suited for a holiday. Unlike those weird and strange worlds that they had been in before, this one didn’t really have a tricky setting. This was a very normal dogblood script, and the plot even had a BE. When the story ended, the main protagonists broke up and went separate ways, and none of the characters were able to get the people or things that they wanted.
Xue Ling’s guess was that the original story had probably been written as a piece of heart wrenching youth literature, because the development of the entire plot seemed to be filled with a light sense of sadness. Even if the set-up was interesting, at the end, it still went down the path towards stabbing the reader in the heart with a knife. And it was a knife that had been coated in sugar. When people were willingly pulled in by its sweet taste, they suddenly realized that it was a knife. The story seemed to have achieved its purpose after making readers thoroughly muddled, and so it ended.
The main focus of the story was still on the relationship between two men. The protagonist shou was the elder brother of Xue Ling’s current body. He was a university professor, and the protagonist gong was one of his students.
Originally, there was no way for a relationship to develop between the two. But they developed a connection anyway because the protagonist gong bought back a little toy pig. As long as the gong brought the little pig with him to sleep, he would turn into the shou’s family cat for the night. And it was precisely because of this interaction that he would discover that the shou was the person he met over the internet who he secretly had a crush on.
The protagonist shou was named Mu Sichao and his internet alias was Thoughtful Dawn. He was a famous god in the internet audio drama circle – his voice could change in a hundred different ways, and he could come off as a gong or a shou. The most important point was that his voice was particularly provocative, and if everyone he had teased before all lined up, they could probably form a circle around the earth. He had gotten together with enough different CPs to form his own football team. And the protagonist gong was coincidentally a new entrant in the circle as a gong voice. He encountered the famous god the first time he joined an audio drama group. Young and ignorant, he turned red as soon as the protagonist shou flirted with him. Afterwards, he began to look into all the protagonist shou’s works, and it was as though he had entered a deep pit and had no way of getting out at all.
But he was just one out of the innumerable people who had a secret crush on this famous god. The protagonist shou couldn’t even remember his name. In order to tie himself to Mu Sichao, the protagonist gong began to strive hard so that he could get near this god and stay a little closer to him.
Unfortunately, all of his efforts only got him Mu Sichao’s complete rejection. Although he liked to flirt, he never jumped rashly into any relationship. Even if the gong’s confession had been even more sincere, it would still be unable to move his heart that was made out of stone. The protagonist gong had his heart broken and had originally been dispirited, but unexpectedly, he turned into the short-haired cat that Mu Sichao kept in his home…
Then, the story began to turn around. Because he discovered that Mu Sichao was Thoughtful Dawn, the protagonist gong began to intentionally get in touch with the protagonist shou. The two of them dragged on for almost a year before they properly confessed to each other, and then got together.
As far as any normal story was concerned, the next step would be for them to show their love and affection. But they still had to deal with the biggest obstacle to their relationship, which was Xue Ling’s current body.
The body he currently possessed was named Ning Simu. He was Mu Sichao’s younger brother, who had been lost for many years. When Mu Sichao was four, his mother had given birth to his younger brother, and their father had named him Simu. ‘Chao’ meant dawn, and ‘Mu’ meant dusk, and when paired together, it could create the saying ‘yearning from dusk to dawn’ which was also his love confession to their mother. But in fact, while their mother was still carrying Simu, their father had already gone off the rails.
Their mother was livid when she learned about this matter, and immediately applied for divorce. After a round of disputes, she left the city with Simu. At first, their mother still maintained contact with Mu Sichao, and Mu Sichao heard from her regularly up until he graduated from elementary school. But an unexpected incident occurred, causing their communications to stop.
Mu Sichao’s father died in an accident. His relatives were strange and a little crazy, and turned the entire matter into a big deal. Mu Sichao’s uncle came back from abroad and brought Mu Sichao out of the country.
At the same time, Mu Sichao’s mother changed her last name. Her new husband was a Northerner, and after the two of them were married, Mu Sichao’s mother brought Ning Simu with her and moved to the north. In the era where communication still relied on sending letters, the letter his mother left behind had no way to reach Mu Sichao who was already abroad.
Mu Sichao tried to get in contact for a long time, but there was no trace of his mother. He even went on TV to search for his mother, but the news that he sent out was lost in the ocean and he was left with no way to find her. Ten years later, Mu Sichao’s studies abroad ended, and he chose to return home to continue looking for news of his mother and little brother. What happened after that was also a result of his decision to return home.
In Ning Simu’s memory, he indeed had an older brother, but he had been very small back then, and his impression of his older brother had only been through his mother’s letters. He had never seen the actual person before, so after he grew up, he never brought this matter up. When Ning Simu was small, he had drifted with his mother, and neither mother nor son lived well. His mother often worked late to keep him warm and fed. After his mother remarried, their happy days had also not lasted for long when they discovered that his mother was suffering from cancer.
Ning Simu was still young, but he lost the mother that he had always depended on. His stepfather was kind to him, and always gave him money to support him. Later on, he went out to sea to do business, founded his own company, and formed yet another family. He did not forget Ning Simu, but the relationship between father and son remained somewhat rigid and bizarre. Their rare exchanges revolved around whether or not Ning Simu needed more money. After university, their contact became less and less. Ning Simu supported himself by working, and his days were not bad, nor were they great. Occasionally, he would go online to sing some songs, and it could be considered as a bright spot in his life.
Unfortunately, the bright spot in his life was destroyed very quickly.
It was destroyed by a man. This man was a friend of Mu Sichao, who returned back to the country with him. He was also the second man in the story: the childhood friend who could not beat the story’s fated love. His name was Wen Ruoyi, and he was probably the biggest variable in the story.
Wen Ruoyi was Mu Sichao’s childhood friend. He had always been good friends with Mu Sichao while they were abroad, and when Mu Sichao said he planned to return home, he came along. As a supporting male character, he naturally also liked Mu Sichao, but Mu Sichao occupied too sacred of a place in his heart, and he could not bear to bend and sully him and make him be together with him. So instead, he found a substitute…
Yes. This substitute was Ning Simu.
In order to have more common topics to talk about with Mu Sichao, Wen Ruoyi joined the internet audio drama circle with him, and he was now another god-level personage there. During the process of recording an online drama, he came into contact with Ning Simu, who had sung a song for the production. Ning Simu’s voice was very unique, and he also gained some fame after having sung for a few years. Wen Ruoyi found many of his songs, listened to them, and discovered that his voice sounded quite similar to Mu Sichao’s.
Perhaps it was out of curiosity, or perhaps the author deliberately arranged it this way, but Wen Ruoyi began to get closer to Ning Simu. His personality was very gentle, and especially when he was intentionally getting to know someone, he could make a person fall into his ensnarement incredibly quickly. Ning Simu was a student who had not yet truly stepped into society, and soon fell into this gentle and tender trap. He even exposed his identity, and agreed to meet Wen Ruoyi in person.
If Wen Ruoyi contacted him because he was curious about his voice, he was shocked when he saw him in person. After all, he was Mu Sichao’s brother, and if one looked carefully, they would find that Ning Simu’s eyes and side profile were very similar to Mu Sichao’s.
Perhaps it was a mistake in a moment of weakness, or it was a strange combination of circumstances, but Wen Ruoyi began to associate more with Ning Simu while carrying a mixture of guilt, anxiety, and joy in his heart.
At the beginning of their association, the two of them actually enjoyed their time together. Regardless of whether it was online, or in reality, Ning Simu felt that he had probably found his own happiness, but an accident caused him to meet Mu Sichao…
As his interactions with Wen Ruoyi began to increase, there was an especially large group of people who criticized and blackened them on the internet because they did not support their pairing. Even after a particularly large explosion of criticism, Wen Ruoyi still had no intention of clarifying their relationship. Ning Simu was broken hearted and wanted to find Wen Ruoyi for comfort, but unexpectedly, he met Mu Sichao, who was staying together with Wen Ruoyi at the time.
At this point, Mu Sichao had just gotten together with the protagonist gong, and whenever Wen Ruoyi looked at him, there was sadness and forbearance in his gaze that even he was not aware of. The gaze he used to look at him was gentle to the extreme. Ning Simu had seen many of his expressions, but he had never seen his eyes become gentle like this.
He began to have doubts about their relationship, and based on his understanding, it was obvious that Wen Ruoyi really liked Mu Sichao…
Which meant that Wen Ruoyi had only noticed him because he looked like that person…
When faced with such a thing, if one did not quietly initiate a breakup, they would go wild for a while. Ning Simu chose the second option, and during his tantrum, Mu Sichao discovered his existence and the brotherly relationship between the two of them came to light.
Unfortunately, it came to light at the wrong time.
Ning Simu was someone who lacked love. He had lacked it from childhood until now, so his feelings towards Wen Ruoyi, who was like sunshine in his life, were very serious. And someone he regarded so importantly only considered him as a substitute, and the person he was a substitute for was his elder brother who he had not heard from for many years…
All of this forced his fragile spirit to the edge and he subsequently tried to commit suicide several times. This strained the relationships between Mu Sichao, Wen Ruoyi, and even the male protagonist, and after repeated misunderstandings, the connections between the four seemed to be coming to an end.
At the end of the story, he had struggled to the point of physical and mental exhaustion, and chose to break up. After everything broke down between him and Wen Ruoyi, he chose to leave the city and go sightseeing far away. In the end, he died in a tour bus accident.
Everything came to an abrupt end. Before he died, he made two phone calls, one to Mu Sichao where he called him elder brother and said he was sorry. The other went to Wen Ruoyi, but he did not have much to say. Wen Ruoyi had not answered the phone, so by the time he opened his voicemail, he only heard the youth’s hoarse voice as he apologized to him and said farewell.
After Ning Simu died, Wen Ruoyi seemed ensnared in his memories of that youth. Mu Sichao and the protagonist gong broke up, and he left the city and took his younger brother’s place to wander around the world. As for the protagonist gong, he stayed in the city, and said that he would always be waiting for Mu Sichao’s return.
Xue Ling finished going through this sad, tragic story of youth, and expressionlessly looked at the system.
The system nodded and said earnestly, “You guessed right, he is Wen Ruoyi.”
new arc~
(don’t ask me about the shapeshifting pig thing, i don’t know what’s going on there either)
on the topic of recommendations, since we’re now moving into a modern day arc, you guys should go give a try. same author as Rebirth of a Supermodel, frequent releases, and good translation quality~