The words faded.
The line went quiet.
On the other end, there was only the faint, trembling sound of Lin Xiaoyou's breathing.
So...
She wasn't as relaxed as her tone had suggested just moments ago.
Fang Qi held the phone, his gaze slightly unfocused.
Lin Xiaoyou, you really are...
"Sis! What are you doing in there, did you fall in the toilet or something?!"
From the other end of the line came that little boy's screeching voice again!
"Forget your experiment or whatever—if you don't come out now, I'm gonna eat it all! I've had my eye on that last fried egg for a while now!"
"Hey, you little brat, put that down! That egg is mine!"
Lin Xiaoyou immediately yelled back.
Then her voice dropped low again, and a playful giggle came through:
"So, Senior, don't you worry. We..."
"We are absolutely, one hundred percent, on the same side, okay?"
Fang Qi was silent.
How should he put it...?
He felt like he was experiencing, once again, the gap between himself and a genius.
Was this... the stubbornness of a genius?
"But, before that..."
Her voice softened, and her tone grew unexpectedly gentle.
"Senior, give me a little time, okay?"
She sounded like she was both coaxing and pleading.
"Let me first enjoy... this time's 'experimental results.'"
Her voice dropped even lower.
"Is that alright?"
And then, before Fang Qi could say anything...
"Coming, coming!"
Lin Xiaoyou was already shouting toward the door.
Her voice had returned to that carefree, bubbly cheerfulness.
A "click" came—the sound of a door opening.
Then came the little boy's wailing:
"Wait, I didn't hear any water running! Did you wash your hands? You didn't wash your hands after using the bathroom!"
"Nonsense, I did wash them!"
"Mom! Sis didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom!"
"Lin Yu!! Shut your mouth!!!"
"Beep—beep—beep—"
The call ended.
Fang Qi froze for a long time...
Before slowly lowering his phone.
Staring at the "Call Ended" screen, he was dazed for a while...
Then he leaned back, sinking into the sofa cushions.
The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily.
...He kind of wanted to laugh.
But the moment his lips curled up, they fell again.
...His wife was gone. He really couldn't laugh.
But...
"Haah."
He shook his head.
Yeah.
He did, in fact, kind of want to laugh a little.
Liguang still hadn't been found, the world was still in chaos, and he still didn't know what his next step should be.
But at least... he had a "reliable" partner.
Fang Qi leaned back on the couch, staring at the light strips on the ceiling, his mind drifting slightly.
Lin Xiaoyou might be a pain in the neck, but when it really counted...
She really did come through.
A reassuring partner, huh...
...Sorry, Xiaoyou.
I used to think all you knew was how to court death.
Turns out, you're actually this dependable?
...I really misjudged you.
But still, she's such a pain!
And speaking of which, isn't all of this her fault in the first place?!
Once I find Liguang, I'm definitely going to have her give Lin Xiaoyou another good beating...!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Urgent knocking on the door!
No, wait...
That was more like pounding!
This time, it wasn't coming through the phone!
Fang Qi's head snapped toward the door.
His front door...?
Who?
"Xiao Qi! Xiao Qi, are you home?"
An anxious voice pierced through the security door!
"What's wrong with you? Open the door!"
Ah...!
Fang Qi's expression relaxed a little.
...It's Sister An Lian.
The Sister An Lian of this world.
The one with no memories of that other world, the one with a happy, complete family.
...She actually came?
Fang Qi pursed his lips.
That made sense.
He'd been rambling incoherently on the phone, then suddenly hung up...
She was probably scared by him.
She...
Fang Qi suddenly felt a little lost in thought.
Because a question had crossed his mind.
If An Lian, like Lin Xiaoyou, had memories of both timelines at once...
What would she choose?
On one side: a childhood spent in an orphanage, where her parents and brother died in a disaster, enduring bitter hardships alone.
On the other side: her mother calling her "dear little Lian'er" softly at the door, her father placing food on her plate at the dinner table, her brother lifting her up high...
Which side would she choose to stay on?
...She would probably be the one who least wanted to leave.
In Sister An Lian's eyes, this guy who wanted to change the world back...
Was practically the villain.
The knocking suddenly stopped.
Ah...!
Fang Qi snapped back to reality immediately!
Sister An Lian isn't going to call the cops, is she?!
I've got to go open the door for her!
He got up quickly and was about to head for the door...
Then he heard the sound of a key sliding into the lock from outside.
"Click!"
The door opened.
...What?
Fang Qi stared wide-eyed at his own door!
The security door was flung open, and An Lian rushed in, her face full of worry!
She was wearing a white knit sweater, her black hair slightly disheveled and loose...
Clearly, she'd rushed out in a hurry without bothering to fix herself up.
And her overall vibe...
Her usual cool, distant air was mostly gone, replaced with a hint of gentleness and liveliness!
The moment she stepped inside, she spotted Fang Qi standing by the sofa!
The worry on her face immediately eased a little.
"Xiao Qi, how are you?!"
She closed the distance in a few quick steps and grabbed his arm!
"What's going on with you? Why didn't you open the door?!"
Fang Qi, her hand gripping his arm, was completely stunned.
...Huh?
He stared blankly at the cool-featured face so close to his.
...Wait?
"Say something!"
Seeing that he wouldn't speak, An Lian's brows knitted even tighter.
Her grip on his arm tightened further!
"You said all that strange stuff on the phone earlier and then hung up out of nowhere—do you have any idea how worried I was?"
"I thought something had happened to you...!"
She blurted all of that in one breath, her chest heaving, clearly genuinely panicked.
Fang Qi, overwhelmed by her tirade, finally snapped back to attention.
"An, Sister An Lian..."
He instinctively glanced at the still-open door.
"How... do you have a key to my place?"
If Liguang ever found out another woman had a key to their house...
Yikes...
That would be terrifying...
An Lian's face was still full of worry. She was caught off guard by the question for a moment...
Then her expression turned even more baffled.
She even raised her hand, about to press the back of it to Fang Qi's forehead, to check if he had a fever!
Fang Qi: "?!"
His body reacted before his brain—he instinctively flinched back, dodging her hand!
Then...
Then, the atmosphere became awkward.
An Lian's hand hung frozen in midair, her gray eyes widening slightly, staring at Fang Qi in shock.
Fang Qi blinked too.
Uh...
Reflex action.
"Xiao Qi, you..."
An Lian's brows furrowed even deeper, her expression utterly confused.
"What... is going on with you?"
An Lian kept a firm grip on his arm, her eyes filled with concern:
"Your spare key's always been with me—last time you locked yourself out, I brought it over. Don't change the subject!"
Her gaze suddenly sharpened!
"Xiao Qi, what was that you said on the phone earlier?"
"What was that about 'she's gone' and 'the room has changed'..."
"Have you been under too much stress lately? Or did you stay up late again last night? Or..."
She glanced around the room, her expression slightly suspicious.
“You got tricked by a woman…?”
Fang Qi: “…”
Tricked by a woman?
Yeah.
There wasn’t really any problem with saying it that way.
He really had been tricked badly — by his own Liguang!
That little con artist had vanished in the blink of an eye, and now he had to go find her!
But…
He glanced at An Lian’s hand gripping his arm, and pursed his lips.
He really hoped this time Liguang was just fooling him again.
He hoped she had only pretended to disappear, hiding somewhere nearby to secretly watch him panic.
But…
Now he was certain.
That wasn’t possible.
Otherwise, if another woman was grabbing his arm like this…
That crazy woman would have already jumped out!
Fang Qi thought this, and instinctively tried to pry An Lian’s hand off…
Yet she was gripping so tightly that he couldn’t budge it at all!
…Good thing Liguang wasn’t here.
But that thought made a dull ache pulse through his chest.
Fang Qi shook his head, pushing those messy thoughts aside!
He looked up again, meeting An Lian’s gray eyes, which were full of worry.
“Xiao Qi, what exactly…!”
The hand gripping his arm tightened even more!
And Fang Qi stopped trying to pry it off.
He just…
Wasn’t used to this version of Sister An Lian.
In this world, she knew nothing.
But…
When it came to caring for him, her “little brother”…
The maintenance specialist who remembered across all cycles, and this woman standing here with a complete family…
Neither one had ever changed.
So…
Fang Qi immediately forced out a smile:
“Sister An Lian, I just woke up and was still half-asleep. I was talking in my sleep.”
He couldn’t let her worry either!
His tone lightened considerably, and he winked at An Lian:
“Really, I’m fine now!”
“See? I’m perfectly okay!”
An Lian stared at him for several seconds, but the worry in her eyes didn’t fade one bit!
Clearly, his excuse hadn’t convinced her.
“…The house is quite lively today.”
Still, her tone softened a little.
“Come back with me.”
But the words she said carried a feeling that left no room for refusal.
…It really did feel like she was his real older sister.
Yet Fang Qi pursed his lips.
…Go to the An family home?
No, no, no!
His wife was gone — how could he have time to go visiting other people’s houses?
He still had to find his wife!
“I…”
He instinctively wanted to refuse.
But…
Looking at An Lian’s worried expression, the refusal got stuck in his throat.
Well… maybe it could work?
Lin Xiaoyou probably still needed some time to “enjoy the fruits of her experiment.”
And right now…
He didn’t really have a direction to go in.
So…
Fang Qi thought for a moment.
Learning about An Lian’s current family, learning about how this world had changed…
That was what he needed to do now!
Maybe he could find some clues from it.
Yeah.
Fang Qi took a deep breath…
Raised his head, and looked into An Lian’s still-worried gray eyes.
“Sister An Lian, stop pulling on me.”
Then he slowly let out that breath.
“I… I’ll go with you.”
Let’s go take a look.
Let’s see how the people who died in the original timeline…
Were living their lives now.
This timeline — without Chenxi, without Bomo, without the second AI crisis…
And without Liguang.
What had it become?
…Let’s go take a look.
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
