Lin Yu noticed the change in Miao Haixin's expression.
A pang of sorrow struck his heart.
During all those years when the grandmother and granddaughter only had each other to rely on,
scenes like this must have happened many times, right?
Facing a once-beloved family member who suddenly doesn’t recognize you, treating you like a stranger—
That feeling… must be unbearable.
“You are… Xiaochun? No, Xiaochun should be older than you, no no.”
“Jianjun’s daughter? But you’re much fairer than her…”
“Heh, I’m getting old, my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
Granny Miao struggled to guess her granddaughter’s identity.
Failing to recall, she gave an awkward, embarrassed smile.
Miao Haixin quickly stepped in to help:
“Grandma, don’t worry, let me give you a hint. How many granddaughters do you have?”
Granny Miao raised a finger:
“Just one. My son only had one precious daughter—I only have one granddaughter.”
Miao Haixin continued guiding her:
“Then do you remember what your granddaughter’s name is?”
Granny Miao patted Miao Haixin’s arm and chuckled while looking at Lin Yu:
“Hah, listen to this kid—how could I forget my granddaughter’s name?”
“My late husband was surnamed Miao, called Miao Dashan. My son is Miao Chenggong, and my granddaughter—she’s Miao Haixin, Xinxin!”
Lin Yu maintained a gentle smile and nodded at the elderly woman.
Yes.
She remembered everything clearly.
Yet she had forgotten that her granddaughter had just been sitting beside her, watching TV.
No—
It wasn’t that Granny Miao had forgotten.
It was just that time had stolen her memories away.
Miao Haixin leaned closer to her grandmother, turning her face toward her:
“Now look at me again. Who am I?”
Granny Miao studied her for a long moment.
Then she poked Miao Haixin’s cheek lightly:
“Oh! Xinxin!”
“My granddaughter Xinxin! See how my memory fails me, heh.”
Her words seemed directed both at Lin Yu and herself.
When the three of them finally sat down to chat,
Granny Miao suddenly stood up again, clapping her hands:
“Ah! A guest is here, and I forgot to make tea!”
“Xiao Song, you two sit and talk. I’ll go to the kitchen and get the teapot.”
With that,
Granny Miao shuffled slowly toward the kitchen.
Lin Yu rose to stop her, but Miao Haixin signaled with her eyes for him to let her go.
He could only watch as the elderly woman moved at a snail’s pace toward the kitchen.
“It’s fine, let her go. Keeping busy is good for her mind—slows down… the forgetting.”
“When the nanny and I aren’t home, she’s often alone anyway.”
Miao Haixin motioned for Lin Yu to sit back down.
Lin Yu asked curiously:
“Nanny? You hired someone?”
Miao Haixin pushed the fruit tray toward Lin Yu.
Picking up an apple, she handed it to him:
“Yes, when I’m at work, I have a nanny come over.”
“She watches over Grandma for a few hours, cooks for her, keeps her company.”
“Sometimes, when I’m too busy, Grandma has to stay alone.”
As she spoke to Lin Yu, Miao Haixin’s gaze kept drifting toward the kitchen.
Clearly,
she wasn’t as at ease as she appeared.
On the contrary,
she was deeply cautious about Granny Miao’s daily movements.
Lin Yu felt even more moved.
In his past life, he hadn’t known much about his advisor’s family situation.
He never imagined that her job barely covered so many expenses—
Rent, hiring a nanny, daily living costs…
How could she possibly have savings under such circumstances?
Yet she still lent him five thousand yuan?
How much could she even have left for herself?
Miao Haixin’s optimistic demeanor seemed untouched by hardship.
She even joked with Lin Yu:
“So, how’s the actor? This extra’s performance giving you a headache?”
Lin Yu quickly shook his head:
“Not at all! Grandma’s spirit is amazing.”
“Elderly people her age rarely have such vitality.”
But Lin Yu wasn’t here just to visit.
He was here to diagnose a problem!
Earlier, when shaking Granny Miao’s hand, he had taken her pulse.
Truthfully,
Miao Haixin had taken excellent care of her grandmother.
Her pulse was steady and strong—no signs of serious illness.
The likelihood of a sudden health crisis in the coming months was low.
So then…
how could something happen to her?
Considering that Granny Miao was often left alone, Lin Yu made a bold guess:
The accident likely occurred when neither Miao Haixin nor the nanny was home!
But when? And what kind of accident? Lin Yu couldn’t imagine.
Food poisoning? Gas leak? Fire?
For an elderly woman with a fading memory, any mishap was possible.
Lin Yu changed his approach and asked:
“Advisor, how old is Grandma this year?”
Miao Haixin answered without hesitation:
“Sixty-eight. Her health’s not bad, right?”
Lin Yu nodded and pressed further:
“Sixty-eight? She doesn’t look it at all. If my grandmother were still alive, she’d be sixty-eight too.”
“Do you remember Grandma’s birthday?”
Miao Haixin gave him a slightly puzzled look.
But he had to ask.
If this wasn’t illness but fate,
perhaps metaphysical methods could reveal some clues.
With her birth details, he might be able to calculate something.
His knowledge of Zi Wei Dou Shu (a Chinese astrological system) might actually help.
Yet reality dealt Lin Yu a harsh blow.
His advisor shook her head regretfully:
“Ah… I don’t know Grandma’s birthday. Even she doesn’t remember.”
“I asked her long ago, before her mind started fading.”
“She said her family only remembers she was born during cabbage harvest—no one noted the exact day.”
“Back then, families had too many children. Many didn’t keep track of birthdays.”
Lin Yu’s heart sank.
Right—
Many elders from rural areas didn’t know their birthdays.
And just like that,
his hope of using her birth chart for divination was dashed.
“Drink, drink! Chat while you sip.”
Granny Miao returned from the kitchen, carefully balancing a small teapot in one hand and two tiny cups in the other.
Setting them on the table,
she placed no cup for herself but arranged one each before Lin Yu and Miao Haixin.
Then she poured tea for both with painstaking care.
“Thank you, Grandma.”
Lin Yu expressed his gratitude, but as he looked at the cups, his heart twisted.
No steam rose from the tea—in fact, the liquid looked no different from plain water.
Miao Haixin touched the cup and immediately realized it was cold.
She began to say,
“Grandma, you—”
Before she could finish,
Lin Yu lifted the cup and began sipping slowly,
as if the water inside was scalding hot.
...
(Extra chapter delivered! More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading—your support means the world to a small-time writer like me. If you enjoyed it, consider sending a little love my way. Grateful to you all!)
Heart] Chen Yi traversed the cultivation world for eight hundred years, charging his way to the Tribulation Transcendence stage. Just as he was outwitting his 81st Heavenly Tribulation to ascend to immortality, he was suddenly pulled into a chat group called the "Multiverse Transmigrators Support Group." To his surprise, the group was filled with nothing but fresh-faced newbies who had just transmigrated. [Help! I transmigrated into a disgraced concubine in the cold palace, and the tyrant emperor is about to execute me!] [I ended up as a cannon-fodder villain, and the protagonist is still chasing me—WTF!] [I woke up as the protagonist’s father, but I’m about to be sacrificed in a ritual! What do I do? Urgent!!!] Chen Yi stared at the chaotic flood of desperate pleas in the group and fell into deep thought. "Seriously? You drag me into a newbie transmigrator chat group… only after I’m one step away from becoming an immortal?"
reezy rom-com) Good news: Jiang Liu is quite the ladies' man. Bad news: He’s lost his memory. Lying in a hospital bed, Jiang Liu listens to a parade of goddesses spouting "absurd claims," feeling like the world is one giant game of Werewolf. "Jiang Liu, I’m your first love." "Jiang Liu, you’re my boyfriend—she’s your ex." "Jiang Liu, we’re close friends who’ve shared a bed, remember?" "Jiang Liu, I want to have your baby." The now-lucid Jiang Liu is convinced this must be some elaborate scam... until someone drops the bombshell: "The day before you lost your memory, you confessed your feelings—and got into a relationship." Jiang Liu is utterly baffled. So... who the hell is his actual girlfriend?! ... Before recovering his memories, Jiang Liu must navigate this minefield of lies and sincerity, fighting to protect himself from these women’s schemes. But things spiral even further out of control as more people show up at his doorstep—each with increasingly unhinged antics. On the bright side, the memories he lost due to overwhelming trauma seem to be resurfacing. Great news, right? So why are they all panicking now?
shall grant"] ["Inscribing the glory of our race upon tombstones"] ["All that is threatened, I shall protect"] How his younger sister sees her brother: A brother who only makes eye contact once a day, mostly fading into the background as he tinkers with who-knows-what in his room all day. Their life paths should have remained largely separate. Until one day. Su Qi created an equipment card for his never-met "online girlfriend." His sister fell into silent contemplation upon receiving the "white stockings." [Card can be upgraded] [Upgrade by fulfilling any of the following conditions] [Condition ①: Consume one hundred higher-tier cards] [Condition ②: Complete one 'Heart-Pounding Adventure'] What constitutes a Heart-Pounding Adventure? [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Beginner Level): Equip the card and invite 'Su Qi' to admire it.] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Easy Level): Equip the card, invite 'Su Qi' to touch it, and analyze the equipment's texture.] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Entry Level): Equip the card and invite 'Su Qi' to...] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Challenge Level): Freely combine the words 'Brother' 'Out' 'Brother' 'Me' 'Please' into a complete sentence...] "Please help me analyze both teams' mistakes in this match, brother..." His sister exhaled in relief—surely... surely there couldn't be anything more difficult? [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Suicide Mission Level): Sneak a peek at the names of the galgames in 'Su Qi's' hidden E-drive folder]
. 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!"
