DTTM 48

Chapter 48: What’s wrong now?

“…One day, I was walking down the street when I suddenly saw a strange man in a gray coat, sneaking around in the shadows of an alley.”

He beckoned to me and lowered his voice, saying, “I have a particularly beautiful gem here, even more blue than the river pine stones of the Kingdom of Wo, a color only found in the land of gods. I’ll sell this gem to you. How much are you willing to pay?” He held the gem in front of me.

That beautiful gem sparkled in the sunlight. From the first glance, I was captivated by it. But I didn’t have the money; I couldn’t afford it.

So I asked the strange man, “Can we replace it with something else?”

The strange man, as if he had expected this, smiled and pointed at my face: ‘I want one of your eyes.’

At that time, I thought, I have two eyes, even if I give him one, I’ll still have one left.

I readily agreed. He took my right eye and left the gem in my palm.

I guarded that special gem for a long time, until one day, it suddenly turned into a stream of light, flew back into the sky, and became a star.

It turned out that it was a wounded star that fell from the sky. Once it recovered, it returned to the sky.

Now, although I can’t see with my right eye, it doesn’t matter. Whenever I look up at the sky, I know that the most beautiful streak of emerald blue is always there, watching over the world for me.

The truth was really not suitable to tell children, so I embellished it in an artistic way.

“Can you still find the bad guy?” Zong Yinzhuo couldn’t help but yawn after hearing the story. “Make him…make him give your eye back to you.”

Actually the current balance in my bank account was enough to cover the treatment. Whether I go to Bazel or choose any medical institution in Shangcheng District, as long as I tell them I need a corneal transplant, I should be able to regain my vision in my right eye within a month.

But there’s no need for that.

There was no need to restore vision in my right eye, whether from the perspective of timing, function, or personal image.

“He probably can’t find it anymore. And this is the price. To gain something, you must give something up…” My voice trailed off, and Zong Yinzhuo closed his eyes and fell fast asleep in just a moment.

After waiting a few more minutes and seeing that he was completely asleep, I quietly withdrew my hand, tucked him in, and called Aunt Chun to leave the room together.

Zong Yanlei did not return until the early hours of the morning. Under the butler’s arrangement, I moved into a guest room on the second floor.

After taking a shower, I sat cross-legged on the sofa, lost in thought as I looked at the silver dopamine brooch on the coffee table.

Nothing.

It remained completely still after entering the mansion.

That night, I explored almost every floor. Given the range of this signal detector, if the key were here, it should have reacted by now.

Therefore, the key was not here.

I slumped to my side, sinking into the soft sofa, and let out a long, weary breath.

“Young master, where did you hide it?”

Before I knew it, I curled up on the sofa and fell asleep.

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Because the curtains weren’t drawn, I was already half-awake due to the light as dawn broke. But when Zong Yanlei walked in from outside, covered in frost, his chilly aura instantly woke me up completely.

I was awake, but because I didn’t know what he was going to do, I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep.

Zong Yanlei stood in front of me for a while, then reached out and gently brushed the ends of my hair.

“Why aren’t you sleeping in bed…” he muttered softly. He bent down and lifted me from the sofa.

I was only wearing a thin nightgown, and as soon as I got close to his body, I was so chilled by the cold emanating from his coat that I couldn’t help but shiver. Afraid that he would see through my pretense, I immediately snuggled my face into his chest.

The next moment, he tightened his grip on me, quickly walked to the bedside, and carefully placed me on the blanket.

He pulled the other side of the blanket over me and stood there without moving. I could feel him watching me, as if he were observing me, or perhaps assessing how soundly I was sleeping.

I maintained my even, slow breathing, hesitating whether to continue pretending to be asleep or feign waking up… Suddenly, a warm hand covered my head. And just as I focused all my attention on that hand, something even hotter and softer pressed against my right eyelid.

Perhaps afraid of waking me, he only touched me briefly before getting up and leaving.

The door slowly closed, and the room fell silent again.

I waited a while, making sure he wouldn’t come back, then covered my still-warm eye and suddenly sat up in bed.

It was just through my eyelids, a touch so slight I could barely feel any force, yet my eyeball felt as if it were charred by that heat, burning from the depths of my eye socket.

It had often ached over the years, and I’d gotten used to it, but this time was different from any other. Strictly speaking, it didn’t hurt; it was just hot. Too hot.

It felt like something was struggling, growing, shouting, and brewing inside that eyeball, trying to pierce my flesh and spread into the folds of my brain.

I covered my right eye and stumbled into the bathroom. I leaned close to the mirror and used my fingertips to pry open my eyelid to check, the white, misty layer was still floating on the iris, and there were a few faint red blood vessels in the white of my eye. Other than that, there was nothing unusual.

My lower eyelid was slightly red from being pulled. I blinked, turned on the tap, and bent down to wash my face with the bone-chilling cold water. I didn’t stop until my skin felt a stinging cold. I grabbed a towel and roughly wiped the water off my face.

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[Mr. Zong Shen’an, Chairman of the SunGod Group, passed away at 3:00 AM after failing to respond to medical treatment.]

In the morning, all the major news media in Penglai published this news as their headline of the day.

The old sun has come to an end, and from today onwards, the Sun God will usher in its new era.

After having breakfast with Zong Yinzhuo and playing hide-and-seek with him for a while, I left Luoying Mountain in the afternoon and returned to the team headquarters.

Along the way, I paid special attention and found that there was indeed a black car following me not far behind, and it followed me all the way to the gate of the headquarters.

Meeting Ye Shuer outside was definitely out of the question; I could only arrange to meet him in the metaverse.

It was still the same mirror of the Wan Shu Church. I waited in front of the statue for quite a while before he finally arrived.

“Ge, you finally contacted me! You have no idea how worried I was about you…”

When I turned around, I saw Ye Shuer wearing a white coat, with huge dark circles under his eyes, walking quickly toward me with his arms outstretched.

I looked him up and down, then raised my arm, palm facing him, to signal him to “stop.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Even if Yu Xuan hadn’t passed on my message, it was all over the internet. He shouldn’t be this worried.

He stopped an arm’s length away from me, his eyes glazed and unfocused, looking like he’d been working himself to the bone for days and nights.

“A few days ago, Zong Yanlei suddenly launched a non-periodic technical review. He ordered us to submit a report on this year’s interim milestones within five days and demanded a quantitative forecast of next year’s experimental process, saying it was directly linked to budgetary authority.”

“Data cleaning and model verification for brain-computer interfaces cannot be rushed, but he only cares about KPIs. In order to finish the report before the deadline, I led the whole team to stay up for three nights in the lab. Now my brain is more chaotic than the raw EEG signals that are waiting to be processed…” He maintained the posture of his arms forward, and both his tone and expression were like sleepwalking. “Zong Yanlei is simply a devil.”

“…Then can you still communicate normally?”

Zong Yanlei had just taken office, and unexpectedly, he was the first to get burned.

“I’ll try my best.” Ye Shuer lowered his arms, raised his head, and looked at the huge gray statue at the church’s far end. Feeling relieved, he said, “By this time next year, neither the Sun God nor Penglai will exist anymore.”

I lowered my hand and coughed lightly: “I can’t find the key.”

He paused, his gaze shifting downwards to my face, and he slowly exclaimed, “Huh?”

I had to repeat myself: “I can’t find the key. It’s not on Zong Yanlei, not at his house, and certainly not in the headquarters.”

He realized what was happening and gasped, “Then… what do we do?”

“There’s another way we might try, but…” I didn’t finish my sentence, abruptly changing the subject. “Let’s not talk about that for now. Wuxi Kunpeng’s decision to let the Royal Police Department arrest people arbitrarily is a bad move for him, but it’s a good thing for us. We’ll continue with our expertise in the media campaign and intensify the online condemnation of him. We need to help Zhong Xiaoshan cut off this fat ‘tail’.”

Ye Shuer pondered for a long time. Just as I was about to kick him out of the neuro-navigation pod and let him go back to sleep before coming back, his mind started working again: “If they arrest one, say they arrested ten; if they take a man, say they arrested men, women, and children; if they release them quickly, say we haven’t seen them come back; if they’re alive, say they’re dead… Zhong Xiaoshan sits by and watches the chaos, nurturing enemies to enhance his own power. We’ll just stir up the waters even more.”

Thankfully, he wasn’t completely stupid.

I smiled and vigorously rubbed his head: “Let him see that he’s not the only one in this world who can turn black into white.”

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In the days that followed, Zong Yanlei was busy with Zong Shen’an’s funeral arrangements and didn’t contact me again. As for me, because I had promised Wei Jiarui that I would go back to see him as soon as possible, after informing Xu Chengye, I gave up going with the main group and returned to Zengcheng ahead of schedule.

For my safety, Xu Chengye even specially assigned two tall, burly bodyguards in black to me, and told me to take them with me wherever I went.

So, the two bodyguards came with me to Aunt Kou’s seedling nursery. We worked in the greenhouse during the day and went home together at night to play a “shiny dress-up” game with Wei Jiarui and Xiang Rou, getting covered in shiny stickers. This went on for five days, and the two bodyguards went from being energetic at the beginning to becoming hunched over.

The day before the competition, after lunch, I said goodbye to Aunt Kou and the others, and prepared to go to the hotel arranged by GTC to meet up with Xu Chengye and the others.

“No!!” As a result, Wei Jiarui clung to me and refused to get down. Whenever someone touched him, he would loudly cry, “Waaaaah, Daddy, take me with you! I don’t want to be separated from you again!”

I struggled to hold him tight; I had no choice but to agree to take him along.

Since I had a match tomorrow, someone had to look after him. After some discussion, it was decided that even Wei Bao would come with us to the hotel.

Even after we got in the car, Wei Jiarui was still sobbing on my shoulder. He had had a habit of easily falling asleep in cars since he was little. As expected, he fell asleep halfway through the journey and didn’t wake up again until we arrived at the hotel and checked in at the front desk.

“Hold him for a while.” My arms were so sore I could barely feel them, so I handed the little chubby boy towards Wei Bao.

“Couldn’t you just shake him awake and let him get down and walk by himself?” Despite saying this, Wei Bao still took Wei Jiarui.

“He’ll have plenty of time to walk on his own later, so this little bit won’t make a difference.” As I said this, I poked Wei Jiarui’s rosy cheeks.

Wei Bao clicked his tongue twice: I can’t even imagine how spoiled a child would be if you ever had your own.

Suddenly, the once quiet waiting area in the hotel lobby became noisy, and everyone’s eyes turned to the entrance.

A group of people surged into the hotel, and the leaders were the ones who caused the commotion.

Although the online debate about which GTC driver had the better driving skills was unresolved, there was no disagreement as to which of the 13 teams had the most handsome drivers: Sun God.

Let alone Zong Yanlei, Yi You and Tan Yunmei were both at a level where they could debut solo in the entertainment industry. With these people standing together, the already dazzling hall seemed even brighter.

“Xiao Man, what a coincidence!” Yi You waved enthusiastically at me and walked over. “And this is…”

“My son, and my son’s uncle,” I introduced them.

Yi You froze instantly: “Son? You have a son? You’re married??”

“Yes.” Although I was answering him, my attention was actually on Zong Yanlei behind him the whole time.

He was holding Zong Yinzhuo’s hand, and his expression had been grim ever since he entered. When Zong Yinzhuo saw me, he tried to come over, but Zong Yanlei pulled him back.

After picking up Zong Yinzhuo, Zong Yanlei glanced at me coldly before sitting down in the waiting area.

“Aren’t you only 25? Your child is already this big? You got married and had children early?”

What’s wrong now?

“Yeah,” I replied to Yi You half-heartedly.