DTTM 67

Chapter 67: Found It

“If you were given another chance, would you choose to stay or leave?”

“Given absolute trust, would you choose betrayal or loyalty?”

“If I give you a knife, will you choose to kill me, or love me?”

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I opened my eyes abruptly, the words still echoing in my ears. The room layout was unfamiliar. I sat up, rubbing my temples, and glanced at the slightly messy but now empty bed beside me. I wasn’t sure if my headache and exhaustion were from a nightmare or someone’s terrible sleeping posture.

I picked up the glass from the bedside table, wanting to drink some water, when I noticed a note underneath it, with sharp and flamboyant handwriting.

Zong Yanlei went to the company early in the morning and told me to stay put after I woke up and not to go anywhere.

I gulped down a whole glass of water, which alleviated the dryness in my throat a little. When I got up to go to the bathroom to wash up, I noticed another deep red hickey on the side of my neck in the mirror.

The old ones hadn’t even faded before new ones appeared overnight. Fortunately, I brought my suitcase with me yesterday, which contained band-aids, enough to temporarily cover up these absurd marks.

Zong Yinzhuo was nowhere to be seen during breakfast, and he didn’t appear again after breakfast. I initially thought he had slept too late last night and was having trouble getting up today, but when I asked the butler, I learned that the little guy had been taken to the Crown Princess’s palace early this morning.

“He was taken to the palace?” I paused, my hand still holding the milk glass.

“Yes,” the butler replied. “The Crown Princess dotes on the young master and often invites him to the palace to play with the young prince.”

The young prince he mentioned was Chu Shengcheng and Crown Princess Dai Yue’s only child. I remembered his name was “Chu Lin”. Just two days ago, Chu Shengcheng went mad, threatening to punish Zong Yanlei. Today, the Crown Princess sent someone to take Zong Yinzhuo away. This timing inevitably invited speculation.

However, Yu Xuan and Chu Shengcheng were still in Wo Province dealing with Bondor’s funeral arrangements and wouldn’t be able to return to Baiyujing in the short term. Seeing that the butler was calm and Zong Yanlei did not seem to object, it seemed that such “summons” by the Crown Princess were already commonplace and there should be no danger.

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Zong Yanlei told me to stay put, so I didn’t go anywhere that day. I just stayed in the spacious study used for receiving guests and read books all afternoon.

Zong Yanlei still hadn’t returned by dinner time. The butler served me in the small dining room, where the food, drinks, and service were all top-notch.

Thinking back to the last time I ate at this table, there were four of us. Back then, I felt the table was a bit cramped. Now, I was eating alone, and I realized the table was actually quite large. After placing my cutlery, there was still a considerable amount of empty space.

After dinner, I went back to the study to kill time. A light drizzle had started outside the window; raindrops pattered against the glass, gathering into shallow streams on the transparent surface. I lay on the sofa, covered with a blanket. Maybe it was the dry heat from the heating, or it was overuse of my eyes, but my only normal eye, my left eye, gradually began to feel sore and tired.

I placed the book face down, closed my eyes, and planned to take a short nap. It was at this moment that Zong Yanlei returned.

Before he even appeared, my senses were immediately struck by the subtle scent of tobacco mixed with cologne emanating from him. Then, his slightly cool leather gloves caressed my cheek, slowly moving down to my neck, lingering for a moment over the band-aid on my skin. Seeing that I still didn’t open my eyes, his fingers moved further down, unbuttoning my shirt, seemingly about to undress me…

I opened my eyes abruptly, grabbed his hand, and said, “Young Master…doing this to someone who’s asleep isn’t right.”

“Asleep?” Zong Yanlei had probably rushed in so quickly that he hadn’t even had time to take off his coat, and his clothes were still damp from the outside air. “Weren’t you pretending to be asleep?”

As he spoke, he withdrew his hand, then, with a faint smile playing on his lips. He turned and took off his coat before throwing it onto the sofa beside him.

“How could this be pretending to be asleep?” I sat up and explained, “I’ve been reading all afternoon, and my eyes are a little dry. I just closed them to rest for a bit when you came back.”

“What have you been reading all afternoon?” The book I’d been holding dropped onto my lap as I sat up. He glanced at the cover, his brow furrowing slightly. “Why this book?”

“I just randomly picked one.” I closed the revolutionary classic titled “The Gadfly” and tossed it aside.

This book, written hundreds of years ago, tells the story of a man who goes from a devout believer to a man whose faith collapses, then changes his name and joins the revolution, ultimately dying tragically at the hands of his biological father’s judgment.

The gadfly, originally a blood-sucking insect that bites livestock, is transformed in the book into a pen name used by the male protagonist to criticize the church and bite feudal rulers.

“I don’t like this story.” Zong Yanlei looked away, loosened the fingers of his black leather gloves one by one, and then tossed them onto the sofa as well.

He stood slightly turned to the side, showing only half of his face to me, so I couldn’t see his expression. I could only tell from his somewhat critical tone that he really didn’t like the story.

“Is it because it’s not perfect?”

At the end of the story, the protagonist is arrested and imprisoned after the uprising fails. His biological father, a cardinal, visits him in prison. The protagonist gives his father two choices—God or him.

The father was in extreme pain, but ultimately, unable to abandon his faith in God, he chose to uphold the church and personally signed his son’s death sentence.

The protagonist was executed by firing squad, falling into a pool of blood. Shortly after his death, his father went mad and soon died of a broken heart. The entire story was filled with betrayal and rupture, as well as self-destructive power struggles, resulting in an ending that was far from “satisfying.”

“If it were you, what would you choose?” Zong Yanlei took my hand and pulled me up from the sofa, asking instead of answering, “Would you choose your faith or the person you love?”

I suddenly feel a strong sense of déjà vu, as if this conversation had happened somewhere before, but I just couldn’t remember where.

Perhaps it was in a dream? It was rare to be unable to recall memories, but it wasn’t impossible.

“Of course…” I almost answered without thinking. I knew exactly what Zong Yanlei wanted to hear: “Choose the one I love.”

His gaze slowly traced my face before finally settling on my eyes: “Remember what you said today.”

Before I could think it through, he pulled me outside.

“Where are we going, young master?”

“To my ‘game room’.”

When Zong Yinzhuo showed me around the mansion before, we passed by Zong Yanlei’s “game room.” The so-called game room was actually a room where neuro-navigation pods were housed. There were five or six pods inside, each with top-of-the-line configurations, which would easily sell for six figures on the market.

The more expensive the neuro-navigation pod, the more sensitive its neural interface, and the better it could simulate the body’s sensations, especially in subtle ways. In simpler terms, there was a reason for the higher price; cheaper neuro-navigation pods simply couldn’t simulate real physiological pleasure.

“Are we going to have a practice match?” Coming here in the middle of the night, the only thing I could think of was training.

“No,” he said. “I’m going to take you somewhere.”

His hand swept across one of the neuro-navigation pods, and the next instant, the silver-white hatch slowly opened. He walked in and sat down.

Seeing this, I chose the one next to him, opened the hatch, and sat down inside as well.

The neural interface connected to the chip behind my neck like tentacles. In the blink of an eye, without any discomfort, I arrived at the “Sky Domain” of the metaverse, suspended among the clouds.

Zong Yanlei’s invitation followed. The next second after pressing the “confirm” button, a very special “door” appeared before me.

This withered green door was entirely made of tangled and wrapped thorns. Originally a passageway, it seemed to refuse anyone’s approach, covered in sharp, barbed thorns. Anyone who tried to open it would surely be pricked and bleed.

I tried to push it, but as soon as I touched the thorns, my fingertip was pricked.

I immediately withdrew my hand. The wound was so small it was almost negligible, yet a single bead of blood still seeped out. The blood bead touched a thorn and was instantly “absorbed” away. Then, as if confirming that I was not an enemy, the branch began to loosen, and the thorns retracted inch by inch, revealing the black entrance they had been protecting.

After making sure that the thorns weren’t closing in, I stepped into the darkness. In just one breath, the view opened up before me. Beneath my feet lay lush green grass, and pink tulips and white rose bushes bloomed in the bright sunlight. In the distance, a grand and opulent grey-white mansion stood, just as it had been six years ago when I left.

This was the Zong family’s old residence, where I spent nine years.

I had some doubts. Did Zong Yanlei build an identical building in the metaverse?

Why?

Just like houses and land in the real world, spaces in the metaverse needed to be purchased. A single “door” could cost anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars. Such a large space would certainly require a considerable amount of money.

As I was thinking, I suddenly caught a glimpse of a figure moving behind me out of the corner of my eye. I turned around and realized that it was me… or rather, the “me” from the past.

The “me” in the gardener’s clothes and thorn-proof gardening gloves was pruning the withered flowers of a rose bush.

My delicate face still held the innocence of youth, and a medical eye patch covered my right eye. When no one was around, I didn’t even bother to maintain an expression, my demeanor completely mechanical and cold. This was… me at eighteen.

The figure was semi-transparent; when I tried to touch it, my arm passed right through its body. It looked like a realistic virtual projection.

I looked around but didn’t see Zong Yanlei, I decided to head towards the mansion.

I had imagined there would be many more figures in the mansion, masters and servants, forming a more realistic “family.” But in reality, the building was quiet, the furniture was spotless, and the air was filled with the fragrance of flowers and a faint scent of wood incense, yet there were no servants in sight.

In the corridor, the semi-transparent figures reappeared; this time, it was Zong Yanlei and “me”.

Zong Yanlei walked in front, and I followed behind him. The two of us looked to be only eleven or twelve years old.

“Why are you following me? It’s annoying!” Zong Yanlei turned around and looked behind him with an impatient expression, and he walked faster and faster.

“Because I’m your ‘personal’ study companion.” I followed behind him with a grin, deliberately emphasizing the word “personal”. “If I don’t follow you, Butler Li will think I’m slacking off.”

Two blurry figures passed through my body, one after the other, and walked towards the end of the corridor.

I touched my chest; there was no sensation there. I continued walking, trying to find Zong Yanlei, or rather, to find traces of the young master who was on the same timeline as me.

As I ventured deeper into the mansion, more and more figures appeared and disappeared in every corner. I occasionally saw one or two afterimages of Wuxi Li, but most of them were of myself and Zong Yanlei: “me” tending to his wounds, “me” feeding him medicine, “me” chatting with him with a sly smile…

The figures overlapped, their words intertwined, like a chaotic chorus that left me momentarily bewildered. Only by listening attentively could I discern their respective “voices.”

“Not sweet enough.” Zong Yanlei, who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, frowned and placed the empty glass back into the saucer in my hand. “Did you skimp on the honey?”

He was afraid of bitterness, so he used to drink a cup of honey water every time he finished taking medicine.

I glanced at the empty cup and replied with a smile, “You caught me. I was worried that you would get cavities from eating too many sweets, so I took the liberty of skipping a spoonful of honey. I won’t do it again next time.”

I was lying.

I didn’t add less honey; it was just that Zong Yanlei’s sense of taste had deteriorated, so he had a harder time tasting sweetness than before.

“Oh, I thought you were deliberately trying to make me suffer more.” Zong Yanlei didn’t look at me, but just wiped the corner of his lips with a handkerchief and said coolly.

I was taken aback, glanced at him for a moment, then smiled and leaned down to whisper in his ear, “How could I want you to suffer, young master? I’d rather your life be filled with nothing but sweetness—”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

A deep male voice suddenly drowned out all the surrounding noise and entered my ears. I snapped back to reality and at the same time, a warm body pressed against my back.

“Why are there so many afterimages here?” I leaned back against Zong Yanlei.

“Because these are images generated from my memories, you can think of this as a three-dimensional ‘photo album’.” Zong Yanlei put his arm around my waist, pressed his lips to my ear, and extended the tender kiss to my neck. “This place holds things that are very important to me.”

My body still remembered the indulgence of the day before, and began to tremble. High-end machines were truly different; they could even simulate such subtle sensations.

I slowly exhaled, ran my fingers through Zong Yanlei’s hair, and tried to pull him away: “…Don’t tell me you want to do it here?”

“Is that a problem?” He remained unmoved, gently rubbing the skin on the side of my neck with his sharp canines. “Everything that happens here, as long as it doesn’t go too far, won’t harm your body in reality.”

I couldn’t find the words to refute him.

My fingers stiffened for a moment, then slowly loosened. I eventually compromised and said, “Okay, but you have to let me do it myself.”

This makes it less likely to get out of control.

He chuckled, the vibration spreading from his neck throughout his body: “Okay, I don’t mind.”

Before I could react, he scooped me up in his arms and walked toward the bedroom. The shadowy figures in the hallway and room were still numerous, pacing back and forth like a spectator unwilling to leave. Even though they were merely projections of memories, the illusion of being watched still sent a shiver down my spine, it was a strange and stimulating sensation.

Just as Zong Yanlei was kissing and pulling me onto the bed, I inadvertently looked up and saw the ceiling above me.

My eyes widened in surprise.

In the center of the bedroom ceiling, there was a huge, radiant golden sun symbol. In the middle was a sphere, and around it were rays of light like lightning.

It was like a peculiar lamp, with golden light flowing along the grooves of the carving, and liquid light slowly moving within the texture. When I slightly turned my gaze, the gold refracted into tiny specks of light.

But I was certain.

In the real Zong family mansion, there was no such thing on the ceiling of Zong Yanlei’s bedroom. This was the only place in the entire mansion that didn’t match my memory.

My shock was beyond words; it was like someone had poured ice water over my head and then pushed me into the snow to die, jolting me awake from the turmoil of desire and cold.

Found it.

My mind exploded with a thunderous roar, then was blown to smithereens.

A strong premonition told me that Zong Yanlei was not lying to me; there was indeed something very important to him here, and that thing might be the Sun God’s key.

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Author’s Note

The first three questions weren’t all the questions Zong Yanlei asked, but rather the final ones he posed.