DTTM 74

Chapter 74: Coordinates do not exist. Please verify.

My view gradually cleared up from a murky state.

Baroque-style carved cabinets, dark red velvet sofas, fancy fabric wallpaper, and a huge brass chandelier overhead… This was Zong Yanlei’s bedroom?

How did I get here?

I tried to move my limbs, but was shocked to find my body heavy, as if my veins were filled with superglue. I could only stiffly maintain the position of sitting against the headboard. I couldn’t even blink.

“…It worked?”

A familiar, languid male voice sounded from nearby. Only then did I realize that Zong Yanlei was sitting on a single sofa chair by the bed.

Is this… a dream?

“Where to begin?” The bedroom was dimly lit. He toyed with a slender, pen-like object between his fingers, his legs crossed, his tone somewhat nonchalant. “You’re 19 now. That must have happened shortly before you left the Zong family. That day, Zong Shen’an called you over… What did he say to you?”

As he spoke, my vision flickered slightly. Then, against my will, my throat opened and closed on its own, yielding to his guidance and revealing long-buried memories.

“He said, ”Do you know why I summoned you?” My voice was slow and hollow, as if I hadn’t woken up properly. “I thought it was about Zong Yanlei, but he said no, it was about me…”

I recounted everything that happened until I left that smoke-filled study. Zong Yanlei quietly listened the entire time, his posture was still the same, except for the expression on his face gradually shifting from indifferent to stunned.

“You… never had any extenuating circumstances?”

“Yes, I never had any extenuating circumstances…”

He seemed to have a thorn stuck in his throat, and remained silent for a long time afterward, only his hands kept moving, his thumb constantly rubbing the tip of the “pen”.

“I… Two days before Zong Yanlei’s bone marrow transplant surgery, he called you over and said that once he recovered, he wanted to go out and see the world, and asked where you wanted to go. You said then, wherever he is, that’s where you’ll be…” His voice was tight and heavy, “Do you remember?”

“I remember.” My mouth still wouldn’t listen to me. “I… lied to him. At that time, I had already decided to leave… but I was just missing a trigger…”

He leaned back against the sofa. Half his face sank into the shadows where the lamp couldn’t reach, making it impossible for me to see his expression.

“Wei Nuan, was that the trigger?”

In that instant, he was like a beast crouching on the ground, his shoulders and back tense, poised to attack at any moment. And I, like a fool oblivious to my own mortality, kept waving a cat toy in front of him.

“Yes, Wei Nuan was a perfect opportunity…”

“So, what you said back then was your heartfelt feelings? You… didn’t want Zong Yanlei to recover?”

“I……”

My vision began to shake, as if my soul was colliding with this stiff body, desperately resisting the “spell” that forced me to speak.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” He snorted, then repeated each word through gritted teeth, “You, don’t, know.”

He pressed his fingertip into the tip of the pen, as if he were trying to suppress something out of control. He glanced down and moved his hand away, before starting at the bead of blood welling up from his fingertip for a long time, and then spoke again: “After leaving the Zong family, were you happy?”

“After leaving the Zong family, I… stayed at home to recover from my injuries… until Ye Shuer came looking for me…” I talked about Free Will, Ye Shuer, all at once, “He said he needed me, the Wo people needed me… I think I was happy…”

It’s over.

Upon hearing this answer, Zong Yanlei would undoubtedly be furious.

As a bystander, powerless to do anything but watch everything unfold, I could only close my eyes in despair deep within my soul.

“Free Will… Ye Shuer…” he murmured, as if the scattered clues had finally been completely connected. “So that’s how it is.”

He dug at the tiny wound on his fingertip with his fingernail, spreading the overflowing blood. He looked up and posed a question that nearly stopped my heart: “You returned to Zong Yanlei’s side, became his navigator, because… because Free Will is planning something?”

Don’t… whatever you do, don’t say it out loud.

“For… the God-Making plan, and the God-Controlling plan.”

I revealed the top secrets one by one. From creating the spiritual leader of the Wo people, to replicating the Sun God’s key, manipulating “Balaka”, to launching a coup on the celebration day… I covered everything, big and small, without hiding anything.

As he listened to my plan, Zong Yanlei pressed his fingertips repeatedly against the strange “pen.” Drops of blood fell from his fingertips, but his movements never failed.

“…In order to more smoothly carry out the coup, we also need…the anger of the people…On that day, I will…kill…”

“So it was all a lie from the beginning,” he interrupted me coldly before I could finish, “it was all a ploy.”

Completely unaware of the danger, I simply said a single word: “Yes.”

He seemed stunned by the word. For two or three minutes, he didn’t speak again, nor did he continue to harm himself. He just silently looked at me from the shadows.

And then, without warning, he started laughing. 

The laughter started softly, then gradually grew louder. He placed his elbows on the armrest, covered his face, and laughed so hard his shoulders trembled and his whole body shook, as if he were experiencing the most ridiculous and absurd joke in the world.

After a while, the laughter gradually subsided.

He straightened up, used the armrest to get up from the sofa, and slowly walked towards me.

“I’m such an idiot…”

When he got to the bedside, I could see clearly that what he was holding in his hand was not a writing pen, but a red injection pen.

“You must think I’m ridiculous too.” His eyes blazed with a fierce, hurricane-like rage, as if he wanted to destroy everything in sight.

As if the storm wasn’t fierce enough, I added another sentence.

“You shouldn’t have been soft-hearted.”

He reached out and grabbed my neck: “Yes, I shouldn’t have been soft-hearted.”

Perhaps he accidentally smeared some blood on his face while laughing, because there were several bloodstains at the corners of his eyes. Coupled with his sinister expression, he looked like he was about to break my neck at any moment.

Warm blood stained my neck. I saw his lips part: “Jiang Man, have you ever…”

I tilted my head slightly up to look at him, and I should have answered, but I couldn’t hear any sound coming out. Even though I felt my mouth moving.

Not only that, my vision became increasingly blurry, as if someone was slowly drawing a curtain in front of me.

Whatever I managed to say caused Zong Yanlei to freeze again. His hand, which was tightly holding my neck, gradually loosened, and in the end, he didn’t make a move.

It was an expression so complex I couldn’t decipher it. Pain, entanglement, exhaustion… It was as if he had made up his mind for the ten thousandth time, only to be stopped and persuaded to turn back at the last minute.

He closed his eyes, dejectedly withdrew his hand, clenched it into a fist, and took a deep breath.

“Alright…” He looked down at me, but it didn’t seem like he was talking to me. “This is the last time… I promise, this is the last time…”

He murmured to himself, bent one leg on the edge of the bed, and ran his fingers through my hair before pressing the back of my head against his forehead.

“It’s over, go to sleep.”

The moment the words left his lips, my eyelids felt as if they were being held down.

In the darkness, his voice faintly echoed in my ear.

“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?”

“Jiang Man, this is the last chance I’m giving you…”

He claimed it was my last chance, but there was a note of desperation and resignation in his voice.

My consciousness slowly drifted out of the dream, and I struggled to wake up to find myself in a somewhat unfamiliar, dimly lit room.

Light seeped in through the gap in the curtains. I lay in bed, my mind a jumble, unable to recall what had happened, or even tell whether it was morning or evening.

After a while, I recovered from this disorienting feeling before I gradually remembered that I was in the cabin left by Ye Shuer’s stepfather.

“Ge, you’re finally awake!”

The door was gently pushed open, and Ye Shuer came in carrying a tray. As soon as he saw me open my eyes, his face immediately lit up with surprise.

He placed the porridge on the tray by the bedside, then put a pillow behind my back and carefully helped me sit up.

“I was terrified! After Zong Yanlei threw me out of that space, I rushed over here. As soon as I opened the door, I found you unconscious lying on the ground…”

Ye Shuer told me that I had been unconscious for a day and a night. During that time, Xu Chengye called me several times. He replied in my name, making excuses that there was an emergency at home and I had to leave in a hurry.

So much time has passed, and Zong Yanlei hadn’t called the police, nor has the Sun God Group taken any action. It’s as if nothing ever happened; he just… let me go.

“Is the key real?” I asked the question that concerned me most.

Ye Shuer was stunned for a moment, then slumped his shoulders, and he became listless like a deflated balloon.

“It’s… a fake that looks very real.” He sighed. “It should be a high-quality counterfeit key commissioned by Zong Yanlei through.”

I wasn’t surprised. I gently stroked my neck as I considered the overly realistic sensations in the dream. I realized that the plan had been exposed, perhaps because Zong Yanlei had injected me with something without my knowledge.

Hell Echo?

Recalling how Wuxi Chen looked when he was injected with truth serum, it was exactly the same as my state in the dream.

I was careless.

“What a pity.”

I took the bowl of porridge from Ye Shuer and filled my hungry stomach.

I quickly shoveled the entire bowl of porridge into my stomach, placed the empty bowl back on the tray, and said, “You should resign from Sun God as soon as possible. Zong Yanlei probably already knows about our relationship, and you are in a very dangerous situation right now.”

After a pause, I changed my mind: “No, you don’t need to go through the resignation process, you can just ‘disappear’.”

Ye Shuer’s expression changed as he realized the seriousness of the situation.

He lowered his eyes and pondered for a moment, then nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll hide and protect myself. What about you? Ge, are you going to hide with me?”

I shook my head: “No, I have things to do and can’t hide. You just take care of yourself and don’t worry about me.”

After repeatedly confirming that I was unharmed, Ye Shuer left the cabin, he turned back every few steps.

After seeing him off, I put on my coat and went down to the basement, where I lay down again in the still-powered neuro-navigation pod.

Zong Yanlei’s name had disappeared from the friend list. Furthermore, no matter what methods I used, the visit history couldn’t find the door to the virtual space.

Fortunately, I still remembered the coordinates.

I entered the coordinates and clicked “OK”.

[Coordinates do not exist, please verify.]

I stared at that line of text for a moment, then entered the same coordinates again.

[Coordinates do not exist, please verify.]

[Coordinates do not exist, please verify.]

[Coordinates do not exist, please verify.]

The process was repeated mechanically for more than ten minutes, with consistent feedback.

Ultimately, I had to accept that the space had been completely destroyed by Zong Yanlei.

I withdrew my hand, clenched my fist and closed my eyes before leaving the neuro-navigation pod.

I then secluded myself in the cabin. A week later, there was still no word from Zong Yanlei, but the celebration had hit a snag.

It was postponed due to the Pope’s health reasons.

At the same time, Zong Yanlei and I, as representatives of the GTC annual champions, were formally summoned by the King of Penglai. This was an unprecedented honor in the history of GTC.