The Trembling Big Bad Wolf (Please Vote!)

The Trembling Big Bad Wolf (Please Vote!)

The next day.

Pain!

It hurt so much!

His head hurt so much!

The bizarre dream filled with whispers swiftly shattered. Adam, still asleep, felt an intense throbbing pain in his head, as if someone had swung a club at him with all their strength. He reached up to touch it, opened his eyes, and saw a small patch of dark-red dried blood.

"Hiss."

Adam sucked in a sharp breath and abruptly stood up, only to find that he could not control his body at all. He fell heavily from the sofa onto the floor.

"Damn it!"

Fortunately, he had raised both hands in front of his face and protected it in time, preserving his handsome looks.

"What was that?"

Adam struggled to brace himself against the sofa and slowly rose, his heart filled with shock. Ever since transmigrating, he had never encountered anything like this, especially after all his attributes had soared.

Looking again at the dried blood in his hand, Adam tried his hardest to search his memories and recall what had happened. Yet no matter how he racked his brain, his mind was as blank as television static.

Where was he?

Right, Karen's Home!

Last night, he had driven them home, and then... there was no then.

Had he spent the night at Little Red Riding Hood's house?

Calm down, calm down, calm down... After taking several deep breaths, Adam mocked himself. "At least I'm still alive..."

Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he hurriedly checked himself all over.

"Whew, thank goodness, thank goodness. Everything's fine."

"But what exactly happened?"

As he pondered, Adam's gaze swept over his surroundings. He suddenly spotted half a red handprint on the edge of the sofa, its color dull.

"A bloody handprint?"

Adam subconsciously looked at his own hands and found that aside from a few red streaks left from touching the blood scab on the back of his head, there were no signs that his hands had been covered in blood.

It was not his hand!

Then whose hand was it?

"You're awake."

Just as Adam's imagination began running wild, Juno's lazy voice drifted over.

Adam turned and saw Juno standing at the stairway in pajamas, yawning.

"What happened last night? Why can't I remember anything?" Adam urgently asked. "And why does my head hurt so badly?"

"You were hungover."

Juno laughed. "You drank until you blacked out and hit your head on the coffee table. Of course it hurts."

"So that was it?"

Seeing Juno's natural expression, Adam thought about it and felt that it was possible. He tentatively asked, "Then what about this bloody handprint?"

"Hey, you still can't figure that out?"

A strange glint flashed through Juno's eyes. "You split your head open and bled quite a lot. Karen and I held down your wound for you, and we accidentally got blood on it."

"I see. Then thanks, you two."

Adam's heart tightened. Unsure whether Juno and Karen had noticed that his wound healed unusually quickly, he did not dare say more and changed the subject. "Right, where's Karen?"

"She's still asleep."

Juno glanced upstairs and smiled indulgently.

"Then I'll be leaving?"

Adam was ready to head home.

"Sure. Drive slowly."

Juno nodded.

After getting into the pickup truck, Adam nodded at Juno, who stood outside the house with her arms folded and a smile on her face. Then he stepped on the gas and drove away from Karen's Home.

On the road.

Adam thought over his conversation with Juno. Something felt off, but he could not sort it out. Then a thought suddenly flashed through his mind, and Adam slammed on the brakes.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the magic equipment Bob had given him. With a motion like a magician shuffling cards, he spread them out and counted them. Not a single one was missing.

"I'm overthinking it."

Adam shook his head and laughed at himself. Then he floored the gas and got back on the road.

Forget it. He would not think about it anymore.

He had already told himself not to imitate those reckless United States teenagers. Curiosity killed the cat. When it was time to be confused, he should stay confused. Sometimes, ignorance really was bliss!

When he returned to Duncan's Home, it was naturally lively again.

In his little sister Teddy's eyes, he was a playboy, even a Big Bad Wolf. But in his parents' eyes, he was the pride of Duncan's Home, as innocent and pure as a little white rabbit.

In truth, Adam's self-assessment was more accurate: a trembling Big Bad Wolf!

After last night, he had completely bid farewell to his high school years. Once summer vacation ended, Adam would officially begin his life at Columbia University. For now, however, the most important thing remained writing Lord of the Mysteries.

Reading, writing!

Reading, writing!

Reading, writing!

Adam threw all his energy into those two things, and more than two months of summer vacation quickly passed.

During that time, his friends came to see him as well.

Little Sheldon had hardly changed. He was still as annoying as ever.

Paige did not come. According to Little Sheldon, she had plunged headfirst into mathematics, officially ascending to the very top of the scientific hierarchy. She had also become deeply interested in the crown jewels of mathematics, the Millennium Prize Problems, especially the existence and smoothness problem of the Navier-Stokes Equations.

Adam believed that with Paige's extraordinary intelligence, this Millennium Prize Problem that had troubled countless scientists might well be fully proven by her in the near future.

When that happened, she would certainly earn a Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics and something even more precious to mathematicians than the Nobel Prize.

The ones who came by often were Juno and Karen.

Compared to her former gloominess and eccentricity, Karen had become much more cheerful. Her attitude toward Adam was still far from friendly, but the intense hostility she once had was gone.

Juno remained as composed and unruffled as ever. After seeing Adam write fiction and reading Lord of the Mysteries, she gave it extremely high praise. As expected, she began following the updates, which caused the lazy Adam no small amount of distress.

Because Juno seemed able to truly see through people's hearts. Normally, she no longer wore the red hooded sweatshirt that had left Adam traumatized.

But whenever she became dissatisfied with the update speed, two Little Red Riding Hoods would appear before Adam's desk, one on each side. They would not say a word, merely smile as they watched him type.

Beneath the lamplight, between two tall shadows, stood a small, helpless, pitiful figure...

Compared to that, sending razor blades to demand updates was laughably weak.

Thus, his original plan of spending over two months of summer vacation writing half of the first volume of Lord of the Mysteries, The Clown, was completely transformed.

"...They saw a clown painted in red, yellow, white, and other colors running toward them. He first tossed one tennis ball after another into the air. Then, when everyone's attention had been drawn skyward, he produced a bouquet from nowhere—a bouquet of Seville Chrysanthemums.

The bouquet was held before Melissa and Benson. It was golden yellow, a color that symbolized joy.

Melissa and Benson looked somewhat blankly at the clown across from them. His face was covered in red, yellow, white, and other paints, while the corners of his mouth curled high into a fixed happy smile, an exaggerated smile, a comical smile.

End of Volume One."

Adam wrote the final word. Having maintained ten thousand words a day for more than two months, he felt so moved that he wanted to cry, just like Klein. Yet he forcefully squeezed out a clown-like smile at Juno and Karen.

It was a happy smile, an exaggerated smile, a comical smile.

Summer vacation had finally ended.

The days of being hounded for updates had finally passed.

A new era had finally arrived.

PS: Thanks to Shuo Tangtang and Li Lama of Shaolin Temple at Wudang for the donations!