Second Life! [Please Bookmark! Please Keep Reading!]

"Dad."

"Dad!"

"Dad, don't die!"

Meng Nan heard someone calling, someone crying, someone shaking him. He was barely conscious.

He opened his eyes.

Meng Santan was clutching his head and wailing nonstop. Meng Xingzhe and Meng Jian were crying, too. Zhao Xiaoshuang still looked young. She held Meng Santan with one hand and whispered through her tears, "Stop shaking your dad."

The moment she finished speaking—

"Eh?"

"Dad?!"

When the youngest, Meng Santan, saw Meng Nan actually open his eyes, he sprang away in fright, his face turning pale as he yelped, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!"

The second son, Meng Jian, was badly startled, too. He scooted backward on his butt, inch by inch.

The eldest, Meng Xingzhe, was holding on to Meng Nan. He froze, unsure whether to let go or keep holding on, then gave an awkward little smile.

Zhao Xiaoshuang was still the quickest to react. She rushed forward and threw her arms around Meng Nan. "You're awake! You're awake!"

She laughed through her tears.

Then cried through her laughter.

Her tears dampened Meng Nan's shoulder. They felt cool.

Everything was so familiar.

I died again?

How did I die?

With a thought, Meng Nan instinctively put an arm around Zhao Xiaoshuang's shoulder, then silently called up the panel and opened the [Death Log].

[Name: Meng Nan]

[Age at death: 30]

[Cause of death: Severely wounded in a magical duel, heart and lungs both damaged]

[Cultivation before death: Inner Qi Stage, Qi Circulation Realm]

[Regression: Two months]

I died again!

Meng Nan glanced at the [Death Log]. His gaze fell on the new entry at the bottom, and then a scene appeared—

He was still in this room.

His head hung low.

There was no breath left in him.

Zhao Xiaoshuang was beside him, her face deathly pale, her eyes vacant.

Meng Santan was right there, slumped on the floor and wailing up at the sky.

Meng Xingzhe and Meng Jian knelt on the ground, both crying.

The scene ended there, abruptly.

I died of my injuries two months later. But when I came to this point in time, I appeared two months before I actually stopped breathing.

Touching the [Death Log], Meng Nan gradually pieced things together.

It was because his cultivation in reality was different—he had already reached 'Fetal Breath Contemplation'—that he had two months to spare.

That's pretty good.

With that much time, even if it was only two months, he at least had a buffer. He wouldn't show up and die on the spot.

Ordinary deaths, like 'Qi Deviation,' 'dying of old age,' or 'being gravely wounded and near death,' were all fine.

But he was afraid of being slapped to death on the spot. If he showed up then and came back to life, he'd surely die all over again.

A month or two, at least, gave him a buffer.

Did each minor stage give me an extra month?

Meng Nan wasn't sure. He'd have to verify it later.

But for now, the most pressing thing was to figure out what had happened over the past twelve years.

And why he'd been so badly wounded.

"I'm fine."

"I just got the wind knocked out of me. I'll be all right once I catch my breath."

After gathering his thoughts, Meng Nan smiled at Zhao Xiaoshuang. This time, he was even calmer, even more at ease.

They'd spent several months together day and night in reality.

They'd supported each other through eight years of their previous life.

Meng Nan knew Zhao Xiaoshuang very well by now.

And their three children, too.

He just hadn't expected—

"The second and third were still born."

Meng Nan looked at the second child, Meng Jian, with his delicate features, then at the youngest, Meng Santan, with his round, tigerish face. He suspected that he hadn't managed to reach the Inner Qi Stage before the end of the year back then.

I had a 'Suoluo Seed' and still couldn't break through?

Meng Nan shook his head inwardly. Was the 'Visualization Realm' really that difficult?

But this time, there was no need to guess.

I'll know once I look.

Meng Nan sat up.

"Dad!"

"You scared us half to death! You stopped breathing just now!"

Meng Santan was seven this year. Once she saw that her dad wasn't a corpse come back to life, she hurried over again.

Meng Nan patted her head, then smiled at the three siblings. "Go play for a while. Xiaoshuang, you stay."

"Oh, okay!"

"Then take care, Dad!"

Meng Santan was obedient and sensible. She followed her eldest brother, Meng Xingzhe, and second brother, Meng Jian, out, looking back every few steps before finally leaving.

Inside the small house.

Meng Nan looked over the furnishings.

They were certainly better than in reality, and better than when he'd first arrived in his first life—not to mention when he'd left.

Then he recalled the [Death Log].

I reached the 'Inner Qi Stage, Qi Circulation Realm' and had some strength. I had a little standing in Yinlian Village, so the furnishings and standards at home could be upgraded a bit.

Meng Nan was a cautious man. He lived according to his means—not putting on airs beyond his station, but not making himself or his family suffer unnecessarily, either.

Actually, he didn't need to look at the [Death Log]. One glance at the house's furnishings was enough to guess roughly what level of cultivation he'd reached before dying.

No more than two hundred people in all of Yinlian Village had reached the Inner Qi Stage, even counting the village as it was twelve years later.

Twelve years ago, there could have been only a little over a hundred.

With Inner Qi protecting his body and some cultivation to his name, he'd be doing all right in the village.

Beyond that—

Someone like Qian Yu, who had reached the True Qi Stage, was rarer still. In Yinlian Village, she'd have some say in the village's affairs and could pretty much be considered a high-ranking figure.

Don't underestimate the upper ranks of a village with two or three thousand people.

This was a backward village in the wilderness. Its leaders wielded far more power than any village officials.

"The Inner Qi Stage."

"I'd done pretty well for myself."

After taking a rough look around, Meng Nan turned to Zhao Xiaoshuang.

Now he had to explain things to her.

But the explanation was the same old story. Even though more than eight years had passed, he still had it down pat. "My heart and lungs were damaged, and my brain was affected. I can't remember a lot of things from the past dozen years. It seems like I can only remember my childhood, growing up, and the first two or three months after we got married. Everything beyond that is gone."

As he spoke, Meng Nan frowned and gently tapped his temple, putting on an act of amnesia.

He still had to play his part. Otherwise, Zhao Xiaoshuang might find him too calm, grow suspicious, and let her imagination run wild, disrupting the harmony of their family and their marriage.

"You've lost your memory?"

Zhao Xiaoshuang hadn't known that damage to the heart and lungs could cause something like that. But given his condition, he had only a month or two left at most. What difference would it make whether he remembered things or not?

She took Meng Nan's hand and forced a smile. "If you can't remember, then you can't remember. I'll tell you everything."

"Okay."

"Is my diary still here? I'll read it while you tell me. Maybe it'll help me remember."

Meng Nan thought Zhao Xiaoshuang's smile seemed a little strange. He agreed, then suddenly remembered something that made him want to laugh. "You don't think I'm going to die, do you?!"

He knew he wouldn't die. His body had gone from the near-death state caused by his badly damaged heart and lungs to match his condition in the real world—

Eighteen years old.

Full of vitality.

Only his cultivation had regressed again. Just like in reality, he was at the 'Fetal Breath Contemplation' stage, no longer at 'Inner Qi Circulation.'

But Zhao Xiaoshuang didn't know that!

Smiling, Meng Nan held out his arm, wrist up. "Take my pulse."

"You—"

Zhao Xiaoshuang stared blankly, then reached out to take his pulse.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

She immediately felt how strong and steady Meng Nan's pulse was. He didn't feel like someone whose heart and lungs were ruined and who was about to die. If anything, he was healthier than ever.

"This—"

Zhao Xiaoshuang's eyes widened. For a moment, she was stunned.

Meng Nan knew that ordinary people wouldn't accept something like this right away. But Zhao Xiaoshuang shouldn't have too much trouble with it. Thinking of all the groundwork he'd laid in reality, he asked at once, "You didn't tell anyone I was badly wounded and about to die, did you?"

"No."

"Over the years, you've told me this more than once, including this time: don't tell anyone until they've really buried you."

Zhao Xiaoshuang remembered how, not long after they married, Meng Nan had inexplicably said something like that. She also remembered what he'd told her this time, after he'd been gravely wounded and was bound to die sooner or later. Putting that together with the way he was now, she suddenly realized, "You knew all along?!"

Why hadn't he let her tell anyone?

The answer was obvious!

This time, for example, with injuries as bad as his, Meng Nan could hold on for a month or two at most before dying.

If word got out, and then everyone saw him up and about again, they'd inevitably become suspicious.

But if no one knew, then the two of them could tell people whatever they wanted.

At the thought of all this—

The worry on Zhao Xiaoshuang's face and the anxiety in her eyes vanished at once. She clutched Meng Nan's hand tightly. She was too overcome with delight to spare a thought for her curiosity, but she still complained, "If you weren't going to die, why didn't you tell me sooner? You scared me on purpose! You scared me!"

Zhao Xiaoshuang hit Meng Nan, putting quite a bit of force into it.

He'd truly terrified her this time. She'd thought Meng Nan was really going to leave her just like that. She'd held back her grief and fear as she brought him back from Great Goose Valley, thinking only that before he died, he could see the children again and return to Yinlian Village.

She hadn't expected the surprise to come afterward, so suddenly.

"Thank goodness!"

After hitting him a couple of times and complaining a little, Zhao Xiaoshuang laughed and cried, finally letting all her feelings out.

Now that he no longer had any reason to hold back, Meng Nan pointed beneath the bed. "Get the box. I want to see my diary."

"The diary!"

"You lose your memory as the price for coming back to life?"

"So that's why you write in your diary every day?!"

Zhao Xiaoshuang understood everything now.

That was right.

What respectable person kept a diary?

Her husband was different from everyone else. Every night, after cultivating and before soaking his feet, he would take out a notebook and jot down a rough account of what had happened that day.

At the time, she'd thought it was just one of Meng Nan's habits and hadn't looked any deeper.

Not until today.

Now that she put together his earlier warnings, his instructions, and this bout of amnesia, everything became clear.

Meng Nan had clearly known that he could come back from the brink of death, but that he'd lose his memory. That was why he'd told her not to let the secret out and insisted on keeping a diary every day.

Now it all made sense!

"This ability is strange. I wasn't even sure it would work."

"And I can only use it once."

Meng Nan explained it to Zhao Xiaoshuang. The indignation on her face faded. "I know what you're like. As long as you're alive, that's enough! More than enough!"

Meng Nan had come back from the dead.

Zhao Xiaoshuang had gotten back what she'd lost.

Her relief and delight were every bit as great as his, if not greater.

The rest was just minor details. She didn't care about any of it.