A World Without Lin / The Ways of the World

"You hate yourself for being powerless and not developing the serum at that time, and you feel that you caused the death of your wife and daughter."

"..."

"So we really are alike..."

As Spasi pondered those words, Lin revealed a frivolous smile and patted Spasi's back forcefully, "Of course Lin is still in this body. Ever heard of fusion? That's the noblest form of summoning..."

After Lin launched into a tirade that shattered Spasi's logic, he grabbed a glass of wine and went off to cause trouble again, with Prometheus following him like a little shadow, constantly watching to see if he was using Lin's body to do anything out of line.

"Speaking of which, where are those two at now?"

Lin swirled the rich liquor in his glass, tilted his head back to look at the crystal chandelier, and murmured softly.

"Don't tell me they've gotten together, haha, that would be so weird, I wouldn't be able to bear watching... I hope not?"

"Huh? What are you talking about, Brother Lin?"

Pardo, her mouth stuffed full of chicken leg meat, her face glistening with oil, asked Lin, who was muttering to himself, with her cheeks puffed out.

"It's nothing, Pardo, you should eat more. You're growing all the time." Lin walked easily to her side, picking up a chicken leg for herself. "Let's have a contest to see who can eat the most!"

"Okay." Pardo happily agreed. Although Lin often stayed by her side, he would only strictly set various training plans for her. They had never had a relaxed chat and meal together like this before.

"Hehe, no need to eat so fast, no one's going to take it from you..."

The power is out!

The power went out while I was typing. That's the downside of living in the countryside; you never know when the power will come back on. So I'm sending out a notice using my phone.

The remaining chapter will be postponed to tomorrow. I seem to have been taking a lot of leave lately, so I'll make up for it with an extra chapter tomorrow.

As expected, the special episode on Yan Luo was also taken down. Waaah, I can't even write anything a little risqué anymore. I'd better tone it down in the future. Everyone, use your imagination to fill in the details of Lin being knocked down and taken back to be Xingnu.

Chapter Sixty-Five: The World Where Lin Doesn't Exist

Humans love the various virtual worlds in literary creations; the beauty that doesn't exist in the real world is displayed in a world they can't touch.

They pursue, yearn for, and explore, placing their emotions in people and a world that do not actually exist.

Do they not know it's fake? No, they know it better than anyone else.

But pain cannot be ignored just because you are awake; it penetrates to the bone and follows you like a shadow.

The disappearance of Yan Luo was a big deal, but Lin wasn't too panicked. On one hand, Lin would fall into a drowsy state every time the bell rang, while Yan Luo was much better off, probably because he had gone to investigate the area in advance. On the other hand, Yan Luo was a Herrscher, so even if his powers hadn't fully returned, he was unlikely to be in danger.

For now, let's pay attention to what's going on here.

Lin was in a shopping mall. He vaguely remembered that it was the largest shopping mall in Changkong City and a landmark in the most prosperous area.

So it's back to Changkong City...? The place where Yan Luo's wish took place was Changkong City, where Lin lived...

He walked to the entrance of the mall, and the automatic doors opened to both sides. The bright sunlight hit his eyes, making him squint slightly.

In a daze, he seemed to return to the normal world, with its vibrant colors, bustling streets, and...

His tongue was throbbing, and even the slightest movement produced a faint taste of blood, indicating that it had not yet healed on its own.

"Bite--"

The automatic door keeps opening and closing. A person, seemingly isolated from the world, stands quietly in the doorway, under the evacuation lights of the automatic door overhead.

The wound on my tongue hasn't healed.

Logically, after the bell tolls, as time passes, his body should be reset, and all his original injuries should be healed.

A layer of ice crystals formed in his dark eyes, which were mixed with a shimmering green, as he turned his head to look at the calendar hanging on the wall of the mall.

The bright red calendar hung prominently next to the clock, allowing people to confirm the date.

The sharply defined Roman numerals told Lin the time.

Is he back again... or...?

A bus came from the end of the road. Lin glanced at the time again. If he remembered correctly, there was still half an hour left in the lunch break at the Chienyu Academy, and this bus route happened to pass by the Chienyu Academy.

"Bite--"

The automatic door opened, and Lin walked towards the parked bus, boarding it with practiced ease. But just as he was about to find a seat, the driver called him back.

"Young man, you haven't paid yet." The weathered middle-aged man looked like he had decades of driving experience.

"..."

Lin was stunned for a moment, then rummaged through his clothes, turning out even his inner pockets, which looked cleaner than his face.

Can I pay on credit?

"May I get off?" the driver asked expressionlessly.

There was no other way. Lin hadn't lived a normal life in the outside world for a long time. The members of the Firemoth never had to worry about what kind of transportation to take or how much money to spend, except for Vill-V. It's said that before receiving the Divine Key Project, she blew up the Spiral Workshop three times a month just to scam maintenance fees; the funds allocated to the Engineering Department were completely insufficient for her alone.

He seems to have become out of touch with the normal world.

Just as Lin was about to get off the bus and walk over, a student bus card was swiped twice on the card reader. "I swiped it for him."

"Hmm? Okay." The middle-aged driver was too lazy to say anything more; he just wanted to pay.

"Thank you," Lin said to the person.

The other party replied coldly, "It's nothing."

Lin Yi recognized the voice. He turned his head slightly and saw a familiar, beautiful face.

She remained expressionless, like a sculpture cast from an iceberg, her long, silvery-white hair casually draped behind her head, and her Chienyu Academy student uniform was still the same as before.

No, something was slightly different. Lin Cong her expression that he had never seen before.

Seeing that Lin didn't move, she slightly turned her gaze to look behind him. After seeing that there was still an empty seat, she stepped forward without making a sound and said coldly, "Excuse me."

Lin subconsciously stepped aside, and he watched her pass by him before walking to the last row by the window, sitting down, and putting on his headphones.

Lin didn't sense that the other person intended to communicate with him, and he wasn't sure if it was just his imagination, but he felt that when she was looking at him just now, there was a sense of unfamiliarity in her eyes.

It wasn't the usual hatred and anger, but a very simple sense of unfamiliarity.

This made Lin realize that things might be more complicated than he had imagined.

However, Lin did not rush to disturb her. Instead, he found a seat nearby and pretended not to know Yan Luo. He quietly used the reflection in the glass and rearview mirror to observe her.

Yan Luo leaned her head against the transparent window. Her pretty bangs covered one eye. She listened to music while gazing out the window in a daze. She wasn't looking at any specific point or scenery; she was simply doing the act of looking.

There was a sense of distance between me and the others in the last row, two seats away.

A somewhat lazy high school girl who doesn't seem very approachable.

When the car braked suddenly, she hurriedly grabbed the seat in front of her, bumping her head on the glass. She rubbed her forehead, then continued listening to music as if nothing had happened, but this time she moved a little further away from the glass.

She looked perfectly normal, with small, easily overlooked trinkets and decorations on her handbag and phone—just an ordinary, rather aloof girl.

Moreover, it didn't seem like acting at all.

Just as Yan Luo took out a lollipop and was about to unwrap it, she instinctively looked up and surveyed her surroundings. Lin then turned her head back and looked straight ahead.

Yan Luo's wish has gone wrong.

The two noticed during the first wish that Lin did not actually wish for his parents to return, but the wish still arose in his heart, and the monkey claw granted it.

When Yan Luo wanted to grant the wish for the two to disappear, she did not sincerely want to kill them, so the monkey's paw did not grant the wish.

In other words, the monkey's paw fulfills not just their verbal wishes, but their genuine inner desires.

Now that humanity has returned, it means that Yan Luo does indeed hope that humanity's fate can be changed. However, at the same time, some of her own thoughts seem to have gone astray, causing her to lose her memory and revert to being a student at the second Chienyu Academy.

And... what about him?

What role does Lin play?

"Chienyu Academy, we've arrived..."

The prompt to get off the bus pulled Lin Cong his thoughts. He watched Yan Luo get off the bus and then got up himself.

I'm afraid he's nobody.

She hated Lin, so in her world, Lin did not exist.

"Your very existence is a mistake, and I am here to correct that mistake."

The words of Yan Luo echoed in Lin's ears.

Chapter Sixty-Six: Human Relationships and Social Skills

In fact, there was something Lin had been thinking about ever since he first met Yan Luo.

Who exactly is she?

She told herself she was Abaddon Yama Demon, but that name was just something someone else had given her, and she was only receiving the information she was given.

He had considered the possibility that Yan Luo was someone he hadn't yet met in this Intrinsic World, but he later overturned that assumption through a detail.

The last time she and Yan Luo attended school together at the Chienyu Academy after they had grown up as siblings, she went straight to the classroom where Lin had studied.

If other information, including the Yan Luo, could be used to reconstruct the entire process by investigating data and observing Lin from the Parallel World, then it would be impossible for Yan Luo to know which classroom he attended when he was studying at the Chienyu Academy, which was destroyed during the Third Honkai War. In fact, she herself was very familiar with the Chienyu Academy, as evidenced by her attitude of not even looking at the classroom numbers, which showed that she knew the entire location of the Chienyu Academy inside and out.

Yan Luo couldn't possibly be a student from the Chienyu Academy that Lin hadn't noticed. There were fewer than five survivors in the entire Changkong City Third Honkai War. Apart from Kevin and Mei, he had met the other three, and they had all chosen to return to normal society.

So who is the survivor in Changkong City who knows everything about Lin, even which classroom he attends, and who hasn't been noticed by Lin yet?

Moreover, Lin recalled a distant incident that started strong but ended weakly, with the entire process being extremely short, but Lin still remembered it.

Lin got off the car with Yan Luo and walked for a short while before arriving at the school gate. Then Lin encountered his second problem.

"Wait a minute, unauthorized personnel are not allowed to enter during class time."

After the bus driver, the gatekeeper stopped Lin again. He could only watch helplessly as Yan Luo walked into the school gate, and then, as if sensing something, he turned around and glanced at him.

"I'm a student," Lin explained.

"You're not wearing your school uniform, and you don't have your backpack. Where are you from?"

"... I... forgot."

"Where's your student ID?"

"..."

Lin stood awkwardly at the door. He didn't foolishly search his pockets; he had already checked them in the car, and they were definitely among the cleanest things in the world.

Students would look at him curiously as they passed by, and they were indeed surprised to see someone with such an appearance there.

"I saw you staring at that young girl all the way here. Do you think I didn't notice? Back in my day, I was a sniper codenamed Eagle Eye in the army..." The gatekeeper, holding a teacup, suddenly started nagging at Lin, who was standing there. "I'm telling you, young man, you're so handsome, why are you sneaking around like a stalker? Why don't you just talk to the girl directly? Wait, with your looks, why do you have to date a student? These days, do all men like schoolgirls? But actually, I was pretty much like you when I was young..."

How come Lin never noticed before that the gatekeeper at his school was so eccentric?

More importantly, he tried to leave and find another place to climb over, but the gatekeeper stopped him. Now he's stuck, unable to go in or back out, and just listening to the gatekeeper's rambling.

Of course, no one could stop Lin from leaving if he wanted to, but it was already class time, and even if Lin went in, he would probably only see Yan Luo giving a lesson.

"You're a pretty good guy, listening to me for so long." Finally, the gatekeeper finished recounting his glorious history, from his ominous birth to joining the army and then to his enlightenment in Longchang, which saved him thirty years of detours and made him a security guard. He told the story vividly, as if it were an epic. He was tired of talking. "But you're too clueless about social etiquette. You'd better be more clever next time."

"... Be quick-witted?"

The old man smiled but didn't say anything. Instead, he took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. Lin saw that there were different brands of cigarettes in the pocket and immediately understood what he meant.

Has he always been so "unsophisticated"?

"Alright, what are you going in there for?"

"Look at my sister."

"You should have said so earlier. Guardians only need to register to enter the school. What's your sister's name?" The old man dragged his shoes into the pavilion, pressed a few keys on the computer, and a student list appeared. He typed on the keyboard with two fingers, not very skillfully.

Lin hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yan Luo."

"Yan Luo..." the old man muttered the strange name, then typed it into the search box.

After a while, the old man didn't speak, but looked at him with a meaningful look, his eyes saying, "Confess yourself."

"Young man, you don't think you can get lucky by just making up a name on the spot, do you?"

No name... as expected.

"I remembered the wrong school..." Lin turned to leave, just as she heard the school bell ring, signaling the end of the last class.

So his feet stuck to the ground again, and he waited quietly for Yan Luo to come out.

Seeing his expression, the old man sighed and shook his head, convinced that he had his eye on a girl at school. "Don't affect her studies, okay? And no matter how handsome you are, if a girl doesn't like you, she just doesn't like you. Don't force it."