The Long Night Stretches On, Sleep Eludes Me

"Young master, you may return and rest first. Leave Mr. Fool to us."

At last, after a long silence, a middle-aged man who looked like a butler stepped forward and dissolved the awkward atmosphere.

Young master?

Gu Bei's heart stirred.

"Mm, I'll leave it to you, then."

A mysterious man swimming through an ocean of shit and crap was certainly quite a spectacle. Most people would take a few extra looks, snap some photos, and post them on Weibo to send them trending. But as the instigator, Gu Bei couldn't exactly stand aside and gloat. He'd be better off making a quick exit. Besides, he honestly didn't care what was wrong with that man. Sneaking out in the middle of the night to play ghost and getting drenched in excrement was simply asking for it.

That wasn't the important part. More importantly was Gu Bei's own situation.

Looking at the people around him, then at the furnishings of the house, he had already formed a guess about his current circumstances.

He had returned to the Riser Family.

Although he was deeply confused about how he had returned, and worried that he might expose himself as a fake "young master," no matter what, he was safe. At least temporarily. That alone let him breathe a sigh of relief.

Under the butler's direction, several maid-like women emerged from the crowd carrying wooden buckets and rags. They began cleaning the blond youth and the pool of filth he had been "immersed" in. The onlookers gradually dispersed and returned home, but judging by their expressions, tonight's events would probably remain a favorite topic of discussion for quite some time.

Gu Bei returned to his room as well.

He lay back down on the bed where he had first awakened.

He had far too much to process.

"Super-precise invincible artificial intelligence, can you explain what exactly happened?" he asked the system in his mind. "And where the hell did you go when I called for you earlier?"

The system said nothing.

"Don't play dead. I know you heard every word."

"Deng deng deng, booting up." Accompanied by a familiar tune, the system sounded innocently irritating. "Hello, nice to meet you for the first time. How may I be of service?"

Veins began bulging on Gu Bei's forehead. "Playing dumb, are we?"

He felt like an anime character, with a cross-shaped vein twitching at his temple in all its exaggerated glory.

"...My mistake." The system changed its tune with breathtaking speed. "The information in the database exploded. I was focused on processing the data and failed to respond to you in time. Sorry."

Only then did Gu Bei's anger ease slightly. After thinking for a moment, he followed up on the system's words.

"What happened to the database? What new information appeared?"

The system replied, "It was the original owner of this body's memories. When the Purifiers extracted your memories, those memories suddenly all surfaced. There was too much information for the database to process, so it crashed. It took me a full three days to repair it."

Gu Bei felt that sentence contained a little too much information too.

The Purifiers extracted his memories? What the hell?

And what did it mean, three full days?

It seemed that quite a lot had indeed happened while he had been unconscious.

"Why did the Purifiers extract my memories? Were they the ones who brought me back here?" Gu Bei asked. "And Michelle? She just let me go like that?"

The system's voice suddenly turned coy. "You have so many questions. The system is about to crash again."

The veins on Gu Bei's forehead bulged again.

"After knocking you out, Michelle escaped." The system's tone instantly returned to normal. "The Purifiers arrived soon afterward and took you away. They spent two full days adjusting you, and it seems they also used some method to invade your memories."

Gu Bei found that rather terrifying. "They invaded my memories? Then didn't they discover that I learned magic?"

If The Church discovered anything, wouldn't he be finished?

"No, you were pretty lucky." For some reason, the system sounded somewhat disdainful. "The instant they invaded your memories, all the original owner's memories suddenly emerged and were read by them. For some reason, they apparently failed to notice the memories from after you arrived in this world. They believed you had merely been kidnapped by a witch, tortured by Annie until you fainted, and then discovered by them. So in the end, they safely returned you to the Riser Family."

Hearing that, Gu Bei let out a breath of relief.

As long as he hadn't been discovered.

There had actually been plenty of holes in his plan to use the Water Ball Spell to lure over the Purifiers, then escape with their help. If the Purifiers had some special method that revealed he could use magic too, he would definitely have been dead.

He had only come up with the plan because he had nowhere else to turn. A large part of him simply couldn't swallow the insult and didn't want Michelle to get her way. The moment he summoned the water ball, he had been nervous as hell, terrified that his life would end right there.

Thankfully, everything had gone even more smoothly than he had imagined.

Gu Bei was still quite puzzled as to why Michelle had let him go so easily. But since she had done it, why keep thinking about it? He could just chalk it up to a sudden burst of good fortune.

Thank heaven. After being unlucky for so long, he had finally caught a break.

"Don't celebrate too early, okay? You caused another huge disaster today." The system seemed to have a habit of raining on his parade, making it thoroughly unpleasant. "That man you drenched in piss and shit seems to have quite a background too."

"...Who is he?"

"Dick Fool, eldest son of the Fool Family," the system answered. "The Fool Family is also a highly prestigious noble house in the Royal Capital. Their ancestor was a famous court entertainer who accidentally burned to death an assassin preparing to kill the king during a fire-breathing performance. The king was delighted and granted them noble status. Over time, the Fool Family has come to control the entire entertainment industry in the Royal Capital. Their influence is enormous."

Gu Bei thought about it and asked, "Compared to the Riser Family?"

"A little weaker."

"Then why the hell should I be afraid of him?"

"..." The system was speechless.

Gu Bei's current situation was delicate enough. He truly had no time to care whether he had offended some spoiled young master from another family. Right now, his most pressing problem was how to successfully play the role of Grant Riser.

After all, he wasn't the real "young master." If anyone noticed something was off, things would truly become disastrous.

Who knew how people in this world viewed transmigration? Given how terrifying The Church was, it wasn't impossible that they would label him a demon's apostle, tie him to a cross, and burn him alive.

It was all because he was unlucky. He hadn't inherited all of this body's memories directly, leaving him with this extra headache. And after Michelle had suspected him once already, he wasn't particularly confident in his acting skills.

Therefore, he needed to integrate into this world and the Riser Family as quickly as possible.

That was the most life-threatening matter at hand.

"Didn't you say just now that the original owner's memories appeared in the database?" After thinking for a moment, Gu Bei said to the system, "Tell me everything about 'me.'"

The system hesitated before saying, "That's far too much. Even if I talked for a month, I might not finish."

Gu Bei was somewhat helpless. "Can't you simplify it? Tell me the most basic and important things first, enough that I won't give myself away in front of others. We can ignore the minor details."

"All right, please wait. Organizing data..."

Accompanied by a series of strange electronic sound effects, the system fell silent again. Gu Bei called out twice without receiving a response, and he roughly understood that this system wasn't exactly high-performance. So he could only patiently wait for the system's "simplified memories" to be ready.

Thinking of the unbelievably terrible lag on his little laptop, and then of the ox-cart CPU that might have been inherited by the system, Gu Bei felt deeply grieved.

He should have bought a new computer before transmigrating.

Silence returned once more, and Gu Bei found this period somewhat awkward. It wasn't especially long, but it wasn't especially short either. He truly had no idea what to do. In the end, he decided to keep sleeping and pass the long wait while the system organized the data.

It was the middle of the night, after all. He couldn't exactly go wandering around outside again. What if he ran into another sleepwalking lunatic? He couldn't exactly splash someone else in the face with shit again.

Under these circumstances, it was always better to postpone facing the Riser Family and give himself more time to prepare. He had even planned to sleep in a little tomorrow morning.

"Sleep..."

He seemed to have just slept for three days and three nights.

Damn it, this was so boring. He couldn't sleep...

He suddenly missed his phone terribly. Before, every night before bed, he would turn off the lights, lie under the covers, pull out his phone to scroll through Weibo or read novels, and gradually drift off. But when he subconsciously reached toward the bedside now, he suddenly understood that those days were gone forever.

He was no longer in that world.

While being held hostage by the witch earlier, he hadn't had time to think about any of this. Now, with the pressure temporarily lifted from his shoulders, all sorts of complicated, indescribable emotions came flooding out from nowhere.

He had transmigrated.

He had left the world where he had lived for over twenty years and come to this completely unfamiliar place.

He had always grown tired of his old life and often imagined that one day he would go somewhere else and live a more meaningful life. But now that it had truly happened, he felt like there was a pebble in his shoe, rubbing him raw.

There was nothing he could do. Everything had happened too quickly. One moment, he had been sitting in the little room he rented; the next, he opened his eyes to find the world turned upside down.

At the end of the day, he was only an ordinary person.

A helpless sigh sank into the darkness beside Gu Bei's bed. He turned over and stared blankly upward, staring at the empty darkness covering the ceiling.

"I really... can't go back."

Just as he lay on the bed, trying to sleep yet utterly unable to feel sleepy, the faint sound of a lock turning suddenly reached his ears—when one couldn't sleep, even the tiniest sound became a thunderclap.

What was going on...

Gu Bei was groggy for a moment, but immediately became alert.

Someone was picking the lock to his room!

A thief?

What the hell was going on now?

Pulled back from his inexplicable melancholy and made aware of the situation, Gu Bei felt speechless. He had been here for less than half a day, so why had so many bizarre things already happened? Couldn't he just have a peaceful day?

With no other choice, he decided to wait and see what this person wanted. He shut his eyes tightly, adjusted his breathing, and pretended to have entered a deep sleep.

He focused all his attention on his ears. Soon, he heard the soft sound of the door opening, followed by cautious footsteps. His nerves immediately tensed. The other party was being so furtive that they clearly weren't here to do anything good. If they were a decent person, they would have knocked first, wouldn't they?

If the other party truly meant him harm, what should he do?

Gu Bei didn't immediately shout for help. He felt there was something strange about this.

His intuition told him to remain patient.

Soon, the stealthy footsteps stopped beside his bed.

Unable to open his eyes, he could only rely on a vague sort of "feeling" and do his best to sense the person's presence. Were they hostile or friendly? Strong or weak?

Time itself seemed to gradually come to a halt.

A strange feeling faintly arose.

As his concentration deepened, it was suddenly as though the tip of a needle had touched foam. Deep within his Consciousness Space, the blue Triangle Glyph gave a soft "ding."

A ripple swept across the entire world, and everything became brand new.

He suddenly discovered that he could sense the water vapor drifting through the surrounding air. The "water" that had once felt distant suddenly became much closer to him. He could speak with it, receive its feedback, as though every tiny water molecule were bouncing energetically inside his mind.

The sensation was incredibly marvelous. It was as if Gu Bei had gained a brand-new pair of eyes. Without opening his eyes, he could "see" everything nearby through his perception of water elements. This "vision" was still blurry, roughly like having severe nearsightedness without glasses, but it was still an indescribably wonderful feeling.

Like a baby opening his eyes for the first time, he eagerly experienced this new world.

He had already sensed the person standing beside his bed.

As Gu Bei gradually became familiar with this perception, the other person's image also began to take shape: an adult man, probably around six feet tall, but extremely thin, like a Bamboo Pole. That was all he could make out. Perhaps because this was his first time using this perception, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't "see" details like the man's face.

That person simply stood there, as though waiting for something.

As the initial novelty gradually faded, Gu Bei began to feel confused. He didn't know what the other person wanted. He could sense a faint, almost imperceptible sense of danger—the intruder seemed to carry a trace of killing intent.

But he didn't alert the enemy. He could vaguely sense that this person wasn't very strong, and the emergence of the Water Element Sensing Method reassured him greatly. So he decided to wait.

This was Riser Family territory. How had this person gotten in? And why had he come for Gu Bei?

Gu Bei caught the scent of a conspiracy.

In any case, the man's appearance had been far too sudden. Gu Bei wanted to see what he intended to do.

"Waaaah! Stop sleeping and wake up! This person wants to kill you!"

A deafening mechanical voice, with all the destructive power of a 6:30 a.m. alarm clock, jolted Gu Bei from head to toe. It was the system, which had supposedly been organizing data. For some reason, it had popped out at this critical moment.

The system appearing wasn't the key issue.

The key issue was that, startled by the shout, Gu Bei instinctively opened his eyes.

Then he was completely dumbfounded.

Through his eyes, forced open in fright, Gu Bei could see a pair of reflective eyes staring blankly at him in the darkness. At the same time, a gleaming dagger was pointed directly at him.

Those eyes looked at him and blinked several times.

He looked at those eyes and blinked several times.

"..."

Fuck. This had blown up.

That damned system. May it eat instant noodles without a seasoning packet and have a son without a belly button.

Gu Bei stared at those eyes, took a deep breath, put on a friendly expression, and said:

"The long night stretches on, and sleep eludes me. Comrade, are you out for a stroll too?"

As he spoke, he gave the gleaming dagger a terrified glance, then hurriedly added:

"Big brother, your fruit knife is really distinctive!"

A note: Dick Fool is written in English as Dick Fool. You can look up what the words mean online. Please make sure to remember him.