As the mist dissipated, Wen Qianhua’s legs gave out and she fainted, taking the little leopard cat down with her.
Wen Qianshu quickly reached out to catch her, then used her foot to catch the little leopard cat.
Her white cat crouched to the side, let out a “meow,” and didn’t move a muscle, offering no help whatsoever. It had clearly adopted its master’s habit of watching a show unfold.
2333: “…”
That’s a great pose you’ve got there.
It must be that because the original “Wen Qianshu’s” mental body had not fully formed, it was dispersed during the incident. A portion of the mist remained on the little leopard cat, leaving it in a state of being sometimes awake and sometimes not.
That was why the little leopard cat’s behavior was sometimes so contradictory—one moment it would disdainfully reject the leopard’s licks, and the next it would move closer to be licked.
Now that this small piece of the mental body had disappeared, Wen Qianhua couldn’t adapt to the sudden change and fainted.
2333: “What do we do now?”
“What else can we do?” Wen Qianshu said. “We’re already here.”
2333: “?”
What are you planning to do?
Wen Qianshu spoke, “You’ve been following us all this way. Tell your master to help me carry my sister back.”
2333 was taken aback, realizing she wasn’t talking to it.
A golden eagle flew down and landed on the railing, tucking its neck in.
It was Mu Danqing’s mental body.
Wen Qianshu knelt down, placing the little leopard cat and Wen Qianhua on the ground so they were lying flat. She then stood up, pushed open the door, and walked into the infirmary.
Once inside, Wen Qianshu smiled. She reached out, grabbed a mental body rabbit by its long ears from the windowsill, and stared at it. “You’ve been watching for so long. Stop hiding.”
“Song Huan.”
Standing before her was an elderly woman, none other than the school doctor, Song Huan.
She looked older than in her ID photo. With her hands in her pockets, she smiled gently. “The other doctors have all gone to lunch. What can I do for you?”
Wen Qianshu examined the rabbit while asking, “Do you still think you’re doing a good thing?”
Song Huan: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Wen Qianshu raised an eyebrow. “Actually, I think I understand.”
Wen Qianshu tugged at the rabbit, watching its limbs hang limply. “Sentinels have highly developed senses. A typical shallow mental soothing session removes trivial and useless information, like the clinking of chopsticks during a meal, things that are of no use to their lives and only serve as a nuisance.”
“But you’re different,” Wen Qianshu said. “You don’t care about the sound of chopsticks at all. You directly eliminate their negative emotions.”
“Let me guess what you’re thinking—”
“You’re thinking—”
“Those poor Sentinel students, covered in blood, so sad inside, always fighting, getting injured, and coming to the school infirmary for bandages.” Wen Qianshu looked up at her. “So you comfort them, talk to them, and treat their negative emotions as useless information, erasing them bit by bit.”
“That timidity, pain, despair, sorrow—all the things you deem bad, you just make them get rid of it all.”
That was why Wen Qianhua exhibited a state of “complete mental health” after “Wen Qianshu” fell into a coma, because the negative emotions she should have had were guided away and abandoned.
“They’re still students, most of them suffering from bullying, or family discord, or a lack of love. And they’re all Sentinels, so their mental energy is diffuse. They wouldn’t notice if a little was missing. They just feel comfortable here with you, so they come to you more and more frequently, letting you dissolve their negative emotions bit by bit.”
Song Huan narrowed her eyes at her.
Wen Qianshu took a step closer. “Isn’t that right?”
Song Huan: “I just want them to have a happy time at school.”
Wen Qianshu laughed. “Make them happy?”
“Or make yourself happy?”
“You enjoy the feeling of ‘saving’ people; you enjoy them treating you as a dear friend, praising you as the best doctor; you enjoy them coming to you again and again, forgetting their pain, unwilling to leave.”
“You don’t deal with the people who bully them, you don’t address the root of their pain. You just let them escape their emotions, making their tolerance for pain weaker and weaker, making them flee to you time and again. After they graduate, they can’t handle the slightest stimulus, desperately seeking mental soothing, yet no one can give them the same feeling.”
Wen Qianshu stared at Song Huan, watching her face gradually turn pale. “No one would be as arrogant as you, thinking they have the right to decide another person’s emotions.”
“They did indeed have a happy and false time at school,” Wen Qianshu said. “And after that? A life of losing control and fragility?”
“When they graduate, new, young students fill their place. If they come looking for you, you just switch schools. There are plenty of ways to make sure they can’t find you.”
“And then—Sentinels weren’t enough for you. You set your sights on a Guide.”
“Guides are so wonderful, aren’t they? That Wen Qianhua who gets into fights, so talented—you didn’t even need to do much. Just a few words, a hint for her to soothe away those painful emotions, and she would do it herself.”
Wen Qianshu: “She was in so much pain, so much that she couldn’t bear it. So you told her, soothe away this information, and the pain will be gone, and your family won’t have to worry about you anymore.”
Soothe them away—
So Wen Qianhua soothed away those emotions.
But while the feelings disappeared, the memories didn’t truly vanish. They were hidden in the deepest corners, and once triggered, once recalled, the pain was still heart-wrenching.
It was like being injured, but instead of applying medicine and letting it heal, you deceive yourself into thinking there was no injury at all. Until one day, you suddenly see the wound again and find it just as it was before, fresh and agonizingly painful.
Wen Qianhua was different from the Sentinels; she could eliminate those negative emotions on her own. So she repeatedly forgot, but she also repeatedly encountered Sentinels, repeatedly saw that nutrition pod at home, and repeatedly remembered.
She would forget the pain, then feel it again, and when the pain became extreme, she would escape, thus forgetting once more.
In this vicious cycle, her memories became distorted. Gradually, her recollections of her sister were filled only with the pain she constantly relived, only the negative emotions between them.
The name “Wen Qianshu” transformed from the person Wen Qianhua was closest to into the sharpest of knives, cutting her to pieces with every encounter.
Wen Qianhua couldn’t take it anymore. She became afraid. She didn’t want to get close to any of her family members again—
Her temper grew worse, and she showed her thorns to everyone.
One day, she would have nowhere left to run and would be headed for a complete breakdown.
“This false, cruel savior,” Wen Qianshu drawled with a sneer. “Are you enjoying playing the part?”
“Deceiving yourself and others—is it fun?”
“What do you know?”
As Wen Qianshu’s words grew more and more piercing, Song Huan finally couldn’t hold back. She looked at her with heavy eyes. “Have you seen what those people look like? Do you know what it feels like to be in extreme pain?”
“I was clearly helping them. They were all very grateful to me.”
“Pain—” Wen Qianshu smiled, but her eyes were devoid of emotion. “Is that so? You think I don’t know what ‘pain’ tastes like?”
“Of course you don’t,” Song Huan interrupted coldly. “You think the little hardships you’ve suffered can be called pain?”
“You’re all so young, what have you ever experienced!”
“You say I’m arrogant—” Song Huan said. “Aren’t you arrogant yourself? You think you can hold me here just by grabbing my mental body?”
Hearing this, Wen Qianshu froze and abruptly let go of the rabbit, trying to toss it away—but it was too late. The rabbit landed steadily, but a multitude of fine, long mental threads spread out from its ears, extending and connecting to Wen Qianshu’s palm.
Song Huan’s control over mental energy was truly exquisite and remarkable.
The mental threads were so fine they were almost invisible if one didn’t look closely.
Even though Wen Qianshu had been on guard, she hadn’t noticed that Song Huan had already connected so many.
Wen Qianshu’s pupils constricted. “You—”
Song Huan smiled. “Overestimating your own abilities.”
Her mental energy surged, easily invading Wen Qianshu’s mental domain. She intended to eliminate Wen Qianshu’s suspicions about her as quickly as possible, so that when the police arrived, she could still feign innocence.
This young Guide was deliberately provoking her, holding onto her mental body to prevent her from leaving, trying to stall for time—she could see it all.
Unfortunately, young Guides like this were not skilled in manipulating their mental domains and were quite easy to guide.
Everything was going smoothly—
Very smoothly—
Song Huan’s smile slowly faded, and her brow furrowed.
Wen Qianshu’s mental domain was different from that of an ordinary Guide. It wasn’t bright or clear at all. Instead, it was dim and murky, almost like thick ink, resembling a moonless night.
The scent of blood lingered in the air, and the mental energy was cold and viscous. Flashes of light occasionally appeared, revealing countless eyes opening and closing, suspended high in the air, staring at Song Huan.
It was cold and oppressive, eerie and ghostly, with even strange sounds of chewing and laughter, gunshots and crying.
Song Huan tried to search for her emotions but couldn’t find a place to start.
Countless chaotic pieces of information and negative emotions swirled around her like a howling wind, an incessant roar in her ears.
Was this really a Guide?
How had she not collapsed yet?
In the deepest part of the mental domain, Wen Qianshu watched as Song Huan’s expression shifted from contempt to confusion, and then to panic. The doctor had always dealt with children in schools, but Wen Qianshu had just come from an apocalypse.
Song Huan realized something was wrong. She turned, wanting to escape this mental domain, but there were no doors around her. She was trapped.
A flash of light revealed a person with a face full of rotting flesh, opening a bloody maw and lunging at her.
Song Huan screamed.
2333: “…”
2333: “You really did it on purpose.”
Wen Qianshu: “Since we’re already here, we can’t let the police go home empty-handed.”
“Let her attack me once, so the police can catch her in the act.”
2333: “This is entrapment.”
Wen Qianshu: “If I don’t say anything, who’s going to know?”
2333: “…”
It really couldn’t expect Wen Qianshu to follow the rules.
Wen Qianshu watched as Song Huan’s mental energy darted around her mental domain like a headless fly, then suddenly said, “Speaking of which, part of this world’s problem is solved. How about we talk about something else?”
2333, who had been gleefully watching Song Huan, stiffened at her words. “What?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
Wen Qianshu: “What do you think?”
“Think carefully. Are you going to keep hiding it?”
2333: “Hiding what? I told you, I’ve shown you everything. What else could there be—”
“Is that so? 2333—”
Wen Qianshu’s voice was calm. “I gave you a chance.”
2333 froze abruptly, but then it sensed the infirmary door being pushed open as someone burst in.
Inside the infirmary, Wen Qianshu and Song Huan stood facing each other, their eyes closed.
Mu Lian’s voice came through. “She has invaded her mental domain.”
Mu Danqing: “What?”
2333’s eyes widened. “You—”
It suddenly understood. When Wen Qianshu said she had Mu Lian call the police, it wasn’t so Wen Qianshu could arrive before them, but so Mu Lian would come along too. Transportation in this world was so convenient and fast, and both the school and the hospital were stops for the shuttle.
Mu Danqing: “What do we do? Once a mental domain is destroyed, it’s over.”
Mu Lian: “I’ll try to go in and see.”
She explained to the police who had followed her in, “I have a soothing certificate—yes, I’m a Sentinel, but I’ve obtained a soothing certificate. Besides, we can establish a Sentinel-Guide lock. She trusts me very much—”
2333 was in disbelief, but it heard Wen Qianshu say softly, “She can actually remember some things, can’t she?”
If only I had met you sooner—
In the next life, I’ll protect you—
That gaze that was always watching her, that person who was always waiting for her.
“I’ve paid attention to the things she remembers,” Wen Qianshu said. “Most of them are promises she made at the end of a world.”
Wen Qianshu: “So I’m guessing that when a world line collapses or ends, you have to open a channel to the Main God’s world. At that moment, the world is unstable, which affects the system core, and in turn, Mingyue’s memory.”
2333 tried to remain calm but couldn’t speak. It had no physical body, yet it felt an inexplicable cold, a cold that made it tremble. It heard Wen Qianshu laugh. “This world line almost collapsed just now, didn’t it? Do you think everything has stabilized yet?”
2333: “I, I—”
Wen Qianshu: “I’m guessing not. If you could repair things that quickly, I wouldn’t have encountered that loophole in the first world.”
Wen Qianshu: “Back at the hospital, when we almost formed a Sentinel-Guide lock, I saw code in Mu Lian’s mental domain. This means that in this world line, this so-called mental domain can be used to access Mingyue’s soul, which is her code.”
“I can take advantage of the world line’s instability to change the system core, to make Mingyue remember me completely.”
2333 couldn’t help but say, “That’s all just speculation. What if you’re wrong?”
“Yes, it’s all speculation,” Wen Qianshu said with a smile. “So are you going to keep hiding it? Let me just fumble around blindly?”
2333: “The system core of System No. 0 is on you right now! If you do something to it and accidentally harm it, you’ll be the one to suffer along with it. Do you know how painful it is to have your soul torn apart—”
Wen Qianshu laughed. “Suffer then suffer. If I fail, she’ll just forget in the next world anyway.”
“I can afford to gamble.” Wen Qianshu grinned, enunciating each word. “What about you?”
“Do you dare to gamble the No. 0 core against me?”
Her tone was so innocent, her smile so naive, yet her eyes were so cold.
For the first time, 2333 realized that the four people in the four worlds were not just disguises for Wen Qianshu; they also contained parts of her personality.
She was a smiling gambler.
A calm madwoman.
Even if she didn’t succeed this time, now that she knew this method, she could create such a situation again and again. One day, she would get what she wanted.
In the mental domain, countless eyes watched everything.
Song Huan was in a wretched state. Having just escaped the siege of zombies, she was swept up by a torrent of information and dragged into a mire of mental energy, struggling desperately.
In the outside world, Mu Danqing looked worriedly at Wen Qianshu and Mu Lian, the golden eagle perched on his shoulder.
Mu Lian placed her hand on Wen Qianshu’s shoulder.
2333 trembled, trying to say something.
The cold, eerie mental domain that Song Huan couldn’t find an exit from gently opened at Mu Lian’s touch, tenderly inviting her in.
These chaotic emotions, this painful wait—
This long, dark night, this nearly hopeless cycle—
Wen Qianshu felt a warm and familiar mental energy approaching.
It was as if the bright moon had appeared in the dark night.
She saw a sliver of light.
Wen Qianshu thought to herself.
This time, the giant stone of Sisyphus will not roll down again, will it?
Author’s Notes:
The mist at the end of the previous chapter was “Wen Qianshu,” the real sister.
When Second Brother Wen called, the sister’s nod meant she was allowing him into the room, and it was also a way to hint at her identity.
The flowers withered because the sister had completely departed, so all the flowers symbolizing hope withered. Only the one left by the painting (Wen Qianhua’s hope) did not wither and barely survived with Wen Qianshu’s help.
