Chapter 58

Chapter 58

*Crash—*

“Sorry, Sister Han!”

The assistant, having just seen off the business partner, was tidying up the tea set in the meeting room when she accidentally knocked over a glass on the table, sending it shattering to the floor.

Bian Han wasn’t really startled.

But she pressed a hand to her chest, feeling a bit short of breath.

Why did she have that same feeling of bad luck again, like after she’d used that talisman before?

She helped the assistant, who was squatting to clean up, to her feet. “Did you get scalded?”

“No, no,” the assistant hurriedly replied.

Bian Han moved the chairs aside, called the cleaner in from the doorway, and opened the meeting room door wide. “It’s all broken glass. Please wear gloves and be careful when cleaning.”

The assistant and the cleaner thanked her. Picking up her laptop, which hadn’t gotten a drop of water on it, the assistant followed closely behind Bian Han as she asked, “How many event venues have been confirmed so far?”

“Three, all scheduled for May and June.”

The assistant answered methodically, “After you posted the notice on Weibo about halting public engagements after July, so many organizers reached out through Editor Qin to invite you, and they were all extremely insistent.”

“Not taking any more. Let’s finish the ones we have on hand first.”

Bian Han was revising the manuscript for an upcoming publication based on the feedback notes.

Jiang Jining was due to have the baby around the Ghost Festival in July.

She wouldn’t have time to handle these things afterward.

The assistant nodded in understanding, then added, “Oh, right. The fourth print run for *By the Monarch’s Side* is twenty thousand copies, with ten thousand each for standard and special signed editions. The factory said they’d deliver the paper stock in the next few days.”

Bian Han took it in stride. “Okay.”

Less than two minutes after the assistant left.

Bian Han picked up her silenced phone while taking a drink of water and noticed several missed calls—

The most recent one was from Bian Jiacheng.

To her surprise, Fu Yuze had called her three times.

A sense of foreboding instantly washed over Bian Han. She set her water cup down with a *thud*, grabbed the nearest car keys and her bag, dialing a number as she headed out. *Brrr-brrr-brrr…*

No one answered.

Bian Han hung up immediately.

In that moment, she received a call from Bian Jiacheng. “What’s wrong?”

“Sis! Old Fu is probably on his way to you. Please, keep an eye on him for me. Ningning is gone.” Bian Jiacheng still sounded shaken from being jolted awake.

Bian Han’s heart clenched. “Speak properly!”

How could he say something like that so casually?

Especially now, with Jiang Jining so heavily pregnant.

After getting the gist of the situation, Bian Han rushed toward the publishing house entrance. From a distance, she saw a familiar car speeding toward her.

The car window rolled down immediately.

What met her eyes was Fu Yuze’s bloodless lips and the veins bulging on the back of his hands gripping the steering wheel. His gaze fixed intently on her, he uttered only one sentence: “How can I find him?”

Jiang Jining had vanished into thin air.

In the swimming pool at the back of Xie Ting.

On a perfectly ordinary morning.

He vanished without a trace when Aunt Tao went to look for him after she’d finished making the pastries.

When Fu Yuze received Uncle Lu’s call, he was still calm. But when he returned home, checked the backyard surveillance, and found it had mysteriously stopped working, and he couldn’t find Jiang Jining anywhere, he began to hate himself for breaking his routine and leaving the house today.

In an instant, his heart rate flatlined. A sudden roaring in his ears drowned out all surrounding sounds, and he could barely tell red from green on the traffic lights.

Finding Bian Han became his only lifeline.

At least she had tried before.

“To my place.”

Bian Han pulled open the door and got into the car.

Her calm might give Fu Yuze some reason to trust her. Sure enough, she heard a low voice beside her: “Seatbelt.”

In truth, it took her two tries to fasten it.

In about ten minutes, after turning into the residential complex, Bian Han saw the magnolia tree in the distance, its presence still faintly palpable. Without thinking, she spoke up: “Do you know the story of how I found Ningning and brought him home?”

Fu Yuze stopped the car.

He listened carefully to every possible detail.

Looking through the car window, Bian Han noticed the bright sunshine. If she remembered correctly, it had been pouring when she left this morning. It was this sudden feeling that made her speak without holding back: “I tried so many, many methods before, but none could send Ningning home. Watching him grow thinner day by day, for a long time I couldn’t face him calmly.”

“Because… the one who brought him here was me.”

The day she found Jiang Jining was a day she would never forget.

Besides running her own publishing company as the chief editor and being its driving force, Bian Han was also a writer. Her most influential and commercially valuable pen name was Yu Bushi, which enjoyed almost breakout-level fame.

In this year, at thirty-one—

Bian Han, under the immense attention from all sides, made a grand entrance by starting a new novel. She completed *By the Monarch’s Side*, a pure love xianxia novel that skyrocketed in popularity from the very start of its serialization, single-handedly reviving the declining traffic of the platform and creating another phenomenal work.

She typed the final word of the entire book.

It was less than a week before Bian Han’s thirty-second birthday.

Back then, Bian Jiacheng asked her every day: how did she want to celebrate her birthday party, what gifts did she want, what wishes did he could help fulfill, what things did she want to do.

Bian Han was still immersed in the withdrawal after finishing a creative story. Hearing him go on and on started to annoy her, so she casually made a wish: “I want all my children to be healthy, safe, and happy, and to enjoy a peaceful old age with me. How about that?”

In fortune-telling, an author's creative works are often linked to the 'Children' palace. This was just an offhand remark from Bian Han, but Bian Jiacheng, who didn't get it, took over organizing the birthday party and then, with a wave of his hand, took her and her house full of cats for a comprehensive health checkup.

Bian Han couldn't stop laughing when she found out after returning home.

The turning point was that day.

To celebrate the success of her new book, Bian Han invited a few friends for a night of drinks at a pub near Jingming Lake.

She wasn't planning to get drunk.

Before Bian Jiacheng came to pick her up, she could still take a stroll around Jingming Lake.

At that time, Jiang Jining was like a drowned kitten, his body still submerged, his pale fingers clinging to the shore as he observed her, his beautiful eyes wide and trembling, looking utterly pitiful.

Hmm?

Bian Han thought she was hallucinating. She kicked off her high heels, sat down on the ground, grabbed his wrist, and said with a silly chuckle, "You're as handsome as the sons in my book."

It wasn't until Jiang Jining told her his full name—"Jiang... Jining"—that Bian Han reacted.

It just sounded vaguely familiar to her.

After pulling Jiang Jining ashore, she had no jacket to offer. She handed him her bag covered in crystals, containing tissues and her phone, and told him to hold it. Stroking his hair, she said with a laugh, "Your hair is real."

Jiang Jining had been cautiously observing her for a while. She seemed drunk, and her look and behavior were strange, yet he didn't feel any sense of danger. So, he boldly asked, "...Have I arrived somewhere outside of Dalin?"

Dalin...

Dalin?!

Bian Han sobered up in a flash. She questioned Jiang Jining meticulously about the characters of his name and his background. Although she didn't extract much information, it was enough to shatter her entire worldview.

Dalin was clearly the human realm in her book, a utopia beyond the cultivation world where peace and order reigned. The protagonist descended there to undergo tribulations and, at a critical moment of life and death, was fortunate enough to be taken in by a local noble family to recuperate, rebuild his Dao heart, and experience the warmth and coldness of the human world.

The local noble family...

The Jiang family estate, the Duke of Dalin's mansion.

You couldn't blame Bian Han for not remembering Jiang Jining's name—

In fact, she hadn't even carefully given this child a full name. She merely mentioned in passing the kindness the protagonist received at the Jiang residence and how interesting it was to interact with the Jiang family's third young master, Ning, who was barely two years old at the time. With just a few words, she sketched out the peculiar bond formed between the protagonist and this child.

To satisfy personal preferences...

She had casually written the setting that men in Dalin could become pregnant if they had red moles on their skin, to serve the needs of certain special plotlines. But such details were like a drop in the ocean within a story spanning millions of words.

Bian Han, deeply moved, naturally clung to Jiang Jining and wouldn't let go.

This led to the scene Bian Jiacheng discovered—

His older sister, eyes red, insisting on taking another beautiful stray kitten of unknown origin home, determined to raise him herself.

For Bian Han.

Jiang Jining was no different from a child of her own.

She flipped through the copy of "By the Monarch's Side" she had written herself over and over again, meticulously dissecting the ten chapters set in Dalin, solely to find a way to send Jiang Jining back. However, due to the scarcity of information related to Jiang Jining personally, she was left with no leads.

So...

Bian Han had never been to the world in the book.

She knew Jiang Jining's background only because she had created it.

After hearing Bian Han out, Fu Yuze stopped dwelling on where Jiang Jining came from. He had only one request that seemed like it could change fate: to see Jiang Jining, who originally did not belong to this world.

This was a dead end.

It felt as excruciating as being flayed alive.

"The book?" Fu Yuze moved his somewhat numb and icy arm. The gloom and confusion in his eyes were hidden by his tousled hair and dark lashes. He asked Bian Han hoarsely, "Can I take it back with me?"

Bian Han went to the bookshelf and pulled out that copy of "By the Monarch's Side" that Jiang Jining had read. It was the unmodified first-edition proof, with a more complete plot and more details. Without hesitation, she pushed it in front of Fu Yuze.

He was in a terrible state.

Bian Han really couldn't bear to see it anymore and said, "The trigger for A Ning's return this time is probably related to the name chosen based on his birth characters, and also..."

Fu Yuze finally perked up a bit: "What?"

"He's pregnant." This was also part of why Bian Han hadn't been utterly devastated; she'd had an inkling for a while. "...After Ning Zai reminded me about his different constitution, I had my suspicions. I didn't tell him because I was worried he might do something extreme in his desperation to go home."

This statement contained extremely crucial information.

Even in his extreme despondency, Fu Yuze understood it clearly.

"You two have created a connection between the two worlds." Bian Han added immediately after saying this, "To a certain extent, Ning Zai also knows how to come back."

"What if he doesn't want to."

Fu Yuze said this without any interrogative tone, as if trying to convince himself that Jiang Jining had finally made it home, and he should be happy. He had found Jiang Jining sleeping in the mud, dirty, by Jingming Lake, and promised to take him home.

He had kept his promise.

"How come I never noticed you were such a pessimist before?" Bian Han couldn't stand it anymore and told him the truth: "Ning Zai is even more bewildered than you are, going home at this time. Carrying a big belly, he won't even know how to explain it to his parents. How do you expect him to get married in the future?"

"Buzz—"

Seeing it was Bian Jiacheng's call, Bian Han hung up irritably and tossed the phone onto the book held by Fu Yuze, who was as stiff as a statue. She felt like she had taken in another problem child. Leaning her hands on the desk in resignation, she said, "Fine, I'll tell you how to see him."

Why couldn't he just wait?

Jiang Jining had given him both his heart and body; it wasn't like he could run away with the baby.