Chapter 116

Chapter 116

Huo Jinan's borrowed body woke up on schedule on the third day, but he found that he hadn't been carried back to Lord He's residence—instead, he was being held at the Crown Prince's mansion.

Shen Lian's coma had thrown the entire household into a flurry of panic and activity, while the other suspects remained detained at the Northern Garrison for interrogation.

Only Old Master He, who had been unconscious when the incident occurred, was brought to the Crown Prince's estate, with two young eunuchs taking turns to watch over him.

Huo Jinan hadn't expected that even by feigning a coma, he still couldn't make the smug protagonist of this timeline, Xie Yuan, lower his guard.

Perhaps only after Shen Lian was successfully recalled and it was confirmed that Huo Jinan was no longer a suspect would Xie Yuan release him.

But the problem was that Huo Jinan couldn't wait that long.

Even if he had managed to secure permission to take over Old Master He's body through tricks and deception, his consciousness couldn't remain for more than fourteen days.

Once Old Master He's own consciousness began to stir, each brain region would start attacking Huo Jinan's consciousness, attempting to drive him out of the body.

Returning to his own body required first going back to the basement to connect to the equipment; otherwise, he could only notify the system to activate the recall device and have his consciousness leave this timeline together with Professor Shen.

He was, after all, an SS-rank host. If he ended up destroyed alongside Shen Lian—an E-rank on his first mission—his rating would definitely drop upon returning to the Administration Bureau, and many of the system's special item access points would be closed off.

He was restless.

Huo Jinan opened the system interface and first checked the progress of Professor Shen's consciousness eviction.

One look, and he almost yelped.

How had Shen Lian's physical health only dropped 4%?

Did this Crown Prince's mansion have an ICU life-support system or what?

Then he checked the consciousness pacification system and saw a red alert flashing directly.

Holy crap, the trauma spike had reached 67%!

With the medical conditions of this ancient era, his body should have degraded by over 30% by now.

And the consciousness should have been guided by the machine to find its happiest memories, staying at 100% health.

How was Shen Lian the exact opposite of a normal person?

This level of consciousness instability would cause massive data loss during recall.

Huo Jinan was panicking.

If he himself failed the mission and was recalled, he'd just get demoted and lose points.

But if Professor Shen lost all his research memories and his value, his consciousness would be cast into the universe—basically reincarnated.

What on earth was going on? Did the quantum robot's guidance glitch out?

Huo Jinan opened the robot's operation interface and pulled up Shen Lian's consciousness monitor feed—

Five-year-old Shen Lian sneaked into his father and stepmother's bedroom at 2:30 in the middle of the night.

As the snores rose and fell softly, the child crawled inch by inch across the wooden floor, skirting around the five-foot bed, until he reached his father's bedside table.

In the pitch-black dark, he reached out and rummaged through the piles of clothes and trousers, but didn't feel the hard, rectangular shape he was looking for.

The little boy knelt on the floor, slowly straightened up, and his big, tearful eyes strained to scan the darkness until he finally caught sight of the phone by his father's pillow.

His little hands trembling, he grabbed the phone and crawled back out of the room inch by inch.

Once on the balcony, he slid the glass door shut, and the boy wiped his eyes first, eager to unlock the screen and find his mom's profile photo.

That's when he remembered the phone needed his dad's fingerprint to unlock.

He fiddled with the lock screen until 4 a.m.

Summer nights are short; dawn was only an hour away.

In despair, the little boy stared at the emergency call screen and recited his prepared lines: "Good evening, Mom. Sorry, Dad won't let me use his phone during the day, so I can only call you at this hour. I wanted to ask where your new company is. Summer break's almost over—can I come visit? I can ask for directions and walk over by myself."

His voice, trying so hard to stay steady, trembled in the corner of the balcony.

The emergency call screen stayed frozen—no mom appeared to answer him.

So he kept going with his polite self-pitch: "I asked Teacher Li, and she said Asperger's wasn't considered autism back in the day. She said I might be smarter than other kids. I'm super fast at math—when I see numbers, the answers just pop into my head. Teacher Zhou and Teacher Li both fight over who gets to hold me and compliment me. I know how to use the washer and dryer now, and I can pour Dad's water and wash dishes—I can do everything."

The phone didn't help this kid send his latest résumé to the mom who'd abandoned him.

As dawn was about to break, he crawled back into the bedroom, trying to put the phone back exactly where it was, and accidentally woke his dad.

His dad and stepmom, thinking a burglar had broken in, jumped up screaming.

When the lights came on and they saw it was just their little boy kneeling by the bed, his dad grumbled in annoyance and lay back down.

His stepmom asked what he was doing sneaking into their room in the middle of the night, then noticed the little hand clutching her husband's phone.

"You snuck in here in the middle of the night just to play on your dad's phone?"

"How can a kid be this badly behaved! At your age, staying up all night on the phone?"

"Old Shen, are you gonna do something about this or not? If you don't whoop him now, he'll be a total lost cause when he grows up!"

By the time Huo Jinan saw Shen Lian's dad get up and pull off his belt, he was already glaring at the memory-termination button like he could set it on fire.

But the system's reroute cooldown wasn't up yet—172 seconds still left on the timer.

In desperation, Huo Jinan shut the monitor feed and took a deep breath.

What kind of piece-of-crap calming device was this?

A tier-four civilization, and this is what they made to burn his points?

Scrolling through the logs, every memory route was flagged red.

People rarely retain memories from before age three; most memories start at three.

And the few memories from ages three to five had actually triggered Professor Shen's trauma triggers, making his consciousness dangerously overactive.

When the 172-second countdown finally hit zero, it was clear Shen Lian had taken a beating from his dad—his trauma level had spiked to 81%.

Huo Jinan's vision went black, then black again.

Professor Shen's early childhood was a disaster.

But once the soothing program kicked in, it wouldn't stop until brain death—and by then, Shen Lian's consciousness would be so hyperactive that a ton of data would be lost during recall.

Mission failed or not, these years in this timeline might as well have been for nothing.

Huo Jinan, frantic and desperate, frantically worked the interface, trying to pull Shen Lian out of despair before brain death.

-

Prince Xi and Song Jin were baffled—ever since returning to the mansion, their fourth brother had gotten even weirder, his eyes alarmingly red, yet his expression ice-cold.

He had the eunuchs haul the study's desk, chairs, brushes, and ink into the bedchamber, set them beside the young imperial physician's bed, then buried himself in a stack of manuscripts, studying hard, occasionally having the military physician answer his questions.

Song Jin cautiously leaned in to take a closer look.

He couldn't make heads or tails of it, but he could recognize titles like "Anti-inflammatory Components of White Immortal Powder" and "Gear Iteration of the Nine-Turn Water Mill" on the manuscripts.

For the first three days of Shen Lian's coma, you could still hear the Crown Prince breaking down and muttering to himself at night.

But after this return to the mansion, the sound suddenly stopped.

Aside from regularly turning Shen Lian, cleaning him, and feeding him, Xie Yuan poured all his time into breaking down the technical details of White Immortal Powder and the Water Mill.

Song Jin and Prince Xi were both stunned—why had the fourth brother suddenly gotten so many interests at a time like this?

They'd never seen him study military strategy with such ravenous hunger.

Now that Shen Lian was in a coma, after panicking for three days, he'd just suddenly let it go?

Song Jin couldn't help but feel disappointed on Shen Lian's behalf.

Xie Yuan had always been an odd one—unbound by morality, indifferent to the ways of the world, with a fierce, ruthless nature like a wild beast, yet tinged with a harmless, childlike greed.

He was dangerous, yet somehow endearing—inexplicably likable.

But Xie Yuan didn't trust strangers easily, and he wasn't about to let new people into his heart.

At first, when Song Jin noticed Xie Yuan had actually fallen for Shen Lian, he'd secretly joked to Xie Hang that Imperial Physician Shen was lucky—but now he just found it cruel.

This War God of Great Wei, who never miscalculated, could handle his emotions with such cold, rational restraint.

Another day passed, and Shen Lian's face grew paler, yet Xie Yuan stayed unmoved.

The third brother, worried Xie Yuan might regret this later, went over and whispered, "Why not try a Hail Mary? His body's not in too bad a shape—why not risk a strong remedy?"

"No need." Xie Yuan kept dissecting the gear structure, face blank: "No medicine can save him now."

Even Xie Hang was taken aback by his brother's coldness.

He hesitated, mulled it over, then nodded and left the room by himself.

Xie Yuan wrote nonstop, furiously.

He'd essentially fully broken down the Water Mill's principles.

No assassins waiting for him to catch.

No poisons waiting for him to neutralize.

Everything Shen Lian had told him was true.

It was someone from another world who'd taken his young imperial physician.

No one else would eagerly flip through every word he wrote, joyfully respond to every line, then grab a fresh sheet of paper, holding back a flood of love, and with the same wit, nail every tease he made.

No one else would care whether he was Prince Qi or a male favorite, gazing at his soul with burning eyes.

No one else would dream of becoming his wife.

No one else would go red to the tips of their ears and meow at him.

No one else, even when wronged and misunderstood, would still only want to keep him from feeling sad.

To his right was the Water Mill working model Shen Lian had spent nearly half a year building, calluses forming on his hands, starting over again and again—all for him.

To his left were the warming powder, White Immortal Powder, and health-strengthening powder Shen Lian had prepared and extracted for him before his campaign, sleeping only two or three hours a night.

They were never ancestral prescriptions—it wasn't until Xie Yuan dug up these pharmacological preparation diaries that he realized how grueling and intricate the research and production had been.

Once all this was done, Xie Yuan would follow Shen Lian's trail to find the "murderer" from the other world.

The young imperial physician had said the "immortals" who wanted to assassinate him wanted Xie Yuan to rule Great Wei.

This meant Xie Yuan had bargaining chips.

He wasn't sure he'd actually find Shen Lian's soul after falling into a coma, but Xie Yuan had no other choice.

If he didn't risk his life, no one else could bring Shen Lian back for him.

There was no time to waste.

White Immortal Powder and the Water Mill were both the life's work of the young imperial physician.

These overly brief manuscripts needed to be fleshed out and broken down so they could be passed down for future generations.

The Fourth Prince Xie Yuan, with his illustrious military record, could die at nineteen with no regrets, but the great physician of Great Wei, Shen Buqi, must go down in history.