Chapter 48: Some People Appear at Too Convenient a Time

Chapter 48: Some People Appear at Times That Are Simply Too Coincidental

Back in the real room, Shu Hanqing was dazed for a long moment, while the man holding him still hadn't stirred.

Shu Hanqing patted Lei Zheng's face, trying to wake him, but with no luck, then attempted to push Lei Zheng off of himself.

He was practically crushing him.

Did Lei Zheng even know how heavy he was?

But before he could even muster the strength, Lei Zheng's arm around him tightened with a brutal force that felt like it would snap his spine, yanking Shu Hanqing close and pressing him back into the soft mattress.

He was awake now—staring at Shu Hanqing for a moment, then lowering his head and sinking his teeth into Shu Hanqing's lips.

This could barely be called a kiss.

It was brutal, with zero finesse, carrying a desperate, all-or-nothing madness, as if the world were ending around them.

Within moments, Shu Hanqing tasted blood on his tongue.

Only when both of them were completely breathless did Lei Zheng finally stop, looking wrecked.

He buried his whole face in the crook of Shu Hanqing's neck, utterly drained, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.

Shu Hanqing knew he still wasn't fully back from his memories, and soon, a warm, wet dampness spread across the skin of his neck.

Lei Zheng's tears slipped from the corners of his eyes, soaking into their tangled skin and hair.

"I'm sorry... Shu Hanqing, I'm sorry... It was my fault, I'm sorry..."

Lei Zheng held Shu Hanqing with such irrational desperation, as if he'd bolt the second he let go.

He tried to push him away, but it was completely useless.

Shu Hanqing was exhausted too.

The violent clash of memories from both lives, the emotional whiplash between highs and lows, along with the bone-deep exhaustion from having his residual Superpower drained earlier, all crashed over him like a wave.

Shu Hanqing let Lei Zheng vent while he himself drifted back into a hazy sleep.

When he woke again, it was almost dark out.

Shu Hanqing reached out and touched the gray-blue, stiff military-issue shirt Lei Zheng was wearing.

The fabric clung perfectly to the man's ridiculously good, explosive build, and the heat of his body seeped through the thin fabric to Shu Hanqing's cool skin.

Lei Zheng was sitting up at the head of the bed, and the room still smelled faintly of sharp tobacco.

Lei Zheng slowly looked down at him, and Shu Hanqing covered his eyes, only to be pulled back into the man's arms.

"You're awake? Does your body... does it still hurt?"

Shu Hanqing turned his head and shook it, about to ask the time.

Before he could turn back, kiss after kiss fell like rapid raindrops, landing all over his flushed cheeks and the hollow of his neck.

His scorching breath felt like it was melting their skin together.

Shu Hanqing half-closed his eyes, hesitated, let out a soft sigh, and reluctantly reached out his right hand, grabbing the black hair at the back of Lei Zheng's head: "...Are you ever gonna stop?"

Lei Zheng greedily licked his damp lips, his large palm morbidly stroking the delicate, cool skin of the young man under him, and said in a low, raspy voice: "Baby, you know? From then till now, I haven't dared to close my eyes even once... I'm just afraid this is another dream."

At the word "dream," Shu Hanqing looked at the man, who seemed on the verge of losing it, with a complicated expression, and said, his voice slightly hoarse: "...Then do you think we're really living in a book with an ending already written?"

At this point, Shu Hanqing looked back at all the tangled mess of both lives, the bloody purges and misunderstandings—it really had all come down to sheer bad luck.

But in this absurd fate, the only comfort was that at this very moment, there was still someone else who shared the same memories as Shu Hanqing.

Lei Zheng cradled Shu Hanqing's face in his hands: "I don't know, and I don't give a damn if it's a book. As long as you're in this world, as long as you're still alive, that's enough for me."

Shu Hanqing was suffocating from the man's radiating body heat, struggling to breathe, and in exasperation shoved at Lei Zheng's head, which was way too close.

But the man's muscles were so taut that he couldn't move him an inch.

Lei Zheng, now fused with all the memories and regrets of his past life, had turned into a clingy pest that couldn't be driven off or shaken loose.

No one knew better than him what "lost and found" really meant.

It was something you couldn't snatch back from the gods even at the cost of your whole life, of being skinned alive and having your bones broken—priceless.

Once they'd both calmed down.

Shu Hanqing leaned into Lei Zheng's chest.

Lei Zheng said: "...If we're really just living in a book with an ending already written, then who wrote it? Who set the rules? And who's the one who ultimately judges whether we live or die?"

Every question they threw out had no answer.

Shu Hanqing spoke: "...From the moment I opened my eyes in this life, something suddenly popped into my head. But it's completely dormant now, ever since I called it out for lying to me all along."

Lei Zheng asked: "Did it threaten you? Did it make you do anything?"

Shu Hanqing: "No, it just kept warning me, telling me absolutely not to mess with the so-called plotline, and to... find a way to get out of here."

"Plotline?" Lei Zheng's memories of both lives flashed through his mind like a slideshow, finally landing on a name. "Plotline... could that person be Rong Hua? In that damn book, weren't we all revolving around just him?"

But the moment those words left his mouth, they both fell into a strange silence.

In that instant, they both silently searched their memories, pictured Rong Hua's usual impulsive, whimsical intelligence, and then decisively scrapped that theory.

With a brain like Rong Hua's, he couldn't even properly turn against his own father—he didn't have the scheming mind to be the puppet master behind all this.

Lei Zheng sighed, his big hand kneading Shu Hanqing's shoulder, and rasped: "...But thinking about it, this life is really different from the one we lived through in a lot of ways. I've suddenly got a few unfamiliar faces around me."

Shu Hanqing looked at him, confused.

Lei Zheng met his gaze, a sharp coldness flickering in his eyes: "...Like they're here to watch me. Some people showed up in this life way too deliberately, way too smoothly. As if they were inserted at precisely calculated moments."

Shu Hanqing asked, confused: "...Who?"

Lei Zheng didn't answer right away. Instead, he took Shu Hanqing's right hand—with its long, slender fingers—and pressed it palm to palm with his own. Then, with his fingertip, he silently traced characters one stroke at a time on the young man's palm.

The strokes overlapped.

On Shu Hanqing's slightly ticklish palm, the character "Yin" took shape.

Shu Hanqing's mind couldn't help but jump to a name that had been circling right under Lei Zheng's nose: Yin Bianyan.

In the memories of Lei Zheng's past life that Shu Hanqing had just inherited, the name Yin Bianyan had never appeared even once.

In the previous life, Shu Hanqing had spent a considerable amount of time scrambling and fighting his way up in the central base, yet he had never even heard the name of this fire-attribute ability user.

Notably, on their way to secretly rescue Yan Shenyun in District Ten in this life, Shu Hanqing had seen exactly what that woman was capable of. Such formidable and destructive fire Superpower—if it had truly existed in the previous life, there was absolutely no way he wouldn't have had any memory of it.

But why, in this life, had she suddenly appeared out of nowhere by Lei Zheng's side, becoming his right-hand person?

Sometimes, Shu Hanqing felt that the so-called "plot" bouncing around in his head wasn't just some cold, emotionless machine running on a fixed program.

During several intense emotional struggles, Shu Hanqing could sense that thing trying to read his crushing despair, even clumsily attempting to comfort him at times.

Some things, only another human could truly understand.

How could a machine understand the bitter, aching twists of the human heart?

In the previous life, there was clearly no Yin Bianyan—so why does she show up in this one?

And why did the system in his head show such eerily human emotions?

One after another, unanswered questions filled Shu Hanqing's mind, twisted into a hopeless tangle.

Lei Zheng was clearly following the same thread of thought and landed on a glaring inconsistency: "Yin Bianyan... her timing really was too perfect. I was just thinking—back when we went to District Ten to bring that 'living corpse' Yan Shenyun back to the base, it was a miserable, life-threatening journey. Why would she, a High-Level Ability User, be so dead set on tagging along with me?"

Shu Hanqing pressed further: "Who exactly is she? In the previous life, I was by your side, and I never saw this person."

Lei Zheng: "Her identity is very mysterious—my clearance can't even access it. She doesn't belong to any current faction in the inner city. I've suspected whether she might be the mistress of some hidden big shot who's never shown his face, or a secretly raised illegitimate daughter. Otherwise, there's no explaining how she managed to force her way into my inner circle with such hard-handed tactics. Honestly, that woman is a real smooth operator who can play every side in navigating personal connections and the power dynamics between major forces. I was pretty resistant to her at first, but she's genuinely capable, so over time my prejudice naturally faded."

Mistress?

Illegitimate daughter?

Forcibly inserted into the ranks.

And her identity was beyond even Lei Zheng's clearance? That meant she outranked Lei Zheng himself.

Shu Hanqing suddenly recalled the scene when he'd seen Lei Zheng earlier—Yin Bianyan standing shoulder to shoulder with him, talking with such easy, familiar rapport.

Even his gaze toward Lei Zheng inevitably took on a hint of scrutiny and suspicion.

Lei Zheng had been deep in thought, but the moment he caught that look, his back went cold.

He immediately tossed aside all the schemes and conspiracies in his mind, cupped Shu Hanqing's face, and defended himself: "No! Shu Hanqing, what kind of nonsense are you thinking about right now? I swear to you—I have absolutely never done anything that low and dirty with anyone other than you! Not a shred of it!"