DDT - Chapter 99
Chapter 99: Tycoon's Daughter (7)
This was a bedroom with a Western-style decor. Yi Shuhan's room was very large, with exquisite imported furniture elegantly distributed in every corner. The walls were a faint cream color, and delicate, framed foreign oil paintings hung upon them. A quick glance counted one, two, three, four, five of them. One of the paintings looked suspiciously to Chi Junluo like a famous work from her own world—The Scream?
It seemed these paintings were quite valuable, befitting the status of the prominent and wealthy Yi Family.
Chi Junluo turned around, her back to Yi Shuhan's large bed, and gently lowered herself. With Madam Yi's help, she successfully placed Yi Shuhan on the bed. The two of them removed Yi Shuhan's outer coat and pants, then covered her with a quilt.
Madam Yi sighed softly and muttered, "I don't know where this girl gets it from. She's been a little monkey since she was small, always bouncing around. The older she gets, the harder she is to control…"
Chi Junluo stood politely and quietly behind Madam Yi, pretending not to hear the noble lady's grumbling.
After a moment of muttering, Madam Yi stopped. She turned to see Chi Junluo standing there quietly and remembered that this was the young woman who had brought her precious daughter home.
Madam Yi's face immediately brightened. An aura of warmth emanated from her, yet she didn't lose her elegance. "And you are, Miss?"
Chi Junluo was not at all timid. She gave a very proper, slight nod and offered a simple self-introduction. "Good evening, Madam. I am Shuhan's upperclassman. My name is Chi Junluo. I'm terribly sorry about tonight. Shuhan and I were reading at my place and lost track of time. By the time we realized it, it was already late, so we rushed to bring her home. I apologize for making you and Shuhan's father worry. Please forgive us."
Madam Yi felt she had a firm grasp of her daughter's temperament. Seeing that this upperclassman from her daughter's academy was so well-mannered, and that her own mischievous daughter was willing to spend time with her, she concluded that this girl must be a good kid. Thinking of Yi Shuhan's boisterous nature, so unlike that of a young lady from a prominent family, Madam Yi boldly guessed that, nine times out of ten, it was her daughter who had caused trouble for someone else again.
This child named Chi Junluo didn't try to pin all the blame for their lack of time awareness on Yi Shuhan, but she didn't take it all upon herself either. She didn't try to curry favor by shouldering all the responsibility just because Yi Shuhan was the young lady of the Yi Family. There was no deliberate flattery, and she was well-versed in etiquette. It seemed she also came from a family with a good upbringing, and her background was likely not ordinary. As an upperclassman who had studied at the academy for an extra year, she would be more knowledgeable and worldly. Madam Yi wondered if she could possibly rein in her own daughter's wild nature.
"It's no trouble at all. Don't I know my own child's character? She must have caused you a lot of trouble, Miss Chi. Thank you for going through the effort of carrying this little monkey back so late at night. Shuhan is being too unreasonable," Madam Yi said, her tone slightly reproachful but filled with a deep motherly love.
Chi Junluo suddenly felt a bit happy. In this world, the heroine finally had a happy family! Hopefully, this complete family could offer her some form of compensation.
"Shuhan is wonderful. She has her own thoughts and insights. She's a great person, truly a testament to being raised by you and Mr. Yi. Her spirit is extraordinary!" Chi Junluo said with a smiling compliment. Her features were already beautiful, and when she smiled gently, it was like a refreshing spring breeze—lovely without being aggressive or overly glamorous. Madam Yi was infected by her smile and began to smile as well.
As the two of them chatted, they forgot all about the "Yi Monkey" lying on the bed. Yi Shuhan had already taken a short nap on Chi Junluo's back. Now, lying on the soft, large bed and hearing the chirping conversation by her ear, the heroine stretched comfortably and woke up.
Just in time to hear her mother invite her upperclassman to stay the night, Yi Shuhan's eyes flew open. "Mommy, let Sister Chi sleep here with me! My bed is super wide!" she exclaimed.
With that, Yi Shuhan patted the empty space beside her, her eyes shining with a bright light. Her gaze was so adorable it was impossible to refuse.
Madam Yi considered it. Both were girls, so it was perfectly fine and safe, with nothing to be concerned about. Besides, her wild child had never had many playmates. Now that she had an upperclassman willing to chat with her in bed, it was a rare opportunity. Why not let the two young people bond a little?
It also saved them the trouble of having someone prepare a guest room.
After Madam Yi thoughtfully closed the door for the two girls, all that remained was a slightly bewildered Chi Junluo, the heroine with a strange glint in her eyes, and a single warm-colored bedside lamp.
Yi Shuhan kicked the oversized dog-shaped pillow next to her onto the floor, scooted over, and patted the bed, urging Chi Junluo to get in.
After experiencing the heroine's constant stream of suggestive remarks, Chi Junluo had become vaguely wary. This heroine's personality was completely different from the ones she had met in previous worlds. Her gaze was terrifying! And she knew how to "seduce" people!
Having been somewhat "seduced," Chi Junluo's mind suddenly flashed back to a viral Weibo video she had seen many, many lives ago. The shameless words of a plump woman with full, sensual lips echoed in her head, "He has the guts to seduce me! Hurry up and kiss me on the lips!" (For those curious, you can search Weibo for "Hurry up and kiss me on the lips" to see the video that was popular back in 2016.)
The heroine looked on in confusion as a trace of horror appeared in the eyes of the upperclassman standing before the bed. She had no idea that at this very moment, in her own bedroom, standing before her own bed, this Sister Chi was thinking about another woman.
This Sister Chi! So naughty!
By the time Chi Junluo came back to her senses, she had already taken off her clothes, turned off the light, and was lying next to the heroine.
It felt like a lifetime ago…
Chi Junluo lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, lost in memories. The last time she had truly lain in bed with the heroine was a very, very long time ago…
Moonlight streamed through the window, casting its glow upon the two of them.
Yi Shuhan wriggled under the covers, and while Chi Junluo was distracted, she successfully wrapped her limbs around Chi Junluo's ramrod-straight body.
Chi Junluo shuddered and snapped back to reality. Before she could turn her head to say anything, the heroine's head came to rest in the crook of her shoulder.
"Goodnight, Sister. Tonight, you're my big doggy," Yi Shuhan yawned, closed her eyes, and fell asleep at lightning speed.
Her even breathing was like a gentle breeze, stirring the strands of Chi Junluo's hair that had fallen across her shoulder.
Held in an octopus-like embrace, Chi Junluo seriously calculated the equation. The large dog pillow just kicked to the floor by the heroine = big doggy. Big doggy = her, tonight. Therefore, the conclusion was that she, tonight, was equivalent to a pillow.
So, the heroine was just treating her, Chi Junluo, as a tool… the bed-warming kind…
But on second thought, her entire purpose was to collect the Power of the Heavenly Dao and the heroine's soul fragments. Wasn't that exactly what being a tool for the heroine meant?
There was nothing wrong with that logic.
Having figured it out, Chi Junluo carefully turned onto her side, gathering the heroine into her embrace, and closed her eyes.
In the sea of consciousness, the Heavenly Dao watched with wide eyes as, under the bright moonlight, two clusters of golden Power of the Heavenly Dao intertwined, coming and going, before the majority of it slowly seeped into Chi Junluo's body. Then, everything returned to calm.
The Heavenly Dao's heart couldn't calm down for a long time. It was that golden power again, the one mixed with faint silver threads that looked so much like the Power of the Heavenly Dao. What on earth was this Chi Junluo?! The Heavenly Dao was a little worried. Would the Power of the Heavenly Dao it had stored in Chi Junluo's body be absorbed by her?! If she stole it, it would have nowhere to go to cry.
The Heavenly Dao quickly sent out its divine sense to check. Fortunately, its Power of the Heavenly Dao was still there, not a bit less, just squeezed into a corner by that other power inside Chi Junluo's body.
The Heavenly Dao scratched its head. It seemed that in this world, the Power of the Heavenly Dao on the heroine could probably only be collected through hugs or close contact.
That was a good piece of intel. Also, it needed to find a chance to go to the Upper Realm and inquire if a person named Chi Junluo existed. It really didn't want to provoke some powerful figure, even if the chances of that were extremely small.
The two people on the bed were already fast asleep. The moonlight was gradually obscured by clouds, and the room grew dark again. The Heavenly Dao shut itself in a small dark room on the edge of the sea of consciousness, trying to calculate how long it could be gone to the Upper Realm without major chaos erupting here.
With much of the Power of the Heavenly Dao drained from her body, Yi Shuhan once again fell into a dream she had every year.
It was an endless, cyclical dream.
When she was very young, the dream had only one cycle. As she grew older, more and more cycles were added, one after another.
In the beginning, the bizarre scenes in the nightmare often scared the young Yi Shuhan into wailing tears. Later, after having the same dream so many times, she stopped crying. That was when the second cycle appeared. A person fell from the sky, bursting into a spray of fresh red blood right at her feet. Although she vaguely sensed it was a dream, a fake scene, she just couldn't wake up. She could only stand there numbly, watching a vibrant life disintegrate in an instant.
It was then that she realized her dreams were all about death.
Her frequent struggles and fearful cries in her nightmares caught the attention of her parents. For several years, the Yi Family invited many Daoist priests, said to be famous in the Dragon Kingdom, to perform rituals, but all to no avail. During that time, the frail and tiny Yi Shuhan was too scared to sleep. She became silent and withdrawn all day, looking terrified and utterly haggard, almost to the point of autism.
Finally, a traveling Daoist priest discovered the crux of the problem. After the priest performed a ritual, the young Yi Shuhan described the scene she saw. Forced to stare at the corpse in her dream, she had easily memorized the golden pattern on its wrist.
The traveling priest used jackdaw blood to draw two identical blood-red patterns on Yi Shuhan's right wrist to suppress the eerie scenes in her dreams. After that, a hazy fog shrouded the two interconnected dream cycles, and for several years, Yi Shuhan was no longer frightened.
Later, when she was a bit older, a girl of fifteen or sixteen at the first awakening of love, the third cycle of the dream arrived.
Unlike before, Yi Shuhan wasn't scared by the dream in the third cycle. Even with the sky full of smoke and battle, even with bodies littering the fields, her eyes could only see that heroic and valiant general.
She felt her heart stir.
However, at the end of the dream, the brave general was pierced through the chest by an enemy's sword.
The general used all her strength to embrace the enemy and fall from the city wall together.
This time, she didn't feel fear. She only began to feel heartache.
For a long time, she was immersed in that seemingly illusory dream, wanting to save that general. For some reason, seeing the general die felt like her own heart had died too.
She slept in a daze for several weeks. It wasn't until the war situation grew tense and the Japanese Army drew near that she began to pay attention to the war. Her anger at the New Government's inaction allowed her to temporarily set aside the unreachable dream. Before even entering the academy, the radical Yi Shuhan, filled with patriotic fervor, began to eagerly absorb progressive ideas, studying day and night to get into Huaping Academy. Only occasionally, in the dead of night, would she stand at the edge of her dream, watching her general die again and again.
She seemed to gradually understand the general's patriotic aspirations. The nation was in peril. If her sacrifice, like the general's in the dream, could bring about an era of peace, she too would willingly die.
Later, she was admitted to Huaping Academy, participated in student protests, and then met someone who, despite having no presence at all, shone brightly in her eyes.
Yi Shuhan had a gut feeling that this upperclassman with no presence would be very important to her.
Now, that upperclassman was by her side.
That night, she had her fourth dream.
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