Chapter 25

It was very late when she got home after fooling around. It was Wednesday, and Xing Tong reported that Shen Shiqian was still sitting in the military headquarters office reviewing documents at this hour. He would most likely be staying at the military headquarters tonight and wouldn't be coming back. When Feng Ran was taking a shower, she touched the bite mark on her collarbone and remembered those memories that seemed to originate from her past life, which she had briefly put aside. Her mood, which had just been comforted by Luo Le, became depressed again.

After taking a shower, she draped a towel over her shoulders, her hair still dripping wet, and went outside. She sat at her desk, staring blankly at the empty computer screen.

She has been experiencing hallucinations much less frequently lately, probably because her memory has mostly returned. However, there are still many blank details she can't recall, like a disassembled train carriage that has lost its grappling hooks. Her memories are fragmented and she can only piece together the general outline of her experiences.

Feng Ran recalled the nightmare she had the night before arriving at Shen Shiqian's house. The feeling of her body being damaged by toxins was still vivid in her memory. If it wasn't just a simple nightmare, then that must be how she died in her past life, right? It wasn't because of the nerve damage she had always been worried about. It felt rather strange.

In her past life, Shen Shiqian did not interfere in her relationship with Luo Le. Before graduating from high school, she got engaged and lived together because of Luo Le's arrangement. However, she was both compliant and resentful of Luo Le's approach. She was like a puppet that could be manipulated. Their relationship was neither hateful nor loving. Her mental state was very bad, and she could only rely on Luo Le's pheromones to soothe her.

Because of her, Luo Le gave up her guaranteed admission to the military academy and turned to apply for medical school instead. Although Feng Ran was admitted to the Capital Military Academy, due to Feng Linye's interference, her physical disability was exposed and she was reassigned to the non-combat mechanical engineering department.

Because Feng Linye set a bad precedent for her, Feng Ran's college life was quite bleak. She was isolated, her research results were plagiarized, and she was treated as an outcast. It was during that time that she first met Shen Shiqian, the Sirius of the Empire, the object of everyone's admiration. Feng Ran was no exception. Because the impression was so deep, even though they later became enemies, Feng Ran still felt that he was different from the others in the Empire.

She didn't graduate properly because Luo Le found out what had happened at the academy. He hired people to beat up all the classmates who had spoken ill of her, and then, feeling guilty, hid in the villa, too ashamed to go out. At that time, they probably liked each other, but Luo Le domineeringly controlled everything about Feng Ran. Actually, it didn't matter if she didn't go to the academy; Feng Ran had long been tired of it.

She began to hate Basil because he made her wear a mental energy collar, which he made himself, with his name engraved on the inside. It restricted her use of mental energy as a treatment to alleviate and prevent nerve compression. It wasn't a big deal, but Feng Ran still hated it. She hated, even feared, the feeling of being unable to use her mental energy to perceive the world in silence; dark memories of the past tormented her along with the silence.

Feng Ran couldn't quite remember why she was labeled a wanted criminal. She only remembered that Luo Le had finally let her go because she saw how much pain she was in. She woke up alone in the sea of ​​stars, having lost everything, even though she had never truly possessed any of it in the first place.

Because she became a wanted criminal, she became more at ease accepting all malice, and even her personality became much more cheerful, appearing somewhat crazy. Her days of wandering alone were boring, and opposing the Empire became her new pastime. Due to the brief pause in the interstellar battlefield, the task of pursuing the wanted criminal fell to Shen Shiqian. Every time they clashed, Feng Ran was able to learn a new thing about Shen Shiqian.

Until the light that once illuminated her darkness turned into a fire aimed at her heart, Shen Shiqian did indeed shoot her, but she survived.

Her fragmented memories ended there. Whenever she tried to recall the details, her head would start to ache finely, as if needles were pricking it.

Clearly, Feng Ran's story in her past life did not have a happy ending. She lost everything, did not try to build new connections with the world, and died painfully alone. But did she feel regret or fear? Feng Ran couldn't figure it out, because the pain of death was only physical. She couldn't remember what she was thinking at the time of her death.

The sixteen years that had already passed, a one-to-one repetition of the same mistakes, seemed to be fading into the past. She felt as if she could do something now, yet also as if she could do nothing at all, because the course of the story had changed. Shen Shiqian's intervention had pulled her from the one-way street of tragedy into another fork in the road.

"I know that the timing and methods I used to approach you were inappropriate, but I have been watching you for a long time. Please believe me on this one point, okay?"

Recalling Shen Shiqian's words, Feng Ran felt an uncontrollable throbbing pain in her heart, as if she had been greatly deceived. The scene instantly collapsed and decayed from a sunny, warm spring day, and she crashed all the way down, landing hard in a cold, painful, and dark cave.

Shen Shiqian's so-called love and attention were all lies. He just remembered everything that happened in his past life, just like her. So when he turned around, he immediately used the gentlest way to erase her crime. Should Feng Ran admire him for being so willing to compromise for the future of the empire, or should she feel particularly disgusted because she was the one who was kept in the dark and made a fool of?

He had so many ways to intervene, so many opportunities to kill her directly, yet he chose this method. Did he want to imprison me? Through a shoddy marriage, like Basil did in my past life.

The nerve compression caused by the overexertion of mental energy far exceeded her original damage and inflammation in that instant. Feng Ran felt that most of her sensory systems were gradually failing. The oxygen was drawn in two and stuck in her chest and throat, unable to go up or down. They pulled at her extremities, making her whole body ache when she tried to breathe. Her head felt like it was going to explode, and her eyes were so painful that she could only keep tearing up.

She could no longer distinguish whether it was phantom pain or nerve compression, especially her heart. After she recalled her past life, her heart became particularly vulnerable, and the dull, restrictive feeling reminded her almost constantly that the events of her past life were not just her imagination.

Clearly, Shen Shiqian did not live up to the special place he was in Feng Ran's eyes. Like everyone else in the empire, he easily dismissed everything about her and approached her with ulterior motives. Why? She had too many bargaining chips that the empire coveted. She vaguely remembered that in her previous life, the empire had always wanted to capture her alive, but she couldn't remember the specifics now. She just felt betrayed.

Sirius, however bright and dazzling, belongs only to the Empire. Its brilliance is unfair, excluding Feng Ran entirely. Compared to his previous life, when all his beliefs were shattered and he could only sink into endless pain and despair, Feng Ran now felt that pain and despair being drawn out of his bones and flesh, burning fiercely and transforming into an unending hatred.

Why was she in so much pain? It was all Shen Shiqian's fault. After her tears dried up, her vision barely regained focus. The screen of the quantum computer went out, and the darkness reflected Feng Ran's messy face, lifeless and pale.

Feng Ran blinked her dry eyes. The smart camera captured her facial expression and the screen lit up again. She had been sitting stiffly at her desk for too long, and her hands and feet had become icy cold.

She didn't believe that the fork in the road Shen Shiqian had prepared for him would lead to a happy ending; it was nothing more than mutual entanglement and deception. Let's see who is more skillful then.

Feng Ran found a pair of scissors in the cabinet, got up and walked back to the bathroom. How old was she when she died? She couldn't remember. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt that there wasn't much difference. Especially after trimming her bangs and revealing her eyebrows and forehead, her delicate and upright face showed a kind of aggression. Unlike Qin Xin's droopy eyes, Feng Ran's eyes were more upturned. She was bright and charming when she smiled, and she was also very imposing when she was expressionless.

Feng Ran smiled, but her emotions had been drained by her recent illness, and her smile now looked somewhat sinister and unsettling. However, she was still somewhat looking forward to seeing Shen Shiqian's reaction.

/

When Feng Ran woke up the next day, she found her eyes were a little red and swollen, and she looked listless. It would be troublesome to explain, so she simply decided not to go to school, since she didn't have any projects for that day anyway.

Last night, she lay in bed and thought about many things in a daze. The parts of her memory that she could recall were not complete. It seemed that she could glean some information from Shen Shiqian to fill in the gaps. Moreover, it seemed that Shen Shiqian was not completely lying to her with a sense of righteousness. At least when he was in a false state of heat, the way he called her name did not seem like he was acting.

But now, asking her to reconsider how Shen Shiqian viewed her was something she resisted and felt was unnecessary, since she could never forgive him. At most, she would suppress her plan to confront him face-to-face, patiently put on an act to see his reaction, and still have plenty of ways to cause trouble behind the scenes.

When Feng Ran arrived at the villa, Fran seemed to have stayed up all night and had been given sleeping pills by the robot, and was still lying on the laboratory floor like a corpse.

She stared at him for a while, and only felt a little relieved after confirming that she didn't have any other impression of him. After regaining her memories, she was eager to interact with people and create some changes that were different from her previous life. This would seem to distance her from the dark memories and give her a little bit of security.

With her extraordinary willpower, Fran managed to get up from the ground after the effects of the sleeping pills wore off and after three hours of light sleep. She looked up and saw Feng Ran, thinking that she was still not fully awake, and slapped her forehead.

Feng Ran said with slight disdain, "Don't make me stupid."

It's not a dream.

Fran stood up in surprise, his pale and haggard face making the light in his eyes even more striking: "Why are you here so early in the morning? Aren't you going to school?"

Feng Ran knew very well what Fran was thinking about her. She didn't know whether to marvel at Fran's peculiar way of thinking, which allowed him to forgive her, the abuser, without any resentment, or to envy his honesty and loyalty to his feelings.

Aside from not being her type, Fran was actually quite nice; simple and pure, she was a good choice, and even seemed to be on par with her in terms of short lifespan.

Feng Ran: "If you don't want to go, then skip it."

Fran: "That's true. What's so great about high school courses? You could be more than qualified to be their teacher."

After all, Feng Ran is a genius, a unique and precious Enigma born with "wisdom".

Feng Ran quite enjoyed Fran's compliments, feeling as if he had been drawn into the same camp, finding simple, childish, and playful fun in them.

Feng Ran: "That's right, I plan to rescue Hilde and the others."

Fran slipped slightly: "You agree to use him as a test subject?"