Chapter 84 Why Choose Him? Only a Few Years
"Mom, do you think Xu Wenci really won't hurt my brother?" Ye Chuying sat dejectedly at the table, tapping her fingers lightly on the surface.
"Didn't you never worry about these kinds of problems before?" Ye Qingdai turned off her phone screen and glanced at it.
“But…” Ye Chuying paused, her fingers tapping the table, her voice weak and feeble: “Mom, I suddenly realized that before my brother was ten years old, he had never left the Fu family or the Ye family. How could he possibly have gotten Xu Wenci’s photo…”
Ye Qingdai abruptly stopped turning off her phone screen, her fingertip leaving a white mark on the cold screen.
She slowly turned her head to look at Ye Chuying, and for the first time, a clear glint of fear flashed across her light blue eyes.
"What did you say?" Her voice remained steady, but there was a barely perceptible tremor at the end.
Ye Chuying was startled by her mother's unprecedentedly serious expression. She instinctively sat up straight and repeated softly, "I... I mean... before my brother was ten, wasn't he always well protected? Grandpa listened to Mom and didn't allow him to contact outsiders casually, let alone go out... to places where there might be photos of Xu Wenci. That photo he treasured, he clearly doesn't remember, where did it come from?"
The air seemed to freeze.
A terrifying thought flashed through Ye Qingdai's mind. She shook her head, but the thought lingered in her mind like a venomous snake.
The script's intervention and alteration of this world and its protagonist may have started much earlier than she imagined.
Long before its predetermined plot even began, it had already secretly laid out its plans, silently altering the characters' pasts and weaving the threads of fate.
A wake-up call.
"Mom?" Ye Chuying called out worriedly as she looked at Ye Qingdai's face, which had suddenly turned extremely pale.
Ye Qingdai snapped back to her senses, took a deep breath, and forcibly suppressed the panic in her heart.
“This matter…” she chose her words carefully, each word spoken slowly and heavily, “is more complicated than we imagined. Chuying, listen, don’t mention this photo, or any unusual details about your brother before he was ten, to anyone else, especially… people from Grandpa Qiao’s side.”
Ye Chuying seemed to understand, but nodded subconsciously.
Ye Qingdai stood up, walked to the window, looked at the deep night outside, her fingertips were cold.
Gu Pei has disappeared...
The purpose of that note has been achieved.
[Kill Gu Pei.]
But... what if her guess is true...?
"Mom, is there any possibility..." Ye Chuying suddenly widened her eyes and grabbed her mother's hand.
Startled, Ye Qingdai's tuft of hair on her head wobbled, and she quickly turned around.
"What's possible..."
"My brother fell victim to a pig-butchering scam... Someone tampered with his memories... He never met Xu Wenci when he was a child..." Ye Chuying suddenly burst into tears, "I even tried to set him up with Brother Xu Wenci..."
"Don't cry," Ye Qingdai's temples throbbed, and she rubbed her temples wearily. "Your brother isn't that stupid..."
How could someone who can plan to turn everyone into the villains of this world and want to destroy it be stupid?
Fu Yanli did it voluntarily.
"Why is that photo here..." Ye Chuying sobbed, wiping away non-existent tears while secretly glancing at her mother.
“It was indeed brought by Fu Yanli.” Ye Qingdai glanced at Ye Chuying and caught her faking her tears.
She looks exactly like her brother.
Ye Qingdai shook her head helplessly.
"Really?" Ye Chuying stared in disbelief, forgetting to fake cry.
“It wasn’t brought by seven-year-old Fu Yanli. I asked Xu Wenci’s grandmother, and she had never seen Fu Yanli. That photo was left by Fu Yanli from the last world.”
Ye Qingdai's words were like a sudden thunderclap, exploding in Ye Chuying's ears.
"The...the previous world?" Ye Chuying's voice changed. She grabbed Ye Qingdai's arm suddenly, her eyes devoid of any joking tone. "Mom, explain yourself! What do you mean, the previous world? What...what happened to my brother?"
Looking at her daughter's terrified face, which was almost on the verge of tears, Ye Qingdai slowly shook her head, pulled Ye Chuying to sit down, and felt her palms were ice-cold.
"Chu Ying, what you've heard and guessed might all be true." Ye Qingdai's voice was low and weary, revealing her exhaustion for the first time. "This world... is not as simple as it seems. Fu Yanli, he may carry more than just the memories of this world."
She carefully chose her words, licked her lips, and finally poured out all her guesses: "He might have come to this world as a soul with memories from the previous world, taken that photo, and placed it in our villa, but then disappeared because he collided with Fu Yanli in this world... or perhaps he transferred the memories of the previous world into Fu Yanli in this world..."
"Memories?" Ye Chuying murmured repeatedly, the sheer volume of information leaving her mind in a state of chaos. "Is it to...find Brother Xu Wenci?"
“More than that.” Ye Qingdai’s eyes sharpened instantly. “It’s to change something, or… destroy something.” She thought of Fu Yanli’s seemingly crazy plans and Gu Pei’s disappearance, and her heart felt heavy.
“The script is using us, and Fu Yanli, your brother seems to want to use the script, even… rebel against it.”
As Ye Chuying processed all of this, a more terrifying thought suddenly surfaced in her mind: "That...that note...'Kill Gu Pei'...is that also...?"
“It was written by Xu Wenci.” Ye Qingdai denied her guess, a bitter smile appearing on her lips. “Your brother has a plan, and Xu Wenci naturally does too. As for what his plan is, I don’t know.”
The mother and daughter fell silent, and the only sound in the room was their heavy breathing.
The night outside the window grew increasingly dark, like an invisible net slowly tightening.
In the living room, Fu Yanli's silence was more deafening than any answer.
His fingers, gripping Xu Wenci's sleeve, turned white from the force, and cold sweat soaked his wispy hair. He looked like a bowstring stretched to its limit, as if it would snap at any moment.
Seeing his pained expression, Xu Wenci swallowed the question "why" that she wanted to ask, unable to utter it any further.
He tightened his grip on Fu Yanli's arm, supporting Fu Yanli's sliding body, while his other hand clumsily patted his back again and again, as if comforting an injured cub.
"Don't think about the pain." Xu Wenci's voice was dry, and he coughed lightly, his throat still very sore.
Fu Yanli rested his forehead on Xu Wenci's shoulder, his heavy breath spraying onto the side of his neck, hot yet gentle.
After a while, the violent trembling on his shoulder subsided slightly, but the hand that was gripping his sleeve still did not let go.
“Because…” Fu Yanli’s voice was hoarse as he squeezed out a few words through his teeth, “…that was the only…way out of the world.”
Xu Wenci's hand, which was patting his back, suddenly stopped.
A way out?
Is destroying his rules the way out? Whose rules?
Fu Yanli seemed to have exhausted all his strength. His supporting arm went limp, and he almost completely leaned into Xu Wenci's arms.
Xu Wenci instinctively wrapped her arms around him, her icy body temperature contrasting sharply with Fu Yanli's burning body temperature.
“Your…way to survive.” Fu Yanli closed his eyes, his eyelashes trembling slightly, and finally gently closed them. The bluish-purple veins under his pale arm skin bulged, as if he was trying his best to endure something. “If the rules are not broken…you will always…be bound by them…towards the predetermined…end.”
That ending was Xu Wenci's desolation, and perhaps also his own. In the previous world, they had already witnessed it once.
Therefore, this tragedy must not be repeated.
"So...you chose for me?" Xu Wenci's voice turned cold, and the arm around Fu Yanli stiffened.
He hated that Fu Yanli was always self-righteous and always arranged everything under the guise of doing it for his own good.
but……
He pursed his lips.
Fu Yanli always manages to make a mess of things.
In the end, he didn't fare well, and neither did Fu Yanli.
“No…” Fu Yanli shook his head gently, his hair brushing against Xu Wenci’s collarbone, bringing a slightly itchy sensation. “It’s the system… leaving behind… the only loophole. The chance to destroy the rules… is only once. It can only be used on one person.”
The wisp of system clone he carried only gave him one chance to destroy the rules.
He slowly raised his head, his deep purple eyes somewhat unfocused due to pain, yet still persistently capturing Xu Wenci's gaze.
"I chose...you."
The three words, seemingly light and airy, struck Xu Wenci's heart like a heavy hammer blow.
Xu Wenci's heart skipped a beat. He stared intently into Fu Yanli's eyes until they ached.
Fu Yanli's feelings for him were not out of hatred or scheming, but because in that tragedy whose ending was already predetermined, Fu Yanli had given him the only possible chance to survive.
Xu Wenci felt as if an invisible hand was gripping his heart tightly, and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
So it turns out... it wasn't that he didn't have rules.
So it turns out... it wasn't that his rules didn't exist.
So that's not it after all.
Unbeknownst to him, when he was still a clueless seven-year-old, bound by the rules in every move, Fu Yanli had already completely exempted him from the punishment of the rules, paving a smoother path for him.
"Then what about your rules?" Xu Wenci heard his own voice asking, with a slight, almost imperceptible tremor. "Yours... what about them?"
Back then... if you had broken the rules, our success rate would have been much higher...
Fu Yanli tugged at the corners of his mouth, trying to put on his usual nonchalant smile, but the pain made the smile look somewhat distorted.
“Mine…” he said softly, his gaze seemingly passing through Xu Wenci and seeing Xu Wenci from the previous world. “I know how to avoid most of the rules, so I only stuck to them for a few years.”
Not just a few years.
It has been twenty years.
Fu Yanli had no idea how to avoid the rules and penalties.
If he truly knew why his rules were always filled with his red ink, filled with punishments he had personally verified one by one.
But... back then, he was already thirty years old and came from the previous world, so it would have been easy for him to trick a seven-year-old child into helping him destroy the rules...
What Fu Yanli should be thinking about most is his freedom...
Why choose Xu Wenci, who had just stabbed him in the back?
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