Chapter 008: Duan Feihan

Inside the room, a girl and a chubby mouse stared intently at the old cellphone. Snowball, plump and round, squeaked sympathetically, “Is she really that stupid?” Bai Chuwei nodded in agreement, “She is rather foolish.”

But perhaps she should be. In the original novel, Bai Yinyin, like her, was a supporting character, both fated to possess less intelligence. The author had deliberately made the side characters dim-witted to clear the way for the heroine, Tong Qingyan.

Bai Chuwei turned on the cellphone, which had been wiped clean; the screen displayed only the factory settings. Her slender fingers danced swiftly across the virtual keyboard. In just a few minutes, she restored the phone to its original state before the reset and opened the messages.

Tsk tsk—how depraved the world had become. Bai Yinyin was flirting with several boys at once.

Snowball wrapped his tiny paws around Bai Chuwei’s finger and squeaked, “In this day and age, they call that sexting!”

Bai Chuwei was suddenly enlightened—so this was what they meant by “sexting.”

She hadn’t left Yunwu Mountain for twenty years and was a bit out of touch with modern society. Even her hacking skills had been picked up by borrowing the villagers’ phones.

As she pondered this, a sudden, sharp pain stabbed through her heart meridian. Her jade-pale cheeks turned ashen.

Snowball grew frantic, leaping and squeaking anxiously.

Clutching her chest, Bai Chuwei took a medicine bottle from her pocket, quickly poured out a pill, and the scent of healing herbs filled the air.

She swallowed it quickly. The bitter taste spread across her lips, making her frown tightly with distaste. “This stuff is truly awful.”

The pain in her heart gradually eased. This pill, crafted from various spiritual elixirs, was specially made to treat her heart ailment.

Years ago, a system malfunction had thrown her five thousand years into the past, where the Bai family’s ancestor had rescued her and taken her in as a foster sister. He had died to save her, and so, for five thousand years since, she had watched over the Bai family.

This persistent pain in her heart was a lingering affliction from that time, requiring spiritual medicine rich in energy to keep it at bay.

She licked her bitter lips, and a cold, tall figure suddenly flashed through her mind—the man who had brought her to the Bai family today.

Not only was he strikingly handsome, but—he was practically a walking reservoir of spiritual energy.

Bai Chuwei mused: if she could draw some of that energy from him, perhaps she wouldn’t have to endure such bitter medicine anymore.

*

In the grand hall of the Bai family’s villa—

A dignified, imposing man stepped in from the pouring rain outside, brushing droplets from his coat. He looked at Bai Guofu, who sat contentedly on a rattan chair, and asked with a cheerful air, “Dad, why are you in such a good mood today? I heard the second brother’s family just adopted a daughter? That would make her my niece too.”

The old man, Bai Guofu, opened his eyes and shot him a cold glance. “What do you mean, your niece? You’d have to go back eight hundred generations for that! Have you no sense of propriety?”

The eldest son, Bai Hongmin, was speechless.

Had his father lost his mind?

Not wanting to contradict the old man, Bai Hongmin changed the subject. “Dad, I heard the patriarch of the Duan family is on his deathbed, and has been in and out of the hospital for emergency care. Shouldn’t our Bai family show some concern?”

Bai Guofu sighed with some bitterness, “What use is our concern? The Duan family is one of the most powerful clans in China; they wouldn’t care for the likes of us, a minor family, anyway.” The old ancestor was right—the Bai family had grown poorer under his watch.

Still, that old Duan patriarch was truly pitiful; he hadn’t even begun to enjoy life, and now he was dying.

The one to suffer most would be his youngest son, Duan Feihan.

At only twenty-four, he was about to lose his father so soon.