Chapter 09#
No Pain#
The doctor’s uneasy voice sounded from behind.
“President Li?”
This is a private hospital, serving the rich and noble. The director of the psychiatry department, who hurried over, was courteous and respectful to Li Xingyun, but immediately changed his face when turning to the patient on the bed: “He’s faking it, President Li, ignore him.”
Li Xingyun’s pupils contracted, and he looked at the balding director with a forced smile.
It seemed that no one else could see the shadow of the “red-haired young man”. Even if the shadow angrily pushed and shoved the director, it couldn’t stop the bright needle.
“One injection will do.” The director walked towards Ji Landong, “This kind of person is very shrewd. He’s not sick at all, he just thinks pretending to be crazy will make you soften your heart…”
Before he finished speaking, a piercing pain hit the back of his knee.
The director screamed, his leg went weak from the metal end of the crutch hitting him, and he fell flat on his face, his face ashen: “President Li?!”
Li Xingyun bent down and picked up the syringe. The transparent liquid distorted the light, casting a shadow.
Li Xingyun leaned down and squatted: “Hand.”
The director began to sweat and smirked: “Li, President Li, you’ve taken this joke too far…”
The smile on his face could hardly hold. Li Xingyun’s reaction was not at all like a joke—Li Xingyun had actually changed his character and was protecting the one surnamed Ji.
If so, why didn’t he do it earlier?!?
Li Xingyun’s face was bad, and his eyes were filled with gloom. He looked too much like a malevolent deity. There was silence in the ward. The nurse came over tremblingly and gave the director an injection as requested.
It wasn’t any truly harmful medicine, but it was equally useless.
It was nothing more than pain—pain exceeding the limit of human endurance, like a cluster of fine poisonous vines growing out, swallowing flesh, blood vessels, bones, and internal organs, torturing a person to collapse. If he couldn’t stand it, the “faking” of the illness would naturally stop.
Li’s bodyguards cleared the scene and dragged away the rolling psychiatric director. The ward door was closed, and the person was dragged to the end of the corridor. The screams could still be heard faintly.
The system didn’t appreciate this. It kicked away the crutch and continued to dig through data to find a way to touch Ji Landong.
Li Xingyun was in no mood to pick up the crutch either.
He stumbled a few times, barely stood up, and limped to the bedside.
Ji Landong seemed to be sitting, but if you looked closely, you would find something wrong. His pale eyebrows were flat, and such a big commotion didn’t make him move a bit. His eyes seemed to be looking at somewhere in the void, or not looking at all.
Li Xingyun tried, softly saying: “Ge.”
He tried to cover Ji Landong’s hand with his own, hesitated for a while, and grabbed this hand.
The person who was “unbelievably lucky” to not be injured in the car accident and the collapse of the scaffolding, his hand was colder than ice. The fingers held by Li Xingyun were like a broken machine, and every movement seemed to have noise.
Li Xingyun looked down at this hand, a bit desperate. He tried everything to warm it, cupping it and breathing on it, unbuttoning his clothes, and holding this hand in his arms.
A calm force stopped him from doing so.
Li Xingyun shuddered, raised his head, and met Ji Landong’s gaze.
Ji Landong was woken up by him, looked at him for a while, and recognized him: “President Li.”
Ji Landong retracted his hand, frowned at the temperature he had touched, opened the window, and reached his hand into the cold wind mixed with snow and ice chips.
The blood on Li Xingyun’s face faded.
“It’s not your problem.” Ji Landong explained. He wasn’t targeting Li Xingyun, but because his brain was not normal, the world in his eyes would change: “I’m sick.”
This was a type of hallucination. A temperature that didn’t belong to him, in his eyes, would become a patch of thorns entangling his palm, and sometimes even open its mouth to speak.
It didn’t have any substantial impact.
But it was annoying.
Ji Landong looked for the mushroom but couldn’t find it. He stared at the empty paper flower pot for a while.
The system hurried back: “I’m here, Ji Landong. Li Xingyun is here to pick you up from the hospital. Rip him off for a large sum and go live in a luxury river-view apartment.”
—A red-haired figure of that size disappeared in the ward. Logically, it might scare Li Xingyun into suspecting a ghost, but the system didn’t bother to care. Anyway, Li Xingyun was already dejected enough now.
Li Xingyun had no mind to care about ghosts.
He kept his head down, carefully helping Ji Landong change clothes, staring at the body that was so thin that it seemed only a skeleton was left in the skin, trying his best to restrain himself from trembling and losing his composure.
He helped Ji Landong change into a new shirt, suit, trench coat, and wrapped a scarf around him.
Ji Landong was still the same Ji Landong.
Going out like this, he could still turn a sneak photo into a fashion photo. There have been at least dozens of paparazzi who were suspected of being a fansite and angrily leaked information to prove themselves over the years.
Ji Landong put the system mushroom into his pocket and saw the crutch Li Xingyun picked up: “Are you injured?”
the medicine he took seriously affected his memory. His short-term memory was a blank, and he didn’t remember the car accident.
Li Xingyun had been informed of this.
Ji Landong would forget many things.
Li Xingyun lowered his head, hesitated blankly for a long while, and still spoke in a low voice: “The car accident… was my fault, I brought it on myself, I almost died, and you saved me…”
Ji Landong: “How could that be.”
Li Xingyun’s hand trembled violently, he gripped the crutch, almost unable to steady the elbow support.
“Of course it could.” Li Xingyun stared at the ground, “Ge, you are the best person in this world. I said back then that you only harm people and won’t save them because I’m a damn idiot.”
This seemed funny, Ji Landong laughed softly, and took the cigarette and lighter handed over by Li Xingyun.
Li Xingyun seemed to start learning to shut up.
However, even if he shut up, some words were ready to come out in his trembling and suppressed breathing—Li Xingyun hoped Ji Landong would scold him, hit him, and vent his anger properly.
But Ji Landong’s voice was calm, even a bit gentle: “I’m not angry.”
Ji Landong even had the mood to advise him: “It’s not good to say bad words.”
Li Xingyun bit his lip hard, and still overconfidently wanted to help him, but Ji Landong was clearly more rational at this time. He took the crutch that Li Xingyun couldn’t handle no matter how hard he tried, and easily fixed the retractable positioning.
Ji Landong returned it to Li Xingyun.
Li Xingyun stared at the crutch, froze for a few seconds without moving, then reached out and took it: “I see, Ge, I won’t say it again.”
Ji Landong didn’t seem to want this answer, but it was an effort to speak. He looked at him and then lowered his gaze.
“I’ll take you to that river-view apartment, okay?” Li Xingyun seemed to have finally understood, adjusting his tone again, “Ge, you saved my life, let me stay for half a night, and let me cook a meal for you, okay? You have to let me pay the debt.”
He no longer kept approaching and pestering, but cautiously stopped at a distance that wouldn’t make Ji Landong uncomfortable.
Ji Landong at least didn’t refuse.
A spark of fire suddenly lit up in Li Xingyun’s eyes, very inconspicuous, and disappeared in the blink of an eye. He took out his mobile phone and quickly gave orders.
This car accident caused Li Xingyun to be unexpectedly and seriously injured, which also made the Li family decide to intervene. Li Xingyun no longer contended with his family, so there were many more people he could use.
The apartment Li Xingyun prepared to give to Ji Landong was in a premier high-end residential area, with sufficient services from property management to supporting facilities. The assistant sent by the Li family was also very efficient, and the ingredients for dinner were already on the island.
Li Xingyun was busy with an apron.
He learned to cook, but deliberately showed a weakness, asking Ji Landong for help in a hurry, making the room very lively.
Ji Landong sat in the sofa, answering about the heat and seasoning, looking at the light from the kitchen.
Warm-toned light.
Li Xingyun took note of this—back then, Ji Landong wanted to change a ceiling light for the kitchen, because with the pale light, even the best dish would look less appealing.
There was also the sofa, which was customized to be wide and three meters long, so no matter how you tossed and turned, you wouldn’t fall to the ground.
The curtains were specially made of cotton yarn.
The carpet was in the color matching that Ji Landong liked.
Li Xingyun even matched the slippers style, which was the cartoon pet merchandise of the protagonist in a movie Ji Landong starred in.
In the past, what Ji Landong said, didn’t say, or jokingly mentioned… all became real now.
There was even a puppy, soft and fat, whimpering incessantly and affectionately, wagging its tail desperately, and trying to climb onto Ji Landong’s lap.
“Great!” The system was very excited. It liked puppies. This was the life Ji Landong should live, “Ji Landong, do you like this place? Do you feel a bit better?”
Ji Landong nodded: “Very good.”
He held the puppy that kept sliding down, his expression very gentle, and touched the puppy’s warm and soft short hair.
The system froze.
Ji Landong remembered to coordinate his expression, so the system saw those eyes slightly curved, which was very vivid.
“Ji Landong.” The system asked, “Are you feeling better?”
Ji Landong nodded: “Much better.”
The system asked: “Then why does the value show that you are in a lot of pain? Ji Landong, where are you uncomfortable? Tell me, and I’ll apply for painkillers from the headquarters.”
“The value is wrong.” Ji Landong suggested a possibility, “I’m not uncomfortable anywhere. Look, the redemption value has also progressed.”
The system saw the redemption value rise by a large margin—as if the sudden drop just now was really just a numerical error caused by a fault.
Could someone control the number of redemption points?
The system hadn’t seen it, so it only hesitated for a moment before happily throwing its worries behind its back, teasing the puppy to pounce on Ji Landong, and arching Ji Landong’s hand to crawl around.
“When the redemption value exceeds sixty, you can complete the task.” Ji Landong asked the system, “The plot will no longer bind me, right?”
“Yes.” The system thought for a while, and it was indeed so—as long as Ji Landong’s redemption value exceeded sixty, this story would be completely HE, and everything afterwards would be free.
Whether Ji Ran is the protagonist or whether the plot line collapses would not matter anymore. After all, the story has ended, and no one cares what happens after the happy ending.
“However, Ji Landong, the value is not the most important.” The system said, “You being happy is more important. Do you want to give the puppy a name?”
The system scrolled through the data, found the relevant entry, and read it to Ji Landong: “A dog will never betray you.”
“As long as you give it a name, if you give it a name, you have raised it, and it will be yours forever.”
It saw Ji Landong’s eyes smile slightly.
This very faint smile shadow stabbed into Li Xingyun’s eyes like a sharp blade piercing through the chest and gouging out the heart. Ji Landong, who was caught off guard and pushed out of the house as a “murderer”, also smiled like this after being stunned for a long time.
The breakup was very impulsive, and the falling out was too hasty. Long after Ji Landong left, Li Xingyun found a notebook he had left in the sofa gap, which had some very unrestrained renovation plans on it.
Just the day before being pushed out of the door, Ji Landong even wanted to buy a dog house and raise a dog with him that could live for twenty years.
Li Xingyun couldn’t move. He felt as if he had swallowed a red-hot poker, which would pierce through his throat if he lowered his head.
After a long time, he put down the dish in his hand, walked over, and squatted beside Ji Landong’s knee.
“Ge.” Li Xingyun said softly, “What should we call it? I asked, and its breed has a very long life span, the longest can live for twenty years.”
He saw Ji Landong shake his head.
Ji Landong pinched the puppy’s three-layered back of the neck. The puppy was really affectionate, holding Ji Landong’s hand and nudging it with its head. Ji Landong was nudged into smiling softly.
The puppy didn’t get a name.
Ji Landong didn’t raise it: “Puppy.”