UCS Chapter 111.2

Gao Shi thought of his fragmented dreams. Of the inexplicable obstacles that had appeared one after another along the way. Could the thing Ying Bujie was referring to be the plot itself?

If a single flower could give birth to a world, then a world born from a book seemed perhaps not so strange after all. But if they were not originally people of that book, and the so-called protagonist Gao Gusheng had come into this world together with him, then what grounds were there for saying they had been created by the plot?

Could there be more to what was called the plot than it appeared?

He looked at his oblivious, dazed son, and ruffled his hair.

If he had been able to protect Lele in their past life, he could protect him in this one too.

He looked up and asked Ying Bujie, “They say there is a fragrance on Lele. What is that about? It seems to have started around the time he was approaching his eighteenth birthday. It never happened before.”

Ying Bujie said, “It is because he is about to bloom. Fragrance is one of the spirit flower’s natural gifts. It can bewitch enemies, and if he becomes too frightened or faces danger, it will be released. Because Lele carries our bloodlines, we cannot smell it.”

Gao Gusheng asked with a puzzled expression, “But you said I can only take on a form after blooming. Was I not already in human form when Dad found me?”

Gao Gusheng had accepted the fact that he was a flower with surprising smoothness.

Ying Bujie explained patiently, “When we were separated at the time, the world was in upheaval. The blood of both myself and Gao Shi within your body was activated, and you took on a form prematurely.”

“But because you transformed ahead of time, your mind was not as clear as it would be in a normal maturation. You could only take the form of a child of one or two years old, and you forgot everything from before.”

“Once all of this is over, as you grow, your memories will gradually return. You will also be able to freely control your own form.”

Gao Gusheng blinked. “One last question. What should I call you?”

From what his dad had said, Daoist Ying had been looking after him since a past life, and it was Daoist Ying who had brought him home and raised him. By any measure, he ought to call him Dad. But the word Dad had in Gao Gusheng’s heart long since become Gao Shi’s alone. That word had accompanied him through sixteen years of his life and given him an inexhaustible sense of safety. It was as though no matter what happened, as long as he could call out that word, there was nothing left to worry about. Just as in moments of danger his body would release its fragrance, in the presence of his dad, he would never release it again.

He simply could not bring himself to call Ying Bujie that.

Besides, if he called them both Dad, how would anyone tell who was who?

Ying Bujie smiled faintly. “Just call me A-Die. That is what we agreed on in our past life.”

Ying Bujie rarely smiled. Gao Shi could not help looking over. When he smiled, he was like the cleanest snow on the peak of Kunlun Mountain.

Gao Shi was momentarily struck still, then asked, “And what was agreed for how to address me?”

“A-Fu.”

“A-Fu?” Gao Gusheng repeated after him, scratching his head. “That is very old-fashioned. We must have been in an ancient setting in our past life.”

Just then, the clothes Gao Shi had sent for arrived. Gao Gusheng changed and moved around a bit. A perfect fit.

“I am fine now. I am going to find Mo Hua and the others.”

He ducked out of the tent, then poked his head back in. “Oh, one last suggestion by the way. Dad, the way you address A-Die is way too stiff. Even the most oblivious straight boys in my class know to call their girlfriends babe.”

Gao Gusheng fired that off at top speed and vanished before Gao Shi could knock him on the head.

Gao Shi and Ying Bujie looked at each other. Gao Shi pressed his fingers to his temple. “Very good. He is getting bolder.”

Ying Bujie looked at Gao Shi, blinked, and pointed to the corner of his own mouth. “It hurts.”

Gao Shi glared at him, just about to say something, when he caught Ying Bujie’s eyes. They were shimmering, like a rabbit that had been deeply wronged, drooping its ears in misery. To ignore him would feel like committing a great crime against the universe.

Goodness. He had heard that if an owner ignored their rabbit, the rabbit would grieve itself into refusing food and die. Ying Bujie’s true form could not possibly be a rabbit, could it?

Gao Shi let out a sigh and accepted his fate. “I will have someone bring medicine.”

Ying Bujie shook his head, took Gao Shi’s hand, and pressed it against his cheek. Looking obedient and pitiful all at once. “It really hurts.”

“A kiss will make it better.”

Ying Bujie leaned in, and this kiss was exquisitely gentle. Like a fine, delicate dessert drenched in the freshest and most fragrant flower nectar, carrying an intoxicating sweetness of fruit and blossom that made one reluctant to rush, wanting only to take small sips and linger over the aftertaste.

Gao Shi lightly pressed his lips to the small wound at the corner of Ying Bujie’s mouth. The faint taste of rust was like some kind of enhancing agent, making it impossible to hold back from taking more.

This time Ying Bujie let him do as he pleased, only waiting until Gao Shi’s momentum began to flag before unhurriedly launching his own campaign, savouring his exhausted prey at leisure.

A cage woven from flowers and honey, impossible to escape. Every feeble struggle only became part of the pleasure. The soaring eagle found itself wrapped in the branches of a tree, with nowhere to go but down into the honey-made swamp, sinking together into that sweetness.

His eyes had gone hazy with the kiss. Some unknown span of time passed before he heard that voice, warm with a smile, asking softly at his ear: “Will you not give me a pet name, Shan Shan?”

…

“Captain!” Xiong Xiong spotted Gao Shi and lit up, waving frantically. “Long time no see! What happened to your mouth?”

“…What on earth are you wearing?”

Gao Shi looked at Xiong Xiong in his Northeast floral padded jacket paired with a small ditsy-print long skirt, and felt as though his eyes had been assaulted.

Xiong Xiong grinned sheepishly. “Issued by the squad. I am going for the pastoral wholesome-country-girl look.”

Someone sidled over and teased, “Our big bear here has already captured two men’s hearts. Some people just can’t compete.”

The speaker was the one who had gone for a rather gender-bending aesthetic.

Gao Shi took in the man’s lush beard paired with a Bohemian micro-mini skirt, two large hairy legs peeking out with very little left to the imagination, and wanted nothing more than to gouge his eyes out and rinse them.

“You two, go change immediately!”

“Received!”

“Yan Jian, walk normally! Do you not know how short that skirt is?! Do you want everyone to get a full view of your dog-print underpants?!”

…

The Gao family’s supplies had fought their way through every obstacle to get here.

What did a mountain sealed off by heavy snow matter? The Gao family had dispatched thousands of workers, and brought in over a thousand able-bodied young men from the local villages to take turns clearing the road, hacking and digging until the path into the mountain was forced open.

The wages the Gao family offered were outrageously generous, and the working hours were reasonable. In the villages, not just the young men but even the elderly in their seventies and eighties had grabbed their spades and headed out, eager to dig for hundreds of li and show everyone that their strength had not diminished with age.

Once the road was cleared, moving supplies in became much faster, and the traffickers from the abductor villages who had been apprehended by the police were transported down the mountain at the earliest possible opportunity.

The female Spirit Police officer with the codename Phantom Butterfly had formidable abilities. She dragged several thousand people into dreams simultaneously and constructed individual nightmares for each of the traffickers.

Gao Shi went to take a look. The man who had used to beat the wife he had abducted was in the dream curled into a ball and shaking, and it was impossible to say whether he was dreaming of being beaten by his wife in return.

The village chief who had treated people like livestock let out an occasional pig squeal in his sleep, and it was impossible to say whether he was dreaming of being a pig led to slaughter.

When these traffickers woke from their nightmares, the terror still lingered in their eyes. They were frighteningly compliant, weeping as they spilled everything in one uninterrupted stream. A few with stronger willpower sensed something was wrong and attempted to resist, but by then their companions had already laid everything bare.

The principle that a law cannot be enforced against a majority did not apply here. These people would be locked behind iron bars forever, living out the rest of their lives in nightmare.

A handful of those who had been enhanced by the so-called True Immortal were also sent to the research institute.

At the research institute, no amount of willpower could hold out for long.

From these people, they learned that the so-called True Immortal had appeared without warning one day and subjugated a trafficking ring. These were the first people to receive enhancement. That group began expanding its sphere of influence, supplying the True Immortal with virgins. Those who provided the most, contributed the greatest, and whose devotion was most genuine would receive the True Immortal’s blessing.

Those who received the True Immortal’s enhancement grew faster, stronger, and gained abilities beyond ordinary human limits.

This was also why a single trafficker had dared to go after Yun Zhiyi alone.

Fortunately, the True Immortal’s enhancement had its limits in certain areas. After being kicked in a particularly sensitive location by Yun Zhiyi, even an iron man could not have held up.

Females carry Yin by nature, and a virgin carries extreme Yin. A virgin dying in agony in a place of extreme Yin would generate powerful Yin energy. This Yin energy and ghost energy was absorbed by the so-called True Immortal, who grew stronger day by day and channelled the power back to the traffickers below.

And so a virtuous cycle was formed.

After research conducted by the institute, it was found that the so-called enhancement was nothing more than the Ghost King injecting a portion of his ghost energy into their bodies, boosting their physical capabilities by squeezing their lifespans. Those who had been enhanced had only a few short years left to live, and their final month before death would be spent in extreme agony.

The kind-hearted director of the institute, upon learning of this, felt it was imperative to show care and concern for those approaching death, especially since the institute’s research had inadvertently activated the ghost energy, causing these traffickers’ lifespans to shorten even further, leaving them not far from the end.

And so, out of humanitarian considerations, the director used the final stretch of their lives to trial the majority of the experimental devices he had been wanting to test. It could be considered a contribution to scientific research on their part, an accumulation of some small merit, so that after death they would not languish too long in the eighteenth level of hell and delay their reincarnation into the animal realm.

As for the Ghost King, the institute was somewhat more hesitant to experiment too vigorously. The Gao family had originally offered such a high reward that it had attracted an extraordinary number of remarkable individuals, and the assault on the Ghost King had been especially ferocious. The institute had exerted enormous effort just to prevent the Ghost King’s soul from scattering to nothing on the spot.

There was no other way. His soul happened to be particularly resilient, and he also seemed to know quite a lot about events from a thousand years ago.

He would have to be kept in good condition for now.

There was, however, one small incident along the way.

According to archaeology experts, the Ghost King had been an emperor in life, and the ghost city was his mausoleum, which held enormous archaeological value. After the Yin energy had been cleared, it was planned to be opened to the public as a famous tourist attraction of the Yin realm, with tickets available for purchase.

One of the research staff happened to see this announcement and was delighted, and could not help discussing it with a colleague. Unfortunately, the Ghost King chose that exact moment to regain consciousness, heard every word, and promptly passed out again on the spot, amounting to half a month of care wasted.

Ghost King: …Our home has been seized!

***