Chapter 15: Six Suns (15)
Li Wei obediently placed the diary on his lap, glancing left at Jian Yuntai, who stared down thoughtfully, and right at Song Yulu, who stayed silent. In his mind, the shocking scene from moments ago replayed vividly.
If this were a TV show, he felt like he had missed a hundred episodes.
Meeting, getting to know each other, building a relationship…
How did it just skip straight to the bedroom?!
And now, the atmosphere in the room was awful. The two of them seemed at odds, both wearing unfriendly expressions.
He was just an ordinary little citizen, a lifetime of helping old ladies cross the street… why was he being forced into this? He desperately wanted to escape the room, sniffle sniffle!
“The diary in your hand—let me see it,” Jian Yuntai’s voice sounded weak, carrying a faint strain.
Li Wei shivered, carefully walking to the bed and offering the diary with both hands.
The diary was the item Song Yulu had told him to fetch. Though called a diary, it was really just a thin squared notebook. The pages were filled with cursive, flowing script that looked like dragons and phoenixes dancing across the page. Jian Yuntai glanced through it and could barely understand over half of the content.
But understanding even a small portion was enough.
Most of the lines recorded what Song Yulu had said in the instance. Beyond that, it listed mundane daily tasks—just the ordinary log of a science researcher, like feeding rabbits one day, killing rabbits the next.
It was worth noting that the diary was extremely worn—so old it was almost unbearable. The outer pages were warped as if soaked in water, and the blue ink inside had bled and smudged, making it look like an ancient relic hundreds of years old.
Jian Yuntai thought wryly that Song Yulu certainly liked appearances. Outside, he smelled of expensive perfume so strong it could hit your nose; in private, his diary was nearly falling apart, yet he didn’t bother to replace it.
He closed the diary and looked up at Li Wei. “How did you survive?”
“!!!” Talking about this, Li Wei perked up, vividly recounting how he had won by sheer luck.
“The truck—didn’t it overturn? I was unconscious inside for a long time. When I woke up, it was already morning, and the road was full of corpses. I nearly died of fright, ran blind straight to the research lab, and then met Academician Song.” He paused, then hesitantly asked, “What exactly happened? How did you get so badly injured? What about the other two?”
Jian Yuntai didn’t answer the questions but instead frowned at Li Wei. “You weren’t infected?”
“Infected? What infection?” Li Wei looked confused.
Creak, creak—
The wheelchair turned around, and Song Yulu held a tray, placing it between the two of them. He lowered his gaze and said, “I’ll apply your medicine.”
Jian Yuntai finally tore his eyes away from Li Wei and glanced at the tray of alcohol swabs and medicine.
No medical treatment in the instance could heal player injuries. The bottles and vials were useless for him—but he spotted some painkillers and felt a spark of hope.
“I’ll handle it myself,” he said. One dose of painkillers would suffice.
He grabbed the hem of his shirt with one hand, intending to pull it off.
Song Yulu suddenly turned his head sharply. “What are you doing?!”
“???” Jian Yuntai blinked, confused.
Li Wei immediately covered his face with both hands, whispering frantically: “Put it back on! You’re not observing male virtue!”
“…” Jian Yuntai was even more bewildered.
Through a slit in his fingers, Li Wei peeked, sighing: “It’s the first time I’ve seen a male Bodhisattva take off his clothes so… enthusiastically.”
Jian Yuntai’s mouth twitched.
He almost forgot—the lore and rules in each instance’s world were different. Some worlds were entirely unlike the real one, some exactly the same, and some, like the Six Suns instance, had subtle differences. Thinking about it carefully, in this scorching heat, he hadn’t seen any of the natives take off their shirts.
So he put his shirt back down.
The livestream audience went wild:
“Ahhh Li Wei, what are you doing stopping him?! Last time we didn’t see, now we get nothing orz”
“Relax, sisters, we can watch the replay after the instance ends!”
“The pure ones are still watching live, the lewd ones are already taking screenshots, sneaky fun hehe~”
Three full seconds after he lowered his shirt, Song Yulu finally turned his head, brow furrowed: “The blood on your wound has clotted onto your shirt, sticking to skin and tissue. Pulling it off directly would cause secondary injury. I need to cut your clothes.”
“Fine.” Jian Yuntai suddenly remembered the devilish title he had received earlier—he still doubted if he’d imagined it. Hesitating for a moment, he instructed, “Just cut around the wound. Don’t cut anything else.”
“Relax.” Song Yulu snorted. “I have no interest in your body.”
Jian Yuntai glanced at him and retorted with a dry smirk, “Coincidentally, I’m not interested in you either.”
The air between them sparked like a live fuse. Li Wei instinctively stepped back, putting some distance between himself and the “bullet.”
Song Yulu’s hands were steady, his long fingers gripping the scissors. Faint blue and purple veins bulged on the back of his hand. He carefully cut around the wound, gently lifted the bloodied fabric with tweezers, and placed it on the tray.
It hurt somewhat, but Jian Yuntai’s endurance was extraordinary; he gritted his jaw without a sound.
Li Wei, still covering his face, peeked through his fingers, his eyes darting around comically.
Then Song Yulu paused his hands, glancing at Li Wei. “There’s food stored next door. Go eat something.”
“Ah?” Li Wei was startled and quickly said, “I’m not hungry, I can stay to help—”
Before he could finish, a crisp “click” sounded.
Song Yulu expressionlessly placed the scissors on the tray. Without saying another word, Li Wei obediently stiffened like a snake hit on the tail.
Sobs, sobs, sobs, how scary was that! Li Wei wisely scurried outside: “I’ll come back when you’re done.”
The door closed.
The room was left with only the two of them.
Removing the clothes around the wound was a long and painstaking process. Song Yulu was meticulous in his work; he kept finding ways to lift off more fabric with the lightest touch possible.
As he adjusted his movements, the scent of the man surrounding Jian Yuntai’s nose shifted—sometimes it was like snow-covered pine atop a mountain, sometimes it was rich iris perfume, faintly drifting in and out.
The room was completely silent.
At this moment, painkillers were still off-limits, and there were no oral medications. Before long, Jian Yuntai broke out in a cold sweat from the pain. He gritted his teeth and asked, “Do you have any clean clothes?”
“For what?”
“Of course to wear. I can’t exactly run around in a torn, hole-ridden shirt. And it’s covered in blood.”
“You… you want to wear my clothes?” Song Yulu’s wrist twitched lightly as he lifted his gaze, eyes full of surprise.
Jian Yuntai looked at him, puzzled, and nodded.
Song Yulu’s voice became hoarse, and he stammered, “O-okay… In these special circumstances… we… we have no choice.”
Jian Yuntai guessed he might have hit another inconsistency in the instance’s world logic, but his attention was caught by something else, and he said, amused, “Why are you stammering all of a sudden?”
“I stammer when I’m nervous.”
“Nervous? What’s there to be nervous about? I wasn’t nervous when you treated me, and you’re not even a professional doctor.”
“……”
Song Yulu fell silent. No matter how Jian Yuntai teased him, he gritted his teeth and refused to give him any chance to laugh.
But Jian Yuntai still chuckled. “Little stammerer.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, his expression changed. “Hey! Ouch, ouch, ouch! Be gentler!”
Song Yulu finally eased his movements, cursing expressionlessly, “You’re just a bandit.”
It took Jian Yuntai quite a while to recover, and he didn’t dare tease him further. Out of boredom, he glanced around the room and finally directed his attention to the wheelchair under Song Yulu.
Given the earlier tense atmosphere, he smirked a little, feeling a touch of schadenfreude. “How did you end up with a broken bone?”
Song Yulu paused briefly, lowering his gaze. “It’s not a fracture. Everything below the knee is prosthetic.”
“……” Jian Yuntai suddenly couldn’t laugh. Surprise, regret, and sympathy all swirled together as he asked, “How did it happen?”
“Chasing the sun,” Song Yulu replied, his tone calm and detached.
He placed the last blood-stained piece of cloth on the tray, disinfected the area around the wound with alcohol swabs, and finally applied the medicine.
He said nothing throughout the process, seemingly unwilling to elaborate, yet he showed no sign of sadness either.
Jian Yuntai guessed that it was probably something done by a senior at the research institute. After all, Song Yulu had always been in conflict with the seniors. Those people could even shoot the sun; it wouldn’t be impossible for them to sever a person’s legs in cold blood.
This topic had now gotten very close to the main quest, and Jian Yuntai had a question he’d long been curious about—one that all the livestream viewers were also dying to know.
“Why exactly did the researchers want to launch the suns?”
“……”
This time, Song Yulu stayed silent an unusually long while—long enough that the medicine application was finished, long enough that Jian Yuntai thought he wouldn’t answer. Finally, he lowered his gaze and spoke slowly.
“I don’t know… maybe they went mad.”
This man rarely showed emotion in his expression, yet the feeling in his eyes seemed more real than that of any native in the instance.
For a moment, Jian Yuntai felt a pang of confusion.
The person before him seemed perfect—so young, yet already reaching heights many could never dream of. He was the creator’s proudest masterpiece, yet he would never stand upright again. He would hardly ever see the world from another horizon.
All of this, traced back to the source, had only been to stop his seniors from launching the suns and to save the city.
If this had been Jian Yuntai’s situation, he would have simply kidnapped his friends, taken a taxi out of the city overnight, and called it a day.
The thought had just appeared in his mind when the electronic chime sounded:
【Player Main Quest Updated】
【STEP2: Stop the Fifth Sun from Launching】
Jian Yuntai’s mind jolted. He said, “I want to meet the senior you wrote about in your diary.”
Song Yulu looked puzzled. “For what?”
“Launching suns is just… inhumane. I have to scold them in person, properly.” Jian Yuntai rambled along Song Yulu’s train of thought, but inside he was coldly calculating: later, I’ll kill all of them. Let’s see who dares to launch a sun then.
Song Yulu retrieved a piece of clothing from the wardrobe and handed it over, sitting in his wheelchair with his back to Jian Yuntai.
“It’s six in the morning now. You’re awake while everyone else is asleep. Some seniors are on night duty, working through the night. You can’t meet all of them at once, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless tonight at midnight. Everyone will gather to launch the suns and collect observational data. If you want to go, around midnight I can take you to watch.”
This time, Li Wei realized he should knock. He tapped lightly twice. No sound came from inside.
Nervously, he opened the door a crack and peeked in. “Academician Song, didn’t you say you were going to take me to get a blood test?”
“Let’s go.” Song Yulu nodded.
Li Wei happily stepped forward to push the wheelchair. As he moved closer, Song Yulu’s gaze on him was strange—complex and tinged with sorrow.
Realizing Jian Yuntai was watching, Song Yulu quickly averted his eyes. “They don’t know I’m hiding someone here. Don’t go out during the day; you’ll alert them.”
“Okay.”
Half a minute later, the door clicked shut.
Jian Yuntai watched the direction they had left, his expression hesitant, deep in thought.
※※
Jian Yuntai slept. For the past three days, he had barely had a single uninterrupted rest; the moment his head touched the pillow, exhaustion dragged him under.
This sleep, however, was especially sweet.
The bedding carried the warm scent of the sun, mingled with Song Yulu’s faint perfume. These scents overpowered the blood and alcohol lingering on him.
The clock ticked slowly, tick-tock, tick-tock.
When he woke again, it was past ten in the evening. Jian Yuntai shot his eyes open, staring at the ventilation ducts on the ceiling.
No matter how tired he was, he never slept deeply. Any sound from the ducts immediately roused him.
He slowly reached for the scissors on the nightstand, breaking them in half within the blankets and gripping the sharp blades.
He was waiting.
About five minutes later, a rustling came from the ventilation duct. First, screws twisted; someone removed the slats and brought them inside. Then the person jumped down.
Jian Yuntai sprang up instantly, his long leg sweeping to trip the intruder, the blade pressing hard against a major artery.
Before he could even act, the man groaned in pain, cursing: “Jian Dadan, are you a porcupine or what? You stab at anyone! Open your eyes and see who I am!”
“Fatty?!” Jian Yuntai exclaimed with delight, lifting him up. “How did you know I was here?”
“Me too.” Young Master Xue popped out from the ventilation duct. Seeing Fatty’s battered state, he said mischievously, “Good thing it wasn’t me who went down first. Thanks for taking the hit, Fatty.”
“…” Fatty rolled his eyes, holding his waist and plopping down on the bed. “What do you mean, how did we know you were here? We didn’t know at all. All these ducts connect the rooms. I ran into several players in there, but didn’t have any conflicts.”
“Fatty said we couldn’t leave you alone, so we crawled through the ducts for hours, trying to see which room you were hiding in. You have no idea—this research facility is huge. We crawled four or five hours.” Young Master Xue collapsed onto the floor, hands braced behind him: “Finally finding you, Fatty said you were asleep and told me to be quiet.”
Jian Yuntai felt a warmth in his chest, only to hear Young Master Xue continue: “He said he wanted to scare you.”
Jian Yuntai: “…”
“You blabber everything out anyway; sooner or later someone’s going to rip your mouth off.” Fatty raised a fist at Young Master Xue, then turned, smiling like a blooming chrysanthemum. “By the way, Dadan’er, you bandaged that wound yourself? Not seeing you for a day, I finally realized wounds need care. I thought you liked letting them air out.”
Jian Yuntai shook his head, amused. “Not me—it was Song Yulu who helped.”
Fatty’s eyes lit up. “You met him? Hurry, have him take us to those bastards launching the suns. Otherwise, Step Two of the mission can’t be completed, and we’ll lose another ten days of survival time.”
“He said he’d take me there at twelve,” Jian Yuntai replied.
Fatty froze. “But… isn’t it already twelve? Wait, it’s past twelve!”
“?”
Jian Yuntai pointed at the room’s clock, exasperated. “Were you crawling in the ducts so long you got confused? It’s only ten o’clock now—two hours until twelve.”
Fatty looked even more stunned, shaking his head with certainty.
“No, your clock is wrong. I checked every room on the way here; every room has a clock. I made a point of checking, and it’s definitely past midnight.”
“…”
Jian Yuntai frowned. What was going on?
Were the clocks deliberately set slow, or had Song Yulu just been too lazy to correct them?
And why hadn’t Song Yulu come yet? Had something happened outside? Many players had fled into the research facility, and the situation was chaotic.
Jian Yuntai thought hard, feeling that something was off—he seemed to have missed something.
At that moment, Young Master Xue suddenly exclaimed, picking up a work ID from the table with a strange expression: “Could this person… be NPC Song Yulu?”
“He is,” Jian Yuntai confirmed, glancing at the photo.
“What?!!”
Fatty’s expression also twisted strangely. He and Young Master Xue exchanged glances, both grave, their eyes full of shock.
“How can this be?”
“This is impossible!”
The two paced the room, clearly unable to accept the truth. Jian Yuntai waited a moment, then finally lost patience. “He is Song Yulu. What’s the problem?”
“Of course there’s a problem! A huge one!” Fatty exclaimed, flailing his arms dramatically.
Then he revealed a shocking fact. Livestream viewers gasped, stunned, taking time to process it. Everything Jian Yuntai had experienced over the past three days in this instance was overturned, presented from a perspective he had never imagined.
Fatty said the artificial suns were launched by Song Yulu.
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