Chapter 110:
It felt like a long time had passed, or perhaps just a moment.
As the long night began to break, consciousness was returning. Jiang Juan faced the glaring white light, everything around him bright as day.
“Beep, beep, beep—” The instruments emitted urgent and sharp sounds, and Jiang Juan heard many voices.
“Doctor, he’s bleeding again; the bleeding won’t stop, it’s impossible to control!”
“His heart rate is irregular; the patient’s heart rate is too low!”
“Doctor—his heartbeat has stopped!”
Jiang Juan tried hard to open his eyes, but he had no strength. He clearly sensed the ebbing of his life force and felt both exhausted and cold.
Perhaps he should just continue sleeping.
If he fell asleep, he wouldn’t feel tired or cold.
Thinking this, Jiang Juan gave up resisting.
The sounds—the beeping of the instruments, the anxious calls, and the hurried footsteps—faded away, and Jiang Juan fell back into darkness.
His consciousness scattered in the silence.
Floating.
“Your fate is extremely favorable, said to be one of wealth and honor, but you are destined to face three calamities.”
Jiang Juan’s eyelashes fluttered.
Who is this?
It seemed he had heard this before.
“The first calamity, you were already on the brink of death, yet you had a miraculous turn of events. The second calamity, you have enemies and grievances, but you are not meant to die. The third calamity…”
What about the third calamity?
Jiang Juan’s scattered consciousness began to coalesce again. He was involuntarily stirred by these words, struggling to think.
Calamities.
His calamities.
Is it his heart disease?
No.
It’s not that.
His heart had problems since birth, and the life-threatening notices he received could be bound into a book. If it were his heart disease, there wouldn’t be just three times.
So what could it be?
Jiang Juan thought hard.
He felt like he had forgotten something important, something he shouldn’t have forgotten, something he must remember.
What did he forget?
What is it?
Jiang Juan was anxious.
He was exhausted, had no strength, and felt cold due to hypothermia. He kept shivering, like a leaf caught in the wind being swept into the ocean, tossed by the tides and waves, carried far away to an unknown place.
Hurry and remember.
Hurry up.
The sounds of hurried footsteps and the urgent beeping of the instruments came back to Jiang Juan’s ears. He heard many people talking to him.
“Don’t sleep.”
“Hold on a bit longer, just hold on.”
“You survived the first emergency, you can make it this time too. Your future is still long, and your family is waiting for you. Don’t give up.”
Don’t sleep.
He still hadn’t remembered, he hadn’t remembered anything.
He couldn’t sleep.
He needed to remember what he had forgotten, the forgotten thing was truly important.
Jiang Juan kept reminding himself, struggling desperately.
He didn’t know how much time had passed. In the boundless darkness, fleeting lights slowly entered, flickering endlessly, and finally converged into one. Jiang Juan saw the light once more.
A swaying, bright light.
It was at that moment that Jiang Juan finally remembered what he had forgotten.
He had promised someone he wouldn’t abandon him.
He had promised Xue Fangli he wouldn’t leave him.
“The surgery was successful.”
This was the last thing Jiang Juan heard before losing consciousness.
When he woke up again, it was ten days later.
Jiang Juan sat up in confusion, trying hard to recognize that he was in a completely unfamiliar place. He reached up to his chest, finding no trace of any surgical scars.
Was it a dream?
Had he returned to the operating table, with the situation still critical, but the surgery ultimately successful?
“You’re awake.”
With a creak, someone opened the door. An old man in a tattered robe walked in, hands behind his back, swaying slightly. Jiang Juan looked up and immediately recognized him.
“Master E’nan…”
E’nan waved his hand and asked Jiang Juan, “How are you feeling?”
Jiang Juan hesitated, “I’m okay.”
E’nan nodded, “That’s good.”
Jiang Juan had many questions to ask him but didn’t know where to start, so he fell silent.
E’nan looked at Jiang Juan, no longer the shrewd and mercenary figure he had been previously. Instead, his gaze was filled with insightful wisdom. Smiling, E’nan said, “I’m not a fraud, am I? You’re weak in constitution and your spirit is unstable.”
“…It seems so.”
Jiang Juan asked him, “Did you save me?”
E’nan replied, “You saved yourself.”
“If not for your compassion for the old man and the little one at the Jinghua Tower, the second calamity would not have been resolved. And if you hadn’t pitied my thin disciple and given him a piece of silver, he wouldn’t have led anyone.”
Jiang Juan was taken aback. E’nan continued, “You don’t belong here; you should go back. I didn’t want to see you or intervene, but…”
He paused, and E’nan’s expression turned somewhat strange, as if recalling an unpleasant memory.
That day, a man came to his humble hut, his eyes filled with blood and his expression extremely fierce. He stared at E’nan as if he were a monstrous spirit emerging from a hellish abyss, terrifying beyond measure.
“Wake him up.”
The man spoke languidly, each of his words carrying a hint of bloodthirstiness, his warning unmistakable.
The knife was held to E’nan’s throat; if E’nan refused, it would be instantly drawn. With no other choice, E’nan sighed and said, “Fine, the good deeds he has sown will naturally bear good fruit.”
Thinking of this, E’nan slowly said, “You and His Majesty have a deep bond; seeing that moved me, so I decided to help.”
Jiang Juan asked, “I was unstable, did you help stabilize my spirit?”
E’nan did not answer immediately but looked at Jiang Juan’s wrist. Jiang Juan looked down and saw that he was wearing a red string with an irregular bead on it.
“What is this?”
“Good stuff. You’ll have to return it in the future.”
Jiang Juan fidgeted with it, and E’nan, looking pained, said, “Be gentle, be gentle.”
Jiang Juan: “Can’t I play with it?”
E’nan: “…Not exactly.”
E’nan spoke vaguely, “I was afraid he would come looking for trouble, so I tricked him a bit. As a result, to stabilize the spirit, he smashed the divine altar and took the ancestral master’s relic.”
A relic?
Jiang Juan understood and looked at the object on his wrist, suddenly feeling uninterested in touching it.
E’nan continued mumbling, “People can still be reasonable, but this thing… it doesn’t listen to reason and resorts to violence easily, like a ghost. Even the Buddha would be troubled by it.”
Jiang Juan: “…”
Mentioning the troubling nature of this thing, E’nan’s face turned pale. He seriously told Jiang Juan, “Keep it under control. You must guard against evil properly in the future and ensure it doesn’t cause trouble again.”
Jiang Juan could only reply, “I’ll try my best.”
With everything that needed to be said out of the way, E’nan waved his sleeve as if shooing away mosquitoes and said, “If you’re awake, leave quickly. If you delay further, he’ll think you’re still unconscious and might end up destroying my humble hut.”
Jiang Juan felt quite apologetic, “I’m sorry…”
Knowing that E’nan was right, and that Xue Fangli might indeed cause trouble if he delayed further, Jiang Juan got out of bed.
He supported himself against the wall and took a few steps. Suddenly, Jiang Juan remembered something and asked E’nan, “If I stay here, what about my family?”
E’nan answered, “When I retrieve the relic, that will be the day you return home.”
Jiang Juan nodded, then asked his final question.
“I read a book and then came to this world. Was all of this just a dream, or… is it really happening?”
Jiang Juan himself wasn’t sure how to answer.
It felt like he had dreamt of entering the world of the book, but it also felt like he had dreamt of returning to his so-called real world, back to the operating table, and even faced a near-death situation.
“Does the dream of the butterfly belong to the butterfly, or does the butterfly dream of being Zhou?” E’nan smiled and said, “What is real? And what is false?”
Note; pls google butterfly dream.
“Everything is false. All conditioned things are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows, like dew and lightning. Yet everything is also real. Every flower, leaf, grass, and tree—you can touch it, you can perceive it, so it exists here.”
Jiang Juan was confused by this, and E’nan continued, “Every flower is a world, every leaf is a Bodhi. In the three thousand worlds, wherever your soul is, that is where reality is.”
Jiang Juan seemed to understand a bit, “Then… what about the original Jiang Juan?”
E’nan smiled mysteriously, “You are always yourself.”
With those words, E’nan told Jiang Juan, “Go now. Someone has come to pick you up.”
Jiang Juan responded with a “mm,” thanked E’nan sincerely, and bid him farewell before leaving the hut.
Not far away, a man stood tall and thin. From the moment Jiang Juan emerged, he stared intently at him, his jaw set, his lines sharp.
“I’ve slept well.”
Jiang Juan spoke softly. For him, it was just a long sleep, but during this time, he had lost all sense of time, whereas Xue Fangli had not.
A total of ten days. During these ten days, Xue Fangli had not closed his eyes. Each night, he suffered from excruciating headaches and lost sleep, which made him irritable. He had boundless rage but nowhere to vent it, only able to wait and wait again.
Xue Fangli lifted his eyelids and looked at Jiang Juan, saying calmly, “Come here.”
“Okay.”
Jiang Juan smiled at him, took a few steps, and then, evidently very happy, threw himself into Xue Fangli’s arms and hugged his waist, “My spirit has been stabilized.”
“Mm.”
Jiang Juan: “Did you wait long?”
Xue Fangli: “Not long.”
Jiang Juan added, “I haven’t forgotten.”
Xue Fangli asked nonchalantly, “Forgotten what?”
Jiang Juan answered slowly, “I won’t abandon you.”
Xue Fangli lowered his gaze.
His reaction was noticeably different; unlike usual, he didn’t pull Jiang Juan into his arms as soon as he saw him. He didn’t even embrace Jiang Juan’s waist but just watched him.
Jiang Juan touched his face and seriously comforted him, “Don’t be afraid. I will stay with you, always stay with you.”
Xue Fangli asked, “Not going anywhere?”
Jiang Juan nodded, “Mm, I won’t go anywhere except by your side.”
After a moment, Jiang Juan added softly, “Don’t let me go. I don’t want you to let me go either.”
Xue Fangli did not speak. Under his calm exterior, his whole body was trembling. The emotions hidden in his dark eyes churned endlessly, intensely, with a bloody taste spreading in his mouth. Xue Fangli coughed.
“You…”
Jiang Juan was about to comfort him but was suddenly startled.
Blood was oozing from Xue Fangli’s lips, bright red and glaring.
“So much blood.”
Jiang Juan quickly tried to wipe it away, but he was suddenly grabbed. Xue Fangli tightened his grip on Jiang Juan’s wrist.
“You said it.”
Xue Fangli’s voice was hoarse, but his tone was fierce, “Stay by my side, and don’t go anywhere.”
“This lifetime, the next lifetime, the lifetime after that… as long as I have you, I won’t let you go.”
Author’s Note: Salted fish Juan panicked: None of that matters, you’re coughing up blood again, and now I’m going to be a widow QAqqQ
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