Chapter 52
Modern Story
Extra 8

The autumn air was crisp and refreshing. Near the east gate of the hospital, Li Mu, wearing a mask and hat, carrying a backpack, holding a phone in one hand and a laptop bag in the other, stood in the shade of a tree, calling for a ride. Her thumb quickly typed the address on the phone screen, and she pressed the call button. Soon, a driver accepted the order, and the system indicated she needed to wait for four minutes.

She confirmed the license plate number and tried to turn off the phone screen, but the button’s position was different from what she was used to. She had to adjust the phone in her palm before turning off the screen with one hand.

This new phone, which she wasn’t quite used to yet, was brought by a colleague. Her old phone, which had accompanied her for five years, was destroyed in a car accident. Fortunately, it could still make calls, so she asked a close colleague to get her a new one from a nearby store.

Four minutes passed quickly. During that time, Li Mu repeatedly checked her phone six times to confirm she hadn’t remembered the wrong license plate number. She found the corresponding vehicle and confirmed it once more while walking a few steps.

She got in the car, reported the last digits of her phone number, and the car started moving.

She was lucky; the driver didn’t try to chat with her at red lights. The quiet atmosphere allowed Li Mu to relax gradually, her gaze falling on the tall buildings passing by outside the car window. For the umpteenth time, she marveled—

She had really come back.

The first thing she did after getting the new phone and inserting the SIM card was to transfer the money for the phone to her colleague. The second thing was to search for the online novel “Drunken Phoenix.” The result showed that the novel had been locked by the platform and was unavailable for viewing.

Li Mu then searched for the novel online and found a post where the author complained that the male protagonist was killed off in the extra chapters, and the supposedly dead antagonist, Lin Yan’an, helped the Grand Princess Zhaoming ascend the throne.

When Li Mu had her car accident, she had only seen the main story’s ending and hadn’t read the extra chapters. It was only now that she learned about the shocking plot twist in the extras. However, after reading the post, no one knew why the novel was locked. Even if the extra chapters were outrageous, the platform wouldn’t lock the entire novel.

With the novel locked, she turned to WeChat and asked her mother if she had come to the hospital when she was first admitted. It wasn’t that she suddenly had any unnecessary expectations of her parents, but in the seventh year after Lin Que was saved by Wudu, which was the year Wudu said Lin Que might not survive, she was twenty-five. Before she traveled back in time, she had a car accident at the age of twenty-five. She had been worried about Lin Que’s health, and the next moment, she found herself back in the modern era, back at the scene of the car accident.

It was a chain car accident, and no one knew if any of the cars would suddenly catch fire. Fortunately, some kind-hearted people helped rescue those trapped in the cars.

Li Mu was one of them. At the time, she was completely dazed, likely having hit her head. Everything she heard and saw was chaotic, and she occasionally felt dizzy and disoriented. In the confusion, she saw a familiar face flash by—it was Lin Que with short hair. Then, she lost consciousness in the modern era and woke up in the ancient era, with Lin Que anxiously watching over her. He said he had tried to wake her up all morning, and she, who usually slept little, had astonishingly slept for six hours, which was twelve hours in total.

And that was just the beginning. After that, she became increasingly sleepy, and Wudu couldn’t determine the cause of her condition. Only she knew that her consciousness would return to the modern era and her original body whenever she slept.

Moreover, each return had a time gap. Even if she had spent an entire day in the ancient era, she would still return to the moment right after the car accident in the modern era, until the ambulance arrived and took her and the other injured people to the hospital.

In the modern era, she fell into a coma. During the coma, she couldn’t see anything or move, only hearing sounds. After examining her injuries, they found no major issues, just a head injury that hadn’t yet healed. Even if she woke up, she would need to stay in the hospital for observation for a few days. During this time, Li Mu overheard a conversation between her mother and a nurse.

The nurse asked, “Does your daughter have any allergies?”

Her mother’s voice was hesitant, as if she had been asked something she didn’t know well, “I don’t think so.”

The nurse asked again, “Does she take any medication regularly?”

Her mother replied in the same uncertain tone, “I think so… I don’t really remember.”

The nurse continued, “Do you know the name of the medication she takes?”

Mom: “I think it’s called… sertraline?”

Li Mu felt a mix of emotions. Her mom actually knew that one of the medications she had taken for social anxiety included sertraline. But that was a long time ago. During that period, her condition was so severe that it affected her daily life, and she had to go to the hospital for treatment and medication. Later, as her condition slightly improved, she gradually stopped taking the medication under the doctor’s guidance and hadn’t taken it for a long time. This was also why she sent the message to ask. She wanted to know if these were just her hallucinations during the coma or if they were real events.

Her mom’s reply confirmed that she had indeed visited the hospital once, which reassured Li Mu a bit.

During her coma, every time she fell asleep in the ancient era, her drowsiness became increasingly severe. She had a premonition that once she fully woke up in the modern era, her ancient self might never wake up again. She had always wanted to return to the modern era, but now she began to feel reluctant to leave Lin Que. She still remembered the face she saw at the car accident scene, which looked exactly like Lin Que’s, and remembered that the person had blood on them, likely also injured in the accident. If that wasn’t her hallucination, if there really was someone in the modern era who looked exactly like Lin Que and was involved in the same car accident, could she hope that person was Lin Que?

Li Mu had no choice. She could only cling to such fantasies to comfort herself.

Later, not only did her waking time decrease, but even her breathing would occasionally stop in her sleep. Lin Que didn’t dare leave her side for a moment, talking to her every day until his voice was hoarse, fearing she would leave him forever.

Once, when she barely woke up, she heard Lin Que softly whispering while holding her, “Wudu said I wouldn’t live past seven years. Now that seven years have passed, I survived, but you fell ill.”

“Sometimes I wonder, is it because I survived that you became like this?”

“If that’s the case, if I die, will you get better?”

Li Mu, afraid Lin Que would lose hope, told him everything about her origins and experiences. She also mentioned that she seemed to have seen him in the modern era to give Lin Que a glimmer of hope—that this impending death might only temporarily separate them, and they could meet again in another world.

If it were anyone else, they might think Li Mu was crazy after hearing her story. But Lin Que took her words seriously, carefully digesting the information and starting to learn more about the world Li Mu lived in. He even analyzed how they could find each other in the vast sea of people if they truly ended up in another world after death.

Li Mu gave Lin Que her phone number. It was the only method she could think of. Remembering that string of numbers might allow them to meet again.

Could it really work? Li Mu tightly gripped her phone.

Before being discharged, she had asked if there was anyone named Lin Que among those brought in from the car accident.

The nurse checked and said there wasn’t. She also mentioned that not all the injured were brought to this hospital; some were taken to other hospitals, suggesting Li Mu check there as well.

She found the phone number of another hospital online and called to inquire, but there was no one named Lin Que. She began to doubt if she had seen correctly. Maybe the face that flashed by and looked exactly like Lin Que’s was just her mind playing tricks on her.

If that was the case, what should she do? Had she lost him forever?

Li Mu felt a deep emptiness and sadness in her heart.

Li Mu’s phone vibrated, and she quickly checked the screen. It was a message from a member of her project team. Despite her car accident and being in a coma for about a day, her kind colleague had brought her a new phone and, following the supervisor’s instructions, also brought her laptop from the office so she could continue working while hospitalized.

She really wanted to call the police.

Li Mu closed her eyes for a moment. Her decade-long journey through time had made her somewhat unfamiliar with her work. Fortunately, she had the excuse of being hospitalized, so she could slowly adapt and recall her tasks.

Li Mu disliked being criticized and didn’t want to hold others back. After reading the message, she typed a reply. Until she reached her destination, she was busy communicating with her team, temporarily suppressing all her negative emotions.

…

“Qiwu!” At a private middle school, Li Yunxi carried her lunch from the cafeteria and found Lin Qiwu, whom she had known since elementary school, on the library’s rooftop.

The library’s rooftop was a botanical garden. Lin Qiwu sat cross-legged on a leaf-shaped bench, looking glum. “I have no appetite.”

Li Yunxi knew why Lin Qiwu was unhappy. Her cousin had been in a car accident and hadn’t woken up yet.

Lin Qiwu had grown up in her uncle and aunt’s house, and that cousin was like her own brother. With her brother still in a coma and her parents keeping her at school due to academic pressure, she couldn’t visit the hospital often, making her understandably unhappy.

Li Yunxi wanted to cheer Lin Qiwu up and shared some good news. “Remember that online novel I showed you before? The one An Xueqing’s cousin wrote based on us.”

Lin Qiwu certainly remembered. That novel not only used their names but also killed off her uncle in the story… Yes, it killed off everyone in her family except her aunt, even her second sister-in-law.

The protagonist of the novel is Li Yunxi. If Li Yunxi hadn’t recommended it, Lin Qiwu would have suspected Li Yunxi herself wrote it. Seeing that the extra chapters even killed off Li Yunxi and her early school crush, she realized the author might have been in a bad mental state, writing out of spite.

Initially, they could have told their parents and had a lawyer sue for infringement to get the author’s personal information from the platform. But their lack of legal awareness led them to investigate on their own, like detectives. Eventually, they deduced that the author was An Xueqing, who had once been in the same class as Lin Qiwu and later fell out with her.

They confronted An Xueqing, who was also confused. She admitted that she had indeed told her cousin, who wrote online novels, about Lin Qiwu’s family situation and their fallout. She vaguely remembered her cousin saying she would stand up for her. So they were sure An Xueqing’s cousin wrote the novel.

“The novel has been locked,” Li Yunxi told Lin Qiwu.

“Really?” Lin Qiwu asked. She had previously sent the link to her older brother, and then he had a car accident. She didn’t want her uncle and aunt to see the upsetting novel while her brother was still unconscious, so she only told her second brother, who was the type to work silently without saying much. Even if he had sued for infringement, he wouldn’t have mentioned it. If Li Yunxi hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have known the novel was locked.

“Great!”

Li Yunxi handed her lunchbox to Lin Qiwu. “Eat up, eat up. I went all the way to the international department cafeteria to get this.”

Although their school’s regular cafeteria was also good, it couldn’t compare to the international department’s cafeteria.

Having heard the good news and seeing her friend’s effort to get her lunch, Lin Qiwu felt much better and didn’t refuse.

After lunch, they returned to the dormitory for a nap. An Xueqing approached Lin Qiwu, saying her cousin had been sued and asked her to plead for help.

Lin Qiwu refused. “Who told her to write like that? And you shouldn’t have told others about my family’s matters. I can’t help you, so don’t come to me.”

They didn’t bother with the matter anymore. A month later, the school held a sports day. Lin Qiwu participated in four events, achieving good results in each. Li Yunxi, who wasn’t good at sports, kept submitting articles to the broadcast station to earn points, praising her friend in various ways.

The sports day lasted two days. On the second afternoon, during the closing ceremony, some students took out their phones to take pictures. The teachers, seeing the good atmosphere, turned a blind eye.

Lin Qiwu used her phone to take a photo of Li Yunxi and Gu Yuwen. Just as she pressed the shutter, the screen changed, showing an incoming call from “Annoying Ghost,” which read as “Lin Yan’an.”

Like in the novel, Lin Yan’an wasn’t related to their family but was their next-door neighbor. His parents were often away, leaving him in the care of a nanny. Because they lived close, Lin Qiwu had played with him since childhood, knowing him longer than she had known Li Yunxi.

Lin Yan’an was two years older than her, now twenty-one, and had a much more relaxed life than her as a high school student.

Lin Qiwu answered the call and asked what he wanted.

“I’m at the hospital, visiting your brother,” Lin Yan’an said.

“Showing off, huh?” Lin Qiwu replied.

“No, I just wanted to tell you that your brother woke up,” Lin Yan’an said.