Chapter 20: Two in One

Qi You, with a thin blanket and a glass of warm water, pushes open the small wooden door to the back garden.

She crossed the cobbled path and couldn't help holding her breath and easing her steps when she saw the man in the center of the garden.

The back of the garden is covered with jasmine, planted when Xu You was still in good spirits, and after three rounds of chemotherapy, her hair fell out, her stomach was cut a third of the way through, and she couldn't eat much of anything.

While the doctors were discussing a fourth operation, Xu You abandoned the treatment and returned to the cottage they had bought.

Now lying in the wheelchair, she is so thin that her wrists on the armrests have only a thin layer of skin wrapped around the bones, and her face sleeping in the sunlight is like the jasmine buds on her side, white and quiet.

Qi You sighed softly, and when she went back to the house to get a blanket, Xu You fell asleep again, as she had been doing for a while now, with less and less conscious moments.

In the early spring afternoon, when the temperature is still a bit low, Qi You puts a blanket over Xu You and holds the back handle of the wheelchair, trying to push Xu You back to the house.

Moving twice, Xu You woke up, his voice a little muffled, "Did you mail it?"

"Send it," Qi You said, "every week, I won't forget."

After a pause, she couldn't help but say, "What's the point of looking at those flowers all day, what if you fall asleep in the garden and catch a cold next time?"

Xu You smiled and didn't say anything, knowing that his cousin was worried about him, he only felt a warmth in his heart.

"And don't sneak up in the middle of the night to write me postcards," Qi You couldn't help but chime in, "You've written so many, how many more are you going to write, and you don't even care about your health."

Xu You smiled helplessly, "Okay, I know."

"Know, know, you'll say know every time," Qi You pursed her lips, "Have some warm water."

Xu You took the cup and drank it in small sips, slowly swallowing it, drinking with some difficulty, Qi You's eyes were sore from watching, and he looked away.

The frequent headaches and abdominal pains were too much for Xu You, and he asked the system again, "When will I die?"

The system said, "You won't have to suffer this if you complete the decapitation mission, and not completing the three-month countdown won't take a second off the clock."

Xu You did not speak, birth, old age, sickness, and death, she has not yet experienced the second stage, and directly crossed over to the third or fourth stage, which is also considered to have lived life to the fullest.

The hours were long like gruel simmering on a stove, waiting torturously for the moment when it would finally boil over and go out.

Xu You's moments of unconsciousness and pain grew longer and longer, and in the last few days, she couldn't eat or drink, and was lying in bed, full of sickness.

Qi You finally went from secretly wiping her tears to letting out a loud cry, "Cousin ...... Don't go ......"

That day, Xu You seemed to be better, could see the people in front of her, clearly hear the voice of the speech, her breath weakly smiled: "Crying like this why do ...... I still have breath in it."

Qi You wiped the tears from your eyes and said, "Don't talk so much, get well."

"Good, good," Xu You slowly closed his eyes, "It's late at night, don't keep watch, go back to sleep."

Xu You added, "It's not very windy tonight, open the window a bit, I want to get some air."

She rarely makes requests, and hasn't said so much in a long time Qi You thought about it, but opened the window and added a quilt for her before leaving.

Xu You closed your eyes, and your mind was filled with the image of a person.

In the afternoon, when the window was open and the sun shone warmly in, Min Duan held a strand of her black hair and curled his body to sleep.

She only added a spoonful of honey to the milk, and he pursed his lips as he watched, not quite satisfied with the look.

The way she lazily leaned back against the couch and read a fairy tale as he curved his lips and listened.

And the way he always watched her quietly with those clear, penetrating eyes.

She knows her time is almost up, and it turns out that when people come to the end of their lives, they really do look back at the people and things that are important to their hearts.

Xu You struggled with her movements, pulling out the postcard and a pen from under her pillow, she gripped the pen with all her strength and wrote down the messy words in one stroke.

The tip of the pen rustled on the paper, softly in the quiet of the night.

Min Duan, I like--

"Splat," the pen rolled to the floor and the postcard fell between the cracks of the bed.

The dappled moonlight leaking in through the window fell silently on the hand she had resting on the edge of the bed.

--

Xu You returned to the blank space without regaining his senses, sitting upright.

Until the system's voice rang out, "Congratulations to the host for completing the mission, the mission score level is B, rewarding 3000 points."

What?

She finished the mission?

When did she finish the job?

So says Min Duan ...... Dead?

Xu You's mind buzzed with confusion and said incredulously, "Min Duan is dead? Impossible!"

The system says, "You can spend 100 points to watch the mission replay for mission review."

Xu You still doesn't believe it, "Watch the mission replay."

A screen quickly unfolded in front of her and began to play at multiplied speed.

Min Duan was cooking alone in the kitchen, and he only tasted the dishes he made, frowned and poured them out, and kept doing it over and over again before he was satisfied.

He stared at the table full of dishes, went off on a tangent, and suddenly muttered, "I know how to cook everything in your recipe ......"

Min Duan seldom slept, or rather dared not sleep, especially in the afternoon nap time, he would even fidget and go to the bookcase to rummage through the books she had talked about and read, so that his mind would be a little more stable.

The pages flipped and a sheet fell out.

Min Duan picked it up and saw that it was a jasmine bookmark, and his eye lashes flickered as he flipped the book from cover to cover, turning up two bookmarks.

Then he went to the bookcase again and went through all the books, searching for treasure, carefully tucking each bookmark he found into his arms.

As they grew more and more jasmine flowers, sometimes Xu You would pick some to make tea, or make them into bookmarks and clip them into books.

That night, Min Duan placed the bookmark on his pillow, the faint scent of jasmine lingering on his breath, and the evening breeze brought the fragrance from the windowsill into the room.

A familiar smell, as if she'd never left.

Min Duan closed his eyes, again not asleep, and silently sketched her in his mind.

Later, he opened up the two houses, his original house was pitch black, the orange sticky notes Xu You had written for him, the shape of the Sun he put on the wall, was the only color in that house, while her room was always beige, warm and bright.

It's a clear distinction, like hell on one side and heaven on the other, and he spends most of his time cowering in "hell".

Min Duan goes out every day, to the mall, to the supermarket, to all sorts of crowded places, he takes tons of drugs to force himself to adapt to the scent of the living, he comes back to his home and suffers from the onset of the disease all night long, suffering alone, and as long as he gets over it, he will continue to go out again.

Through constant stress, to forced physical and psychological adaptation, he was able to go farther and farther and use less and less medication.

By the end of the day, he was basically able to go out like a normal person, except for subconsciously avoiding oncoming people.

" Xu You , I can go out like a normal person, and soon I can accompany you all over the world."

"When are you coming back."

A man's life is too difficult to bear, as if he can't see the end of the endless sea of misery, the only thing that gives him some comfort is the postcards from Xu You, who sends a postcard every week with two or three sentences on it.

" Min Duan , the temperature over here has dropped so much that a lot of hail has fallen, smashing the windows and crunching them."

" Min Duan , today's sunshine is very good, the water of Ruo Ming Lake is sparkling, like tens of thousands of glass balls broken."

" Min Duan , I saw that the peach blossoms on the Unsan Mountain are blooming and beautiful, but I didn't see the peach blossom demon that is recorded here, I think it might be that there are too many people and she is hiding."

......

Whenever he was on the verge of not being able to hold on, he would take the postcard and look at it over and over again, thinking of how well she was doing in a faraway place, thinking of how she would smile so happily without him, and he had the motivation to struggle to stay alive again.

A life is so long, there's always a return date.

They'll meet again.

Min Duan sends Xu You a postcard back, but every time he mentions a question or topic, she doesn't respond. The address of the postcard always changes, and he thinks she's traveling all over the world, and may not be able to fix a place to receive his postcards.

Some time later, Min Duan picked all the jasmine flowers on the windowsill, made bookmarks, and carried some of them around in a small glass jar.

He bought a plane ticket and left the country as well.

The place we got to first had long since let the sun go and it was no longer hailing.

After a few more days, Min Duan sat on a stone chair on the shore of Lake Ruoming, staring at the sparkling water, his eyes bleary, silently squeezing the small glass jar in his hand.

The peach blossoms on the unseen mountain are late, still half of the mountain is full of red, many people take pictures and play, couples embracing each other under the trees, all the bustle has become a distant background, he stood on the top of the mountain, full of depression.

He walks all over the world by himself, seeing the scenery she has seen and eating the food she has mentioned, like an ascetic monk practicing in silence, yet without complaint.

Until one day, his cell phone rang, and at that moment he was out of his mind, even suspecting that he had misheard, since Xu You left the country, her cell phone had not been turned on again.

Is she coming back?

Min Duan didn't dare to delay and pulled out his cell phone, his hand shook so much that the phone almost fell, his chest rose and fell violently, he took two big breaths, and the moment the call was answered, he even stopped breathing.

A moment of silence on both sides.

Min Duan's knuckles whitened as he gripped the cell phone, and carefully whispered, "Xu You?"

"Cousin-in-law," Qi You said, "it's me."

Min Duan immediately asked, "Where is she?"

Qi You paused and said, "I'll give you the address, so you can stop by if you'd like."

"Good."

Receiving the address, Min Duan was in a constant state of ecstasy and wanted to rush over there immediately, but he was stopped dead in his tracks when he passed a window and saw his own wretched appearance.

He was bearded, his hair that hadn't been cut in a long time was down to the nape of his neck, his face wasn't clean, the nails on his hands hadn't been clipped, and his clothes hadn't been changed in how long?

How could he meet her in such a bad way.

Min Duan immediately bought all the things he needed to wash up and fix himself, checked into a hotel to take care of himself, and made sure he was cleaned up, so he took a plane to the city overnight.

By the time he found the place, it was already afternoon, and Min Duan checked the house number with the address again, his palms sweating with nervousness for the first time.

The place was a small cottage decorated in European style, with a blue roof and white walls, two stories high, with a number of plants by the door and a half-human-high iron fence in front.

Min Duan was thrilled the moment he rang the doorbell.

The bell rang melodiously into the house, and ten seconds or so later there was a clear sound of the lock being turned, and with a click, the door opened.

Qi You walked out with a tired face, "Cousin Husband, you're here."

Min Duan looked back, "Where is she?"

"She ......" Qi You seemed to have some words to say, his unspoken words hiding his emotions, "You should come in with me first."

Min Duan suppressed the uneasiness that welled up, curled his fingers tightly, and followed her inside in silence.

"Have a seat," Qi You handed him a glass of warm water, "I'll get something."

Min Duan scanned the living room, still in light beige tones, wooden furniture, floral arrangements, large, open floor-to-ceiling windows, her favorite style, but there was no sign of her.

Restraining his anxiety, Min Duan waited for a while, almost unable to sit still, when Qi You came over with a large cardboard box, "She wrote these for you and asked me to send you one every week."

Min Duan received it and saw that it was full of postcards, thousands of them, enough for him to keep receiving postcards from her for the next hundred years.

The above, written long in advance, what does she mean by this ......

"And this one, I found it under the bed." Qi You handed over the postcard in her hand as well; if she hadn't been organizing her things and found this one under the bed, she probably wouldn't have called Min Duan and gone along with her cousin's arrangement.

But she thought that her cousin wanted to see him.

Min Duan's fingertips trembled as he took the postcard, which read " Min Duan , I hi--" The fourth word was unfinished, a long stroke was drawn out, and the handwriting was quite messy, not the kind of messy that was intentional, but one that looked as if it had run out of energy.

There were still traces of ink swooshing on that stroke, like a tear had fallen.

"Where the hell is she?" Min Duan said with difficulty.

Qi You lowered her eyes and sighed deeply, "You come with me."

Walking backward to the cobblestone path, the oncoming wind brought the familiar scent of jasmine to him, and soon his eyes were filled with the color of jasmine in the courtyard, with the stone monument erected in the center being very conspicuous.

"Cousin suffered from cancer and planted this field of flowers here during her last moments, she didn't want her body to slowly decay so she ended up scattering it here as ashes." How could she not have expected that once her cousin came here, she single-handedly planted a grave for herself.

The person next to her was unusually silent, Qi You turned her head, "Cousin husband?" The next moment, her eyes darkened.

Min Duan manipulated her and said icily, "You go out first."

The afternoon sunlight was a bit harsh, and Min Duan quietly looked at the tombstone in front of him.

Thinking of her pearly smile, so sweet, she said a lifetime is so long, there's always a time to return.

False.

It's all fake.

The blood in his body has long been frozen, not feeling a trace of warmth from the daylight, he reached out to rub the cold stone tablet, his eyes pained, his voice hard to the extreme: " Xu You , you lied to me."

Blown gently by the sun-warmed gentle breeze, the jasmine swayed its delicate petals.

Xu You sees the blue sky in the backdrop of the projection, and it seems that the only thing left in the world is a lone figure standing in a field of white flowers.

He kept his eyelids lowered, making it difficult to read his expression.

The wind slowly stopped and he said, " Xu You , I can't wait for you."

"I'll get you."

Min Duan drew out the scalpel that Xu You had once placed against his neck and placed it in the same position.

"No!!!" Xu You shouted as hard as he could, but it was a pity that they were not in the same time and space and he could not hear them.

In the next moment, the plum red blood fell on the white petals, and the smell of blood and the scent of jasmine blended on the patch of soil.

With blood gushing from his neck and feeling the loss of his life force, Min Duan collapsed next to the stone monument, sniffing those light, familiar scents and quietly closing his eyes.

I can finally fall asleep, he thought.

The projection screen in front of his eyes disappeared, and Xu You had already blurred his vision, unknowingly bursting into tears, and not noticing that his body had been trembling.

"Warning warning warning, host emotional actualization value reached 60 ..... .70..... .75...... Breaking 80," the system said, "Initiate emotional reset initialization."

Xu You The memories in your head are stripped to pieces, and so much of it seems like it's through a layer of hairy glass, and you can't really see it.

I don't know how long it took, but Xu You stopped her tears, calmed down, and after her sanity returned, the system began to say, "Please prepare the host to teleport to the next world."

Xu You fell into the white circle of light and disappeared into blank space-time.

Waking up in a room full of joyful red, the red head covering her vision, her eyes dropping to see the wedding dress on her body and the gold bracelets on her hands.

Xu You lifted the red head with one hand, did not even read the world line, directly stood up and walked to the table, smashed the porcelain wine pot on the table, picked the sharpest tip, and stabbed it into the neck.

The candle flames swayed, the big red candles shed remnant tears, blood stained red clothes, and blood flowers fell on the ground.

......

Xu You once again opened her eyes, back to blank space and time, subconsciously touched her neck, always felt a vague pain, the shards stabbed in is a real pain, wait until the vitals completely flowed, she is no more pain detached from back.

This real pain made many hosts not dare to do anything to themselves even if they didn't want to do the task, so the system's flat voice said in rare exasperation, "You!"

It was the first time it had encountered host resistance, "Don't you want to go back to your original world?"

Xu You let out a cold, unenthusiastic sigh.

Because she realized that there was nothing they could do with her except treat the wish to return to the original world as a reward, which was really a threat.

"Warning," the system said again, "Host's Emotional Actualization Value reached 79!"

Xu You continued indifferently, "Oh."

Previously seven eight said, feelings of actualization value will be because of the host's own resistance and reset not clean, and then again they only have the right to reset once, feelings are still can rise well.

System:"...... Transmission."

Xu You was transported to a new world again, and when she woke up she saw that she was roughly dressed in coarse cloths, with a pair of big hands with a lot of calluses, and was squatting by the river with a mallet to do the laundry.

Xu You gave a cry, threw the mallet away, kicked away the wooden basin in front of her, and jumped straight into the lake, the earthy water filling her mouth and nose, her stomach pouch rising as she sank.

When I woke up again, I unexpectedly found that I did not return to the blank space and time, Xu You surveyed the room, carved and hollowed out wooden doors and windows, the bed curtains are lightly veiled, and I am all in damask and silk, and my hands are also a lot of fine and tender, so I guess it is a young lady of a certain family.

Is this the world of rebirth literature?

Xu You pulled down the gold hairpin on his head and stuck it into his neck without hesitation.

Blood gushed out, Xu You gritted his teeth to endure the pain.

Waking up again, she still hadn't gone back, a glance at the dark sky, the trees flaring under the dark night, the cold wind blowing through, bringing with it a stench of corpse rot.

Xu You looked at his small body and made sure that he was reborn again, and was left for dead in the middle of a deserted mountain.

This time she still doesn't read the world line, and crawls out of the pile on her hands and knees and out of the way.

In this ordinary world, there is an ordinary person, sometimes windy, sometimes watching flowers and birds, she from going to sparsely populated places to walk, waiting for the sunrise to watch the sunset, picking wild fruits and pulling out bird eggs, self-indulgence, but also because of the mountains full of peach blossoms and baffled, remembering a person.

When the system runs out of energy, Xu You returns to blank space-time again.

The system was simply furious: "What do you want, every time you are allowed to cross over, do you know how much energy it has to take, and do you know how hard it is to find the conditions attached to your identity?"

The system said grumpily, "I'm trying to punch up my performance, too!"

The so-called timing of the negotiation is when the other party is not calm, they still have their sanity, and they have made it clear that they can't do anything to help her, Xu You seized the moment and said, "As far as I can observe, the essence of your mission is actually to ask the mission objects not to persecute the world, if I don't have to behead them and I can make sure that they don't go dark, and that everything is stable in the world, can I do that? "

The system fell into a long silence, for the first time a host made these requests, in the past, when a task was set, the host would just bury his head in the sand and do it.

Honestly after countless measurements and long experiments, it's still best to eliminate the hidden dangers by cutting out the roots.

Xu You sat cross-legged and said with a smile, "Anyway, you're already bound to me, you can do it if you don't want to, don't you just want performance? I'll take you to score points in reverse."

System: "......"

The one man and the machine were quiet for a long time before the system gritted its teeth and said, "I'll report back to the mainframe."

Xu You waited left and right, and waited for half a day before the system resounded again, "It's fine to follow your request, but in order to ensure the stability of the world, it's necessary to have the target mission's blackened value reduced to 0, as well as the trust value for you reach 100 before the mission is considered complete."

"If the blackened value of the mission target breaks through 80, we will forcefully intervene in the host's body and manipulate the host's body to carry out the decapitation mission, which involves the issue of the host's personal rights, so sign up."

A glass plate appeared in front of Xu You, and she quickly put down her handprint.

"All right," the system said indignantly as it retrieved the glass plate, "start the next world's quest."

"No." Xu You said.

The system was once again cranky: "Where does it not work again?"

Xu You : "I'm going to reset the first world to follow the new treaty content."

The first world as a newbie quest can be reset by picking a time period, and many fast-trackers who do their first quests with low grades and points will be given a chance to reset what they didn't do well enough and brush up their points.

"Row, row, row."

Xu You: "Wait a little longer."

System: "What again!"

"I don't want you," Xu You said, "I want the Tinder." The matchmaker inside his head disappeared into a disembodied electronic voice at some point.

The system was exasperated, "I'm the professional Chopper System, Seven Eight is a trainee system, only responsible for signing and explaining some matters."

Xu You figured it out, it turned out that this electronic voice took over from the decapitation mission stage, and after that its performance would be linked to her, which she wasn't too happy about, "I want it, besides I don't need to decapitate missions anymore."

Though Seven-Eight was playing Tai Chi in her head, taking vacations and not doing her job ...... but it was still a good system.

"......" The system had the feeling that it was being used up and then thrown away, but it couldn't stand this host anymore, it might as well move on to another host, besides, her terms had changed, so it might affect it's ability to punch results, and it was the number one system on the host points list!

She had already cost it two worlds, and her composite points had dropped by an unknown amount, so without it, let's see how she'll cry for help in the future.

Being extremely efficient, the electronic voice simply stopped talking and simply silenced, and after a while, the oddly poorly made matchmaker appeared in the blank space, and it came running over, "Host, oing oing oing~"

Xu You, expressionless, held down the oinking monster with one hand, "Alright, just teleport me back to the first world."

Seven Eight struggled to raise his charcoal-black head and said vocally, "Host, I miss you boing."

Xu You gives it another hand to hold down, clearly shawking her points, "Hurry up."

"Okay, host."

A long timeline appears in front of Xu You.

"Please select the point in time for the host," it said in a tone of warm reminder, "only the red point can be selected oh."

At a glance, there's only one red dot, Xu You: "......" What's the point of picking?

She took a closer look, and that point just happened to be stuck at the node of the decapitation mission.