Chapter 38: The Irregularity Acting as a Catalyst

Too many things had happened tonight, and with so many people around, it had not been safe. Earlier, Lin Jiangye had only been able to send a few messages and briefly explain the situation. There had been no time to go into detail.

But now, things had reached this point. They were both soaking honestly and openly in the bathtub… If he still could not explain clearly when they were alone face to face, Yu Wangxiao definitely would not let him off.

The motor of the massage bathtub was very quiet. Around their ears, there was only the regular sound of flowing water, breathing, and the fine foam striking their shoulders like waves, bursting with a splash as warm mist rose.

Lin Jiangye sighed comfortably and curiously fiddled with the switches at the edge of the bathtub. In an instant, a fierce stream of water rushed over from behind him, pushing strongly against his back.

He quickly turned it off and pretended nothing had happened. “Let’s sort this out from the beginning, okay? First, speaking of it, this was also something from last week. When you were on a business trip in North City, and I went back to the Lin family to talk with Qiu Zhen…”

“I remember it very clearly.” Yu Wangxiao smiled without a trace. “Come, move closer.”

Lin Jiangye did not act distant either. He immediately shifted a little closer, lazily resting his head on the edge of the bathtub, half his body submerged in the water as he continued, “My attitude was rather cold. Basically, I flipped the table directly. Maybe I was too aggressive? Anyway, she looked a little sad. Then, after she decided to help me, her aura somehow changed. It became like she really cared about me, and her whole person smelled especially fragrant.”

“Smelled especially fragrant… This wasn’t an isolated case, right? Who else?” Yu Wangxiao repeated unhurriedly, very good at picking out the key point.

“Cough. Gu Jiu’an talked to me alone a few times before. He said that his living environment in the Gu family used to be very bad. Because his biological mother’s ashes were in Gu Yuan’s hands, in order to get them back, his actions and development had to be very careful, limited at every turn. But think about it. Isn’t the reason Gu Jiu’an was controlled strangely stupid? Would a normal person lower himself for ashes? It’s simply inexplicable. Clearly, as long as he quickly seized power successfully, he could snatch back the ashes of eighteen generations of the Gu family’s ancestors.”

Lin Jiangye clicked his tongue in amazement over this and still could not understand it at all.

Hearing that these two had been alone together quite often, Yu Wangxiao was originally a little uncomfortable. He admitted it.

But… looking at Lin Jiangye growing more and more indignant as he spoke, now he even felt a little like laughing.

“There are many people in this world who are inexplicable like Gu Jiu’an. Their thinking and logic seem naturally confined within an unbelievable little frame. Like birds raised in cages after hatching, believing they can only walk and never once thinking of learning to fly.”

“Really? Then wouldn’t interacting with them be exhausting?”

Yu Wangxiao’s arm passed behind his head and lightly rested on Lin Jiangye’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I’m already used to it. After all, as long as they never fly out, Yu Corporation can always innovate first, open up different fields in advance, seize market opportunities, and earn more money…”

Lin Jiangye nodded repeatedly as he listened. Recently, he very much liked listening to Yu Wangxiao talk about making money. He simply loved hearing Yu Wangxiao speak as if he were rich. If not for that, how could he enjoy such a powerful massage bathtub tonight…

He raised his hand to squeeze Yu Wangxiao’s fingers and curved his lips. “Hey, Yu Wangxiao, I’ve always felt that you’re not that hard to understand. Your thoughts and actions are quite reasonable, and you don’t speak in riddles. But I can’t understand other people. Gu Jiu’an was a little strange that day. As he talked, he suddenly had a complete realization… Really. It was halfway through talking with me that he suddenly reacted and realized his mother’s ashes shouldn’t be a shackle.”

“Thank you for the compliment. And then what happened?” Yu Wangxiao narrowed his black eyes, seeming very expectant.

“Then…” Lin Jiangye instinctively sensed danger and lightly coughed. “Then he turned into the smell of smoked bacon. Quite fragrant.”

“Mm, quite fragrant. Did you want to eat him?”

“No, no… Listen to me. If only Qiu Zhen smelled fragrant, then it might still be a coincidence. But now that two people in a row have shown the same situation, doesn’t it seem very suspicious? From my perspective, their behavior is like their way of thinking beginning to deviate from the ‘right track.’ Their souls, once stiff, rigid, and rule-bound, suddenly came alive. Does that make sense?”

“Mm. The little bird suddenly realizes it has wings and can fly, so it wants to flap and escape the cage?” Yu Wangxiao looked thoughtful, directly using the example he had given earlier.

“Yes, yes, exactly. Even if they themselves haven’t realized it, their thinking has already broken away from that logic that used to be completely fixed until death. It no longer conforms to their innate ‘character setting.’ A free soul wants to escape its shackles, and fragrance spills out from the shell during the struggle. That’s very reasonable. It’s an instinctive survival reaction!”

At this point, Lin Jiangye paused and drank the glass of red wine on the little tray. Yu Wangxiao’s prepared snacks had also been mostly eaten by him.

Perhaps because Lin Jiangye had mentioned that “beautiful dream” before, the food Yu Wangxiao had placed on the little tray was all chocolate.

It felt just a tiny bit sarcastic, but Lin Jiangye did not mind at all.

He loved eating it.

The chocolate balls sprinkled with shredded coconut had mellow liqueur centers that burst open, and several pieces filled with nuts also had a very good texture.

Bathing was both rest and consumption. After being tired for an entire day, Lin Jiangye was very willing to take in a large amount of high-calorie food.

He ate with great effort, deliberately letting the slightly bitter fragrance spread at the tip of his nose to prevent himself from being unable to resist biting Yu Wangxiao a few more times.

Yu Wangxiao picked up the wine bottle and unhurriedly filled the glass halfway again, then seriously confirmed with him, “These abnormal scents should only be something you can detect. Humans can’t smell them, and even the most powerful detection instruments can’t identify or smell them. Is that right?”

“That’s right. Only I can smell them. It’s a matter of physical structure. But that’s what makes it strange. Because… almost from the very beginning, I could smell your fragrance. As my physical condition slowly improved, my perception in this area became more and more sensitive too.” Lin Jiangye wiped his hands with a bath towel and once again let himself sink deeply into the water, his head pressing against Yu Wangxiao’s shoulder covered in droplets. “Hey, do you know that this place is a novel world? In this kind of scripted world, occasionally a certain character will awaken self-awareness.”

“I guessed.”

Yu Wangxiao was not surprised and continued adding, “After I was reborn, I did some small experiments. For example, deliberately changing my behavior in social situations, or changing things I had said in my previous life. Sometimes, I would only quietly alter a few words, and the meaning of that sentence might completely change, but the other person’s lines… usually would not differ at all. Even if there was a little logical unreasonableness, it could still continue step by step.”

“So scary! If small changes don’t work, do big changes work?”

“They do. Let me think. You have a decent relationship with Li Yushen, right? That child is pretty good.” Yu Wangxiao smiled and lowered his voice. “Before, he was Yu Lin’s loyal little follower, until he came to my house a few times for meals and went to Yu Corporation several times to deliver documents for his father. Now, he has already become a normal person.”

“Eh, that’s true. Li Yushen really is especially normal, but he doesn’t seem fragrant either. Right, there’s also Old Madam Gu. Before she passed away, she was not fragrant, and I couldn’t confirm it at all. But her possibility of awakening should be the greatest. The process of struggling against her ‘character setting’ was very clear, very intense, very classic…” Lin Jiangye was a little distressed. This situation was slightly different from his current guess.

Yu Wangxiao seemed able to see through his mood at one glance and directly reached out to pull him into his arms, comforting him with an extremely generous action. “Don’t worry. Finish explaining your thoughts first. Any inconsistencies with the current situation can slowly be solved later.”

Lin Jiangye was not polite with him either. He buried his face against Yu Wangxiao’s wet chest and rubbed against it. Immediately, his mind and spirit felt refreshed, and his muffled voice came out. “Wu. I suspect that my existence is an irregularity. When a high-intensity energy belonging outside this world stays near ordinary people for a long time, and then cooperates with a little catalyst, it can more easily induce the phenomenon of character awakening.”

“Catalyst…” Yu Wangxiao’s body was a little tense, but he worked hard not to show it. His tone was still unhurried, and his self-cultivation was truly excellent. “Is that why you scolded Lin Yu for so long on the cruise?”

“Yeah. I specially recorded it with a recording pen. I’ll play the whole process for you later, so you can help me analyze it. I’m not very good at cursing people, so the stimulation on him might not have been strong enough. Next time, I need to do more homework, accumulate properly, and then go scold him again!” Lin Jiangye was eager to try, almost pressing his entire body onto Yu Wangxiao.

Yu Wangxiao became even more tense. He realized that Lin Jiangye had not realized at all that neither of them was wearing clothes right now, and that their posture was becoming increasingly wrong… as if he were born lacking a sense of distance.

He pretended to be serious and pinched the back of Lin Jiangye’s neck, his voice hoarse. “…Don’t rush. Learning to curse people isn’t hard. Now, tell me about your exploded corpse.”

Lin Jiangye stiffened, then relaxed again and dryly said, “Alright. I really haven’t told you about my past. I died. I detonated myself. A super big explosion. I suspect that in the meteor shower from ten years ago, apart from cosmic debris, a large part of the fallen meteorites were… mm, my corpse.”

Yu Wangxiao was silent for a long while, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with his light description. But at least Lin Jiangye’s vitality was very strong now. He was lively, able to eat and drink.

Forget it, forget it. What else could he do?

Yu Wangxiao could only sigh softly, pick up the remaining fragments of the stone bowl on the little tray, and carefully inspect them. He could not see anything. So he stuffed one of the broken stone pieces into Lin Jiangye’s mouth and said seriously, “If eating it is good for you, then hurry up and finish it. When did you start suspecting this?”

“Wu, wu… Just today. When I ate the ghost infant, I saw its entire process from birth to death, and a little of my past memories also recovered. To be honest, I never connected these two things before.” Lin Jiangye worked hard to swallow the unpleasant stone piece and drank clean the red wine Yu Wangxiao had just poured. “When I previously discovered that my memories weren’t complete, I had only guessed that the missing memories were probably because I lost my original body, causing information to be lost.”

But who could have imagined it? The remains left after he chose self-destruction could actually beautifully turn into a meteor shower and precisely land in the new world he had not yet arrived at.

If those remains were treated as corpse pieces, thinking carefully, it was actually rather romantic.

“Does this count as destiny? My soul and my body both came to this world to find you, and both are very helpful to you.” Lin Jiangye looked thoughtful. “Look, my body can help you drive away monsters, and I myself can protect you and do many interesting new things with you, right?”

He did not realize he was practically saying love words and was completely immersed in pride toward himself.

“Mm.” Yu Wangxiao looked deeply at him and only answered very softly after a moment.

“You’re so cold.”

“No. I’m very happy right now.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then can I still eat chocolate? This stone is too hard to eat. Yu Wangxiao, I still want chocolate—”

Lin Jiangye had only spoken halfway when his whole body suddenly froze again, and his eyes widened little by little. His gaze slowly moved upward and landed on Yu Wangxiao’s hair damp with mist. For a long time, he did not move again.

“What is it? Is there something wrong?” Yu Wangxiao was somewhat confused and instinctively wanted to get up and take the gun, but Lin Jiangye raised a hand and pressed him back down.

Favorability: 99%.

That pink light screen, which he had grown used to ignoring in ordinary times, suddenly emitted a piercing red glow. The semi-transparent appearance bathed in light trembled gently, and in the blink of an eye, it underwent a tremendous change.

The progress bar had completely disappeared. Replacing it was unexpectedly a fully closed spherical flower bud. It was still in a semi-transparent state, held up by several clusters of fine, scale-like leaves and branches.

Its size was very small, and its round shape was not very regular. It was entirely unremarkable. Within the faint green, a gray-white glow seeped through, seeming to foreshadow the appearance of the cone fruit when it was born. If Lin Jiangye had not been close enough, he would never have been able to see that there was such a tiny flower bud among the branches and leaves.

“…There’s a flower on your head.”

Lin Jiangye murmured softly and raised his hand, carefully trying to touch it, but he passed straight through the gray-white glow. His palm slowly covered Yu Wangxiao’s head and gradually spread open.

The spherical flower bud reflected in his hollow silver pupils, like a gray, dusty moon floating on a shimmering water surface.

“So strange. I suddenly miss my mom a little. Have I thought of her before? I don’t remember.”