TVLMS Chapter 43

Before Lu Ziqing’s jealousy turned skyward, the understanding Lin Mianmian took the initiative to come out of the guest room to acknowledge her presence: “Classmate Lu, it’s me ……”

Lu Ziqing was stunned, and his tightly furrowed brow still had not loosened: “Mianmian? What are you doing here?”

For him, even the opposite sex was an existence that needed to be guarded against. Gu Xiyu and Lin Mianmian met much earlier, and he was jealous of the friendly atmosphere between them every time they teamed up to play a game, even though he was well aware that Lin Mianmian was just an old fan of Gu Xiyu’s.

Lin Mianmian was torn as she pondered how to explain when her eyes suddenly looked past him and landed somewhere behind him, her eyes widening as if she had seen something that shocked her to no end.

Lu Ziqing looked back and saw the boy in casual clothes behind him. He was looking down at the hand that seemed to have just moved away from his mouth. He froze for a moment before noticing the bright red liquid lying in the other party’s palm, the color even staining his pinkish lips harshly.

He felt as if his heart had stopped beating for a second.

Gu Xiyu, who had spat out a mouthful of blood, looked calmer than he did and spoke softly, “Walk me to the hospital.”

It was as if he had just caught a common cold.

Lu Ziqing was about to go crazy. He thought it was just an ordinary cough, and he had asked Gu Xiyu to go to the clinic or hospital several times but was rejected. He never thought a minor illness would suddenly make him spit out such a large mouthful of blood.

Before Gu Xiyu lost consciousness, he vaguely heard Lin Mianmian’s frightened cries and Lu Ziqing’s anxious calls.

He was not surprised by the situation and had even expected it.

When he woke up in the hospital, he could hear a regular beeping sound in his ears. The atmosphere in the ward was fairly quiet, and two low voices were talking beside the bed, one of them familiar and distinctly panicked.

“Isn’t it just a normal cough? What is this report?”

“The test report says that Mr. Gu has ingested too many chemical drugs, resulting in damage to his spleen, liver, lungs, and even kidneys. If the intake of drugs had been any heavier, he might have been beyond saving. The patient was so weak, why didn’t you take him for a check-up in advance? Analysis shows that he had taken unnecessary medication for a long time as a result, so don’t take medication indiscriminately without a doctor’s permission.”

“My brother didn’t take drugs indiscriminately. You just need to tell me whether his life is in danger and what effects it will have on his body!” Lu Ziqing’s voice was getting more and more agitated, and he was on the verge of losing control of his emotions.

The door to the ward was suddenly pushed open, as if someone had come in to stop Lu Ziqing’s violent mood, and he and the doctor left the room.

Gu Xiyu was still a little drowsy, and even though he was conscious, he didn’t open his eyes, but only moved his consciousness to open the system panel.

The system came with a program to monitor the health of his body, so from the moment he felt unwell a while ago, he had switched it on and discreetly looked at it, and he had noticed the changes in his body.

What no one knew was that when Auntie Zhang went to visit her family back home with the supplies he had given her, she handed him a piece of paper not long after she returned. Auntie Zhang couldn’t actually read the contents of the paper, as it was dense with words and strange data. Gu Xiyu talked to her and realized that it was something her son had asked her to bring to him.

It was an examination report on food. It turned out that her child had a foundation in Chinese medicine, and after stewing the supplements he had sent, he discovered subtle inconsistencies in the taste, so he took it for inspection, not expecting to find that the stuff had been spiked with drugs that would cause chronic death if ingested in excess.

The health panel in the system program also proved this, but he had other plans in mind and chose to hide it.

He pretended not to know about it and continued to consume the tonics cooked by Auntie Zhang as usual, but he did it with a clear calculation in mind and a certain amount each time. He would either find an opportunity to pour out any excess or find a way to avoid it.

Treating his body like that was necessary, whether it was for the check-up when the Lu family purposely called him over for dinner or as a ruse to prevent Lu Ziqing’s risk value from being compromised. So he kept the drug intake to an amount that would make his body somewhat unhealthy but not to the point of death.

He just didn’t expect that this body was not as strong since he hadn’t taken good care of it before, and the onset was so terrible. But according to the health program, it wasn’t too serious.

There was another reason why he looked at it discreetly, aside from not wanting to influence the judgment of the subsequent mission instructions issued by the system –

He felt like there was something wrong with his intelligence system.

While he was alone in the ward, he found the ‘Report/Report Error’ option from the hidden corner of the panel and opened it to the message screen, where he could contact the management branch directly.

[Hello L12-31 Branch, this is Gu Xiyu.]

*L12-31 is level 12, branch 31.

[There are a few things I would like to confirm with you.]

————————–

“Thanks to early detection, the patient’s body is just a little weak now and not in a life-threatening situation. However, he has suffered irreparable internal injuries, so you need to take care of him more carefully in the future and prevent him from taking drugs indiscriminately. If you keep that up, there should be no major problems.”

Standing next to Lu Ziqing was a middle-aged woman with a gentle temperament. She nodded at the doctor and said, “Okay doctor, thanks.”

The doctor glanced at the gloomy-faced Lu Ziqing before turning around and leaving.

After leaving, only Zhou Tianyi and Lu Ziqing were left standing a short distance from each other, and the atmosphere was a little awkward. At the end of the corridor was a beverage vending machine, where Xu Chengxuan and Lin Mianmian, who was wearing a pink jacket, were standing. When the latter stood on tiptoe and pointed towards the top, Xu Chengxuan reached out and tapped on the machine, then bent down and got her the aluminum canned beverage.

With the unexpected incident in the middle of the night, the first people Lin Mianmian could think of were Xu Chengxuan’s parents, who had a car. Regardless of the inconvenience, she ran to their door and rang the doorbell. Zhou Tianyi was quite kind, and knowing that Gu Xiyu had an accident, she put on her coat and drove him to the hospital without saying a word.

Zhou Tianyi’s expression gradually calmed down, and before Lu Ziqing went back to the room, she took the rare initiative to say, “Ziqing, let’s …… talk.”

Lu Ziqing was holding the doctor’s report tightly, but ultimately did not refuse.

When Gu Xiyu opened his eyes, a person was sitting by the bed. To his surprise, that person was Xu Chengxuan.

On the single sofa in the corner, Lin Mianmian had her head down. The hood on her jacket covered most of her face, and she seemed to have fallen asleep.

Gu Xiyu’s eyes flicked around the other corners of the ward before finally landing on Xu Chengxuan. The latter knew who he was looking for and said bluntly, “I just saw my mother take him somewhere for a talk.”

Gu Xiyu pursed his lips slightly and simply asked, “You know about their relationship?”

Xu Chengxuan acquiesced and spoke only after a long time, “I was surprised and suddenly understood why Lu Ziqing hated me the moment I changed schools.”

“In his opinion, I was the villain who stole his mother, it was normal for him to loathe me.”

Gu Xiyu didn’t say anything, and Xu Chengxuan continued, “But ever since you appeared, his hatred seems to have slowly disappeared. It’s not that he doesn’t hate anymore, I just feel that he doesn’t seem to be obsessed anymore.”

“That’s good.” Gu Xiyu said softly.

Xu Chengxuan was quite smart and could guess something based on his physical condition: “A big place like the Lu family is full of sinister people who eat people without spitting out bones. It’s better to leave early while you still can.”

There was a light smile on his face. “Thank you, you don’t have to worry, I have my own plans.”

In a corner of the hospital away from the ward, Zhou Tianyi and Lu Ziqing were having their first conversation. She felt that she had a lot to say to her son, with whom she had little contact, but when the thousands of words came to her lips, they only converged into a feeble, “I’m sorry.”

Lu Ziqing was still looking down at the report, not paying any attention to her.

She didn’t mind either, mainly because ever since she met Lu Ziqing, her heart had been clogged with guilt from all these years: “I know that I have wronged you all these years. I shouldn’t have taken out all those grudges and grievances against the Lu family on you, thinking that I would be able to put all the unpleasantness behind me by simply rejecting you.”

“I was too selfish, thinking only of myself, but I forgot that you, though very young, could be hurt. I ……”

“There’s no need for that.” Lu Ziqing suddenly raised his head, interrupting her words.

The dark eyes were cold and indifferent, as if he were looking at a stranger, and Lu Ziqing, who was much taller than her, said in a soft voice, “I don’t care anymore.”

His tone was calm, and even the ripples in his eyes were barely visible. The hostility that had been present when they first met was gone. It was more like he had voluntarily put away the thorns that would have pierced him, rather than having his edges smoothed out.

For he had a new mentality and something to rely on, so he did not need to cling to things that would only hurt him.

“For me, having my brother is enough.”

Zhou Tianyi’s eyes widened slightly the moment she heard these words, and she soon realized the deep meaning hidden in them. She grabbed Lu Ziqing before he left: “You …… Ziqing, I can understand that you have a grudge against me, but you can’t make an impulsive decision just to get revenge on me, or just because of some warmth you experienced for a moment—”

Just as her words fell, her hand was heavily thrown away.

Lu Ziqing’s expression was a bit incomprehensible: “Revenge on you?”

“You’re thinking too much, do you really think you’ll always be that important in my heart…?”

Lu Ziqing laughed lightly and said, “I know exactly what I want, don’t always impose your self-righteousness on me. Just like when you thought leaving me and my father to pursue the new life you wanted, you should have thought that was the best outcome and decision.”

“In fact, was it really?”

Zhou Tianyi was a little stunned by Lu Ziqing’s words, and by the time she came back to her senses, she was the only one left in the secluded corner.

As Lu Ziqing went back to the ward, he passed by the chairs in the corridor, on which sat the perpetually indifferent Xu Chengxuan and the drowsy Lin Mianmian. He glanced at them, pushed the door open, and walked in, surprised to find Gu Xiyu already awake.

When Gu Xiyu saw him, he asked, “Does my mother know about this?”

Lu Ziqing closed the door and replied, “We didn’t alert her when we came out.”

It was better not to let Xie Chunhua know about this matter first, to save her from worrying.

“Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere? Is it very uncomfortable?”

Gu Xiyu: “It’s fine, I’m fine.”

Lu Ziqing had a sullen face as he pulled a chair over to sit by his bed: “You’re not fine at all, you’re vomiting blood.”

“Well, it might be a case of the body’s mechanism rejecting the harmful substances,” Gu Xiyu said.

When Lu Ziqing saw how calm Gu Xiyu was, he became furious and asked in a stifled voice, “Are you that careless about your body? Didn’t you say you wanted to keep me company and come back to live with me and support my dreams when you finish your studies? If you can’t even take care of your basic health, how can you give me a future?”

Gu Xiyu was stunned by his question.

Lu Ziqing took his hand, slowly interlacing their fingers and clasping them together. He grasped the hand hard, as if he wanted to really feel the warmth coming from his palm.

He whispered, “I’ll be obedient, I won’t stop you if you want to fulfill your dream, I respect your choice, and I’ll try to trust you and wait for you to come back. You have to promise me one thing too, take care of your body and don’t let anything like this happen again, okay?”

“Brother, my life …… is only so long, and I want to spend more time with you in the limited days I have.”

Whether it was the previous mission target or the one after that, Lu Ziqing could not easily let go of it. But looking at Gu Xiyu now, when he almost thought he would lose him, he suddenly figured everything out.

Since one was an interchangeable fact and the other was an established development, he only hoped that the period of time that Gu Xiyu belonged to him could be a little longer.

He didn’t want him to leave so quickly.