Chapter 154: The Witch’s Secret
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
After Granny Wang next door turned into a zombie and joined the Eternal Journey, her granddaughter got into a public renting house that provided better living conditions and was closer to her school. ng Chao, then, used his contribution to apply for their room and moved out.
They were no longer short of living space, so once ng Yishan had so money, he decided to remodel the apartnt, which led to him digging up quite a lot of the wall plaster and floor tiles.
Coincidentally, Bai Jiacao was at ho in the afternoon. She had been bored, so she groped around until she found a box hidden in a corner.
It was a tal box used to store MRE hardtacks around thirty years ago.
At that ti, they lacked resources, so when they finished eating the food inside, they were often reluctant to throw away the box, so they used it to store other stuff.
“I think... I put it there when we married.” Bai Suxin and ng Yishan could not quite rember it clearly.
Bai Jiacao opened the lid, and the first thing in sight was a red, heart-shaped chanical watch.
Due to the strong interference from the spirit energy of the Other World, the screen had distorted a long ti ago.
Bai Suxin was surprised and delighted. She brought out the damaged chanical watch and looked at it before she put it on her wrist and said happily, “This is the first birthday present your Dad gave . So it’s here? I was wondering why I could never find it!”
ng Yishan giggled.
Under the chanical watch were a few postcards and birthday cards. They were written full of words, and so of them had hearts drawn on them.
ng Yishan’s face turned red. He quickly snatched them from his daughter and said hastily, “Don’t look!”
“Too late, Dad. I already read them. I didn’t expect that you were so cheesy when you were young!” Bai Jiacao covered her mouth and giggled.
“What? What is it?” ng Chao was very curious as well. “Are those love letters Dad wrote to Mom when he was young? How cheesy was he?”
“Bai! Jia! Cao!” ng Yishan was angry, and he looked ready to throw punches.
“Big Brother, as Dad’s dearest daughter and the one who gives him the most love and affection among his children, I will definitely not betray him,” Bai Jiacao said righteously. “Even if you give one thousand... make that one thousand five hundred, I won’t betray him!”
“Alright, stop causing a ruckus, you two.” Bai Suxin picked up the letters and birthday cards she received when she was young while recalling all the sweet mories from the past. “Little Cao, what exactly did you discover? Why did you say that I was really good when I was young?”
“It’s this.”
Bai Jiacao brought out a mottled notebook from the bottom of the tincan.
The yellow cover did not have any words or pictures. After it was corroded by the passage of ti for more than twenty years, the paper was very brittle, and when Bai Jiacao flung it a little, pieces fell off. The ink on them was very faint, but they could still tell that their mother had indeed written the notebook.
“What is this?” Bai Suxin frowned. She looked confused. “Why don’t I rember having this notebook with ?”
ng Chao went over and read it carefully with Bai Jiacao.
After flipping through two pages, his pupils shrank swiftly.
“This is... sothing like a notebook for class, or sothing like a handwritten copy of exercises,” ng Chao mumbled. “The question on the first page is a function problem that requires you to modify a force execution problem slightly in a zero gravity environnt. It involves advanced mathematics, physics, ergonomics, and other fields. It’s at least five tis harder than the questions in the national college examination!”
“What?” Bai Suxin was absolutely baffled. “Zero what?”
“Zero gravity. In simple terms, it’s a problem about how we can use martial arts in space,” Bai Jiacao explained. “Even though we haven’t managed to break through the Other World’s ozone layer, the explorative dive into this theory is very helpful to solving the tactical mobility of the powerful fighters when they move like the wind or are going through free fall.
“In any case, this is top-tier martial arts research. That’s why I said that you’re amazing, Mom. You were just in your teens or twenties around twenty years ago, right? You were about the sa age as I am, and you didn’t live in such a good environnt as we do, but you were already looking into such difficult questions. It’s nothing strange that I inherited your talent, then.”
“This too. I think this is a design of a spirit energy conductor drawn after assembling or disassembled a really intricate machine.” ng Chao narrowed his eyes. “The interference in the Other World is great, so the materials are not stable at all. You seldom see such intricate machines. This looks like... so sort of stimulation device. It looks like... it can make sothing explode.”
The more he looked at it, the more shocked he was.
All the questions in the hand-copied exercise book involved really profound theories, and they gave off a really dangerous presence.
It was difficult for him to believe that this was created during the warring era twenty years ago, when the research of spirit energy was far less advanced.
It was even more difficult for him to imagine that his mother, Bai Suxin, who was a normal housewife, would be able to solve most of the problems.
Suddenly, he stopped flipping through the pages.
He saw a picture casually drawn by his mother at the corner of one of the pages.
It was a long, narrow eye ford by two overlapping “X”s.
Each X seed to be an eye, but they were sharing one pupil.
A dark light shone from the black pupil, which looked like a black hole that could devour souls.
‘Ow! It hurts!’
A sharp pain pierced his brain after coming through the center of his brow. The mory fragnts from his previous life danced around like shrieking sparrows. ng Chao knew that he had seen this picture before in his previous life, but where?
“Big brother? Heh...”
In his daze, he heard the Dark Witch’s derisive cackles in his ears.
An illusion appeared in front of his eyes.
ng Chao felt as if he was living through his previous life again. His world was filled with darkness and blood.
Purple hair burned, and bloody wings spread out. His little sister looked as if she had escaped from a bloody hell. She clutched his neck and lifted him from the ground.
“You have no idea just what it is that I face.
“Trash like you are a burden that will bring to my ruin.
“From the day Dad and Mom died, we’ve had nothing tying us together. Stop bothering by saying that you’re my big brother!
“Get lost! Leave my side! Go to the ends of the world! Go as far away as possible! Otherwise, the next ti we et, I will kill you!”
ng Chao ignored the Dark Witch’s poisonous and resolute words.
He stared at her hand, the one she used to clutch his neck.
On the back of his younger sister’s hand was the strange picture of the two “X”s that resembled eyes. They overlapped with each other and shared one single pupil!
The picture protruded on her skin and shone with a strange light. It did not look like a tattoo, but sothing branded deeply into her skin, a curse that would never be wiped off!
Thud!
ng Chao fell forward. The mories from his previous life shattered, and his mind returned to the present.
“Big Brother, why did you fall down all of a sudden?”
The middle school version of the Dark Witch did not have any mark on the back of her hand, and she quickly helped him up.
“You’re bleeding from your nose.” ng Yishan frowned.
“Quick. Use a cold towel to cover your nose. Don’t be in a hurry to stuff your nostrils. Stuff it only when the blood has flowed out completely.” Bai Suxin took care of her son with her heart aching for him. “You silly boy, you must have been training really hard in the university, yet you only talk about the good things you went through there. How can we not be worried if you act this way?”
“I... I’m fine. It’s just been really hot and dry lately, so my body is a little heaty.” ng Chao couldn’t care less about his bleeding nose right now. He pointed at the eye made of the Xs on the notebook. “Mom, did you draw this?”
Bai Suxin looked at it. “I think so.”
ng Chao sucked in a deep breath. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I drew it casually more than twenty years ago. I must have seen it sowhere, and since I was bored, I just drew it. What’s wrong? Your face is really pale. You look like you saw a ghost.” Bai Suxin was puzzled. “Is there sothing wrong with this picture?”
ng Chao opened his mouth, but he did not know what to say.
The clues in his mind were still scattered and jumbled together.
“Alright, let’s not talk about the picture for now. Mom, what’s with this notebook? You’ve never attended university. Did your high school teach such difficult problems at that ti?”
ng Chao was truly skeptical. He thought about it and asked, “Mom, have you been hiding your true identity all this while? Are you actually the heir of so ancient and mysterious cultivation family? Did you decide to hide your na and elope with Dad due to those cliche reasons born from the grudges between aristocratic families?”
“What?” Bai Jiacao widened her eyes. In an instant, her mind ca up with a two million word story. She even picked the male and female protagonists for it.
“What do you an elope?” ng Yishan used his chopsticks to rap his son’s head. “I married your mother legally! I even brought her back to the house with a proper car!
“What are you thinking about?” Bai Suxin could not help but laugh. “Your grandpa and grandma were both normal people. The world was in chaos at that ti, so they died a long ti ago during the monster invasion. We do have so photos of them, though. They record how I lived when I was young. Do you think that was the life of an aristocratic family?
“As for these exercises, I do find them a little strange. Now, even when I look at them, I don’t understand them, but this is indeed my handwriting.
“But that’s normal too. Didn’t they say that you’re at the peak of your intellect when you go through your national college examination? Perhaps I was really smart when I was young, but my legs were injured, and I’ve stayed in the house for twenty years. I just manage the house all the ti, buy ingredients, and cook. I also play mahjong with the neighbors.So how could I still be smart?”
“That’s not right.” ng Chao shook his head slowly. He beca even more certain of his guess. “This is definitely not the level a normal high school student could attain twenty years ago by sheer talent and hard work.
“The high schools at that ti wouldn’t teach this sort of questions either.
“This notebook must have co from another source. Mom, trust , this is very important. You have to think about it carefully. Just when, where, and in what sort of situation did you write these things down in this notebook?”
His stern expression scared his family.
Bai Suxin thought about it seriously for a long ti, but then shook her head. “It was too long ago. I just can’t rember it. But I don’t think this was taught in my high school. At that ti, we faced constant invasions from monsters, and the entire city was a battlefield.
“Society was in chaos, and I only went to high school for a year before it was destroyed by monsters. Besides, my parents were no longer around at that ti. So I ca out to look for a job to survive.”
“Where did you work, Mom?” ng Chao asked hastily.
“At that ti, there was a huge shortage of jobs, and I didn’t have any qualifications or supernatural abilities, so I could only work as a nurse,” Bai Suxin said. “We were at war every day, so many people were injured. There was a huge shortage of manpower in the hospitals. With just a bit of training, we were told to handle tasks like dressing up patients and giving them injections.”
“A nurse? Which hospital did you work in?” ng Chao felt that he was getting closer to the answer.
“I switched a few hospitals, so I can’t rember the nas. But they weren’t any big hospitals. The nurses in big hospitals had all received professional training and graduated from nursing school,” Bai Suxin explained.
“At that ti, societal order had just been reconstructed, so we didn’t have a lot of big public hospitals. There were a lot of clinics and temporary hospitals set up in battlefields, though. They were opened by powerful people, and many of them didn’t even have nas. Those hospitals and clinics were promoted orally by the patients, and those who needed help naturally flocked to them.
“Monsters invaded us every day, and viruses as well as bacteria spread everywhere. The dead turned into zombies at any mont. In that sort of environnt, no one cared about hygiene or professionality. If soone treated them, they might be able to live if they got lucky, but if they died, they could only accept it. No one ca causing trouble.
“But even though they were all underground clinics without nas, the doctors there had decent skills. I rember that I worked for around a year in one hospital. It was the longest ti I stuck to one place.
“They had a dicine there that was really mysterious. We had one patient who had a hole in his head from a monster’s attack. It was a ss inside his skull, but after he was injected with that dicine, he survived, and he could even continue fighting. Isn’t that amazing?
“So, I worked really hard in that hospital and forced myself to learn a lot of stuff, because I wanted to get a proper nurse’s license. I probably took those notes at that ti.”
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