94. Younger sisters are utterly useless.

The holiday was real, but not nearly as long as Chen Youyou had made it sound. The girl had only taken a day off in order to help out a good friend, leaving school a day early.

In her words, it was a matter of striking without warning, deceiving the heavens, and slipping through the enemy lines unnoticed, so she could avoid being blocked at the school gate when the break began.

And besides the two girls directly involved, Ranran and Nannan, the one called Xiaolin, the girl wearing glasses, had also asked for a day off early for the same reason as Chen Youyou.

Both of them did it for the sake of sisterly loyalty.

"You girls do have a lot of spirit," Chen Sheng said, unable to help himself. Then, as the car ahead inched forward, he moved his own car ahead a little too.

He was on the way to take Chen Youyou to school.

Whether because everyone had chosen to go out at the same hour or not, the road was jammed from start to finish. The road-rage man beside them kept hammering his horn again and again, while Chen Sheng remained unhurried, even finding time to chat with his younger sister.

"Brother," Chen Youyou asked, "what do you think if I got a tattoo?"

"I’d cut you down a head shorter," Chen Sheng replied expressionlessly, turning his face slightly toward her. "And break your legs."

Chen Youyou, who had been sipping warm milk tea, suddenly felt that the drink in her hands was no longer warm at all, but faintly chilling instead. "Is it really that serious? I thought they all seemed to get tattoos..."

"Who did you see?" Chen Sheng asked, still without expression.

"Nobody... nobody..." Seeing the dark, villainous look on Chen Sheng’s face, Chen Youyou immediately surrendered.

Chen Sheng withdrew his gaze and kept looking ahead. After a moment, he asked calmly, "Why do you suddenly want a tattoo?"

"So I’d look a little fiercer... Well, fine, it just seems cool and pretty."

"Don’t ever say you’re my sister again. What a taste you have..." Chen Sheng shot her a disdainful look. When he was young, he had once felt the same way after watching those gangster films, but at a time like this he had to say it this way.

That way, no one would ever learn about his own embarrassingly stupid chuunibyo phase.

"Brother, getting a tattoo isn’t really that big a deal, is it? And it doesn’t mean you’ll turn bad just because you get one..." Chen Youyou persisted.

"A tattoo doesn’t necessarily mean a person has gone bad, but..." Chen Sheng paused. "Look around. Which good person do you see with one?"

After saying that, he glanced at Chen Youyou. Seeing that she had begun to listen, he finally smiled and said, "Tattoos usually carry some special meaning. Don’t treat them like little decorations. From now on, if you meet someone who treats tattoos as ornaments, stay far away. Stupidity is contagious too."

"What about tattooing the name of someone you like?" Chen Youyou suddenly asked, as though something had just occurred to her.

"Then I’d suggest you find a place with a mole and tattoo the word 'hatred' there."

"Why?"

"Because then, after a breakup, it won’t be awkward, and it’ll still fit the mood. Besides, if you get fat as a ball later on, other people might even mistake it for a small mark. Then you can speak with complete confidence and tell them: don’t look at me now, fat as a pig, because long, long ago I was still very thin, and certainly not someone nobody wanted."

Chen Youyou sat there, dazed, for a while. Then she suddenly turned to Chen Sheng, eyes wide. "Brother, tell me the truth. Do people at the hospital complain about you all the time?"

Chen Sheng: "..."

After that, he concentrated on driving and no longer paid her any mind.

Sisters really were utterly useless.

The trip there had been blocked by traffic, but the way back was smooth all the way. By the time Chen Sheng returned, though, it was already afternoon. He had originally intended to go back to the place he rented, but a phone call summoned him to the hospital.

There were new patients who had come all the way after hearing his name.

By the time work ended, stars had already begun to appear overhead, blinking in the night sky and making Chen Sheng look up at them for a moment longer than usual.

Then he went back to the place he rented.

The moment he opened the door, Chen Sheng sensed that something was off, and carefully looked around once.

"Where’s Yu Youxin?"

He quickly realized what was wrong: that fellow was not there.

"Could she have gone back?"

At the thought, a burst of delight rose in Chen Sheng’s heart. He rushed into the bathroom, took a shower, and then lay back on his long-unused bed.

After so many days away from it, the bed felt extraordinarily comfortable.

After lying there for a while, Chen Sheng got up, fetched the pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and put them on.

With Chen Youyou around before, he had gone three days without touching the healing game.

He had done that on purpose.

Over those few days, he had not even mentioned the healing game once.

Otherwise, if that girl learned he still had such a piece of "black technology" in his hands, wouldn’t she roll on the floor to snatch it away?

Even if he were going to hand it over to Chen Youyou, that would have to wait until he had grown bored of it first.

On that matter, even brotherly and sisterly affection was useless.

Chen Sheng lay down on the bed and prepared to "log into the game."

His field of vision began to change, and around him, one strange rune after another appeared, surrounding him completely.

Then the runes vanished, and Chen Sheng vanished with them.

The empty bed looked as though Chen Sheng had never existed at all. Even the rented room itself seemed, in an instant, as if it had stood unoccupied for a very long time.

There were no spider webs, but there was dust everywhere.

Creak, creak. Along with a strong draft from the corridor, the flimsy door swayed back and forth.

It was an old building that had long since been abandoned.

And looking around, the buildings all around it were just as abandoned, just as old.

Not a single human figure could be seen in the streets.

Streetlamps, traffic lights, and billboards were all badly damaged. The power was out, and darkness covered everything. Even the water system had gone rotten; dirty black water seeped up from the sewers and flooded the lower-lying places.

There was no trace of life here, but neither were there any horrifying skeletons.

Likewise, there was no sound.

It was as though this were a silent world.

But that did not mean the world contained nothing. It still held a few things. Beside a plaza that looked as though it had once been scorched by a great fire, and next to a shop on a deserted street, one of the stores still had its door open.

Behind that door sat a little girl and a woman, who seemed to be mother and daughter.

They sat just behind the shop entrance, motionless, yet both gazing out at the street as if waiting for something.

Then, very suddenly, that silent world was torn apart like a canvas by a hand made of stone, pale as jade yet covered in cracks.

"Old Chen is really impossible to worry about. I let my guard down for a moment, and he went and drew out the ghouls and phantoms again..."

Out from behind the door stepped a stone girl.

She looked as though she had been carved from jade, her entire body covered in cracks, yet pale-gold blood flowed through them, lending her an inexplicable sanctity.

And with her appearance, that silent, deathly world vanished in an instant. The dust scattered away without a trace, and the entire room returned to its previous clean and tidy state.

In the bathroom, because someone had showered not long before, the steam from the hot water had not yet fully dispersed, and the mirror still held a faint veil of mist.

Outside on the street, countless lights shone.