Chapter 61 — A Forced Choice

A sudden chill awoke Shen Yue at two in the morning as the duvet, which she was sharing with her now-husband, was ruthlessly pulled away from her body. She pulled it back and closed her eyes again.

It happened again ten minutes later.

This time, she was slightly more irritated. She pulled the duvet back and looked at Lin Che, who was on his back, eyes closed, and entirely fast asleep. His chest rose and fell at a regular pace, and the vibration from the pill was faintly audible, but she had long since acclimatised to the noise and blocked it out.

She turned over, and went back to sleep.

***

Another hour or so later, Lin Che rolled to face the window, before he rolled back onto his back, and then rolled towards Shen Yue. She shuffled closer to the edge of the bed in case he came nearer to her, and this time she held onto the duvet tightly so as to not concede her warmth.

There was a sudden dip in the mattress, which caused Shen Yue to turn around and open her eyes: Lin Che was standing on the mattress, his feet planted into the soft foam; his face absent of consciousness. It was a strange sight, but not a worrying one, she told herself, as plenty of people sleepwalk all the time, and this was just her second night with him.

She’d probably get used to it in time.

He turned his head towards her, and, for a moment, she thought he’d woken. His eyes were open, and they stared through her, as though he were still asleep and not processing any visual information.

“Lin Che,” she said, somewhat quietly. “Wake up. You’re sleepwalking.”

No response.

This time, slightly louder: “Lin Che, lie back down!”

His neck snapped in the opposite direction, his head now inclined towards the window. Then, he stepped off the mattress and walked in a rigid gait, as though this were his first time using these legs after centuries of sleep. Each step placed the same weight and timing as the last, and, whenever he was about to lose his balance, his torso twisted and contorted itself to shuffle his centre of gravity just shy of falling.

The Gulf of Liaodong at three in the morning was very dark. The wind came in through the open window, carrying salt and cold.

Shen Yue had now gotten out of bed and pinched herself to make sure this was all real. She felt the pain jolt in her skin and flared up whatever Qi she could muster to run towards Lin Che. The only issue, however, is that she had been cycling her Qi to warm herself up non-stop for the past two days, so her reserves were low — she hadn’t been stockpiling or using as much medication, as the extraction of the holy land would be complete by the end of the honeymoon, so there was no point in saving up energy. It wasn’t like she would have to engage in combat anytime soon.

Shen Yue ran, but it was far too late.

Lin Che stepped up onto the window ledge.

“Lin Che—”

He stepped off the fourteenth floor.

Lin Che regained consciousness by the time his body was speeding past the first floor, by which point it was far too late for any action.

The tie was giving him trouble.

***

Lin Che stood in front of the bathroom mirror of his apartment, silk looped through his fingers, his eyes simply staring at his reflection.

He thought about all that had happened: providing Xu Fang and Guo Mingzhe with techniques, negotiating with the Shen Clan, and a honeymoon with his wife with a cameo from his mother and even a dance. He was making progress in his relationships with others, and, although he knew things would come to an end eventually, he naively thought that he could be the one to decide exactly when that end would be.

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And now, here he was, tying a tie, again. Always again.

He set the silk down on the marble counter very carefully, keeping his hands steady and controlled to prevent himself from otherwise throwing it and breaking something.

All his leads were gone. Not gone-gone — Xu Fang would still be Xu Fang, and would still be pulling archival threads to trace the Lin Clan, but there was no guarantee he’d be rediscovering the same information this time round. Too many variables could change with just his actions alone. If he provided Xu Fang with information about Dalian, he would likely ignore sources from elsewhere, and, even if he said nothing, the butterfly effect was real.

He had the memorised phone number at the very least, and Elder Wong’s pill, too, which he’d only now noticed. It started to buzz and vibrate after a short delay, and he concentrated on the pill alone to help calm himself.

His hands found the edge of the counter and gripped it — hard.

Start from zero.