Chapter 304: 304 Sorry, Master
An 8-year-old boy followed a 12-year-old girl to a place called Willow Manor.
To Xia Feng’s surprise, Willow Manor was not some noble estate. Or rather, it only appeared to be a noble estate on the surface, but in reality, it harbored nearly ten thousand orphans in an underground base! According to Gong Changyi’s introduction, the owner of Willow Manor was [Liu Zhengen], whom everyone called Dr. Liu.
Unfortunately, this place was not the home that Little Xia Feng had imagined, and the atmosphere was extremely oppressive. More oppressive than a slum. All the children here were under eighteen. They were dressed cleanly and ate abundantly, but everyone had a frown on their face, their expressions tense, as if something was driving them forward.
Although the atmosphere was strange, luckily Sister Yi was there. According to the manor’s rules, all children were divided into two categories—Master and Servant. Children who were Masters would leave the manor at the age of twelve under Dr. Liu’s guidance to find their Servants and bring them back to the manor. Masters and Servants needed to be paired up, eat and sleep together, and never be apart for at least four years.
According to the “Manor Handbook,” this process was called cultivating tacit understanding and a way of thinking, ultimately achieving “Dual Palace Mind Synchronization.” Little Xia Feng didn’t understand what this meant. He asked Sister Yi, who gently patted his head and told him not to overthink it, saying he just needed to stay by her side.
Little Xia Feng was very obedient to Sister Yi. He nodded earnestly, then snuggled into Sister Yi’s warm embrace and continued to sleep peacefully.
“Mr. Xia, you look quite at ease,” a cool, indifferent voice quietly sounded in Xia Feng’s mind, startling him greatly.
He saw a black-dressed woman, who had appeared at some unknown time, sitting with her legs crossed on a wooden chair in front of the desk. The dim halo of the desk lamp illuminated her stunning face.
“No, Miss Mu, can you please not appear so suddenly? You’re going to give me a heart attack,” Xia Feng thought.
A month had passed in the memory world, and Xia Feng found that his mental power was gradually returning to normal, and his mind had become agile again, allowing him to control Little Xia Feng’s body to move. But he hadn’t done so, letting Little Xia Feng act on his own.
This was because if he interfered with even one of Little Xia Feng’s choices, it would inevitably affect the trajectory of the memory world, or even cause a serious deviation. If that happened, he wouldn’t be able to recall his lost childhood memories.
However, luckily, the passage of time in the memory world was random and chaotic. One moment it might be a normal rate of passage, and the next it could accelerate tens of millions of times, like a whirring Ferris wheel, taking him to the next day, the next week.
Suddenly, it was a month later.
“Miss Mu, won’t your appearing like this attract Gong Changyi’s attention?” Xia Feng noticed that the girl holding him slowly closed her eyes, completely ignoring the black-dressed woman who had suddenly appeared by the desk.
“Don’t worry, she can’t see me. You can think of it as me descending into your memory world in a conceptual form, as an invisible entity.”
“An invisible entity?”
Hearing this, Xia Feng’s unease lessened, and he breathed a sigh of relief, chuckling, “Oh ho, so that means you can’t do anything to me right now?” He had been worried that Mu Qingtong would play tricks and bully his childhood self, but now it seemed…
“If I wanted to, I could condense into an entity and interfere with your memory world,” the black-dressed woman said indifferently.
“…” Xia Feng’s triumphant smile vanished instantly. He spoke earnestly and sincerely, “Miss Mu, I wasn’t provoking you just now.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes!”
Xia Feng felt it was outrageous. Just how powerful was Mu Qingtong’s mental power to be able to traverse and descend freely within a memory world constructed by a nightmare? Not to mention that more than seventy thousand people had been pulled into the nightmare world, meaning seventy thousand memory worlds. Xia Feng’s current mental power was at the entrance level of a Venerable. He could control his childhood body in a ‘very short time.’ However, to achieve out-of-body consciousness and form his adult main body, he still lacked some mental power to possess this ability.
In the nightmare world, mental power was king. According to Mu Qingtong’s general introduction before, only those with Sage-level mental power had the ability to travel into adjacent memory worlds to observe others’ memories. Someone like Mu Qingtong, who could not only travel freely between worlds but also condense into an entity at will, must possess an incredibly heaven-defying level of mental power.
Xia Feng was about to ask Mu Qingtong something else. However, at this moment, his eyelids twitched. He raised his tender little face, pursed his lips, and said nervously, “Sister Yi, I have something I want to tell you…”
“Hmm?” Gong Changyi blinked and raised her hand, rubbing his soft cheek. “Want to see the outside world again? No, according to the rules, you can’t leave the manor before you’re twelve.”
Xia Feng felt his face was like dough, being squeezed and kneaded by the girl’s cool, soft hands. This girl seemed to really enjoy playing with his tender face, and only gradually stopped after his childish pleas of “Sister Yi, no more!”
Really! If it were before, Xia Feng wouldn’t have cared, but now, with Mu Qingtong watching, it made him inexplicably ashamed.
“Miss Mu, could you turn your head and not look for a moment?” Xia Feng felt uneasy under her gaze and transmitted his thoughts helplessly.
“Mr. Xia, as my fiancé, you are showing no resistance in another woman’s arms. This is too much,” Mu Qingtong stated calmly, listing Xia Feng’s transgressions.
“?”
Xia Feng was speechless. Just as he was about to retort, he thought about it and then chuckled, “Miss Mu, are you jealous of a child?”
Mu Qingtong: “…”
“Mmph~ Sister Yi, stop, I wasn’t going to talk about this,” Xia Feng pushed her away with his small hands.
Gong Changyi raised an eyebrow. This was the first time Little Feng had resisted her. She couldn’t help but grip his cheeks harder, her slender eyes curving downwards as she said gently, “Little Feng, you’re being naughty. Big sister doesn’t like a disobedient little brother~”
Little Xia Feng keenly sensed the displeasure in Sister Yi’s tone and became flustered. He quickly dropped his struggling hands and lowered his head uneasily. “S-sorry, Master.”
After entering the manor, Servants had to call their Masters “Master,” signifying a very strict hierarchical relationship. However, Gong Changyi usually let him call her Sister Yi, telling him not to be too formal and to treat her like a friend.
But he knew in his heart that his ability to leave the slums and live in Willow Manor, to enjoy a life of luxury he had never dared to dream of, was all thanks to Gong Changyi. It was Gong Changyi who extended her hand and pulled him from darkness into light, giving him everything, giving him the feeling of a home he had always longed for.
However, he didn’t quite understand his feelings for Sister Yi, but he just didn’t want to lose her, and was even more afraid of losing her. Afraid of losing his only ‘family’ in this world.
Xia Feng silently watched everything unfold. The memories in his mind slowly overlapped with what was happening before him. He could feel the sense of unease and panic his childhood self was experiencing at this exact moment. It seemed that his childhood self was extremely, extremely, extremely attached to Gong Changyi.
