Chapter 65: "Mhm, It's Me. I'm Back."

When Lin Ruoxuan's fingertip lightly touched the screen to open that video sent late at night—

"You are in the prime of your youth, and I am down and out in poverty..."

The familiar melody, wrapped in a slightly hoarse voice, pierced her eardrums. Her whole body trembled violently.

On that destiny-changing night in 2008, when she bought the lottery ticket and won the jackpot according to the Tyrant's instructions, that voice which only she could hear was humming this song with this exact tone!

Although Xu Yunzhou's singing technique in the video at this moment could be called perfect, and his pitch impeccable, that careless and desolate feeling, those few iconic vocal transitions, and even the subtle pauses when taking breaths... were exactly the same as the habits of that mysterious existence deep in her memory!

"Impossible... this is absolutely impossible!"

Lin Ruoxuan's heartbeat abruptly accelerated.

More suspicious points flashed rapidly through her mind—that Bitcoin wallet password known only to her and the "Tyrant," that digital asset held for over a decade as if having foreseen it would skyrocket...

All this was simply like...

She abruptly grabbed her phone. Ignoring that it was only 6:00 AM at the moment, she directly dialed the number of that lazy cat Song Jinxuan:

"Jinxuan! What exactly is going on? Why is this Xu Yunzhou singing this song?"

From the other end of the phone came Song Jinxuan's sleep-hazed complaint:

"Sister... what time is it... Isn't it just a song? He can sing whatever he wants, is there a need for you to do reading comprehension on it?"

In her heart, however, she was sneering: Heh, previously saying you didn't have any thoughts between a man and a woman, who are you kidding! Now getting so nervous just hearing a song!

Lin Ruoxuan forced herself to take a deep breath, trying hard to make her voice return to calmness:

"What else... did he say last night?"

Song Jinxuan yawned and said casually:

"Oh, right, that psycho even asked me to threaten you before he left. Saying something like... 'Your Tyrant is back'. Tsk, what kind of thing does he think he is, truly not knowing his place!"

"Sister, don't worry, I will definitely find someone to screw him to death next... Hello? Sister? Why did you hang up?"

'Your Tyrant is back'

These four words exploded in Lin Ruoxuan's mind like thunder!

She hung up the phone and stood blankly in place.

Her gaze cast toward that oil painting on the wall again, as if wanting to see through the truth behind the fog through the eyes of the person in the painting.

For a long time, she couldn't recover from the massive shock.

That form of address... that unique form of address, belonging only to her alone, carrying reverence and intimacy—"Tyrant."

Xu Yunzhou... he even knows this?

What exactly is going on?

This Xu Yunzhou, she clearly watched him grow up from a child.

She paid attention to him solely because that face looking exactly like the "Tyrant" made her unable to bear seeing any pained expression on it, which is why she secretly gave some insignificant looking-after.

She was never absurd enough to equate Xu Yunzhou with the "Tyrant."

At most... at most, only in certain late nights swallowed by loneliness had she briefly and despicably entertained the thought of treating him as an emotional substitute.

But why?

Why did all recent clues bizarrely point to the same absurd conclusion:

He, Xu Yunzhou, is highly likely the "Tyrant" himself?

She couldn't figure it out! She couldn't figure it out no matter what!

She wasn't stubbornly disbelieving in metaphysics, nor had she not thought that Xu Yunzhou might be the reincarnation of the "Tyrant"... but this didn't make sense at all!

Because in the year the "Tyrant" completely disappeared from her world, Xu Yunzhou was already an eleven-year-old boy!

The timelines completely don't match up! Logically and rationally, this simply doesn't make sense!

But... what if?

No, I must ask clearly today.

With trembling hands, she picked up her phone again and found that number she had saved for a long time but never dialed.

Alias: Xu Yunzhou.

With her finger hovering over the dial button, this Queen who had once made decisive killings in the sea of commerce, was actually as nervous as a prisoner waiting for a verdict at this moment.

Finally, she closed her eyes and pressed it.

"Du—du—"

...

Xu Yunzhou had just turned off his computer and slept groggily for less than two hours when he was forcibly jolted awake by a burst of deadly rapid-fire calls!

"Holy shit so early! Which blind person is this, you'd better have a good reason..."

He grabbed his phone cursing and swearing.

Through sleepy eyes, he impressively saw over a dozen scarlet missed calls on the screen, all from the same unfamiliar Shanghai number.

An inexplicable premonition instantly sobered him up, and he immediately called back.

The call connected almost in seconds!

From the receiver came a female voice, trying extremely hard to suppress yet still carrying a violent tremble, as if on the verge of breaking down:

"Tyrant?"

This long-lost address, belonging only between them, made Xu Yunzhou's heart abruptly jump.

He took a deep breath, suppressed his surging emotions, and his voice was unprecedentedly gentle:

"Mhm, it's me. I'm back."

—"I'm back."

Three simple words, yet like a key, instantly opening the emotional floodgates sealed for thirteen years!

On the other end of the phone, there was first a deathly silence, and then came an unsuppressible sobbing sound.

That was the most primal fragility of a woman after stripping away all strong disguises.

"I don't understand... I really cannot understand all this..."

Lin Ruoxuan's voice carried panic and helplessness, like a lost child,

"Is this a miracle, or am I crazy... but I want to see you right now! Immediately! Right now! I beg you... let me see you right now! I need to confirm you are real!"

"Okay, I also really want to see you, very much so."

Xu Yunzhou's voice was so gentle it could drip water,

"Rest assured, this is not your hallucination, much less a relapse of your old illness. All this is real."

"Wait for me! One hour... no, forty minutes! Give me the address!"

Her tone carried the eagerness of breaking the cauldrons and sinking the boats, and the fierce roar of a sports car engine and whistling wind noise could even be clearly heard from the other end of the phone,

"I'm already on the Shanghai-Binzhou Expressway! The car just passed Dongtang Service Area!"

Holding his phone, Xu Yunzhou was momentarily speechless, simply not knowing whether to laugh or cry in his heart:

"What is this? I just made a breakfast appointment with Song Jiaru, and Lin Ruoxuan comes charging over driving a supercar? Not even giving a chance for time management? This Asura field is opening up way too unexpectedly, isn't it?!"

(TL: "Time management" is internet slang for juggling multiple romantic partners.)

But on second thought, he forcibly comforted himself:

"A thirty-five-year-old business tycoon, a thirty-one-year-old Queen of Pop. After so many years have passed, they should be mature, steady, and reasonable, right? They wouldn't make things difficult for me, a 'little brother' whose actual age is only twenty-six, right?"

"Mhm,"

He steadied his mind, and reported to the phone that location he had just agreed upon with another woman, his mood complex,

"Then we'll... meet at that breakfast stall in front of Yue Fei's Tomb, next to Mingyue Tower, by the West Lake."

...

At this moment, on the other side.

After returning from the "Night Color" club last night, Song Jiaru spent it in an almost self-masochistic wakefulness.

No, not just last night.

During these three nights of coming to Binzhou to prepare for the concert, she neurotically ran to the suite door countless times, repeatedly checking that door "specially left open for someone," and even instructed the hotel front desk over and over again tirelessly:

"If anyone comes looking for me, regardless of gender or age, no matter how late, even if it's 3:00 AM, please immediately, right now notify me!"

But until the night outside the window was diluted bit by bit, outside the door remained deathly silent.

Of all hopes, only that breakfast appointment, as slim as a bubble, remained.

Ten years.

Nearly four thousand days and nights.

More than once had she doubted whether that sentence lingering in her ears after Big Brother left back then, "Let's move the meeting forward by one day, let's have breakfast together," was an auditory hallucination she produced because her obsession was too deep, a hysteria so beautiful she didn't want to wake up from it.

After all, over these ten years, she would always, in certain moments of mental trance, seemingly hear that familiar-to-the-bone, slightly lazy and teasing voice sounding in her ears, indicating a certain time and place.

Both real and illusory, it tortured her into traveling thousands of miles full of hope several times, only to return in vain, heartbroken and sorrowful.

But, even if there was only a one-in-a-billion possibility! Even if this was another self-deception destined to fall through!

She still had to go!

This was the faith supporting her through these long ten years.