Chapter 46: Dreamed of going abroad with my older brother, so much fun ^^

Back in 2009, the internet was not yet so widespread, and as it happened, Old Tang's hometown village fell outside the cellular network's coverage area.

When the friend request finally came through, Lu Mingfei was busy gathering intelligence with the Village Affairs Division six, and thus failed to restore contact with Chu Zihang in a timely manner.

Looking at the friend request that had been waiting for so long, Lu Mingfei's face did not register much joy.

Having wasted so much time in the village and the mountains, it was already three or four in the morning in the United States.

Chu Zihang was not a night owl like Old Tang; given his almost pathologically strict sense of time, he was likely already fast asleep.

Moreover, Lu Mingfei's mood was genuinely poor right now, and hearing any unpleasant news would probably cause him to snap on the spot.

Therefore, after accepting the friend request, he merely sent a casual greeting and left it at that.

Chu Zihang's pitch-black rainy night avatar did not flicker, clearly indicating that he was offline.

Leaving everything else aside, Lu Mingfei switched back to the chat interface.

Just as he was about to click on the Little Celestial Maiden's avatar to beg for her help—the ultra-urgent kind—he noticed a bright red notification bubble next to her profile picture.

Tapping into it, he discovered that during the period when he was out of contact, the Little Celestial Maiden had also sent him several messages.

Prompted by Lu Mingfei's warning, the Little Celestial Maiden had indeed dragged President Su to the hospital yesterday along with her Portuguese-descent mother to undergo the highest-grade medical examination.

President Su had initially brushed it off, thinking it was merely arrhythmia caused by a lack of recent rest, but he was given a severe fright when the test results came out.

Unbeknownst to him, illness had already quietly marked his heart.

Fortunately, it was caught in time, currently presenting only as early-stage symptoms rather than fully developed heart disease.

Upon learning the medical results, Su Xiaoqiang's gratitude toward Lu Mingfei soared to unprecedented heights.

Such a profound debt of gratitude might be a bit too heavy to repay with her hand in marriage in this modern era, but a verbal pledge of "I shall serve as your beast of burden in the next life to repay your boundless kindness" was certainly unavoidable.

Regrettably, Lu Mingfei had no designs on the Little Celestial Maiden's beauty, nor did Su Xiaoqiang intend to defer her repayment to the afterlife.

She simply felt that this fellow was utterly righteous; once the misunderstanding was cleared up, they would be sworn best buddies for life!

And right now, she was in a fantastic mood, fully prepared to splash the cash and treat Lu Mingfei to a lavish meal.

"Forget about the meal; I'm currently stuck in Shan City and can't get back anytime soon. However, I happen to have a favor to ask of you."

"Name it! Say whatever you need!" the Little Celestial Maiden replied instantly. Her domineering declaration gave Lu Mingfei the surreal sensation of speaking with the chivalrous and heroic Master Qiao from martial arts novels.

Without any polite fluff or dragging out the explanation with unnecessary details, he laid out his request in full.

To the wealthy, anything that could be solved with money was never truly a problem. Having frequently traveled abroad and lived in the United States for a year, the Little Celestial Maiden naturally understood the ropes and patted her chest, promising that she would handle the matter.

However, curiosity being the nature of young girls, she couldn't help asking why Lu Mingfei had gone to France, daring to leave the country right before the upcoming college entrance examinations.

This time, Lu Mingfei answered with absolute, unwavering conviction, without the slightest hesitation: "To find my wife."

...

"Young Master! Young Master! The Uesugi Clan Head has woken up!"

A thousand miles away in a towering skyscraper, a stern-faced black-haired youth whose demeanor exuded the fierce aura of a stray dog kept at a distance was meticulously polishing a gleaming samurai sword.

Just half an hour ago, this very blade had sliced open the throats of two unfortunate souls. The blood staining the steel lingered only briefly before sliding down the edge and dripping onto the floor.

Even so, the youth always liked to carefully wipe it down with a cloth afterward, leaving no single edge or crevice unchecked, as though this could somehow wash away the sins clinging to both himself and his weapon.

Yet this almost sacred cleansing ritual was abruptly interrupted by a sudden commotion from outside.

The stern youth was initially somewhat irritated, but upon catching what his vassal outside was shouting, he sprang directly from his office chair like a coiled spring, rushed out the office door like an arrow released from a bow, and bowled over a vassal who happened to be blocking his path.

The robust young man sprawled on the floor watched the Young Master vanish instantly at the end of the corridor, unable to stop his face from twitching.

A sister complex was truly terrifying.

Pushing open the heavy fire exit door and navigating the twisting stairwells, the stern youth swiped his access card to force open an unmarked silver-white security door.

Walking and swiping his card the entire way, the youth's eyes reflected an equal mix of impatience and agitation; the former made him want to hack through these immensely sturdy security doors with his sword, while the latter forced him to violently suppress the urge to smash them down.

Passing through walls bearing signs that read "Danger Zone" and "Unauthorized Entry," and pushing past heavy doors forged of solid black metal, the youth finally reached the end of this seemingly endless corridor.

He shoved open the immensely thick white metal door, ignoring the collective presence of doctors and nurses in white lab coats, and strode with a tense expression straight to the sole hospital bed.

On the flawlessly white bed, a red-haired girl clad in a hospital gown lay quietly. Her rose-red eyes resembled exceptionally clear amber—exquisitely beautiful, yet utterly devoid of life.

The girl looked as delicate as a well-behaved porcelain doll, while the dozen or so tubes hidden beneath the blankets functioned like the strings in a puppeteer's hands, artificially pumping vitality and life into this beautiful, delicate doll.

The stern youth carefully leaned in closer, wishing to communicate with the girl.

Yet no matter what he said, the doll-like, pretty girl offered no response whatsoever, merely staring ahead with those large, rose-red eyes as though her soul had abandoned her.

"What is the meaning of this?" The stern youth grabbed the attending physician by the collar. Gold light flared brightly in his eyes, and his voice turned frosty and cold, sounding as though a blade were being sharpened against the man's neck.

"W-We aren't certain either," the attending physician stammered, daring not resist the immensely prestigious youth before him, his face twisting in a bitter grimace as he spoke:

"We've exhausted every possible diagnostic method, and all we can confirm is that the Uesugi Clan Head's physical condition hasn't suffered any mutation or deterioration.

Just like how she suddenly lapsed into a coma for a full week, we simply don't know the cause behind her sudden awakening now."

The attending physician felt utterly helpless. Clearly, the young man before him was the most reasonable and polite individual within the entire family toward their medical staff.

Yet ever since the girl on the hospital bed had abruptly fallen into a week-long coma, the youth's temper had grown visibly volatile at an alarming rate.

Word had it that within a single week, his ghoul-slaying tally had already surpassed the entire month's total of the Execution Bureau.

Gazing at his younger sister lying on the hospital bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, the stern youth forced down the urge to slice this incompetent physician into pieces with a single stroke.

Relenting his grip on the doctor's collar, the youth took a half-step back. Just as he was about to inquire about the specific details, a rustling sound of shifting blankets abruptly broke the suffocatingly heavy and tense silence of the hospital ward.

Everyone turned toward the sound, only to see the red-haired girl, who had moments ago remained entirely unresponsive to external stimuli, push herself half-upright. She reached out her slender arm, marked by an intravenous needle, to grab a notepad resting nearby.

At this sight, the stern youth's heart leapt straight into his throat. He hurriedly stepped forward to hand the notepad and pen to the girl, holding his breath as he stood vigilantly by her side, closely monitoring his sister's condition for fear that she might faint again if he let down his guard for even a second.

The red-haired girl paid no attention to what was going on in his mind; she simply gripped the pen with intense concentration and began scribbling something on the notepad.

Finally, under the collective gaze of everyone holding their breath, she slowly turned the notepad—now inscribed with a single line of text—to show the stern youth:

"I had a dream. I dreamed of going abroad with my older brother, and it was so much fun ^^"