Chapter 31: A Childish Story

The only person utterly clueless in this entire dreamscape was probably the creator of this story, Liu Wen.

She didn’t understand why, as she ran, that man suddenly grabbed her hand and acted like he wanted to elope with her.

And she didn’t understand why this man also came with his own sparkle effects. Was he a monster?

Liu Wen violently yanked her hand free and fell to the ground.

The man looked at her, seemingly puzzled. “Wenwen, what’s wrong?”

Liu Wen said nothing. She wasn’t sure what the rules of this death game were; she only knew she couldn’t act rashly right now.

“Hahahahaha.” Suddenly, a sharp laugh rang out.

Liu Wen turned her head and saw a woman whose eyes took up half her face. This time, Liu Wen couldn’t control herself. The words blurted out: “What kind of monster is that?!”

Sophia: …

Liu Wen covered her mouth.

Sophia’s lips trembled. She was still trying to bully Liu Wen. “Y-you commoner, you look so pathetic,” she said, but her own tears fell as she spoke.

Liu Wen was silent.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was the one bullying a child here.

“Oh~” An exceedingly pretentious male voice suddenly cut in.

Everyone looked towards the source of the sound and saw an elegant black-haired man, arm in arm with a lively silver-haired youth, walking over.

“Do you know where this is?” The silver-haired youth bounded over to Liu Wen, dragging the long-haired man stumbling forward a few steps.

The long-haired man looked like he was about to fall, and the silver-haired youth quickly steadied him.

After the man stood firm, he subconsciously wanted to smile at Liu Wen, but then he remembered the cold, aloof persona Wang had given him. So, just as the corner of his mouth started to rise, he used all his strength to press it back down, looking fierce and unapproachable.

“Oh!” Liu Wen exclaimed. “He’s so handsome!” Even though the man didn’t have wrinkles, he possessed an inexplicable, elegant aura tempered by the passage of time.

Tao Fangyi was very surprised. “Really?” He broke into a smile.

Liu Wen’s eyebrows lifted slightly. She found Tao Fangyi unexpectedly endearing.

Tao Fangyi was the most normal creature here.

The man who had grabbed her earlier looked very abstract, a kind of handsomeness marred by excessive plastic surgery, unnatural everywhere, with some parts seemingly not conforming to normal human physiology.

The woman who had appeared out of nowhere was also very strange. Could those eyes truly grow on a human face?

Tao Fangyi was different; he had a very normal kind of handsomeness.

Oh, the one holding Tao Fangyi’s arm was also strange; his teeth were oddly shaped.

“Who gave you permission to talk to my Uncle?” Wang’s smile vanished. He stood between Tao Fangyi and Liu Wen. “No matter how endearing he is, he’s my Uncle. It has nothing to do with you.”

Liu Wen raised both hands, palms facing Wang, in a half-surrender gesture. “Of course, it has nothing to do with me. I don’t even know him.” She was just purely admiring him.

This silver-haired youth seemed very difficult to handle. Liu Wen didn’t want any more involvement with him.

“He’s my Uncle, and that one is your Husband.” The silver-haired youth pointed at the man whose appearance didn’t conform to basic human biological structure.

Liu Wen: “…Your Husband.”

Wang: “I wouldn’t even consider trash like that!”

Liu Wen: “And you think I would?”

Wang: “You created him!”

Liu Wen: “How could I possibly give birth to a child that big?”

“He’s Huangfu Yuan, from the novel you wrote in middle school. Did you forget?” Wang asked her.

“Huangfu? That’s super cringey. Who…” As Liu Wen spoke, her expression changed.

Some things were buried deep in her memory, like a switch. Once someone mentioned them, she could recall.

“Don’t remember? What about Sophia?” Wang put his hands behind his back, leaning in and tilting his head close to Liu Wen. “A purely kind, innocent young girl with nothing, noticed by an unreasonable Overbearing CEO~”

Liu Wen’s expression became horrified.

“The heir to the world’s largest business empire~” Wang’s tone grew more and more excited, the last word practically floating upwards.

Liu Wen covered her ears. “Aaaah!”

“Oh~ What a pitiful, helpless, naive little flower,” Wang lamented.

Liu Wen: “Aaaah! Please! I beg you, stop talking!”

“Ah, right. Teenagers are often very curious about relationships between the sexes, especially more intimate relationships. So, it seems you also wrote quite a bit of…” Wang slowed his speech.

Liu Wen: “No no no! Please! No! Don’t say it!”

The shape of his mouth for the last word seemed to press a slow-motion button. “Smut~”

Liu Wen let out a shriek.

Tao Fangyi quickly yanked on Wang. “Don’t talk her to death!”

Wang stared excitedly at Liu Wen. “Hey, do you know what smut means? Do you need me to explain it to you?”

Tao Fangyi covered Wang’s mouth.

Wang made a few muffled sounds and then stopped struggling.

“Child, this isn’t a big deal,” Tao Fangyi quickly tried to soothe Liu Wen.

Liu Wen was crouching, so Tao Fangyi crouched down too. “You don’t need to be ashamed of this. After all, your Uncle didn’t express any negative opinions about your writing. He didn’t even throw it away; he just put your stories into a box.”

Liu Wen froze.

Tao Fangyi thought he had managed to comfort Liu Wen.

The eyes Wang had conjured for himself were very round. Now, they grew even rounder.

“What do you mean, my uncle read it?” Liu Wen’s tone was very calm.

“Oh, just that your Uncle read it,” Tao Fangyi said. He had heard about it from the little toy creatures. “And your Aunt, too. Neither of them had a problem with you.”

Apparently, after these items were moved over, the parents of this house seriously examined what all the things were. Then they found the notebooks from which these fantasy creatures were born. After flipping through them, both fell into silence.

But they insisted on reading to the end.

And their conversation was truly profound.

The man pointed at the notebook in his wife’s hands and asked, “That one’s yours?”

The woman snapped the notebook shut. “You’d better not look.”

The man nodded, making “uh-huh” sounds, and fell silent.

The woman asked him back, “And the one you have?”

The man was silent for a long time, leaving only a sigh.

In the end, they quietly tucked their respective notebooks among countless homework assignments and put them into a large box.

Liu Wen: “Huh?”

Liu Wen: “Ah…”

Liu Wen: “AAAH!!!”

She screamed in utter breakdown, startling everyone except Wang.

Huangfu Yuan had originally wanted to hide behind Sophia, but Sophia had long since taken the chance to hide behind Tao Fangyi and the others.

Sophia sat on the ground with her back to Tao Fangyi’s group.

She clutched her beautiful golden curls tightly, tears streaming forth.

Why was this commoner so terrifying?! Why was she so fierce?

Large teardrops fell from Sophia’s eyes. She trembled, her form blurring slightly from sheer fright.

Huangfu Yuan wanted to cry too, but his character setting dictated he couldn’t. Especially not in front of Wenwen.

His lips quivering, he shuffled towards his creator one tiny step at a time.

“Huangfu Yuan! You actually tried to hog Wenwen for yourself!” The other main leads had arrived as well.

Huangfu Yuan breathed a sigh of relief and quickly rushed to Tao Fangyi’s group’s side. He initially wanted the “Uncle Commander-in-Chief” to pull him along, but Huangfu Yuan still had to adhere to his romance novel male lead persona—he couldn’t hold hands with anyone.

Huangfu Yuan also hid behind them, sitting in a neat row with Sophia. He hugged his knees tightly, tilting his head up at a precise forty-five-degree angle to the sky, because that way, his tears wouldn’t fall.

He was trembling too.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the Campus Idol had already rushed to Liu Wen’s side. “Wenwen! What did that man do to you… Aaaah!”

Liu Wen’s hands were clamped tightly around the Campus Idol’s neck. “You guys were seen by Uncle and Auntie?! You were actually seen!”

Tao Fangyi was stunned by this sudden violence. He hurriedly reached out and covered the eyes of Wang beside him.

Wang pushed Tao Fangyi’s hand away, watching the battle with excitement.

“I can’t let you live!” Liu Wen said through gritted teeth.

The remaining three handsome men stopped in their tracks and simultaneously took a step back.

Liu Wen wanted to physically eliminate this pile of characters she had created, but even after strangling him for a long time, the Campus Idol didn’t die.

Then Liu Wen heard sobbing.

The Campus Idol in her hands was crying. The three men who hadn’t charged forward were crying, too, mixed with the weeping of the Evil Supporting Female Character and the Overbearing CEO.

They had held it in for so long and finally couldn’t hold it back anymore.

The forty-five-degree angle could no longer stop the torrent of tears.

The Overbearing CEO pitifully wiped his tears with the sleeve of his suit. “I told you she wasn’t Wenwen. That Uncle Commander-in-Chief insisted you were Wenwen. The real Wenwen would never treat us like this. Wenwen was so kind.”

“My apologies for that,” Liu Wen said, letting go.

“You’re even fiercer than me!” The Evil Supporting Female Character condemned her.

“You were the one who liked us.” The Campus Idol, who had been strangled for quite some time, refused to get up from the ground. “You liked us! Wuwuwu!”

The more these people spoke, the more wronged they felt. Eventually, they got up and walked toward each other, forming a tight circle face-to-face. Squeezed together, they wailed loudly.

Liu Wen: …

“You won’t be able to get out of here until you give them peace of mind,” Wang told Liu Wen.

“Can’t I just dispose of them directly?” They were characters she had created, after all; she should be able to make them disappear.

The group of people turned their heads towards Liu Wen in terror, then shuffled hastily away from her.

“You can’t. Why would you be so cruel to your own desires?” Tao Fangyi was puzzled. “You should accept them, persuade them.”

“How do I persuade… Wait, who are you people?” Liu Wen looked at Tao Fangyi and Wang. “I don’t remember creating you.”

“We are Cultivators who were just passing by,” Tao Fangyi said, not revealing his true form. “We just discovered you were in trouble and offered our help.”

“So can you get rid of them for me?” Liu Wen asked.

“Of course we can,” Wang nodded.

“Can I ask this favor of you?” Liu Wen continued.

Wang shrugged, then looked at Tao Fangyi.

“They aren’t bad people. I can’t use violence against them,” Tao Fangyi said. “You have to try persuading them, appealing to their better nature.”

“Why should I help you? I only came in to watch a fight,” Wang stated bluntly.

Liu Wen: …

Liu Wen cleared her throat and strode toward the fantasy creatures she had created.

The fantasy creatures collectively let out small shrieks, then, still huddled together, continued shifting in the opposite direction.

“Don’t move!” Liu Wen was getting agitated.

The fantasy creatures stopped moving.

“Come here!” Liu Wen pointed at the empty space in front of her.

Tears in their eyes, the fantasy creatures shuffled forward inch by inch.

Looking at their sniffling, tear-stained faces, Liu Wen suddenly felt at a loss.

“Appeal to them, appeal to them!” Tao Fangyi reminded from the side.

“Wh-what do you all actually want? Let me make this clear first: I won’t waste my entire life here.” Liu Wen still had her own life to live.

The fantasy creatures looked at each other.

Then Sophia, in a small voice, asked, “Th-then, could we… finish acting out the story?”

“Did I not write an ending?” Liu Wen couldn’t remember. She only remembered writing such a thing.

The fantasy creatures shook their heads in unison.

One day, that young child had opened her notebook like any other day and written down her own story.

That day was no different from any other.

It was just that, after that day, that childish story notebook was never opened again.

The life belonging to that child continued on, but a certain piece of the past, along with this cliché story, had remained frozen in time together.