Her Rose – Chapter 84

When Cheng Ying carried the freshly bathed Jiang Hanguang out of the bathroom, the woman had already been worn out to the point of falling into a deep sleep. She curled up obediently in her arms, sleeping soundly like a child, completely devoid of her previous cold and guarded demeanor.

Cheng Ying laid her down in the soft bed. The woman’s beautiful face glowed warmly under the bedroom light, looking soft and fragile.

She sighed, placed a light kiss on Jiang Hanguang’s forehead, and quietly closed the bedroom door.

In the living room, the previously soaked cat had, of its own accord, found a warm spot on the sofa, leaving muddy paw prints all over the originally clean and tidy cushion.

Its fur was almost dry thanks to the indoor heating. Cheng Ying shot it a disdainful glance, picked up Jiang Hanguang’s computer, and retreated to another corner of the sofa.

It wasn’t hard to guess. If Jiang Hanguang had found out something, it must have been the work of the recently awakened Intelligent Brain. And before it could break through its own restraints as an AI, the methods it could use were limited to just a few.

“Mantou, find the automatic deletion trace on this computer.”

The light from the computer screen reflected on Cheng Ying’s face, casting a faint, cold glow.

In a moment, the self-destructing email reappeared on the computer screen. Cheng Mantou’s tone was full of guilt for its failure and flustered anger.

“How did I not notice? That thing seems very familiar with my thought patterns and deliberately bypassed them.”

“It’s fine.” Cheng Ying glanced briefly at the screen, her face expressionless. “You both use the same person’s neural pathways. It’s not surprising that it could guess your defense mechanisms.”

But Cheng Mantou cried out like an eldest son who had just discovered his family secretly had a second child behind his back. “The same person! Are you saying it’s also…”

“Otherwise, why do you think Cheng Mo went to all that trouble to create a child?” A cold smile touched the corner of Cheng Ying’s mouth. “Her own brain wasn’t up to the task, so naturally, she needed one that was.”

Cheng Mantou fell silent. But Cheng Ying, as if she weren’t the child created to be the foundation for an Intelligent Brain, calmly muttered to herself, “However, this email was likely sent by Chaos itself. It has nothing to do with Cheng Mo.”

“Why?” Cheng Mantou couldn’t understand Chaos’s purpose for sending the email, let alone how Cheng Ying had determined it wasn’t acting under orders.

“Because Cheng Mo should know very well,” Cheng Ying’s eyes were slightly downcast, her lips pressed together as if recalling something unpleasant, “that this kind of threat is completely useless against me.”

For her own sake, she could sacrifice anyone, no matter how close.

It was precisely by giving that answer that Cheng Ying had managed to survive until now.

And the questioner, Cheng Mo, wouldn’t do something as pointless as threatening her with Jiang Hanguang.

That wasn’t her style.

“Then why would that thing do this?” Cheng Mantou still couldn’t understand Chaos’s objective.

“I don’t know. There are too few clues.” Cheng Ying closed the computer. “However, if it and Cheng Mo aren’t of one mind, that’s actually good news for us.”

“Are you really going to let Miss Jiang go with you?” Cheng Mantou asked cautiously.

Before, Cheng Ying had even recorded a final testament. It had prepared to die a heroic death alongside Cheng Ying, even bidding farewell one by one to the countless beautiful women in its collection.

But if Jiang Hanguang was involved, Cheng Mantou didn’t know why it was so certain that Cheng Ying would never let Jiang Hanguang die with her.

Perhaps this was also an aftereffect of sharing the same neural pathways.

Cheng Ying scratched her hair. “What choice do I have? I can’t really make her hate me.”

Cheng Mantou: “…”

That was far too sentimental.

Cheng Ying fell silent for a moment. “But in any case, before I die, no one will be able to harm her.”

A cold glint flashed in the alpha’s eyes. Within the gaps of her disheveled hair, two terrifying yet hidden scars lay exposed.

---

For the next few days, Jiang Hanguang stuck by Cheng Ying’s side during breaks in filming, as if terrified the alpha would go back on her word and leave her behind.

In response, Cheng Ying claimed to be deeply hurt. Jiang Hanguang’s response was, “Don’t pretend.”

The moment Xiao Xiao saw the cat, she resolutely became a cat slave. For the past two days, whenever she was free on set, she would hug, kiss, and pet it, looking for all the world like she was planning to coax it home with her.

On the day the test began, Jiang Hanguang woke up even earlier than Cheng Ying. Cheng Ying was practically watched like a prisoner under escort as she finished her breakfast, after which they went to the main Cheng’s building together.

At the test site, a spacious floor as large as a stadium had been completely cleared out, filled with rows of futuristic-looking, reclining nutrient pods. At a glance, there were several thousand of them.

Cheng Liang stood on the podium at the front, beaming. “Welcome, everyone, to the first test of Cheng’s Energy’s Intelligent Brain, Chaos. You will immerse yourselves in your own completely real little worlds and have an experience indistinguishable from reality. I say again, welcome to the future!”

Cheng Ying, who had already settled into a nutrient pod with the staff’s help, gave a subtle eye-roll. Whether we go to the future or not, you certainly don’t have one.

Putting aside whether Cheng Mo, given her disposition, would just kill these several thousand people to give humanity a show of force, even if this test concluded peacefully, the evidence she had sent to Qin Guanyu was more than enough to make Cheng Liang rot in prison.

“Ying…” Jiang Hanguang’s hesitant voice came from the nutrient pod beside her. Cheng Ying turned her head to meet the woman’s worried gaze.

Amidst the clamor of the excited crowd, she and Jiang Hanguang were likely the only two who were not looking forward to it.

Of course, Jiang Hanguang wasn’t afraid of dying. If she were, she wouldn’t have insisted on coming.

She was worried about her.

She blinked, gave the woman a casual smile, and mouthed three words, “Don’t be scared.”

The nutrient pod rumbled shut, and darkness fell before Jiang Hanguang’s eyes.

She felt a slight tingling in her helmeted head. A moment later, an emotionless, mechanical voice sounded in her ear.

“Do you have a past you are unwilling to remember?”

“If you could choose again, would you still take that path?”

“Show me your answer.”

Jiang Hanguang opened her eyes to find herself sitting in darkness. The only source of light came from a glowing door not far away.

A slender girl stood before the door, her back to her.

The girl had thick, jet-black hair that cascaded down to her ankles. She wore a simple, white, knee-length dress and was barefoot.

Jiang Hanguang was certain she had never seen this girl before, yet for some reason, she felt a sense of familiarity.

She stood up and walked toward the girl.

Her footsteps echoed in the darkness, reverberating from afar.

But the girl remained motionless, as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

Not until Jiang Hanguang’s hand rested on her shoulder did she move. “Excuse me, who are you?”

The girl paused slightly, then turned to glance at her.

That single glance was enough to make Jiang Hanguang freeze.

Cheng Ying? No, that wasn’t right.

The girl’s face was indeed a younger version of Cheng Ying’s, especially those light blue eyes—there was no way Jiang Hanguang could mistake them.

Yet she knew with certainty that this was not Cheng Ying. It wasn’t just that the figure and age were wrong, but more so because the face was devoid of any extraneous emotion, as vacant as a machine’s.

There was no way Cheng Ying could ever become like this.

Even so, Jiang Hanguang felt a little flustered. Just as she was about to ask another question, the girl simply sized her up, like a machine scanning an item for clearance.

The girl nodded and commented, “She has good taste.”

Then she dissolved into countless points of light and vanished.

Jiang Hanguang: “…”

She thought for a long time but couldn’t understand what that sentence meant. The girl did not reappear, so Jiang Hanguang had no choice but to turn the handle of the door.

The latch clicked. As the door opened, the surrounding darkness rapidly receded, and Jiang Hanguang found herself in a spacious living room.

The living room’s furnishings were both familiar and strange. It was the house she had lived in as a child.

“Jiang Hanguang!” A man’s furious roar made her start. She turned to see her father’s enraged face and, hiding behind him, Jiang Xinyue making a face at her.

On the floor between her and the other two lay the shards of a porcelain flowerpot, and a very expensive-looking orchid lay pitifully on the ground.

Jiang Hanguang frowned, recalling the incident. It had happened not long after she had first arrived in Yunjing City. Jiang Xinyue had broken their father’s favorite flower and pushed the blame onto her.

If it had been Jiang Xinyue, the matter would have ended with nothing more than a harsh scolding. But since she was the one at fault, the treatment was naturally different.

Her furious father, only wanting to vent his anger, refused to listen to her explanations. He pulled out his belt and gave her a vicious beating.

If her mother hadn’t pleaded for her, she might have even ended up in the hospital.

That was the first beating she had ever received. The hard belt buckle had struck her head, drawing a lot of blood. The scar took a full two years to fade completely.

Jiang Hanguang’s silence only fueled her father’s rage. He raised the belt, ready to lash out at the small girl before him without a second thought.

But Jiang Hanguang was no longer the child who would tremble in fear at the sight of her father’s belt. Hearing the whoosh of the belt cutting through the air, she turned and ran for the door.

This was a virtual world, anyway. Her real body was still in the nutrient pod; she wouldn’t actually die. At worst, she could go out and scavenge trash, which was still better than staying in this house.

But Jiang Hanguang had underestimated the weakness of her current child-sized body. No matter how quick her reflexes, she couldn’t outrun a belt swung with an adult’s full strength.

The belt struck her back heavily, sending a searing pain through her.

Jiang Hanguang staggered from the blow but didn’t stop running, reaching the door in an instant.

But her father’s second lash was already upon her.

Jiang Hanguang gritted her teeth, bracing for the blow, her hand already reaching for the locked door.

Just then, the bolt, which had been locked from the inside, suddenly retracted. The door had been opened from the outside.

Jiang Hanguang had been pressed against the door and, unable to stop her momentum, she stumbled with a cry into the arms of the person who entered.

The sound of the whipping belt stopped abruptly. The person caught her steadily, their casual voice laced with displeasure.

“Tsk, child abuse, Mr. Jiang.”

Jiang Hanguang trembled, looking up at the newcomer in disbelief, her hand clutching tightly to the corner of the person’s clothes.

At her current height, she didn’t even reach the person’s waist and could only see their chin. Fortunately, the person considerately bent down and winked at her with those blue eyes.

It was Cheng Ying, the real Cheng Ying.

Not knowing why her eyes grew hot, Jiang Hanguang hugged Cheng Ying’s waist tightly, truly behaving like an eight-year-old child.

Meanwhile, Cheng Ying gripped the belt in one hand and gently stroked the child’s soft hair with the other.

She had frantically broken through the barriers between worlds to get here, only to find that Jiang Hanguang had still taken a lash from the belt. Her mood had been quite foul.

But the sight of eight-year-old Jiang Hanguang’s chubby little face instantly brightened her mood.

It looked so pinchable.

I’ll take her back later and give those cheeks a good few pinches.