Chapter 47 Final Conclusion

Chapter 47: The Final Conclusion

After removing her makeup, Luo Lan was standing in front of the wardrobe selecting clothes to wear tomorrow morning when Li Mengling pushed the door open, a white facial mask still plastered across her face.

"Elder sister, can I sleep in your room tonight?"

"Mengling, you've come at just the right time. How does this outfit look for going out tomorrow morning?" Luo Lan tossed a very ordinary, basic T-shirt onto the bed, then pulled a pair of straight-leg trousers and a hooded baseball jacket out of the wardrobe.

"Isn't this just what you usually wear?" Li Mengling sat down on the edge of the bed. "Sister, I always feel a lingering anxiety, terrified that at any moment Fang Xiaoling might take over my body again."

"What's the use of worrying? What's meant to come cannot be avoided." Luo Lan closed the wardrobe. "Get some sleep early; we have to go back to school for classes tomorrow."

"I don't want to go to classes," Li Mengling sighed. "After so many things happening back-to-back, I haven't the slightest inclination to listen to lectures."

"I understand you." Luo Lan sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "But only if we pull ourselves together will Mom feel a bit more at ease. Didn't you notice how much older she's grown this time we came back?"

Li Mengling thought for a moment and nodded gently. She peeled off the facial mask, went to the bathroom to wash her face, and upon returning, found that Luo Lan had already crawled under the covers.

"I can finally get a good night's sleep." Luo Lan slowly closed her eyes. "Mengling, remember to turn off the light."

The instant the bedroom light went out, Luo Lan vigilantly snapped her eyes open. It wasn't to guard against Li Mengling, but because she remembered what the burly Enforcer on Pin Mountain had said earlier: "You should consider yourself lucky you weren't home tonight, otherwise both your mother and that high-school-freshman younger sister of yours would be dead."

Although she intended to continue fulfilling her mission under the identity of Li Mengling, principles were principles; no matter what, she could no longer bring harm to Li Mengling's family. Once Li Mengling fell asleep, she would quietly leave this place first and return after dawn.

"Fate is truly so unfair. Why did it have to be me who encountered such things..." The words Li Mengli had spoken in the bathroom mirror echoed continuously in her mind, and Luo Lan could not help but recall once again the feeling she had experienced at age sixteen, standing in a pool of blood while staring at the corpses of her parents.

She had to admit, Li Mengli's ordeal served as a reminder to her. At that time, she had been holding a short blade yet remembered absolutely nothing of what had happened; in that tragedy, she was clearly a victim just like Li Mengli.

In fact, the moment she learned of Fang Xiaoling's amnesia, she had considered this possibility, though she wasn't certain enough back then. The events of that day when she was sixteen were caused by someone else occupying her body and murdering her parents; therefore, the true culprit was the entity that had controlled her body at that time.

"Give me back my world."

Luo Lan was certain that back when she was sixteen, she had also heard those exact words. Yet what puzzled her the most was those very words—since she was the victim, then just who on earth was the person who spoke them at that time?

There was one more point Luo Lan could not figure out: if souls who were transmigrated back would experience amnesia upon returning, why had Li Mengli not suffered amnesia while at the bar, and why had she even gone to warn Tian Hu? And her younger sister Li Mengling's situation was even more illogical; not only did she remember everything, but she also knew more than before, clearly aware that Fang Xiaoling had possessed her body. What on earth was going on with all of this?

As she was pondering, Luo Lan suddenly felt a chill descend instantly within the darkness. Just like in the secret room at Canglan International's residence, she once again used two fingers to clamp down on a blade thrusting directly at her.

In the pitch black, she could not even see the attacker's face.

Yet in this room, aside from herself and Li Mengling's younger sister, there was no one else.

"Mengling, you're at it again." Luo Lan let out a soft sigh. "Even if you know I am not Li Mengli, you should have pretended not to know. If you had done that, I probably wouldn't have wanted to kill you."

"I have no idea who you really are at all!" Li Mengling pressed down with all her might on the short blade in her hands, a weapon she had found inside Luo Lan's leather boots.

"Are you saying that even if I truly were your older sister, you would still kill me?"

"That's right!" In the darkness, Li Mengling's tears dripped onto Luo Lan's face. She had exerted every ounce of her strength to stab downward, but the short blade remained halted between the other's two fingers, the tip unable to descend even a fraction further. "No matter who you are right now, making this body die is the only way to deal with Luo Lan! No matter what, I must avenge my father!"

"Remember, you died because of your own childish temper." With those words, Luo Lan instantly snatched the short blade away and swept the edge backward in an arc toward Li Mengling's position.

Luo Lan rarely missed.

Yet this time, she distinctly felt that the blade merely sliced through the darkness of the room, failing to cause any actual harm to her target.

She dodged it??

Right at that moment, Luo Lan clearly saw a pair of ink-blue eyes shining in the dark like starlight, resembling two night skies shrunk into miraculous circles.

"Is there any need to be so heartless, Sister Luo Lan?" Li Mengling turned on the bedroom lights. Viewed under the illumination, those eyes of hers seemed no different from a normal person's. "Mengling is just a child after all, and the death of our father dealt her a heavy blow; that's not hard to understand. What's more, it was indeed us who interfered with their normal lives first."

"Ah... so it's Xiaoling who has returned." Luo Lan sat up, using the tip of the blade to gently brush aside the hair that had been obscuring her right eye. "How did you manage to dodge my strike just now?"

"It wasn't me who dodged it; someone else dodged it for us." Fang Xiaoling stared straight into her eyes. "I never truly left this body completely in the first place. Earlier, it was Li Mengling's soul that wanted to return, so I yielded my position to her. After all, this body belongs to her in the first place."

"Mengling, you seem a bit different from before." Luo Lan glanced at her coldly. "Yielding a portion of your body? Can we even do something like that?"

"I yielded the greater part of it to her, and my own consciousness is only connected to the pain receptors of the body," Fang Xiaoling said expressionlessly. "After all, this body has suffered too much damage; I was afraid she wouldn't be able to bear such agony."

"Heh..."

Luo Lan vanished amid a faint chuckle, and the next instant, she had pressed the blade against Fang Xiaoling's throat. "In other words, you gave the body up to Li Mengling, and you're taking upon yourself all the pain?"

"I'm not taking it on for her; this pain should rightfully belong to me." Fang Xiaoling stood completely unmoving. "Although the part of consciousness connected to the pain is not in this world, the pain sensation in my consciousness within this world right now is no lighter than that part. Sister Luo Lan, from the moment I learned that you abandoned me for the sake of your mission, my heart was already torn to a million pieces..."

"Fang Xiaoling, spare me the melodrama! What does your life or death have to do with me? To put it bluntly, you are merely someone whose body I transmigrated through, just one of a hundred and ninety-four people. Don't think too highly of yourself!"

"Since none of the people you've possessed matter, why do you remember the number so clearly?" Fang Xiaoling asked calmly. "If I'm not mistaken, you should remember every single person's name as well, right? Sister Luo Lan, you are actually far less ruthless than you imagine. If you had truly killed Li Mengling just now, you would have piled yet another thick layer of guilt right on top of a heart already weighed down by it."

"You are far too full of yourself! Fang Xiaoling, whatever you've experienced has nothing to do with me, but this affected pretense of yours acting like you understand me so well is truly disgusting!" Luo Lan clenched her teeth, the sharp edge of the blade in her hand already stained with viscous red.

"If you kill me, it's equivalent to killing Li Mengli's younger sister as well." Not a trace of fear existed in Fang Xiaoling's eyes. "From here on out, her soul will undoubtedly fight tooth and nail to disrupt your mission plans."

"You think I'm afraid of her? Even if her soul were standing right here, I wouldn't blink an eye if I killed her younger sister!"

"Of course you could do it," Fang Xiaoling looked at her. "Yet why take that risk? Since both you and I wish to return to our true worlds, why don't we all cooperate instead? If you and I complete the mission a bit sooner, we can also leave these two sisters' bodies sooner. I imagine they must be listening to our conversation from somewhere right now. As long as you are willing to agree, I will temporarily take charge of Li Mengling's body and fully cooperate as the younger sister with all your subsequent mission plans. What do you think?"

For some reason, these words sent a chill running down Luo Lan's spine. Thinking back carefully, she had parted ways with Fang Xiaoling on a motorcycle only yesterday afternoon, yet the current Fang Xiaoling felt like an entirely different person—clear-headed and calm, capable of proposing a win-win cooperative suggestion like this even at a moment of mortal peril. This was far from simple...

Luo Lan did not know that this suggestion was not actually proposed by Fang Xiaoling herself. During the period when Li Mengling was in control of her own body, the majority of Fang Xiaoling's consciousness had remained in the Starry Realm, and this proposal was the final conclusion reached through discussions between her and the tens of thousands of "think tanks" in the Starry Realm.