novelraw Chapter 204
Chapter 204
Chapter 204: Xia Li… Something Big Has Happened!
“There are about two months left.”
Lucia counted on her fingers, but after a while, she got herself confused.
She simply opened the calculator on her phone, pressed a few buttons, and got a number in the sixties.
The room was quiet for a while, and Xia Li finally released his hands from the keyboard.
He swiveled in his chair, left his desk, and went to the living room to get Lucia’s pair of green fluffy slippers for her to wear.
The girl curled her ankles, her toes slightly raised, the small boat lying in Xia Li’s palm twisted and turned, as if making a final resistance.
Xia Li took off her little white socks that had been stepped on and turned gray, and put on a clean pair.
The delicate and fair toes were tinged with a faint pink, as tender as newly sprouted lotus roots. Lucia hid her flushed face under the pillow, nervously watching Xia Li, her slender calves tensed, as if afraid that Xia Li would tickle her.
However, Xia Li didn’t tickle her feet. After changing her socks, he put her shoes on for her. “You can’t smell them…”
Lucia said, hugging Xia Li’s pillow, revealing a small piece of her pink earlobe.
“I saw on the news that you can inhale bacteria and get pneumonia.”
“I’m not smelling them,” Xia Li said with a chuckle.
When did he become such a pervert in Lucia’s mind?
“I’m going to soak them in water and drink it,” Xia Li said.
“…”
After saying that, Xia Li left the room with the socks. Lucia’s face turned white and then red, and she quickly followed him.
“You, how can you be so unhygienic!”
The stinky dragon’s expression was anxious, as if she really believed that Xia Li would soak her socks in water and drink it.
She followed him all the way to the balcony and only calmed down after seeing Xia Li throw her socks into the washing machine.
This Brave Hero was very bad, always liking to make all kinds of messy jokes to tease her.
Lucia happily followed Xia Li back to the room. Xia Li was going to read and study, so she sat quietly beside him and stared at him.
Xia Li took out his book and flipped through a few pages, but he was so uncomfortable being stared at by the dragon that he had to put down what he was holding.
Seeing that he wasn’t reading anymore, Lucia immediately brought up the previous topic again.
“Do you have anyone you care about over there?”
“You dragon, why do you think about so many questions every day?”
“Didn’t you say… I should think.”
Lucia shook her phone, which still displayed the ’65’ number she had just calculated.
This number was like a countdown.
Once the time was up, the world that Xia Li had been to would be meaningless to him.
All the friends he knew, the mentors who had painstakingly taught him survival skills, swordsmanship, archery, magic, physical training…
These humans would all become a thing of the past, ceasing to exist.
And these 65 days were the limit for Xia Li to see them one last time.
“I didn’t tell you to think about this kind of problem. I’m not even worried about it, and you’re worried about it.”
Xia Li sighed and took Lucia’s phone, turning off the calculator.
“You’re escaping reality…”
“Bah, my reality is Earth. That world is not reality for me.”
“Although that’s true,” Lucia paused, organizing her words before continuing, “but the feelings you left there are real. You lived there for three years, there must be some people you want to see, right?”
Lucia didn’t understand other reasons.
But putting herself in his shoes, she had only been on Earth for half a year, and she already had feelings for the people and things here.
Xia Li had been there for three whole years.
In these three years, he had experienced a lot of things, many times even facing life and death situations. Logically speaking, his feelings there should be stronger than her feelings for Earth.
“There’s nothing to regret… We’re not from the same world.”
Xia Li’s feelings were different from Lucia’s.
At this moment, he even felt a sense of relief.
“Ever since I came to that world, I knew I didn’t belong there. I would leave sooner or later… So, I don’t have deep feelings for Azure Continent, and I don’t have any sense of belonging there.
Thinking about it now, the only regret is not being able to say goodbye to them properly, that’s all.”
Xia Li said with relief.
The expression on Lucia’s face was still a bit tangled.
She thought she could guess Xia Li’s thoughts, but this time she seemed to have guessed wrong.
Xia Li, who valued feelings so much, didn’t care about the countdown of more than sixty days at all…
Was it because of her?
Lucia was thinking.
“This matter can’t be rushed.” Xia Li reached out and rubbed the dragon’s head.
After loosening her bun, Lucia’s long black hair cascaded down her shoulders, slightly curled where it had been tied up, bouncing twice when touched.
The dragon’s head was very nice to touch, smooth and slippery. It would be even better if there were a pair of dragon horns.
“Right now, there’s not enough magic power, and I haven’t found a way to go back… If I spend all my energy on this, maybe I can find it, but there’s no need. I need to focus on life now.”
“Oh…” Lucia nodded silently.
For their better ‘future’, Xia Li had always been on the road to hard work, and Lucia saw all this in her eyes.
However, some thoughts lingered in Lucia’s mind.
For her, Xia Li seemed to have given up a lot.
She wanted to do something to respond to Xia Li, but she seemed to be able to do nothing but stay by his side.
She walked back to the living room with her slippers clattering, and the sound of online course audio playing came from the small dark room again.
Lucia pressed the remote control and turned the TV volume down to the lowest setting.
She stared blankly at the TV screen. In the picture, there were interesting interactions between the characters, but perhaps because there was no dubbing, Lucia couldn’t get into the content.
“Meow~”
She grabbed the clingy little calico cat and started petting it forcefully.
Lucia rolled on the sofa with Cotton in her arms.
When she was bored before, she would play with Xia Li.
But now Xia Li had to study, and Lucia also understood this boundary. She couldn’t disturb Xia Li at this time.
So she could only play with herself.
Tomorrow was a rare day off.
Normally, Lucia would be looking forward to going out and playing on her day off…
But now, Lucia hadn’t even thought about what to eat tomorrow morning, and she didn’t have any expectations for tomorrow’s holiday.
She had already made friends…
But the feelings between friends were not always there. This kind of short-lived happiness was more like a flash in the pan.
No wonder they said that everyone was a lonely individual.
Lucia used to think that it was pretentious for humans to feel lonely in such a vast and complex society… Now she deeply understood it.
This was another kind of loneliness.
“Meow~”
The bored little dragon came to the door of the small dark room with Cotton in her arms.
She still couldn’t resist the boredom and wanted to disturb Xia Li.
Xia Li looked back at her and saw the girl kneeling on the floor, secretly poking her head in, the kitten in her arms doing the same thing.
“Bored?”
“Yeah…”
◈◈◈
“Come here and read with me.”
Xia Li sighed and beckoned to her.
The evil dragon giggled and quickly threw the kitten in her arms to sit on Xia Li.
Since she became ‘sensible’, she hadn’t bothered Xia Li much. Recently, Xia Li hadn’t even touched games, so Lucia had no chance to sneak attack him.
“Hehe…”
It had been a long time since she had sat on Xia Li’s hard body. Lucia moved her butt and sat a little further in.
Xia Li was quietly reading, and Lucia was curled up in his arms, not playing with her phone, just looking up at Xia Li’s profile and giggling.
Under the desk lamp, Xia Li’s face was divided into two parts by light and shadow. He looked a bit handsome when he was reading seriously.
Lucia was mesmerized, and even had the urge to stick out her tongue and lick him.
But she knew this was the dragon way of expressing affection. What she had to do was not lick him, but kiss him.
Lucia pursed her lips and didn’t lean forward to kiss him.
Suddenly, she remembered what Xia Li had said to her a while ago.
‘Companionship is the most affectionate confession.’
Then they were confessing to each other all the time now…
Lucia shyly swayed her waist, and Xia Li looked down at her.
“Old Xia.”
“What’s up?”
“Let’s go grocery shopping tomorrow, I want to make braised pork ribs and sweet and sour fish for you!”
Xia Li stared at those golden-brown eyes.
He wondered why the little chef was suddenly so eager to cook again.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to stay home and relax all day tomorrow for your rare day off?”
“That’s what I said during the day, it doesn’t count at night!”
“Alright…”
“What else do you want to eat?”
“Eat little dragon.”
“If you eat the little dragon, it will be gone…”
“No, you’re wrong about that.”
Xia Li wrapped one arm around the girl’s soft waist and picked up a pen with the other, tapping Lucia’s nose.
“Eat one bite of little dragon, and you’ll have one more little dragon, eat two bites and you’ll have two… You saw the old woman planting vegetables in the countryside last time, right? You only need to sow one seed to grow many cabbages.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. Xia Li is talking nonsense…”
Lucia’s body was as soft as cotton candy, and she slipped off Xia Li’s lap without realizing it.
With no dragon in his arms, Xia Li picked up the cat on the floor and gave it a good rub.
“If you don’t understand, then why are you running away?”
“I’m going to watch cartoons…”
The evil dragon ran away in a panic, and Xia Li shook his head lonely, sighing to himself.
The road to dragon slaying was long and arduous.
◈◈◈
《Record of Experiences from Another World》
The popularity of this serialized book had risen again.
It wasn’t that the recent updates had any explosive plot, but that a reader who was comparable to ‘heaven-defying’ had raised the discussion level of the book by a notch.
【Coming here because of its reputation.】
【I heard there’s a transmigrator here?】
【Why isn’t the transmigrator the author himself, but a reader? Is it that immersive? It’s like they’ve driven someone crazy hahaha!】
The center of the discussion stemmed from a Q&A post.
The initiator of the Q&A was an active reader of the book, someone with a black avatar and an IP address showing the Chongqing area.
The title of the post:
【If you had the power to destroy the world, would you use it or not?】
The first few replies were like this:
【Chuunibyou patient??】
【Poster, I see you often read a fantasy novel, don’t get delusional.】
【Use it, if it were me, I would use it. It’s great to restart the world, it’s better than me working myself to death for three thousand yuan a month, and then having my boss deduct my salary for various reasons, right?】
【Everyone is so scary. World-weariness is also a kind of mental illness, I suggest you see a doctor.】
【Poster, what kind of power do you have? Tell us and we’ll discuss it together and see how to help you ‘destroy the world’ hehe…】
At first, no one paid attention to this question. Netizens’ attitude towards this question was more like looking at a clown.
However, everyone in this society was a ‘clown’ now, especially for most young people. It was normal to have all kinds of world-weary emotions under social pressure.
It was just that very few people expressed these emotions.
The first few floors of this post were quite normal, and netizens were chatting about their own things.
Until the poster who asked the question posted again.
He predicted several ‘natural phenomena’, and these phenomena happened at precise times.
Only then did netizens feel that something was wrong, or… interesting.
◈◈◈
The next day, Lucia had a rare day off, and Xia Li decided to give himself a day off too.
The two went out early, went shopping, watched a movie, and then went to the arcade to play claw machines.
It was a simple date.
When Xia Li hesitated and arrived downstairs at the chain hotel, he was dragged away by Lucia, whose cheeks were flushed.
She said: “It’s better to buy two more pounds of ribs with that money!”
Xia Li pouted and could only take Lucia home.
Dinner was as he wished. Xia Li ate the braised pork ribs and sweet and sour fish made by the little chef.
The braised pork ribs were very soft and tender, and the meat fell off the bone with a gentle bite. The sweet and sour fish was also crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with a rich texture and a perfect balance of sweet and sour flavors.
The little chef’s cooking skills had improved again.
After washing the dishes, Xia Li was still savoring the delicious taste and collapsed on the sofa to rest for a while.
Lucia was curled up on her small stool, browsing her phone.
Ever since they came home and finished dinner, Lucia had been preoccupied, constantly studying her phone. Even during dinner, she didn’t ask for another bowl of rice, which was unusual for her.
Xia Li thought it was something about work and leaned over to see what Lucia was doing.
However, the stinky dragon wouldn’t let him see her phone. Facing Xia Li’s gaze, she turned off the screen, and the expression on her face became even more serious.
“What happened? Tell me and I’ll help you solve it,” Xia Li said, frowning.
Lucia turned around, her forehead covered in a layer of sweat.
“Xia Li… something big has happened!”