Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - Chapter 294

Chapter 294

Inside Paradise.

Beside the wheelchair, the Long-tailed Bird was plucking out its blue feathers one by one. Every time it tore one free, it let out a shrill cry of pain. Blood seeped from where each feather met the skin, yet it still did not stop.

Only after every feather had been ripped out did the Long-tailed Bird fly into the brazier. Its entire body burned black, and from beneath the charred skin, black feathers began to grow.

Then, little by little, those feathers changed color, slowly turning from black back to blue.

Thus completing a cycle of Samsara.

This was punishment.

His punishment was pain.

Facing the wheelchair stood a blank mirror.

Her punishment was silence.

The Long-tailed Bird opened its beak and spoke.

“Mirror Flower, Water Moon, time has no meaning in Paradise. How many years have we been tormenting each other here?”

“Soon. Once the gates of Paradise open, we will see her. She will, for your sake, make the right choice.”

But the mirror opposite it gave no response at all.

After Oasis Manor was upgraded to Five-Star, Gu Huaiwei went to visit Xu Sanyuan, who was still recovering from his severe injuries, before leaving.

“You’re leaving too?” Xu Sanyuan lay in bed as he spoke.

“Mm.” Gu Huaiwei nodded, her voice very soft.

Xu Sanyuan stared at the ceiling in a daze. “Can’t you stay?”

Gu Huaiwei shook her head. “I can’t.”

Xu Sanyuan gave a bitter laugh, pulling at the wound on his chest. “Cough, cough… You really are alike in that regard.”

Gu Huaiwei only focused on explaining what would happen after she left.

She wanted to make sure everything was arranged properly.

“Daoist Xu, after I’m gone, you will be the patriarch of Oasis Manor.

You are someone my sister trusted. I want to entrust the foundation I built with my own hands to you. Please protect the disciples of the manor for me, and let the spiritual energy here continue unbroken.”

Only if Oasis Manor endured, and disciples kept arriving to seek apprenticeship, would Gu Huaiwei be able to settle an endless stream of spirit stones, absorb the spiritual energy within them, and continue cultivating.

Xu Sanyuan was silent for a moment, his voice a little hoarse. “All right. I will take care of everything you and your sister left behind.”

“Thank you.” Gu Huaiwei let out a breath of relief, then smiled with ease. “With those words from you, I can leave without worry.”

Xu Sanyuan seemed very tired. He closed his heavy eyelids, and only after a long while did he ask, “You and Sister Changge… are you going to the same place?”

“Probably.” Gu Huaiwei was only going to follow the traces her sister had left behind.

“If one day I ascend and become an immortal, if I can cross the boundaries of time and space, will I be able to find you?”

Xu Sanyuan missed everything that had once been.

Those who cultivated immortality were supposed to be cold-hearted and detached.

Yet he had become the passionate one.

The seven emotions and six desires wrapped around him, obstructing his path of cultivation.

Gu Huaiwei was not a romantic idealist.

If it were her sister, she would definitely have said: if fate allows it, we will meet again.

But Gu Huaiwei was only Gu Huaiwei.

So all she said was, “The Three Thousand Worlds are vast and boundless. Reunion is too difficult.”

Gu Huaiwei felt that they would never meet again.

They would exist only in each other’s memories, until those memories blurred.

“Then before you go, let’s play one more game.”

“All right.”

With heaven and sea inverted, they held black and white stones in their hands, just as they had when they first met.

After completing her management mission in the cultivation Dimension, Gu Huaiwei returned to the Real World.

Time in a cultivation Dimension often passed in spans of centuries, and she had been worried that if she became too immersed in a small Dimension, time in the Real World would race by.

Fortunately, time flowed differently in the Dimension and in the Real World.

Gu Huaiwei had spent more than a hundred years in the cultivation Dimension, yet Mu Lingxi had only just completed her first month as an intern at Xiyuan Group.
“Huaiwei, I found a lead on the people who sent you to the orphanage all those years ago. These two are very likely your biological parents.” Mu Lingxi had invited Gu Huaiwei to a private room in a tea restaurant. Looking mysterious, she pulled out an old photo and slid it across the table. “Take a look. This was the couple who brought you and your sister to the orphanage back then.”

Gu Huaiwei picked up the photo. The young couple in it looked exactly the same as the people in the photo tucked inside her sister’s diary.

“How did you get this photo?” Gu Huaiwei asked.

“There was this married junior supervisor at my workplace who kept harassing me every day. I deliberately ignored him, and in a fit of anger he transferred me out of my original finance position and into a social work post with no real perks.”

Mu Lingxi knew that Gu Huaiwei and her sister had grown up in an orphanage.

So she went along with the transfer and had herself assigned to that orphanage.

Then, in the dust-covered Archive Room, she found this old photograph.

“Do you want to find them?” Mu Lingxi propped up her cheek with one hand. “If you find them and meet them once, maybe there won’t be any regrets left.”

“They gave birth to us, but they didn’t raise us. Whatever debt I owed them for giving me life ended the moment they sent my sister and me to the orphanage.”

Gu Huaiwei sounded almost too indifferent.

If you wanted to cultivate immortality, the first thing you had to do was not cling too deeply to obsession.

When obsession ran too deep, it easily gave rise to inner demons.

Back in the cultivation Dimension, Gu Huaiwei had worked hard to calm her mind so she could draw powerful spiritual energy into her body and train in those arts that could summon wind and rain.

The only inner demon she had ever had was her sister.

Her slow progress in cultivation now was part of her tribulation.

As long as she found her sister in Paradise, she would be able to break through that inner demon, and her cultivation would undergo a qualitative leap.

As for the parents who had long since vanished, there was no familial affection left to speak of.

Now, the only thing Gu Huaiwei cared about regarding these so-called “parents” was why they had appeared at Paradise’s entrance with her and her sister when the two of them were still babies.

This had to be connected to Xiyuan Group.

“You’re right. If they had no extenuating circumstances, then they really don’t deserve forgiveness.” Mu Lingxi let out a sigh and clasped Gu Huaiwei’s hand. “The two of us are both the kind of people with shallow ties to family.”

Mu Lingxi’s biological parents had given birth to her and raised her, but all they ever cared about was her useless younger brother. They had never treated her well.

Now they were only coming around because she had finally become capable, eagerly showing up to talk about making amends and asking for forgiveness.

An umbrella offered on a sunny day was something Mu Lingxi no longer needed.

“With fewer worldly ties holding you back, the road ahead is smoother.” That mattered especially to Gu Huaiwei.

Mu Lingxi’s voice turned soft, touched with melancholy. “I’ve heard a saying that people with shallow ties to family are living their final life as a human. That’s why their bonds with relatives are so thin. There’s no connection between them, no debts owed, and no more Samsara in another life.”

Gu Huaiwei smiled and pressed the back of her hand. “Don’t think about it so much. But I still have to thank you for going to all this trouble for me.”

Seeing that there was no gloom on Gu Huaiwei’s face, Mu Lingxi smiled too. “I basically got paid to work undercover, so I’d say I came out ahead.”

The Jiang Family’s business ran into trouble.

For the sake of the family’s interests, Jiang Richen stopped pretending to be devoted and entered a business marriage with another girl from their social circle.

When the wedding invitation was delivered to Gu Huaiwei, she recited an immortal incantation, and a tiny flame rose from her fingertips, burning the invitation to ashes.

People were gradually starting to forget Gu Changge.

The people around her had treated her disappearance as if she were dead.

Only Gu Huaiwei still refused to give up.