The Fallen's Guide - chapter 11

Tang Qiuyun was taken aback.

After she recovered, she said, trying to cover it up, “I mainly came to see you.”

Tang Nian closed her eyes, unwilling to speak.

Four years ago, Tang Qiuyun brought Tang Nian with her when she married into the Xu Family. From that day on, rumors about the daughter of a mistress began to spread from who knows where, and Tang Nian was ostracized by everyone at school.

She was like a stray cat without a home, timidly living under someone else’s roof, driven out and insulted by her hostile stepbrother.

He once smashed a cup against Tang Nian’s forehead, leaving a faint scar above her brow to this day. He threw away her schoolbag, and even ordered the driver to abandon her on the side of the road.

Not to mention repeatedly stuffing all kinds of dead animal corpses, insects, and other filthy, terrifying things into her bag.

All these hurts were brushed aside by Tang Qiuyun with a single sentence: “Just bear with it, Mom is doing this for your own good.”

Four years have passed, and she still hasn’t changed.

Tang Qiuyun stroked Tang Nian’s forehead, saying tenderly, “You’re a sensible child. Mom… it’s all for you.”

Tang Nian gripped the bedsheet tightly.

“Your Uncle Xu has covered your medical expenses. Otherwise, where do you think the money for the bypass surgery came from?”

“His son isn’t in good health… Xiao Nian, you’re not a child anymore.”

Tang Qiuyun received a phone call. After listening for a few moments, she suddenly stood up, panic-stricken, and asked, “How can someone just disappear out of nowhere?”

Her voice was loud, drawing disapproving glances from others in the ward.

She covered the receiver and said to Tang Nian, “Xiao Zhi is missing. I have to go find him. His health isn’t good-if he has an episode…”

Tang Nian wanted to say that she herself had almost died.

There was no saving her.

But in the end, she didn’t say it.

“Go ahead,” Tang Nian smiled faintly. “I’m fine.”

Hospitals are always crowded.

God does not love mankind; the walls here have heard more prayers than any church.

A short, chubby boy squeezed through the general ward, his face full of irritation, pushing open the door at the end of the corridor and running out on his thick legs.

But he couldn’t find his family’s driver.

He was lost.

In his panic, he collided with a cleaner pushing a medical waste recycling bin.

With a bang, both were knocked over.

“Are you blind? Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

The boy kept cursing, his face flushed red with anger.

Then the cleaner pushed the cart away, not noticing anything unusual about him.

Only the boy was left in the corridor.

Xu Zhi realized something was wrong when he could no longer breathe.

His abdomen cramped in spasms, his neck involuntarily twisted to one side, pressing tightly against his shoulder. The curses in his mouth had long since turned into sharp, meaningless cries, his limbs stiff and twitching uncontrollably.

He was having an episode.

He collapsed to the ground.

All the muscles in his body were as rigid as stone, his breathing halted, and there was a faint stinging pain on the tip of his tongue-he must have bitten it.

He was alone in the corridor.

What should he do?

Immense fear flooded his soon-to-be-confused mind, but his unfocused eyes caught sight of something lying on the floor.

Convulsing, he unconsciously pressed his hand against it, feeling a gentle warmth beneath his fingertips, as soft as sunlight.

Like falling asleep on a swing in the garden on a sunny afternoon, enveloped in gentle, warm light.
Xu Zhi didn’t know when his convulsions had stopped.

The skin under his hand seemed to be melting in a warm, gentle sensation.

He felt as if he had turned into a puddle of water.

His skin, facial features, even his bones, all seemed to become viscous and slowly flow, like chocolate melting in a pot of steamed milk.

But he did not feel afraid.

On the contrary, he felt incredibly comfortable, every bone in his body softened in this warmth. It was the most exquisite pleasure he had ever experienced in his short life.

His memory was like a stuck film reel, with a segment cut out by someone.

When he woke up again, his flamboyant Stepmother was kneeling on the ground, crying, while his father was furiously cursing her.

Xu Zhi groaned, rubbed his head, and sat up.

“What are you all arguing about?”

The middle-aged man immediately stopped cursing and rushed over in a panic. “Xiao Zhi, you’re awake, did you…” His voice abruptly stopped.

Xu Zhi rubbed his forehead, then stopped, staring blankly at his own hand.

The fingers were long and slender, the skin fair, lean and well-proportioned.

This was not his hand.

Under the strange gazes of everyone in the room, he threw off the quilt and staggered to the mirror, his eyes trembling violently.

Who is this?

The acne on his face, the large pores, were all gone. Even his sunken features had been artfully reshaped and raised.

His facial features were still his, yet they had been unbelievably refined, as if sculpted by an artist with impeccable taste.

He was taller, too.

His limbs and bones seemed stretched, even his field of vision was different from usual.

No one knew what had happened, staring in shock at the handsome young man who seemed to have undergone a miraculous transformation.

Only Xu Zhi knew.

It was the Feather.

The Feather he had found on the hospital floor before he lost consciousness.

He covered his face, his shoulders trembling, shaking as he first burst into laughter, then broke into tears.

It was a miracle.

A miracle had appeared in his body.

He had been favored by the God of Fate.

No one knew who reacted first, but someone came up to restrain the emotionally overwhelmed Xu Zhi, worried he might have a seizure from the intense joy and sorrow. But he didn’t. His mind was unusually active, yet he showed no signs of breathing difficulty or convulsions, as if that troublesome illness had vanished from him overnight.

Boom-

Heavy clouds quickly gathered above the city.

Accompanied by deep thunder, raindrops the size of beans pelted down, crashing onto the ground.

Tang Nian closed her eyes, turned over, and buried her head in the quilt.

She didn’t know that, thirty-six hours after she quit the game, the city news broadcast an urgent alert:

Torrential rain has caused large-scale road collapse in the city. The road surface in the City Center has bulged upward, and the skyscrapers in the Commercial District are at risk of collapse. Citizens are strongly advised not to go there.

Everyone was puzzled. In the hospital ward, a family member peeling an apple muttered, “Road collapse I can understand, but what does it mean for the road to bulge upward?”

“Is something underground trying to come out?”

In fact, just as the news said, the road really was bulging upward, as if hills were growing out of flat ground.

The asphalt could not hold, cracking into jagged lines, exposing fierce rebar and bottomless hollows.

The Commercial District in the City Center, where every inch of land was precious, was cordoned off with yellow and white warning tape.

The world was quietly changing.