Translator: Dj2203
Editor: Dj2203
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With final exams approaching, Su Xi had no choice but to temporarily focus her attention on them.
Throughout this semester, except for the first two-and-a-half-day monthly exam where she disappeared without informing her child beforehand, causing the child to believe she would never appear again, she had made sure to inform her child in advance for every exam since then. This time was no exception.
But what puzzled her was that every time she said she was going to leave for a few days to take care of something, the cub would show a slightly disappointed and anxious expression on his face and would keep asking her what she was going to do.
But this time, when she spoke, although there was a sense of loss on his face from not seeing her for a few days, he didn’t ask her what she would be doing during those days.
Su Xi: ?
When Lu Huan saw her on the screen packing her schoolbag while talking to him through her little screen, he knew that she must be going to take the exam for the school in her world, just like last time. The school exams in their world were very frequent; every three months, there would be one in her world.
Previously, Lu Huan didn’t know what she was doing every time she suddenly disappeared for about eight days, so he couldn’t help but ask a lot of questions, such as “What are you doing?”, “When will you come back?”, and “Can you come back sooner?” But now that Lu Huan knew what she was doing, he was relieved and knew that she would not suddenly disappear, so there was no need to ask anymore.
But Su Xi felt uneasy because the cub hadn’t asked her anything.
She couldn’t help but emphasize again, “I might not be able to come for a full eight days.”
As the boy reviewed the military intelligence, his pen paused, a hint of disappointment on his face, but he didn’t say anything: “Yes, I’ll wait for you to come back.”
Wait a minute… Su Xi felt utterly bewildered, wishing she could jump into the screen and shake her son’s shoulders: Son, why aren’t you like before, waiting for your parents to pick you up and repeatedly asking me where you were going and why you left me for something else…?!
The little one stopped asking questions, and Su Xi, the mother who used to laugh at him for keeping such a close eye on her, was at a loss.
A sense of loss washed over her once more. Her child, indeed, was no longer a child.
See, he no longer depended on her.
She reluctantly turned off her phone, packed her schoolbag and pencil case, and prepared to go to the exam. The final exams would last four days, and in addition to academic subjects, there were also exams in art, music, and physical education, especially the physical fitness test, which included an 800-meter run. Just thinking about it made Su Xi feel dreadful. She gave herself a pep talk before picking up her bag and heading to school.
When Lu Huan looked up, he could see Su Xi arriving at the school in a four-wheeled carriage on the screen, and then entering a classroom, opening the white scroll in front of her.
She was taking the exam with her pen flying across the paper.
Lu Huan also took out a blank sheet of paper to test the tiny characters he had learned during his six months of marching.
Because Su Xi was wearing headphones, Lu Huan couldn’t hear the listening comprehension section, so he skipped it. When Su Xi turned to the cloze test and reading comprehension section, he skillfully pulled the curtain open and did it with her.
After all, the vocabulary he learned from her few textbooks was limited, and half a year was too short. So he wrote the test paper a little slower than her, but he was still faster than most people in that exam room.
As for the subsequent history and geography exam, he also took the opportunity to explore the subject, which would be good for him to learn about the history of her dynasty.
In the past six months, Lu Huan had learned a lot. Sometimes Su Xi was already asleep, and he would switch the screen to the street and start observing how people riding in four-wheeled carriages swiped their cards and got on the carriage with a “beep”.
Although he hadn’t fully grasped the intricacies of transportation, culture, and healthcare, he was not completely ignorant of them either.
If he were to go to her dynasty someday, he wouldn’t have to be dragged to the police station on the street.
Lu Huan replaced the exam paper that was already filled with answers with another one and continued to answer the questions with Su Xi.
Meanwhile, Su Xi had also been feeling something strange these past two days. She had initially attributed the fish soup incident and the near-fall on the stairs to her improved luck through the game, but these past two days, she felt that something was amiss.
After she finished her first two exams, during evening self-study in her class, the teacher came in to give a lesson. Because she had been daydreaming for a while, she didn’t hear what the teacher was saying and was called on to answer a question. Just as she was wondering what the teacher had asked and what she should answer, a gust of wind suddenly blew in, as if it were coming from the window, abruptly turning the pages of her textbook directly to the page the teacher had asked about.
She stared in disbelief for a moment before stammering out her reply.
When she and her classmates were moving tables together, for some reason, the tables she moved were particularly light, as if someone was lifting them up.
When she and Gu Qin moved the exam room tables back to their original positions, Gu Qin was panting heavily, while she couldn’t feel the weight of the tables at all.
Not only that, on the fourth day of the physical test, when running the 800 meters, she felt as if the wind blowing from behind was pushing her forward, so much so that the 800 meters, which she used to find particularly painful, was completed by her with ease for the first time!
When Su Xi reached the finish line and took off the watch on her wrist, she felt it was unbelievable.
After a while, Gu Qin ran up to her, panting, and said in surprise, “Su Xi, you were amazing this time! How did you run so easily?”
Su Xi also found it incredibly amazing, and she couldn’t help but run another half lap, but this time she quickly felt tired. Could it be that she was in good shape just now?
On her way back to the classroom to change out of her gym clothes, Su Xi thought about it over and over again, but something still felt off.
She had already experienced the magic of the game; when she first encountered the people in the game, she was like a gust of wind to them. And when she suddenly pulled up the bucket, the cub felt the bucket inexplicably become lighter, just like she was now.
Su Xi was quickly startled by a thought that popped into her mind… Could it be that someone else was playing her game too?
Thinking about it this way, she felt even more strongly that the cup of brown sugar ginger water that had inexplicably appeared on her bedside table during her last period of menstrual cramps was not something that her parents, who were so careless, would have poured for her.
Holy crap…Su Xi suddenly thought of something, and recalling the cub’s strange behavior recently, her guess became more specific— could it be that the cub could see her and touch her too?!
That’s why he didn’t ask me what I was going to do for eight days. That’s why, when I logged on after showering that day, I saw him not daring to look up at me, his ears burning red, and a bunch of “Do not look at what is improper” writings inexplicably on the desk?
Su Xi’s breathing became more rapid and her face flushed red as she thought about it. So, had all of this been seen of her sitting on the sofa eating potato chips without any regard for her image, wearing a baseball cap to school for several days to avoid washing her hair, and even talking in her sleep at night?
Su Xi was practically going crazy.
Her face flushed red, and the more she thought about it, the more ashamed she felt. But this was just her guess, and she needed to confirm it with her son.
However, after this thought popped into her mind, the slight melancholy she had felt for the past few days faded a little. She had thought that her little one no longer needed her, but it seemed that her little one had secretly brought her brown sugar ginger tea and accompanied her to run the 800 meters.
Su Xi’s heart quickly warmed. It seemed she had been overthinking things. She sniffed and took her phone out of her bag.
It was already summer here, and it was a bit hot. She took off her school uniform, put on a short-sleeved shirt, found an empty seat, and started playing the game.
After Su Xi opened the game interface, the first screen that appeared was the initial screen of the woodshed in the Ning Wang’s mansion, as always.
She glanced around casually with a smile and noticed that since her son left the Ning Wang’s residence, Ning Wang and others were becoming more and more haggard each day. Perhaps it was because the Ning Wang’s family had completely fallen into ruin, but Ning Wangfei hadn’t attended any banquets among the noble ladies in the capital for a long time. At this moment, she was sitting in the pavilion in the middle of the lake, lost in thought, and there were even gray hairs growing at her temples. Her two sons also looked very dejected, not at all like the arrogant people they had been a year ago.
In the Ning Wang’s mansion, perhaps only the old lady was still holding on, waiting for her grandson to return, firmly believing that he could bring about a turnaround for the mansion. She believed that once he becomes an official in the imperial court, he would lead the declining Ning Wang’s mansion to regain its former glory.
Su Xi didn’t linger on the interface and went straight to the tent where the cub from the Northern Territory was located.
But after looking around, she couldn’t find anyone.
So Su Xi searched everywhere in the military camp but still couldn’t find the cub.
She zoomed out to see where the cub was, and saw the cub’s red dot appear on the riverbank in the northern part of the map— what was the cub doing there? Su Xi was a little worried that something might have happened, so she quickly switched the interface to that location.
But all that could be seen was that nothing had happened.
Along the riverbank, some soldiers and officials were walking back and forth, dismantling tents as they prepared to return home. Behind the snow-covered poplar trees, the cub was standing with the commoner woman named Liu Ruyan, whom he had met a few days ago, and they were talking about something.
Su Xi had no idea what they were talking about, because dialogues that didn’t involve the plot wouldn’t just pop up as a dialog box.
But the scene was indeed beautiful: a handsome young man and a delicate peasant girl on the banks of the willow-lined river.
Moreover— Su Xi opened the upper right corner again and found that this peasant girl was still listed in the harem section.
Perhaps… a year ago, the little one rejected Han Yue and dodged the embroidered ball without hesitation because he hadn’t yet figured it out, but now he had? Well, it was about time he reached the age where his heart began to open to love.
At the beginning, wasn’t Su Xi’s greatest wish that her son could have friends and family in that world to accompany him? Now, she finally saw that he has friends, and maybe even someone he liked. He was not far from regaining his identity as the Ninth Prince and completing the final chapter of the game… These were all her initial wishes, and she should be happy and excited… But why did she feel a sense of loss, like the end of a song?
Su Xi glanced in that direction again, thinking, “I’d better not disturb them. I’ll go online later.”
She turned off her phone screen, stuffed her school uniform into her backpack, and began packing her books.
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