Shen Qingyao’s heart attack was as torturous as ever, especially this time, which was unusually severe.
When Shen Qingyao was carried into the room in a daze, she was still conscious to some extent. She could hear Lu Zhao’s urgent and angry voice, trembling with panic. She heard Cui Qiao and Hong Yun in a mess, and heard her own parents who rushed anxiously, their worried sobs…
Unfortunately, because she was still conscious, the pain accompanied those chaotic sounds, making it increasingly hard to ignore.
She tried desperately to move a finger, wanting to say, “Don’t cry, I’m not dead yet.” She wanted to make some sound to tell them how much she was suffering. But despite using all her strength, she couldn’t do anything, only silently, soberly, waiting for the pain to engulf her.
In a daze, she unexpectedly had a dream she hadn’t had for a while.
It wasn’t about her childhood memories or the original plot. She dreamt about the last days of her life in modern times.
The weather that day was as gloomy as today, with the windows of the ward wide open and the door ajar. The cold draft in the hallway made the entire ward feel like an ice cellar, but Shen Qingyao couldn’t feel any of it.
There seemed to be a fire inside her body, mercilessly burning at her chest. She gritted her teeth tightly, sweat soaking the pillow. The pain was suffocating her.
A nurse on duty in the hospital walked over, looking at her pale face, sighed deeply, and then said nothing, reaching out to activate a machine.
The lines on the screen fluctuated, and the machine’s buzzing was loud, disturbing her peace. Shen Qingyao took a deep breath, suddenly hearing faint voices outside the door.
“So pitiful, so seriously ill, why haven’t her family come to see her even once? How heartless!”
Another voice agreed, “Exactly! Just paying for a caregiver isn’t enough. With such a serious illness, how can she manage alone?”
“Sigh, I just checked, her indicators are off again, she’s probably… sigh.”
A sigh behind the door covered another sound. Shen Qingyao’s mind was blank, the pain inside and the actual pain overlapping, blurring the boundaries of time and space. For a moment, Shen Qingyao couldn’t distinguish between dream and reality, and forgot where she was.
“Yaoyao…” a faint voice came from afar, as if whispering in her ear. The person was calling her. Suddenly, a place in her heart sank, but no matter how she tried to remember, she couldn’t recall whose voice it was.
What was forgotten? Shen Qingyao mumbled in a daze, as if she had promised someone to live on, to wait for him to come back, to watch the moon together, and enjoy the snow together.
In her blurry vision, a figure suddenly emerged, dressed in a white robe, with a jade crown and tied hair, exuding a pure and transcendent aura. She couldn’t see the person’s face clearly, but the only color in her eyes was a fiery red jade pendant hanging from their waist.
Shen Qingyao gasped, greedily breathing the air around her, but it felt thinner and thinner.
The figure in front of her also faded, and she panicked, instinctively reaching out to grasp, but just as her hands touched, everything in front of her suddenly shattered with a loud crash, leaving only an endless white…
On the hospital bed, Shen Qingyao’s hand fell heavily towards the empty space, hitting the edge of the bed with a dull sound. Immediately after, the fluctuating line on the monitor straightened out with a long alarm, without any more fluctuations…
“Emergency! Call emergency! Bed 0052, cardiac arrest!”
Shen Qingyao fell into emptiness.
When her body finally landed, she seemed to have returned to her carefree youth, as if she was following her memory and going through those years again…
It was unknown how long it had been before she heard a voice again
[Host…]
Shen Qingyao whimpered in pain and finally opened her eyes slowly.
The snow outside had stopped at some point. The first snow was not heavy, and only a few white leaves remained on the branches that no one touched. The snow on the ground had already turned into water, leaving only deep and shallow mottled traces.
Perhaps because she had slept for too long, the light after she suddenly opened her eyes was a little harsh. Shen Qingyao squinted her eyes uncomfortably and raised her hand to block it, but found that she couldn’t block it. The sunlight still penetrated her hand and fell directly on her eyes.
She realized something was wrong belatedly. Shen Qingyao put her arms down, and then she realized that she was not lying down. She stood in the void, looked down, and on the bed not far away, there was another ‘herself.’
“…”
Shen Qingyao was silent for a moment, and couldn’t tell whether she was more shocked or more frightened. After all, anyone would be confused to suddenly meet her ‘critically ill’ self.
[Host…]
The voice that woke her up sounded again. It was the system.
“What’s wrong with me?” Shen Qingyao asked with a slightly hoarse voice, clenching her trembling hands, and used superficial calmness to cover up her inner fear.
After all, her current condition was not very scientific no matter how she looked at it. It looked like her soul had left her body. And there were only a few situations that could cause the soul to leave the body.
“I’m not dead, am I?” Shen Qingyao asked again, and then with accusatory eyes: “You liars! What mission! What reward! Are they all fake?”
The system was made guilty by what she said, and it hesitated for a long time before speaking, and it denied three times in a row: [No! You’re not dead! I didn’t lie to you!]
Shen Qingyao snorted with a gloomy face.
Things became mysterious. She just stood in front of her bed, looking at her dying self on the bed. At this time, someone pushed the door in. It was Cuiq Qao.
Shen Qingyao was startled and was about to hide, but she saw Cui Qiao seemed to be completely unaware of her. With red eyes, Cui Qiao brought a basin of water and passed through her directly, and then stopped not far from her. While silently shedding tears, Cui Qiao wet the handkerchief to wipe her fingers.
Just after wiping, Lu Zhao also came. His face was not very good. Although he did not show his sadness and sorrow on his face like Cui Qiao, anyone could see that he was on the verge of collapse.
“Let me do it.”
Lu Zhao asked Cui Qiao to go out, and he took the handkerchief and held Shen Qingyao’s hand, as if he was wiping some treasure.
Shen Qingyao was a little sad. Her resentment towards the system became even more serious.
The system seemed to think about what to say, and then continued the topic and said: [Host, you have completed the task, and the reward will definitely be given to you! I will not break my promise!]
Shen Qingyao stared at Lu Zhao’s back in silence, without saying a word. The system said again: [And… and, the failure of the central control system has been almost fixed, and your reward will be issued soon!]
And if something really happened to Shen Qingyao, Lu Zhao might still turn evil. It’s just the last step left, wouldn’t it be a pity if he turned evil again at this time? The system will not do such a stupid thing.
But the system didn’t say this, after all, if it said this, it would seem really stupid that they would fail at the last minute.
When Shen Qingyao heard this, her eyes moved and she had some reaction. She hummed and then slowly asked: “What’s going on now?”
The face of ‘Shen Qingyao’ on the bed was frighteningly pale. If there was no weak breath, it would be no different from death. In fact, according to the original plot, Shen Qingyao should have died at this time. But in order to fulfill their promise, before the system was repaired, they had to think of another way, extracting part of Shen Qingyao’s soul, making her half-dead, to support her life until the reward could be issued.
But who would have thought that the central system was repaired as soon as the soul was extracted.
So it created such an awkward situation, a dilemma.
After the system explained, Shen Qingyao sneered with her hands folded. Although she didn’t say anything, the system felt like it heard a long 100,000-word long insult and ridicule from the short laugh, and was ashamed.
“Then, why don’t you put me back? What are you waiting for?”
Shen Qingyao glanced at Lu Zhao who was guarding the bed again, and felt more and more that this wave of disaster was really an unexpected disaster. Not only did she experience two waves of severe illness and near death, but she also made the people around her worried. She felt heavy in her heart and inexplicably irritated, and urged.
[…]
That’s the problem.
It’s easy to send Shen Qingyao back, but if someone who was dying in the previous second is alive and kicking in the next second, the scene is also a bit scary.
So the system began to hesitate again: [Well… We may need an opportunity.]
Shen Qingyao didn’t know whether there was an opportunity, she only knew that she was very angry. After a long while, she still patiently asked: “What opportunity?”
At this time, the closed door was pushed open from the outside again, and Lu Zhao, who was sitting in front of the window, was startled and looked over with a calm look. The look in his eyes was obscure, forcing Shen Qingli, who had rushed in just a moment ago, to pause and actually stop where she was.
She was stunned for a while before trotting over again. Anxiously, she asked, “What happened to Yaoyao?”
In fact, she had heard about the general situation when she came out of the palace. Shen Qingyao had a heart attack, vomiting blood and fainting, with a weak pulse, and it seemed that she was almost dying. But Shen Qingli didn’t dare to ask the last three words, nor did she really want to believe it.
Lu Zhao only glanced at her, said nothing, but silently held Shen Qingyao’s hand. Apart from the panic and heartbreak when Shen Qingyao just fainted, he was left with only silence that no one could see through.
Unexpectedly, Lu Zhao almost had people find all the good doctors in the capital, and all the elixirs that had been saved in the mansion over the years, whether useful or not, were sent to Kong Lin. But Kong Lin said that Shen Qingyao’s heart disease was strange, and the prescription needed to be re-developed. He had been looking for it for these years, but it was always a little short.
No one knew how long it would take to make up for this, and no one knew whether the prescription could really be developed, and no one dared to be sure that the prescription would be useful, and that Shen Qingyao would definitely be able to hold on until then.
Only wait.
So Lu Zhao put all his energy on Shen Qingyao, and he was unwilling to give away any more words or attention to others.
In fact, Shen Qingli could see it clearly even if he didn’t say it.
With a breath stuck in her chest, she turned her face away and shed tears silently.
Originally, Xiao Mu had almost rectified the court in the past few days. Xiao Mu was now the only one qualified to ascend the throne, and Shen Qingli must be his Empress.
But now she said: “I have discussed with Xiao Mu that the coronation… will be postponed for a few more days. Yaoyao is in this state now, and I don’t have the energy to be the Empress.”
“Yaoyao will be fine.” Shen Qingli said again, not knowing whether she was talking to Lu Zhao or herself.
“Two days ago in the palace, she joked with me that she missed my wedding, so she must see it on the day of the coronation.” Shen Qingli raised her hand to wipe her tears, gritted her teeth and said firmly: “We can postpone it for a few days, and we will definitely be able to wait until Yaoyao wakes up and see it with her own eyes.”
Lu Zhao lowered his eyes and listened to her words. After a long while, he said ‘hmm’ in a hoarse voice.
Shen Qingyao, who had been beside Shen Qingli, was shocked and her nose was sour. She didn’t expect that her Eldest Sister would postpone such a big thing because of her joke.
At this moment, another person rushed in hurriedly. The person seemed to have traveled a long way. When Shen Qingyao looked outside the door, she heard the neighing of horses outside the courtyard. The person actually rode all the way into the city. The person appeared at this time, and was still out of breath.
The person was holding an ebony box in her hand, and her hair was a little messy because of the rushed journey.
But she didn’t care about so much at this time. She just supported the door frame with one hand, stared at Shen Qingli anxiously, and shouted: “Can’t postpone it!”
The person who came was Shen Qinglin. When she learned that Great Liang was in turmoil and Shen Qingyao returned to the capital alone for Lu Zhao, she followed closely. It was just because she went to find some things on the way that she arrived a few days later than Shen Qingyao.
As soon as she entered the city, she heard the news that Shen Qingyao was seriously ill.
Shen Qinglin’s heart skipped a beat, and she knew that it was not good, so she rushed over without stopping, and happened to hear her Eldest Sister’s decision.
In order to let Shen Qingyao it with her own eyes, the ceremony of the Empress’ coronation was postponed, and it would mean the time for Xiao Mu to ascend the throne and become Emperor was also postponed. Others didn’t know, but Shen Qinglin, who had also transmigrated and had the system for a period of time, knew it.
Shen Qingyao was carrying a system task.
Although Shen Qinglin don’t know the details, but she knew they need to reach the finale.
Only when Xiao Mu really ascended the throne, the mission could be truly completed. Perhaps, Yaoyao was waiting for this turning point.
Shen Qinglin raised her eyes and looked at the people in the room. With a firm look, he repeated: “The ascension to the throne and the coronation of the Empress cannot be postponed. In fact… the sooner the better.”
At the same time, in the void that no one can see, the system also said: [Yes, host, the opportunity has come.]