Chapter 6: The Girl Who Appeared In My Dreams

Shi Ruijie woke up in his bed with a start. The whole room was dark and there was only a bedside table lamp turned on. As soon as his eyes opened, a bunch of people crowded and fussed over him anxiously. His assistant hurriedly instructed the family doctor to take a look at him, and his housekeeper quickly poured him a glass of water as she asked if he was feeling hungry.

He had fallen asleep in his study and somehow woke up in bed.

"Young Master Shi's vitals are alright. He would probably want something to eat, but as he hasn't eaten for quite sometime, something light on the stomach is preferable."

"I'll go make some congee," offered his housekeeper enthusiastically. The old lady seemed relieved to see that there was no big issue with him.

"How long have I been asleep for?" Shi Ruijie asked his assistant, who remained behind after the others had left the room.

"About twenty four hours. I tried calling you the whole of yesterday, but you didn't pick up and so I came here to report on my findings. That was when I found you passed out in your study last night. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong with you and said that you were just sleeping. If you were still not going to wake up, I was going to call your parents and call for an ambulance to send you to the hospital." Dapeng stood by the side of his bed, rambling on, as he clutched onto a black folder as if it was as important as his own life.

Shi Ruijie sighed and pointed at it. "Tell me what you've found out about the books and the sender of the package."

Dapeng flipped open the cover, pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to him. "The books are written by Yu Juan, which is the pen name of a person named Lu Yujuan. Other than the fact that she is a female in her mid-twenties, there really isn't much information I could find about her. Apart from a plagiarism scandal a couple of years ago that was proven to be untrue, there isn't anything suspicious about her. Most importantly, she has no relations with the Association."

Scanning the scarce details about Yu Juan, Shi Ruijie nodded in agreement. He was certain that he was unacquainted with this person—their paths had never crossed before and there was no way that he would have offended her.

"What about the sender? Did you find out who it was?"

"Yes, I found something that is rather curious," Dapeng said as he pulled out a few pieces of papers this time. "This may be something of concern to the Association."

Shi Ruijie adjusted the pillows behind him and sat up straighter. His interest was piqued.

"The sender of the books is a third-year university student named Qian Siyu, majoring in History—"

"Qian Siyu?" Shi Ruijie scowled as he took the document from Dapeng. His gaze fell on the picture of the culprit and he felt a flicker of anger. Stabbing her picture with his finger, he turned to his assistant and asked: "This is Qian Siyu? The person whose application was rejected by Shibao Ge?"

"Yes, it's the same individual."

"Is she somehow related to what is happening to me? Perhaps to take revenge or something? But how is she doing this—is she a member of the Association?"

Dapeng glanced down at his black file and drew in a deep breath. "Here is the curious part: Qian Siyu is not an Association member and her personal information is quite clean—she is quite a model student, a good citizen and comes from a good family background. But here comes the concerning part: she does have some ties with the Association through her mother's side of the family. Her mother's name is Wen Jing, the granddaughter of Wen Chenxi."

Shi Ruijie almost jumped out of bed in alarm. Gripping the document in front of him tightly, he carefully scrutinised the page with Qian Siyu's family tree.

The Wen family? He had not heard of them for a long time now.

That was a surname that had popped up in conversations about the Association with the elders of the Association before, but it was always followed with shushes and hushed whispers about how it was a taboo topic. As such, growing up he was taught by the elders that the Wens were a terrible, terrible family clan that was expelled from the Association due to an incident in the last century.

However, each time his father would always tell him that the elders did not know the full story. His father had heard from his grandmother that the tales of betrayal were in fact youthful pursuits of love and misunderstandings within a love triangle. The incident that had occurred in the last century was not caused by the Wens, and that they were not expelled from the Association. Wen Chenxi had voluntarily withdrew from the Association and donated their library collection to the government, before leaving for a foreign country.

Now that he knew that Qian Siyu had some relations to the Association, the two transmigrating dreams in which he had met with unfortunate endings finally made sense. But what Shi Ruijie didn't understand was how Qian Siyu came to possess the outdated knowledge of transmigrating into books through dreams that only the Ji family had.

"Does she have any relations to the Ji family?"

Dapeng flipped the pages in his file before shaking his head. "No, I did not come across such information during my investigation. Would you like me to run another search? My personal view is that it may be better to check with Mr Ji directly."

Shi Ruijie picked up his phone from his bedside table and immediately searched for Ji Kai's number. "Yes, I need to get to the bottom of this and get rid of this Qian Siyu."

***

"What you experienced was definitely a form of transmigration taught by my ancestors in the past. At present, I'm not aware of any young person in the Association who knows how to practice this art of transmigration," said Ji Kai over the video call, "but I will do some checking on my end to see if any member of the Wen family had previously been learnt it. Have you read the third book yet?"

"Not yet," Shi Ruijie replied, his fingers tracing the art on the cover of the third book, Snow Path. "I dare not read it. Should I burn it up?"

An angry female voice sounded at the other end of the line. "No, that's just disrespectful to books and the author!"

"You're one to speak," he retorted, "your husband has burnt and pulped so many books in his life, he is the villain! How is he able to sleep in peace at night when the ghosts of the books he destroyed float about him every night?"

Fang Yuhan appeared on screen beside Ji Kai with a sharp glower that threatened to cut him through the display. "No, you are the villain. You probably did something bad that caused that girl to feel so indignant that this was the only way she could plead her cause."

"Kai-ge, can you please control her?"

"Don't help him, Ji Kai. He deserves to be punished for his sins."

"Dajie, don't you have anything better to do?"

"Kai, he's being rude to me."

"As a magnanimous older sister, just take a step back and think of him as being childish."

"Ge, why are you bullying me too?" Shi Ruijie protested.

Ji Kai raised his brows at him. "If I were bullying you, would I still be on this call helping you resolve your girl troubles? I'll investigate on my end and update you as soon as I can. In the meantime, my advice would be to read the third book to arm yourself with the knowledge of the plot, especially when we can expect that a third transmigration will take place."

Shi Ruijie felt a shiver run down his spine as he turned the first page of the book open. "Alright... I will read it. Thank you, ge."

"Also, when you're in the transmigration dream, make a mental note of anything you see that is suspect."

*** ***

A/N: Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Real life caught up and caused a writer's block in one of the later chapters, which I had to fix before posting more chapters : P