Ye Zhibai loved a classic old song.
It went like this:
Unforgettable~~tonight, unforgettable~~tonight.
She’d never quite understood before which night could be worth remembering, but this morning, she finally grasped its meaning deep in her bones.
It really was too damn unforgettable!!
Unforgettable enough that Ye Zhibai had dragged herself out of bed at the crack of dawn for a scalding hot shower!
~~~ Don’t ask—last night was just an intense workout, she sweated buckets, so of course she needed a wash.
Back in the room, Guang Yu had somehow woken up from the knockout blow of that literary masterpiece called Aluminum Copper.
Without missing a beat, she shifted into her fox girl form, her face beaming with excitement as she buzzed around Ye Zhibai, who had just slipped into a fresh nightgown, chattering nonstop.
“Ye Zhibai, Ye Zhibai! Why are you stripping the bed sheets first thing in the morning?”
“Did you two get it on yesterday? How’d it go? I passed out, so spill!”
“Where’s your sister? Haven’t seen her around!”
Outside the window, sparrows perched on the power lines, jabbering away. That endless chirping sure felt like summer.
You know what happened to those sparrows later, right?
Keep yapping like that without flying off, and they’d fry on the wires for sure!!
Ye Zhibai neatly folded the ruined sheets from last night and set them on the floor.
Then she rummaged in the closet for clean new ones to remake the bed.
By way of answering Guang Yu’s questions, she added casually.
“Yun’er said she’s off making breakfast. She’s in a great mood today—claims she can whip up twelve dishes.”
“Really?! Awesome! Uh… but why twelve?”
“She said it’d make a perfect heart shape on the table.”
“Grass.”
Grass—as in, the plant.
Guang Yu meant there’d definitely be some greens on the table, while also venting her inner shock.
Human culture was so vast and profound, way more refined than anything in the Heavenly Realm.
But Guang Yu wasn’t about to let Ye Zhibai off the hook that easily.
With a whoosh, she pounced onto the bed, forcing herself right into Ye Zhibai’s line of sight.
Ignore me all you want—I’m asking anyway!
“So, how’d it really go last night? Did you two actually do the deed?”
“You really have to know…”
“Yeah, I really do!”
So bold and shameless!
Ye Zhibai kept her face impassive as ever.
Her cool eyes showed no emotion whatsoever.
But when she deadpanned that line, it dripped with embarrassment and reluctance!
“I… I don’t even know when I passed out. Same as you, I blacked out too…”
“You got clocked by the book too?!”
“No.”
Ye Zhibai dredged up the scattered fragments of memory from last night but clammed up after that.
Guang Yu noticed something amazing, though—as Ye Zhibai thought back more and more, that expressionless little face of hers actually flushed with the faintest hint of red!
Ye Zhibai wasn’t incapable of expressions; they just needed the right trigger. And that subtle blush said it all about her current mortification!
“Oho! You’re blushing!”
“No…! Can we drop this already?”
“Wah, don’t clam up! Pretty please… Whether we can head back to the Heavenly Realm depends on whether you two did it! We can’t share info, so if we don’t have even this much trust and honesty—
What kind of good war buddies are we then!”
When did I ever say we were good war buddies?!
Unable to withstand Guang Yu’s wheedling, Ye Zhibai finally let slip a few minor details.
“I was pretty dazed at first, didn’t know what to do. Yun’er just kept groping and teasing—I have no idea how long it went on.”
“Teasing? How? Come on, what are you scared of? I’m not even human—no need to hold back with me!”
Guang Yu, seriously, I thank you every day.
Thanks for insulting yourself just to make me feel at ease spilling the beans—I’m touched.
To make it less abstract, Ye Zhibai offered an abstract example.
“Like a lotus leaf in a summer pond with a dewdrop on it. You gently press the leaf with your palm—nothing happens right away; the drop just rolls around on the surface.”
“Hm? Not getting it—what’re you trying to say?”
“I mean, I went through a quantitative change leading to qualitative. To put it simply.” Ye Zhibai cut to the chase. “Press long enough, and that dewdrop rolls right off into the pond. The lotus leaf? Total blackout.”
And then—ripples exploded across the pond, warming the whole sweltering summer.
Warming the poor bedsheets too.
Whether Guang Yu got it or not, that was the limit of what Ye Zhibai’s little face could convey.
Who knew this scummy fox was so sharp!
She just pondered for a second, then smacked her left fist into her right palm, her fox ears perking straight up!
“Aha! Got it. Why beat around the bush? Just say as a girl experiencing ‘reaching the summit’ for the first time, you couldn’t hold out and blacked out! Who cares about keeping up appearances.”
The line before “survey all the mountains”?
“!”
The culture fox really knew her stuff!
Guang Yu waved her little hand dismissively, hugged her fox tail, and shot Ye Zhibai a sidelong glance.
“So? You just lay there passively blacking out? No counterattack the whole time?”
“Pretty much not… Cough, not at all.” She sounded a bit guilty—after all, across two lifetimes, this was her first rodeo.
Passive? Nah, call it diligent study!
Plus, Ye Zhibai wasn’t just saving face here. Yesterday, she’d actually flipped around and given Yun’er a taste of her own medicine!
Even a cornered rabbit bites, after all!
She had no clue if she’d done it right, but the state of the bedsheets? Yun’er was definitely partly to blame!
First time, no experience—normal.
If there was a next time, she’d get the hang of it eventually.
But scummy Guang Yu kicked off her slippers, hopped onto the bed, and flipped on supreme mockery mode!
“Lame! That hardly counts as doing the deed! Don’t you dare underestimate it, you slacker! It’s not some finger-wiggle job! No wonder I felt zilch about returning to the Heavenly Realm even after you supposedly did it—turns out you dropped the ball! You—”
“Guang Yu, I’ve suddenly lost interest in buying drinks this afternoon.”
“No worries! We’ll call it even this time—do better next round!”
One of life’s required courses: Two-Faced Shamelessness.
Huh…?
Hang on, wasn’t Guang Yu clueless about this stuff last time? Where’d she pick up all this knowledge?
Ye Zhibai had barely voiced the question when Guang Yu smirked.
Like a magician pulling a trick, she whipped out a “textbook” from who-knows-where.
Ye Zhibai’s eyes widened slowly in utter shock.
Wasn’t that the doujinshi from the apartment yesterday—the one she was supposed to rip up?!
Citrus Saga: The Surge of Love.
Damn, pulling a sneaky one on me!
Not only did she not destroy it, she smuggled it home?!
No task completed, and she still mooched two drinks!
Guang Yu patted the cover fondly, her loli face lit up like she’d struck gold.
“Throwing this away would’ve been criminal! I flipped through it yesterday—truly, books hold houses of gold! Ye Zhibai, you know? According to the drawings, doing the deed takes two to tango. You hogging all the ‘reaching the summit’? No wonder it flopped!”
“Hand over… that book. Now.”
“Hey! No fair! I haven’t finished the second half! Ahh, thief!!”
Stealing my own doujinshi and calling it robbery?!
Guang Yu exploited her tiny frame, bouncing around the room. Ye Zhibai couldn’t catch her.
Why are you such a pest?!
Just as Ye Zhibai paused, panting, to catch her breath and gear up for round two—
Urgent footsteps approached from the slightly ajar bedroom door.
It was Yun’er back.
One girl and one fox called a tacit truce.
Guang Yu swiftly stashed the doujinshi again.
Hmph, time to get rich quietly! That knowledge was priceless!
Ye Zhiyun hurried into the room.
Ye Zhibai caught sight of her outfit and nearly choked on her own spit!
Yun’er still clutched a cooking spatula, and her apron had a big heart in the middle.
The kicker? Right in the upper right corner of the heart was a single character.
—Bai.
Can’t our aprons be even a little normal?!
No matter the inner roast, Ye Zhibai kept her cool exterior.
“Yun’er, what’s up?”
“I love you.”
“!”
I told you, tone down those daily confessions!
Ye Zhiyun shook her head—she’d blurted it out on impulse.
But the next second, she composed herself.
“Sis, we’ve got a sudden update. Yesterday, I had someone look into how that person from your dream was buried after death, right?”
“Yeah… What about it? Already cremated?”
“Not yet. The report just came back—someone stepped up, covered the cremation costs themselves, and handled the whole funeral arrangements after.”
What?
After I died, someone actually shelled out for my funeral?!
A surge of inexplicable gratitude and emotion welled up.
At the same time, a reliable silhouette flickered through Ye Zhibai’s mind.
A fleeting glimpse from childhood memories, etched by the years.
Ye Zhibai felt her nose tingle. Putting everything else aside, there was only one thing she wanted to know right now.
“Cremation… what day did they schedule it for?”
“Sis, that’s exactly why I came to tell you. The Maid Corps just sent word—the cremation’s set for ten o’clock this morning. The body’s already been wheeled into the crematorium, and in two hours, it’ll go into the incinerator.”
“…”
That meant it was about to be burned any minute now!
No time to waste.
Ye Zhibai slapped her thigh and shot to her feet.
Her silver hair flicked back as her small hand waved decisively. Beneath her cool gaze burned an unwavering determination.
“Yun’er, breakfast… we’ll grab it when we get back. Come with me now, okay?”
“Yeah! Of course—wherever Sis goes, Yun’er will follow~”
Wuwu, thank you so much, Yun’er.
Dragging you to the crematorium first thing in the morning with a jinx like me.
But… let’s go.
Time to set off now, and bid a final farewell to my past life’s self!
I died so miserably, wuwuwu!!!
