Chapter 260: Mommy Hug p1
Huayibai…
Huayibai…
Lin Jiayao’s vision was filled with a chaotic darkness, like being trapped in the system space without any interface.
She tried to open her eyes, to move her body, but couldn’t.
It felt like she was being crushed by something heavy, making it even difficult to breathe.
This state lasted for an unknown amount of time. Lin Jiayao could even clearly feel that she was unconscious, but couldn’t break free.
She could only repeatedly call out to the system.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, after Lin Jiayao’s last desperate plea, the system screen appeared.
“[Present]”
Seeing the system dialog box, Lin Jiayao finally felt a sliver of relief.
She quickly opened the login interface, then other system interfaces, even checking the Spirit research in the Research Lab.
Seventeen hours left… so she had been unconscious for about two hours?
No… she had to log into A4 quickly and see if it could find any remains of Huayibai for revival…
The eighteen years in the dream world had made Lin Jiayao truly regard Huayibai as her daughter. Naturally, she couldn’t accept the “fact” of Huayibai’s death.
But she also knew that even if she found Huayibai’s remains, it would be impossible to recreate her.
If she continued to obsess over using the Blood Orb Mycelium to revive a “being,” she would become no different from Wu Hejun, a lunatic consumed by obsession.
In her panic, she just wanted to do something. Whether it worked or not, as long as she was doing something, it would stop her mind from racing.
Lin Jiayao quickly opened the login interface in the darkness and directly chose A4.
When Huayibai had first begun to evolve, A4 had been blown away with her. Now, after so much time, A4 should have been automatically reset by the system.
Just as Lin Jiayao clicked to confirm the login, a system prompt popped up.
[Please retain evolutions before attempting the next login.]
Lin Jiayao had controlled the mycelium clone to find Huayibai before retaining the evolutions from A4’s last login, so those evolutions hadn’t been retained yet.
This system prompt, thanks to Hunting Rhythm, finally calmed Lin Jiayao down.
The dead couldn’t be resurrected… Even if she found Huayibai’s remains now, it would likely just be a mindless A-rank fungal zombie, and she might die if she went there.
But A4 had been there for so long without incident, which meant that Huayibai probably hadn’t even gone berserk, but had directly exploded during the final contraction.
“Phew…”
Lin Jiayao exhaled, the tightness in her chest not easing. Even breathing felt difficult.
So this was the feeling of grief… she didn’t want to experience it again.
Calm down, think about what to do next… Her sister was still alive; she couldn’t fall apart.
She could only hope that time would heal the wounds in her memory.
Slowly opening her eyes, Lin Jiayao saw the familiar ceiling.
Her body… felt so heavy…
Lin Jiayao tried to sit up, but failed. She didn’t even have the strength to prop herself up.
This feeling of heaviness and breathlessness became even more real after she opened her eyes.
The quilt was too heavy, and too hot.
Lin Jiayao reached out to throw off the covers, but her hand landed on a head with soft, long hair.
Huh…
Huh?
Lin Jiayao looked down and saw a small, white figure lying on her chest, its head resting right there, beneath her hand.
This was…
Lin Jiayao felt her mind go blank, and the Turbine Heart Pump, under her unconscious control, began to race.
She poked the small head with her finger, confirming she wasn’t dreaming.
After being poked twice, the figure on top of her stirred, stretched slightly, then slowly raised its head, its chin resting on Lin Jiayao’s chest, and looked at her.
Huayibai…?
“Huayibai?” Lin Jiayao called out.
“What’s up, Mom?” Huayibai tilted her head and asked.
“Get off.”
“Okay~”
Huayibai rolled off Lin Jiayao.
After rolling away, Huayibai rolled back a little, curled up beside Lin Jiayao, and nuzzled her head against Lin Jiayao’s arm, as if looking for a new spot for a nap.
After Huayibai rolled off, the tightness in Lin Jiayao’s chest, the difficulty breathing, the weight on her body… all of it disappeared.
So she had literally been crushed.
Lin Jiayao quickly sat up, leaning against the headboard, and looked at Huayibai, who was about to lie down again, in disbelief.
“How…” Lin Jiayao’s mind was still a mess.
She had just been thinking about the fact that the dead couldn’t be resurrected, even suppressing her emotions, and now, upon waking up, Huayibai was lying beside her?
Had she gone mad, unconsciously creating a new Huayibai clone with her mycelium, deceiving herself?
“Mom?” Huayibai also sat up, next to Lin Jiayao, leaning forward, her hands on the mattress, looking curiously at Lin Jiayao’s confused expression.
Lin Jiayao slowly reached out her right hand, her index and middle fingers pinching Huayibai’s cheek.
Before Huayibai could understand what was happening, she felt Lin Jiayao’s grip tighten.
“Woo… it hurts… Mommy…” Huayibai pouted. Although she didn’t know why Mommy was suddenly pinching her, she didn’t try to move Mommy’s hand away.
“It doesn’t hurt…” Lin Jiayao released her grip, looking at the aggrieved Huayibai, who was rubbing her cheek, and murmured.
Pinching Huayibai didn’t hurt, which meant it wasn’t her own mycelium clone…
Could it be someone else’s mycelium clone? What if she had unconsciously forced the little Black Stem to clone Huayibai?
Lin Jiayao was still in a daze, not quite believing that Huayibai was really beside her.
This was normal. The shock of such a dramatic turn of events was difficult to process quickly.
“You’re not this small,” Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai and said seriously, “What did you look like in the dream?”
Clones couldn’t clone dream memories. If the “Huayibai” in front of her didn’t have the dream memories, then it must be fake.
“Huh?” Huayibai was stunned by Lin Jiayao’s words.
After a long while, Huayibai took her hand off her cheek, pinched the sheets beneath her, and whispered, “So Mommy likes them big…”
Then, Huayibai’s body began to change.
Her face remained childish, her height still that of a small girl about 1.4 meters tall, with thin arms and legs.
But her chest slowly swelled, pushing against her white dress.
“Is this big enough?” Huayibai scratched her head, a shy smile on her face. “If Mommy thinks it’s still not enough…”
“Huayibai…” Lin Jiayao’s voice deepened.
“Woo woo woo, Mommy, I’m sorry…” Hearing Lin Jiayao call her full name, Huayibai stopped joking around.
Her body was quickly enveloped by a large amount of mycelium, and soon, a beautiful white-haired girl in a gray pleated skirt uniform sat beside Lin Jiayao, maintaining her previous posture.
“Mom…” The girl lowered her head, occasionally glancing up timidly, like a child who had done something wrong and was waiting to be punished.
It really was Huayibai…
Seeing Huayibai in this form, Lin Jiayao was finally relieved.
Then, Lin Jiayao asked Huayibai about what happened after she lost consciousness, and Huayibai reported everything to Lin Jiayao.
It turned out that Huayibai had successfully evolved shortly after Lin Jiayao lost consciousness.
Those shockwaves weren’t explosions from a failed evolution, but periodic releases of energy during the extreme compression of her body.
These violent shockwaves were mistaken by Lin Jiayao as explosions.
Of course, it sounded simple, but Huayibai’s evolution process was still very difficult.
This could be seen from the fact that she only had this little blood crystal liquid left after evolving.
If the compression and shaping hadn’t been successful in a few more seconds, then the blood crystal liquid in her body would have been burned out, and her body would have truly exploded because it couldn’t be maintained.
It was an evolution at the very limit.
After hearing the whole process, Lin Jiayao finally breathed a sigh of relief, and at the same time, felt a pang of fear in her heart.
Huayibai had already devoured blood crystals to her body’s limit, and she could still only evolve at the last minute… If there had been any mistakes in the process, or if she hadn’t woken up Huayibai in the dream earlier, then Huayibai’s evolution would have failed.
“It’s good that you succeeded…”
Lin Jiayao leaned against the headboard, reached out, and rubbed Huayibai’s head.
“Hee hee…” Huayibai rubbed against Lin Jiayao slightly, then directly lay down on Lin Jiayao’s lap, looked up at Lin Jiayao with a smile.
She seemed happy to be praised.
“You’re so old, and still acting like a child…” Lin Jiayao said helplessly while combing Huayibai’s hair on her lap.
“Two years old~” Huayibai said confidently.
Indeed, not counting the years spent in the dream, Huayibai was only two years old in the real world.
To be precise, two and a half years old.
It was just that with Huayibai’s beautiful face, acting cute and coquettishly in her arms and calling her Mommy, it did feel a bit strange.
“Don’t be silly.” Lin Jiayao reached out and gently flicked Huayibai’s forehead.
Looking at Huayibai whimpering in her arms, Lin Jiayao gradually felt a sense of peace.
The eighteen years in the dream world made Huayibai smarter and filled the gaps in her common sense, but Huayibai was still her cute and quirky self.
Although sometimes she really wanted to pinch her hard.
Now, she also had an A-rank combat power, right?
Lin Jiayao stroked Huayibai’s hair, and was about to ask Huayibai about her abilities, when she suddenly thought of something and asked:
“Where’s my sister? Have you seen Sister Xi?”
If Lin Jiayao remembered correctly, before she extracted and controlled the mycelium clone, her sister had been holding her. Now that she had woken up, why was only Huayibai here?
“That sister named Kisaragi Mika came here, and there was also a horde at the gate of the camp. Sister Xi went to help deal with it.” Huayibai said truthfully.
“A horde, are there any B-rank zombies in it?” Lin Jiayao frowned slightly.
Had the horde already reached Kun City? That shouldn’t be possible, right?
“It’s okay, Huayibai has already taken care of it,” Huayibai, lying on Lin Jiayao’s lap, rubbed her face against Lin Jiayao’s lower abdomen and said proudly, “It’s safe now~”
“Hmm…” Lin Jiayao nodded, as if she had thought of something, and asked with some confusion, “Then why did you still let Sister Xi go over if it’s resolved?”
“Because there was also a convoy that led them over, and there were many follow-up problems to deal with, so I let Sister Xi go over…” Huayibai’s voice became softer and softer, and towards the end, she simply buried her face in Lin Jiayao’s lower abdomen and stopped talking.
“Tell me the truth.” Lin Jiayao said calmly.
Huayibai was still the same as in the dream. When she lied in front of her, her voice would become softer and softer, and the end of her sentences would always have some uncertain tone words.
“Swish—”
Instantly, Huayibai’s body was enveloped by mycelium, rapidly shrinking, and returned to her original small form. She looked up at Lin Jiayao and said, “Huayibai just wanted to hug Mommy…”
“Sigh…” Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai and shook her head.
Looking at Huayibai like this, it was really hard to get angry.
Lin Jiayao reached out, gently pinched Huayibai’s face, and said seriously: “You’re not allowed to lie in the future, do you understand?”
“Understood…” Huayibai said vaguely, her mouth being pinched.
