Chapter 270: When They Returned to the Modern Era Together (Part 1)

“Miss, the last four digits of your phone number?”

“3498,” Jiang Xian paused. “Let us depart.”

“…”

The driver shot her a strange look. Seeing her expression was normal and that she didn’t seem drunk, he swallowed the words, “It’s a two hundred cleaning fee if you throw up in here.” He started the engine, and the car slipped quietly into the night.

Jiang Xian had long forgotten what the apartment she lived in before transmigrating even looked like. She went upstairs, following the address, and felt a wave of disorientation as she pushed open the door.

‘I lived here?’

‘In a place this small?’

‘I miss living in the Forbidden City…’

Jiang Xian reined in the dangerous thought.

Admittedly, the material comforts of the modern world are certainly better than those of ancient emperors. Fruits and vegetables, cultivated and improved over countless generations, are immeasurably more delicious than any imperial feast—unless, of course, you were after the inhumane pleasure of having a Beauty catch your waste with her mouth. In that case, the ancients had it better.

That said, the humble apartment Jiang Xian lived in was truly wretched.

She had rented it for its cheap price; it wasn’t a nicely furnished place. When she moved in, the apartment contained only a bed and the most basic appliances—not even a sofa. She had bought only a computer desk to make it easier to work from home and could pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. There were no appliances to improve her quality of life, nor any personal belongings that might hint at her tastes.

The cold, white light made her face look like porcelain.

This was the place Jiang Xian had chosen for herself in the big city.

In her life before her last, she had clearly been used to this.

Back in Yan Chi, Jiang Xian hadn’t cared much for personal luxuries either. But the Emperor had insisted on meddling with the decor of her quarters. Different seasons demanded different furnishings, the flowers in the courtyard were changed constantly, and her meals were so exquisitely prepared that she used one set of cups for tea and a completely different one for wine.

It was hard to imagine the ruler of a nation being so particular about interior design.

Everything had to be not only the finest available, but also the most fitting.

Jiang Xian’s philosophy was to focus her energy on work.

The Emperor’s perspective, however, was that since he was so diligent in his state duties, he deserved to eat, drink, and dress well after court let out. And by extension, so did the people around him. When he found that rewarding Jiang Xian was pointless—as she simply put everything away in storage—he took over the renovation of Bihua Palace himself. Every change in scenery she witnessed from then on was orchestrated by him.

Only now, back in the modern world, did Jiang Xian realize just how small and uncomfortable her old apartment was.

She had actually grown particular about comfort.

‘…I should probably quit my job. I can’t remember a single thing about it.’

—————–

Meanwhile, in a unit at the prestigious Tangchen Yipin, a man was slowly waking up.

[BEEP…]

[Sign-In System bound.]

[Host may sign in at designated locations each day to receive random rewards.]

The man spent a full hour piecing together his new reality.

Inside this twenty-three-year-old’s body resided the soul of Xie Che, an emperor from a bygone dynasty. Before waking up here, Xie Che had passed away peacefully, surrounded by his descendants. His final words to his son were—

“Do not grieve. I am going to find your Mother Empress.”

Xie Zhao, himself a father of two sons and a daughter, nodded with tears welling in his eyes.

He had two Mother Empresses, but they both knew Xie Che was referring to Empress Jiang of the absurdly long posthumous title. The court officials had thought the same thing, suspecting it was merely an exercise in padding the character count. They were dumbfounded—what kind of standard was this? Once the Emperor Emeritus passed away, his own imperial title would be appended to it. Just how long would the full title be?

But both the Emperor Emeritus and the current Emperor felt it was perfectly appropriate.

Question it, and they’d add another line of characters.

And so, the civil and military officials reached a silent consensus to keep their mouths shut.

…

‘Queen Chu probably wouldn’t want to see me again in the afterlife,’ Xie Che thought.

Their marriage was purely for show; they were just partners sharing a life out of convenience.

Her primary concern was always Princess Taihua.

The longer one lives, the clearer one becomes about what one wants. That’s why an emperor’s long life has historically never been a good thing. The older they get, the more selfish they become, feeling that with their time running out, they should finally live for themselves.

During his reign, Xie Che never stopped the imperial selections, but they were only to choose consorts for the imperial clan and the princes; he no longer took anyone into his own harem.

After abdicating and moving to Xihua Garden, he spent the rest of his days devoted to Jiang Xian.

Of course, from Xian’er’s perspective, she was probably living with Queen Chu, Noble Princess Consort Rong, Chen Guiren, Zhao’er, Princess Yongping… and a whole crowd of others. But Xie Che loved being by her side. He was so clingy that his second older brother once remarked, “Does the Emperor Emeritus just enjoy the thrill of the chase?”

‘On second thought, maybe he’s right,’ Xie Che mused.

Whether he could ever truly ‘catch’ her or not didn’t matter. Xian’er wasn’t thinking about anyone else, so if he just stuck close enough, wouldn’t she be his?

And so he stuck by her for the better part of a lifetime.

After Jiang Xian passed away from old age, Xie Che’s health declined daily. He sometimes thought he had to reincarnate as quickly as possible to find her. Otherwise, knowing her personality, she wouldn’t even need to drink the Meng Po Soup of forgetfulness to erase him from her memory in the blink of an eye.

…

“What is this ‘Sign-In System’? Who am I? And where is this place?”

Xie Che fired off three questions in succession.

With the system’s help, he was finally able to understand.

This was his ‘reincarnation’ in another dimension. The body’s original owner was a wealthy heir with a family fortune in the tens of billions—a premium-grade heir, at that. While his peers were still cautiously asking their parents for allowance money, this body’s father had been in a car accident that left him in a vegetative state. With his father’s credit cards in hand, he could spend whatever he wanted.

All the money in the world, and no father to answer to.

Anyone else might have been thrilled, but filial piety was etched into Xie Che’s very soul. Since he had been reborn into this body, the original owner’s father was now his father. He had to fulfill the duties of a son on his behalf.

…

With that in mind, his first stop was the hospital to see his father and ask the doctor how one should care for a patient in a vegetative state.

The doctor was extremely polite to him. “Mr. Xie, our hospital will take good care of your father. But if you’d like to do your part, you could perhaps come and chat with him. Just talking to him might stimulate his will to live. A hundred words from us are not as powerful as a single word from family.”

Despite his words, the doctor had little hope that the rich heir would actually spend time with his father.

After all, the young man hadn’t visited the hospital in a month.

He was financially free and living it up.

“Good. I understand.”

Xie Che glanced at the door of the VIP hospital room, a clear dismissal.

After their conversation, the doctor had no suspicion that the young Mr. Xie had been replaced. The young man’s speech was clipped and devoid of pleasantries, consisting entirely of commands—clearly, it was the heir himself! For Xie Che, however, simply accepting that a physician could enter his presence without kneeling and offering greetings had taken an almost superhuman effort…

‘Then again,’ he reasoned, ‘I’m not the Emperor here. I’m just a commoner, the son of a merchant, no less. It’s perfectly normal for a doctor not to kneel before me.’

‘Come to think of it, there are no emperors at all anymore. The people rule themselves.’

Xie Che pushed aside his stray thoughts and began chanting sutras at the bedside of his father, the man who was now in a vegetative state.

He didn’t know how to tell stories, and the body’s original owner had no experiences worth recounting. The father-son relationship had been distant, to say the least. The only way he could think to show filial piety was to chant sutras and pray for his father’s well-being. This, at least, was a task he was familiar with. Even if he wasn’t the most devout Buddhist, he was an expert at reciting the scriptures.

Anyone else would have immediately started figuring out the Sign-In System. But Xie Che held fast to the principles of filial piety. After his transmigration, he spent seven full days chanting sutras for his new father in the hospital before even beginning to attend to his own matters.

It was just that, around the hospital, an urban legend began to circulate about a certain wealthy heir who was chanting sutras every day, trying to hasten his own father’s passage into the afterlife.