Chapter 587: Identity Loading Requires Activation

Machete Girl: Pfft, a father and a mother? “At worst”?!

Doujin Artist: If my mom ever found out about this, she’d probably break my legs.

Skirt-Flipping Maniac: Don’t be scared. They’ll recover.

Doujin Artist: Hey, that’s not what recovery has to do with it! Even if they recover, it’ll still HURT, won’t it?

Amegakure Village’s Angel: Personally, I’d say if you’ve used Identity Imbuement, gaining a father and mother is perfectly normal. If it feels awkward, you can simply ignore them.

Scarlet Lotus Fairy: Mm. Besides, it won’t be a father and mother every time. Most likely you’ll wake up an orphan, just one with an identity in the target world.

Message sent, Li Mochou’s eyes began to roam her surroundings.

A carved wooden bed, gauze curtains of pristine white, and on a brown dressing table stood an oval bronze mirror. Clearly, she was now in a young woman’s boudoir.

And judging by the furnishings, Li Mochou could confirm she was still in ancient China. Which left her a little deflated, truthfully, more than ancient China, she’d hoped to sample modern life.

Soul Society’s Villain: It wouldn’t be so easy to just ignore them, I think.

Unohana Retsu tried putting herself in those shoes, and felt rather queasy at the thought. An orphan from her earliest days, she had never known what having parents felt like. If she suddenly gained a pair, she’d have no idea how to behave around them.

Amegakure Village’s Angel: Didn’t we just say it? Parents are the rare case. And with Identity Imbuement’s random hops, we could push our cause along far more smoothly. Most importantly, don’t you all find the sensation of a randomly generated identity fascinating?

Doujin Artist: Konan-jie, you only said all that for the sake of the last sentence, didn’t you! “Our cause,” my foot. You just think it sounds fun!

Eriri sighed helplessly. Her Konan-jie’s personality really was getting flightier by the day. And this, too, was surely the fault of a certain group leader! A truly corrupting influence!

Pulling her attention away from the group chat, Eriri turned expressionlessly toward Ashley at her side. “Have you stared your fill yet?”

“How could I ever stare my fill!” Ashley answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Mr. Shinigami is so adorable, I could stare until I die and still not have enough!”

Damn it!

The corners of Eriri’s mouth finally gave up all restraint and twitched furiously. She conceded her own miscalculation: she should never have removed her cloak so soon.

Her thinking had been that since the woman had already seen through her female identity, showing her true face couldn’t cause much harm. She had never imagined that her face would instead inflict such profound negative consequences.

Namely, that the lovesick madness of the woman beside her was growing worse by the hour. This, she had truly not foreseen.

Hoo.

Eriri forced out a breath of stale air, wrestled her expression under control, and said flatly, “When will the testers be arriving?”

Even with noble status, entry into the War Church required passing a test.

Of course.

Such tests were usually mere ceremony, with enough hard coin prepared, one could sail through without the slightest hindrance.

“About fifty minutes from now.” With business on the table, Ashley reined in her emotions. “Does Mr. Shinigami still remember the precautions I mentioned earlier?”

“Do not show contempt or disrespect toward the War Church, and the instant you lay eyes on them, recite the War Church’s core doctrine.” Eriri rolled her Byakugan. “My memory isn’t that poor.”

“I only fear you’ll act rashly and accidentally cut down the tester.”

“Do I look like someone who’d defy the grand scheme over a trifle?”

“Then recall, if you would, how you behaved when we first met…”

“Enough. Back then you were trying to take Claire away. Now I’m planning an infiltration. The two aren’t remotely comparable.”

Eriri rolled her Byakugan again, consciously ignoring the intoxicated look blooming across Ashley’s face after the jab, and turned her gaze back to the group chat.

Amegakure Village’s Angel: Interest and cause don’t conflict. Eriri-chan, your awareness is still lacking.

Curly-haired Guy: Hmph. She is, after all, merely an Eriri.

Doujin Artist: Shut it, you white-haired moron! What’s this “merely an Eriri”? You’re the “merely” one, you hear me?!

This is an Actor: So for all the chatter in this group, none of you still knows which world Mochou actually went to?

Gerard sent his message while keeping an eye on some enormous black dog bolting down the street for all it was worth.

That’s right, the enormous black dog was none other than Sirius Black, escaped from Azkaban. He, too, was an Animagus. In dog form, he had stealthily boarded a Ministry of Magic transport ship, and midway through the voyage he had diverted toward Yorkshire.

Clearly, he meant to rendezvous with his dear friend “Lupin” first, and only then begin plotting his next move.

Lazy Kitten: Aww, but you can’t blame us for that. Sis Mochou hasn’t given us a single hint! The group chat didn’t say anything about the identity either.

Scarlet Lotus Fairy: It’s not that I’m withholding. The identity simply hasn’t been activated yet?

Pretty Boy from Skull Island: Activated?

Doujin Artist: What on earth is “activated”?

Lazy Kitten: Don’t tell me, do we have to spend points to buy a verification code for the activation?!

The word “activation” instantly reminded the kitten of all those Tencent games she used to play, and the whole cat began to feel unwell. Those accursed games had no gameplay whatsoever to speak of beyond fleecing players, and worst of all, even after whaling, the good cards might never drop.

Scarlet Lotus Fairy: No, nothing like that. It just takes meeting a native of the world to activate it.

At the very moment Li Mochou’s message went out, the door to the room swung open with a creak.

A beautiful, richly featured matron in a pale-yellow silk gown stepped slowly inside. At the sight of Li Mochou, her expression paused almost imperceptibly before she spoke, cool and remote: “So it’s you. You still know how to come home?”

This, this sentence! A sentence at once so familiar and so strange! It carried Li Mochou back to her old master, that same despair-at-hopeless-disciple tone laced with faint doting!

Could this woman be her mother in this world? No, surely not? She was far too young!

Li Mochou was profoundly shaken, her thoughts racing.

And right at that moment, the group chat system’s notification obligingly popped up: [Your identity has loaded successfully. Memory infusion commencing.]

A few moments later, Li Mochou finally exhaled in relief. Fortunately, the worst-case scenario she had feared never came to pass. The woman was not her mother, merely her older sister in this world.