Chapter 525 - 524: IF-line: Did the Big Shot Vie for Favor Today?

Chapter 525: Chapter 524: IF-line: Did the Big Shot Vie for Favor Today?

Ye Ming accepted the friend request and sent Shi Lan a message.

[Hi, this is Ye Ming. I’m back.]

Shi Lan had been in the middle of a lively chat with her best friend when she saw the message and froze. She instinctively glanced over at Ping’an, who looked back at her with those round, soft cat eyes, let out a gentle little "meow," and bounded straight onto her lap.

Shi Lan stared into those eyes for a long moment before she was finally sure — this was her Ping’an, not Ye Ming.

She reached out and gave Ping’an a scratch on the head. Ping’an stretched out contentedly, rolling onto his back to reveal a fluffy little belly, offering it up to her without a care in the world.

She played with the cat for a while before finally typing back to Ye Ming. [Hi, I’m Shi Lan.]

[Did you just get back?]

Ye Ming noted her name and replied quickly. [Yes.]

Shi Lan sent an [Oh.] Ye Ming had made it back way more smoothly than she had — straight home, just like that.

Well, that was probably for the best. She hadn’t exactly figured out how to act around him yet.

[By the way, I wanted to ask — while you were a cat, what was happening with your actual body?]

Ye Ming hadn’t expected that question. He replied: [I crossed over in my sleep. When I came back, I was still in my bed.]

Shi Lan wasn’t sure whether it was because Ye Ming’s time as a cat had been so short, but either way, her experience had been completely different. When she’d been a cat, her body had kept going through the motions of everyday life — it was just like her best friend had described: a little hollow, a little vacant, like the lights were on but nobody was home.

While she was still turning this over in her head, Ye Ming suddenly sent another message. [You don’t seem all that surprised by any of this. It’s like you already know the drill.]

Maybe it was the sense of shared misfortune — they’d both been through the same bizarre cat experience — or maybe it was simply that she trusted him. Either way, Shi Lan couldn’t help herself. On impulse, she typed: [Same thing happened to me.]

She didn’t have the nerve to admit she was Fei Mo. She had thrown up all over him back then, and he’d taken such careful care of her despite her being so picky about food. Just thinking about it was mortifying.

What she hadn’t counted on was how sharp Ye Ming was. The moment those five words landed, something clicked in his mind like a flash of lightning.

Yan Huoshui had been searching for his Benefactor all along, insisting that the Benefactor had a different soul inside.

That other soul didn’t have to be a cat’s — could it have been a person’s?

And now here he was, seeking out Shi Lan, sending her gifts...

Ye Ming had always found it strange that Yan Huoshui and Shi Lan knew each other to begin with. What made it stranger was that Yan Huoshui was clearly the one pursuing the connection — and that was simply not in his character.

What if the soul inside his Benefactor had been Shi Lan all along...

Any other time, Ye Ming might never have connected the dots. But he had turned into a cat himself.

So, not long after Shi Lan’s message, he sent: [You’re Fei Mo.]

Shi Lan was floored. She’d said five words — how had Ye Ming figured out who she was from just that?

And he hadn’t even phrased it as a question. It was a statement, delivered with complete certainty.

Part of her wanted to deny it, but there didn’t seem to be much point anymore. She’d already told him about turning into a cat — everything else was small stuff by comparison.

After a brief pause, she typed back: [Yeah.]

Even though he’d already guessed it, seeing that confirmation still made Ye Ming’s eyes light up with something he couldn’t quite suppress.

No wonder — the very first time he’d met Shi Lan, he’d felt this inexplicable sense of familiarity about her. Now it all made sense. She was Fei Mo. The Fei Mo he’d grown so fond of.

After a long moment, Ye Ming finally wrote: [Good. I’m really glad I found you again.]

Shi Lan wasn’t sure how she felt about it, exactly — but she didn’t find herself resisting, either. More than anything, the fact that they’d both been through the whole cat thing felt like a secret they now shared, and it made her feel a little closer to him.

After a moment, she changed the subject. [How did you end up at L City University of Technology, anyway? Didn’t you get into the doctoral program at Capital University?]

Ye Ming didn’t hide it from her. [Yeah. The thing is, after your soul left, I noticed the change in Fei Mo, so I reached out to Yan Huoshui.]

Shi Lan: [??? How did you contact him? You two know each other?]

Ye Ming replied: [Not super well, but our families had some business dealings with the Yan Family at one point. I’d seen that video challenge he posted online, and then there was the whole eye-roll Skill you’d shown off in front of me — it felt like too much of a coincidence. I wanted to find out if he had any information about you.]

As he typed all of that out, Ye Ming’s feelings were a tangled mess — complicated, and more than a little embarrassed. He rewrote the message several times before he finally hit send.