Chapter 854 - 264: Diagnosis: Love, The Heart of Lu Ya

"N-no, of course not!"

Lu Ya immediately denied it, then lowered her voice and said, "He’s my lover. Later his body functions weakened, and in the end he died. Then everyone said he had to be cremated."

Zi Yuan listened and froze for a moment.

So in that other world, her final ending was still death?

Not that surprising.

"But I didn’t want him to leave."

Hugging the glass tube that held only a single eyeball, Lu Ya murmured, "If they cremated him, then I’d never see him again. I couldn’t accept that, so I secretly took my lover out of the hospital and went somewhere very, very far away."

So that’s why, during the Heart Image Trial, Lu Ya was nowhere to be seen in that world.

"But, you know this too, a corpse is actually very hard to transport, so I came up with a way to separate my lover’s body, and then preserve it intact that way. I planned to figure out how to put him back together once we got to our destination, so that I could be with him forever..."

Her tone was very gentle, even carrying a trace of expectation and happiness for their future life.

But the Little Black Dragon listening on the side was utterly creeped out.

"He’s already dead, you know. That’s just a corpse."

"It’s fine. As long as it’s him, it’s enough." Lu Ya smiled sweetly, like she was still lost in a beautiful dream, "I’ll take good care of him. Be it a corpse or broken limbs, I’ll take the best care of him I can, because... because I’m his wife..."

As she spoke she got so embarrassed she couldn’t go on.

The tips of her ears went so red it was like smoke might start pouring out of them.

The Little Black Dragon then started butting her head against her boss over and over like a cat.

Don’t you dare let my mom down!

"So why did the other organs go missing?"

Looking at Zi Yuan, who seemed completely unmoved, the Little Black Dragon was so mad her teeth itched; the breath stuck in her chest wouldn’t come out, and she wished she could just take a bite out of her.

What the hell, why so mean!

Lu Ya only hung her head, guilt written all over her face. "It was my fault. I thought it’d be safer to have someone else help transport them. I clearly found someone I trusted, but someone along the way opened my package without permission, got scared, threw it away, and even called the police. So I just kept searching and searching, all the way here, but I still can’t find them anywhere..."

Zi Yuan glanced around again.

The environment was still very different; it probably wasn’t the original world.

Did they get lost and wander into another world? Or did the original world simply change?

"I’ll help you look."

Once Zi Yuan made that promise, the Little Black Dragon jumped down from her hand and, for the first time, grinned from ear to ear. One hand grabbed Zi Yuan’s, the other grabbed Lu Ya’s, and she hopped up and down with joy.

"Yay!"

Zi Yuan couldn’t be bothered to shake her off, but Lu Ya hesitated a little. "Is it really okay?"

It sounded a little familiar.

Oh, now she remembered.

Zi Yuan tilted her head to look at her friend, back to when she’d beaten up those thugs and saved Lu Ya in passing.

This was the first thing she’d said back then too.

"Yeah."

But her reply this time was different.

"But I’m not helping you stitch the corpse back together. I’m not interested."

Lu Ya just gave a gentle smile. "Thank you. I’ll do the stitching myself."

For Zi Yuan, finding her own body wasn’t a problem. Even though this World Bubble was a bit bizarre, and any Demon Consciousness she spread out would be swallowed.

But tracking down her own corpse fragments wasn’t difficult.

She led the way in front. The Little Black Dragon, realizing she couldn’t hold onto Zi Yuan’s hand, switched to grabbing the hem of her clothes instead, while her other hand held on to Lu Ya, and she hopped along as she asked, "Mom Lu Ya, how did you and your lover meet?"

"Mm..."

Lu Ya, whose right hand was being shaken by the Little Black Dragon, thought about it with some difficulty. "I guess you’d call it love at first sight? My lover has the kind of personality that absolutely loves fighting, with a really terrible temper. But sometimes there are advantages to that. For example, the first time we met, he stood up for me and fought with three thugs. He ended up getting beaten black and blue for my sake..."

Over there, the Little Black Dragon’s eyes sparkled as she listened, and she let out a slightly obnoxious, "Ooh~"

Zi Yuan frowned. "He was just looking for a fight. I doubt he was actually trying to save you."

"That’s not really fair." Lu Ya immediately refuted, "No matter what he was thinking, he really did save me back then, and got beaten all over for it. That’s obviously related to me."

The Little Black Dragon nodded repeatedly. "Yeah, yeah, exactly."

"He didn’t win, but he still managed to scare those three off." Talking about the past, the girl’s face filled with admiration. "He was super cool!"

"Yeah, yeah..." The Little Black Dragon paused for a second beside her. "Didn’t win?"

"Yeah. Those three thugs were all really tough. My lover was very strong too, but it was three-on-one, two fists can’t beat six hands. Losing is totally normal, right?"

"Hahaha, yeah, hahaha, totally normal, hahahaha..."

Just picturing her all-conquering boss actually getting beaten down by three street punks back then.

The Triple Thug Supreme!

The Little Black Dragon couldn’t help laughing a bit too wildly.

And then, joy turned to misery as she got smacked in the head and stopped laughing.

But every time she thought about it, she still couldn’t stop feeling amused.

Heh, she really wanted to go back in time and give that version of her dad—who couldn’t even beat three punks—a good thrashing too...

Man, did those three thugs have any idea who they’d actually beaten?

If in the future the boss stood alone for all eternity, proving himself once and forever, then those three would be the legendary figures who once defeated the contemporary Great Emperor with their Mixed-Primordial Triple-Absolute Lay-You-Out Formation...

From then on, wherever they went, they could shout, "Zi Yuan was once beaten by three thugs."