Compatibility - Chapter 69

Chapter 69

The medical equipment let out soft beeps. The white gauze curtain was lifted by the gentle breeze, brushing lightly across the foot of the bed and carrying the brimming spring air into the room.

Song Nanyin frowned slightly, her eyelids fluttering as if the sunlight falling on her face had disturbed her sound sleep. She opened her eyes with a sudden start. The first thing she saw was the white ceiling above her head, and the sensations of her body returned along with her waking consciousness.

"I... I'm not dead?" Song Nanyin murmured quietly, taking a few seconds to confirm that she should still fall within the category of "living beings." But with an explosion that big, why was she still alive? Liu Zhaoran had been so badly hurt... she... where was she?

Thinking of Liu Zhaoran, Song Nanyin's nose ached. She felt no joy at being alive, no relief at having escaped death. She suspected that Liu Zhaoran had done something else to protect her during the explosion, which was the only reason she had narrowly kept her life in a blast of that scale.

But... Liu Zhaoran...

A suspicion rose in her heart, and Song Nanyin's nose stung. She didn't wail in anguish. She simply wept, quiet and silent. But as she cried, her choked sobs grew unstoppable. She clutched the bedsheet tightly with both hands, muffled sniffles escaping her.

Just then, the door was pushed open from outside. Song Nanyin assumed it was a nurse coming to make her rounds, but what floated in was something like a drone. It hovered in midair, blue light flickering across its screen before it shone toward her.

"The patient is awake. Current status: conscious, emotion value 56, physical condition good." The robot spoke in a low voice, and Song Nanyin had no idea which hospital had paid a fortune to buy a ward-rounding robot like this. Only then did she notice that the room she was lying in seemed a little off.

The room had no television and no electronic devices of any kind, yet every corner of it exuded luxury. It was absolutely not a hospital too stingy to equip rooms with electronics.

She looked down at the bed beneath her. It was large and roomy, with a pale white button at the headboard. Apart from that, there was only the row of medical instruments beside the bed that she couldn't put a name to.

Song Nanyin figured this was probably a very luxurious private hospital, but she had never heard of or seen such a place before.

Right now, Song Nanyin was in no mood to inspect the room, nor did she want to bother with that robot. She pushed herself up, intending to go outside and find a doctor to ask where Liu Zhaoran was.

Call it wishful thinking, call it her inability to accept the possibility that Liu Zhaoran had already met with disaster. Song Nanyin wanted to see Liu Zhaoran. That was all.

"The owner has been notified. Please do not get out of bed and move about." Seeing Song Nanyin get out of bed, the robot immediately floated in front of her to block her way.

Song Nanyin was about to sidestep around it when footsteps sounded at the doorway. She looked up and saw two women walking in one after the other.

The one in front wore high heels and a black suit, with a head of clean, neat medium-length hair, giving off the presence of a formidable woman of the business world. The woman behind her, by contrast, wore a plain white dress of a homey style, a faint smile on her face as she looked at Song Nanyin.

Song Nanyin was very sure she didn't know these two people, and she understood even less how they had appeared in her hospital room. What was more, she kept feeling that the black-haired woman's gaze at her was somehow off... as if it carried a hint of hostility.

On top of that, the woman's presence was strong. Her naturally bold brows had been carefully trimmed, yet their arches still revealed an unmissable sharpness. Her jet-black eyes were sharp and piercing, the kind of eyes that were imposing yet impossible to fathom.

For some reason, Song Nanyin couldn't shake the feeling that these two women looked familiar... how to put it... especially the woman with long black hair. Her eyes were very much like Liu Zhaoran's. And compared with her, the woman behind her was practically an angel standing beside a god of slaughter, so gentle in both temperament and appearance.

"Who are you..." Song Nanyin looked at them, not really in the mood to deal with them.

"I'd like to ask you the same. Who are you?"

The black-haired woman spoke, her voice carrying a cold edge. Sensing the force in her words, the woman at her side gently tugged at her, and the black-haired woman's expression immediately softened a great deal.

"There's no need for me to explain who I am to you. What hospital is this? And the person who was in the accident with me... her name is Liu Zhaoran. She... how is she?"

Song Nanyin wanted to see Liu Zhaoran. Just mentioning the name sent an ache through her heart. She was afraid she would never see Liu Zhaoran again, and even more afraid of hearing from a stranger's mouth that something had happened to Liu Zhaoran.

She and Liu Zhaoran were the closest people to each other, and ought to have been the most intimate. That was why Song Nanyin didn't want to hear any bad news about Liu Zhaoran through someone else's words.

"She was seriously injured. She's recuperating now." Song Nanyin had already steeled herself for the worst, but she hadn't expected to hear from the other woman's mouth something that could only be called good news. Song Nanyin stepped forward, a little overcome, and grabbed the black-haired woman's arm.

"She... Liu Zhaoran is still alive, isn't she? The explosion didn't... didn't... I... I want to see her. Which ward is she in?"

Hearing that Liu Zhaoran was all right, Song Nanyin almost lost the ability to speak. She didn't even know what she was saying. She was just so happy, so happy she nearly forgot how to talk.

"Before I answer you, you should first tell me who you are and what your relationship with Ranran is. Where has my daughter been all these years? And why did she appear together with you?"

When the black-haired woman finished, Song Nanyin stared at her blankly, as if she still hadn't processed her words. She sorted through the woman's questions in her mind and finally reached a conclusion.

The "Ranran" the woman spoke of must be Liu Zhaoran, her daughter. She said her daughter had been missing for many years and had suddenly come back. What did that mean? Wasn't Liu Zhaoran an orphan?

"I... I don't understand what you mean. Are you Liu Zhaoran's mother? Where is this place?" Song Nanyin felt that everything was so strange it could hardly be reasoned out or explained by common sense. Hearing her question, the black-haired woman was about to flare up, but the woman beside her stopped her, raised a hand, and patted Song Nanyin's shoulder.

"Child, I know you still have many questions. I can tell you what I know. Ranran truly is our daughter. She vanished without a trace eighteen years ago, and it wasn't until the day before yesterday that she appeared together with you at the seaside. You were both unconscious, and she was gravely wounded."

"This is Xingqiu District Three. I'm Chen Xin, and this is my wife, Liu Yumo. We are Liu Zhaoran's mothers."

What the woman said wasn't long, but the amount of information was astonishing. Song Nanyin stared blankly at the two people who claimed to be Liu Zhaoran's mothers. Her first reaction was: can two women have children? Her second was: how could Liu Zhaoran's mothers be this young? They looked like they were only around forty or so?

Xingqiu, what kind of place was that? And where was District Three?

Perhaps because Song Nanyin's reaction was too full of astonishment, Chen Xin and Liu Yumo exchanged a glance, unsure what they had said that warranted such a look of confusion. Song Nanyin had the intuition that something very strange had happened, which was to say, the place she was in now might not be the same as the Earth she knew.

To confirm her guess, Song Nanyin asked what the current date was, and sure enough, she got a year that was utterly unfamiliar...

So, she had crossed worlds and arrived in another, more advanced world?

Seeing how dazed Song Nanyin looked, Liu Yumo and Chen Xin didn't disturb her further. They simply told her to rest a little longer and said they would come back later, and instructed Song Nanyin to ask the AI Butler if she had any questions.

After the two left, Song Nanyin glanced at the floating robot and finally understood that the so-called AI Butler was this robot.

"Can you tell me what place this really is? Where exactly am I?" Song Nanyin asked softly. After hearing this, the blue dots of light on the AI Butler's screen flickered, and then a huge holographic screen appeared before Song Nanyin.

"Madam, it is currently the 786th year of the Yue Era. The area you are in is Xingqiu District Three, also known as the Laniswei Empire Mechanical-Industrial District. Your sex is Alpha, pheromone rank Class C."

The AI Butler said a few things in a mechanical electronic voice, which only plunged Song Nanyin into greater confusion and doubt. So, this was some place called Xingqiu... then where was Earth?

"To answer you, madam, Earth is an ancient planet under the jurisdiction of the Federal Empire. Its distance from Xingqiu is 8,913 kilometers, and the journey by lightship takes fifteen hours."

The unfamiliar knowledge flooded into her mind, leaving Song Nanyin momentarily unable to react. She lowered her head to look at herself, then at the AI Butler before her, gradually accepting the fact that she had crossed worlds. For the next several hours, Song Nanyin spent all her time talking with the AI Butler, and came to realize what kind of world she had arrived in.

This was a new world centered on the ABO human species. Humanity had been caught in a viral infection and had gradually mutated into the ABO human species.

Only now did Song Nanyin understand that the changes in her body were not a so-called "sex change" but what the AI Butler called "differentiation." Moreover, the Earth shown in the video was not the Earth of her "knowledge" either.

The facts were set before her, leaving no room for Song Nanyin to keep questioning them. She could only believe that she had crossed worlds. And precisely because she had learned this truth, she also learned another thing along with it.

From the conversation just now, Song Nanyin knew that Liu Zhaoran must have originally been a person of this world, and that she had accidentally crossed into Song Nanyin's world, which was how she had become an orphan.

Liu Zhaoran was an Omega. She had long known that what had happened to Song Nanyin's body was differentiation into an Alpha, not some bizarre sex change. Yet knowing all this, Liu Zhaoran had chosen to hide it from her, even using the study of her body as a pretext to trick her into coming to her home.

From beginning to end, she had been the one kept in the dark. Liu Zhaoran knew everything, yet concealed everything... even at the very last, she had never thought of telling her the truth.

Song Nanyin sat on the bed, laughing with some irony. For a moment, she didn't know what state of mind she should use to face Liu Zhaoran.

Having passed through life and death, she had let go of the deception Liu Zhaoran had practiced on her before. Her heart had even softened and warmed. She thought that once Liu Zhaoran woke up, she would find some way to make Liu Zhaoran coax her, and then use that as an occasion to forgive her.

But ah... she was always the one who wanted to forgive, while Liu Zhaoran had been faithfully carrying out her deception all along. She was like a fool, spun round and round by her...

Song Nanyin smiled bitterly, glad that she could still laugh at a time like this. Just then, Chen Xin brought over a cup of nutrient solution and handed it to her. Song Nanyin looked at her and said thank you.

"It's nothing. From the way you were just now, you must know Ranran, and know her well. Can Auntie ask what your relationship is? Do you know anything about those missing years?"

Chen Xin looked Song Nanyin over curiously, a little puzzled about who this Alpha who had appeared alongside her daughter was, and why her identity couldn't be traced, why she didn't even have a Light-Brain ID.

Strictly speaking, a person like Song Nanyin, with no identity information at all, was an unregistered resident and should have been handed over to the Federal Investigation Bureau. But in order to learn about Liu Zhaoran, Liu Yumo had still chosen to keep her at home.

Hearing Chen Xin's question, Song Nanyin smiled wryly at herself.

Relationship? Bedmate, fuck buddy, or, rather, deceiver and deceived?

Or perhaps Liu Zhaoran was the keeper of a circus, and she was the foolish lion the keeper raised, jumping back and forth through the flaming hoop. At the image, Song Nanyin let out a soft laugh.

"She and I... are just work colleagues. We're not that close."

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