Chapter 60

He knew he'd screwed up the second the words left his mouth. Huo Jilin hadn't hated him enough to grind his bones to dust, and even if he wanted to, Dean Chen wouldn't have let him.

Yeah, he'd misspoken.

It was the shitty memories that made him automatically paint Huo Jilin as the bad guy.

Huo Jilin's heart had gone numb, but those words lit a fire under his anger. He pointed at Chen Jue, his finger trembling: "You might as well just piss me off to death. Do you know what it feels like to die in a plane crash during the descent? Let me spell it out for you!"

The more Huo Jilin thought about it, the angrier he got, digging up the memories he'd buried so deep he never wanted to touch them again.

"First, you're spinning out of control, like a bird sucked into a tornado, or a cat stuck in a washing machine on the spin cycle. The air gets sucked out of you, little by little. Your skin goes from itchy to aching, then starts splitting open. Your insides go from hurting to going completely numb, and only your heart beats faster and faster, until it's about to rip out of your chest, explode in the air, gasping for whatever thin oxygen is left! That's exactly what your heart patients go through! Vivid enough for you? Want me to run through it again?"

Seeing Chen Jue sitting there cross-legged, looking like he was attending a damn lecture, Huo Jilin almost wanted to run through the whole thing again just to mess with him.

Huo Jilin took a deep breath. He'd actually just described his own death out loud.

He was certain he had died. In the final moments of the plane crash, his heart had stopped. That suffocating, chest-about-to-blow-up feeling—he'd never forget it, not in this life or the next.

So this was what a heart attack felt like, he thought. He'd known it was dangerous, but he'd had no idea the body could hurt that much. You never really get pain until you feel it yourself.

That pain, in his last moment before dying, made him feel a tiny bit guilty about the things Chen Jue had once yelled at him.

Even if Xinhe's choice to have her lover's baby wasn't really his business, he still should've tried to talk her out of it.

Huo Jilin took another deep breath. But now he was dead, so what was the point in saying anything? He just hoped Jiang Xinhe would get a healthy body in her next life.

When Huo Jilin snapped out of it, Chen Jue was still watching him. In the dim lamplight, his face was pale, like a mountain dusted with snow. He had the same blank face as always, the same cold, aloof vibe, but his eyes were still so pure and clear—like stars in the night sky.

Chen Jue had come into this world alone—left at a hospital, an orphan from the second he was born.

But this orphan had turned into a genius, inventing the Heart Foundation Technique that saved who knows how many lives.

Not to mention the hundred-plus surgeries he'd done in his short life—not one failure, except for Jiang Xinhe.

Jiang Xinhe was probably the one thing he could never get past.

He was an angel in white—his ashes should go back to the sky. He should be the brightest star up there.

He belonged to the mountains and rivers, should grow with everything alive, stay green forever, never fade.

That was why he'd finally decided to scatter Chen Jue's ashes over the mountains, the seas, the lakes.

He'd thrown a big memorial service for Chen Jue, using his actions to shut down all the crazy talk online.

To give Chen Jue the justice he deserved.

But even that couldn't bring Chen Jue back.

Huo Jilin looked at the living, breathing Chen Jue in front of him, holding back the heat rising in his eyes. He softened his voice, almost tenderly: "Chen Jue, you died because of me, and I died because of you. We're square now. Can you quit hating me? Let's bury the grudges from the last life. Can we start fresh in this one?"

Chen Jue listened to his soft words and got goosebumps all over his arms. He rubbed his arm, shaking off the feelings from a second ago.

Huo Jilin's sweet tone was like a fox wishing a chicken a happy New Year—totally suspicious.

When Chen Jue didn't say anything, Huo Jilin added: "You already slapped me yesterday. If you're still pissed, want to throw in another one?"

Huo Jilin turned his left cheek toward him, like an invitation.

Chen Jue was tempted to raise his hand. Fighting the urge wasn't easy.

Chen Jue clenched his fist and cut him off: "Don't change the subject. Let's talk about your condition first."

Since Huo Jilin had died scattering his ashes, the least he could do was help him figure out what was wrong.

He didn't want to owe anybody anything—not even Huo Jilin.

Seeing this, Huo Jilin felt somewhat defeated. Chen Jue still wanted to keep his distance. Even after hearing he'd died for him, even after just saving his life, Chen Jue still kept things strictly separate.

Even brothers keep their accounts straight.

That was Chen Jue—the Chen Jue nobody could talk into anything.

He should've said earlier: "You saved my life, so I'll give you my body in return."

This was ancient times—skin contact alone was basically enough to get married.

Total missed opportunity.

Huo Jilin stared at Chen Jue's thin lips for a second, zoning out. Sure, Chen Jue had kissed him to give him air, but it was still a kiss.

He remembered how cold his lips were—and how soft.

Maybe because he'd finally said what he'd buried so deep, he felt like a weight had come off his shoulders. He leaned back against the wall, totally relaxed. The lightning outside kept rolling across the sky.

Without all the air pollution, it looked way clearer and sharper than it did in modern times. No wonder the old-timers were scared of stuff like that.

So many period dramas start on a stormy night like this...

Huo Jilin realized he could still zone out at a time like this—which meant he wasn't scared of thunderstorms anymore.

Well, that wasn't quite it—he'd made colonel, and in that year of roughing it out in the wild, he'd seen every kind of weather.

He wasn't scared of thunder and lightning—he was scared of that moment when the plane went down.

Because at that moment, he was holding Chen Jue's urn with nowhere to go.

The plane had been up there for a while, but he hadn't scattered the ashes yet—because once he did, Chen Jue would be gone from this world for good.

The second the plane ripped apart, he knew for sure Chen Jue was never coming back.

But now Chen Jue was sitting right across from him, cutting off his trip down memory lane with that same cold look as always.

This was the real Chen Jue—the living, breathing Chen Jue.

Huo Jilin snapped out of his nostalgia and smiled at Chen Jue: "Then keep going. What else do you wanna know?"

Chen Jue glanced at him: "The day you died—was that two days after the Dragon Boat Festival? It was storming here too."

He'd given up on materialism—that whole worldview was already shattered beyond repair. He had to go with idealism now.

Huo Jilin thought for a second, then nodded. "The seventh day of the fifth lunar month."

He remembered that date clearly too. After all, something that big was worth remembering.

He'd woken up in the middle of the night—also during a thunderstorm—jolted awake by the thunder.

After quickly taking in the body's leftover memories, he'd cursed once, then just accepted it.

Refusing to accept it didn't change anything. He knew with absolute certainty that he was dead, because this body wasn't his. Even though the face was the same, the body was different—especially that long scar on his back that had almost killed him.

Huo Jilin looked at him too: "When did you get here?" If there was already a kid when he got here, how could he have dealt with that?

A man with a big pregnant belly would definitely be way more shocked than he was.

Chen Jue shot him a look, reading his mind, and said flatly, "When the child was two and a half months along."

Huo Jilin pursed his lips and said stiffly, "Then... you've been through a lot."

Isn't two months or so when morning sickness is the worst? Throw in Chen Jue's cooking skills, which could pass for pig slop, the kid must have suffered—no wonder he was so small...

A faint smile tugged at Chen Jue's lips: "Not as hard as you. Reborn on a battlefield, under a hail of arrows and blades, risking life and limb."

Nice one—he knew exactly where it hurt and jabbed right there.

Huo Jilin took a deep breath. He didn't want to talk about how he died, and he sure as hell didn't want to talk about how he survived on the battlefield. That was also why he brushed off the villagers when they asked about the war—he just didn't want to talk about it.

It was just too brutal.

He really had escaped death by the skin of his teeth. The knife wound on his back should have been fatal. The only reason he hadn't died on the spot was probably because this hunter's body was tough.

When Huo Jilin could finally get up, he stripped down and examined his body.

This body showed the wear and tear of years of hard labor, with muscles just as solid as what he'd built in three years in the military—maybe even better. Lean and tough, covered in knife scars and old wounds. This solid build was what let him survive that blow—he didn't die on the spot, and frontline troops dug him out.

But unfortunately, he hung on for a month in the medical tent and ultimately didn't make it. On a stormy, thunderous night, his fever spiked again and he passed.

Then he came in. So his memories were limited—all he kept were the strongest memories of the original owner.

Going to the battlefield to earn military merit, hoping that one day he could clear the Huo family's name, win back the court's favor, and once again serve the Crown Prince as a pillar minister...

Huo Jilin accepted the memories, but not the grand ambitions.

A court criminal, the whole family exiled, and now only one lone survivor left—that made it clear the only path forward was to lie low and survive.

Lie low until the Crown Prince takes the throne; then there'd be time to come out.

The Old Emperor wasn't dead yet, so the Huo family, caught up in the Crown Prince's faction, had better keep their heads down.

Huo Jilin wasn't royalty and hadn't watched much palace drama, but his family was no pushover either. Their fight for the family estate rivaled any palace drama—a real nine-prince succession battle.

He was the victor, and it had cost him plenty. At least his brothers didn't dare go to the battlefield or stay away from home too long, fearing someone would get ahead of them.

But they'd thought wrong. The old man didn't want filial piety in the present; he wanted someone who could expand the Huo family.

Of course, thinking about all that now was useless. The empire he'd fought to build had already been handed over to someone else.

Huo Jilin suppressed that resentment, just as he had to accept arriving in this world.

He had to accept reality when he saw that this body bore the same face as his own.

As for why his soul had ended up in this person, Huo Jilin couldn't figure it out either. He was a materialist—or rather, an egotist. If he couldn't figure something out, he stopped thinking about it, because surviving at all was already abnormal.

Given how severe the wound was, as the medic had said: "This is a miracle. I never thought you'd wake up. This past month, you've been fading day by day."

Huo Jilin also asked the medic about the full story of how he'd been rescued.

The medic recounted it from start to finish: he'd been pulled from a pile of corpses because of a piece of jade tied around his neck.

Because of that jade, a merciful general had brought him back to camp.