Love, Gun, Cupid

Chapter Twenty-One: Dead Souls (Part 1) (Bonus Chapter)

Du Juan didn't want to make things too awkward, so after she spoke her true feelings, her tone immediately softened. She said, "I promise I won't put Lin Jiade in any fatal danger. You don't want to keep taking medication to suppress your needs, right?"

Within the empire, promotions require not only blood taxes from alien races, but also from other races. If Lin Jiade wants to become strong enough to live a normal married life with you, he must at least become a high-level magic researcher to arm himself enough to break through your defenses.

And how many more years can you wait? If you continue taking the medication you're currently taking for a few more years, it will completely turn you into a person with low libido, and your relationship with him will suffer from an irreparable flaw.

Jasmine, fickleness is both a human virtue and a flaw. If you can't give him what he needs, and he happens to have a substitute who is deeply interested in him, you'll experience betrayal within five years.

Jasmine doesn't trust Du Juan, but Du Juan's words successfully arouse her anxiety. In essence, Jasmine is also a selfish person. For her own benefit, even if she knows that Du Juan is like a devil, she can only choose to cooperate with the devil.

When they returned with the cooked food, they saw Jianlan floating on the dining table, turning the pages of a book, while Lin Jiade tilted his head to watch the traces left by her pen. A harmonious feeling filled the air between them.

They seemed to have a great understanding of each other, which made Jasmine feel like the outsider.

"Jealous?" Du Juan asked.

“She was just lucky. If Lin Jiade wasn’t her destiny, then she and my boyfriend would just be strangers,” Jasmine whispered.

Lin Jiade finally heard the noise. He turned around, saw Jasmine, rushed over, picked her up, and lifted her above his head, saying, "Jasmine, my lame magic is saved!"

"?"

"My Papastathopoulos magic, which I personally call 'trash magic,' Lady Gladiolus said she could improve certain spells to make them more powerful."

Jasmine understood Lin Jiade's thirst for power, and she smiled in return, forgiving her boyfriend's ongoing offense.

Lifting someone up high is one of the things she hates most; if it were anyone else, she would have already exploded with anger.

Then, Jasmine looked at the smiling Azalea and said, "Is this one of the reasons you brought them together?"

A powerful spellcaster whose soul fragments contained profound magical knowledge offered timely help when she was in trouble, hiring a mentor for Lin Jiade at a very low cost.

Such an experience is unrepeatable in Lin Jiade's life, but it happened only once, and you seized it for him and extracted its value. You're going to say it's 'coincidence,' right? You're always so lucky to encounter so many 'coincidences.'

"Oh dear, don't portray me as the kind of calculating woman." Du Juan placed her hand on Lin Jiade's shoulder. "Besides, do you have any complaints about my lover benefiting?"

“He’s my boyfriend,” Jasmine said.

"Our relationship was established first."

“I’ve known Lin Jiade for three years.”

"Is it the kind of acquaintance where you've never exchanged a single word?" Du Juan laughed. "Then I also know the world's richest man."

When it comes to verbal sparring, Jasmine could never beat Du Juan. So she looked at Lin Jiade, who immediately felt a chill run down his spine because Du Juan had also grabbed his waist, but hadn't exerted any force yet, just looking at him with a half-smile.

Lin Jiade turned back and looked pitifully at Jianlan, hoping that his newly acquainted comrade-in-arms would save him.

However, Jianlan wasn't that foolish, so she simply watched the chaotic scene unfolding at the door with interest. Soon, she saw sparks flying from Jasmine's lips, one of which landed on Lin Jiade's hair, and thus, in a physical sense, the youthful passion ignited.

"puff."

Jianlan couldn't help but laugh as she watched Jasmine frantically trying to put out the fire for Lin Jiade.

The young man ended Jasmine and Du Juan's routine argument by sacrificing his own hair. Du Juan was carefully trimming the charred parts for him, while Jasmine lowered her head and put her hands behind her back, glancing timidly at Lin Jiade from time to time, looking like a primary school student being called to the teacher's office.

Hair isn't important to Lin Jiade; he's not exactly handsome. Right after the college entrance exams, he even shaved his head to pay homage to Zidane, but unfortunately, there was no Materazzi to top it off for him.

With the hair issue causing trouble, Lin Jiade forgot about his plan to show Jasmine his "Wasteful Magic 2.0" version of his vision. The cooked food in Jasmine's hands solved his half-fullness problem.

"Lin Jiade, has your appetite increased again?" Du Juan asked.

Just then, Lin Jiade copied and pasted the content of the first lesson of Jianlan's Little Classroom. Du Juan looked at Jianlan with a half-smile. Jianlan's expression was calm as she continued to study Lin Jiade's lame magic.

When she went to school in the afternoon, Jianlan was passively accompanied. No one except Lin Jiade could see her, hear her voice, or feel her presence. Even the Baiyun Charity Club, which gathered magic researchers, could not see her.

Lady Gladiolus is quiet, but having her cosplay as a floating sculpture without saying a word is torture for her, even though she is already dead... No, it is precisely because she is aware that she is already dead that she feels doubly lonely when she sees living people.

So, before class, when Lin Jiade went to the empty restroom to relieve himself, she suddenly said, "It's obvious that your Miss Azalea really wants to control me."

Lin Jiade shuddered, almost causing trouble for the cleaning lady who was responsible for disturbing him. After dealing with his own affairs, he looked helplessly at the gladiolus floating in mid-air.

The latter said, "I'm sorry, but along the way, I followed you on the road, on the bus, and on campus. I saw the elderly enjoying their remaining years, the middle-aged working hard, and the students squandering their youth."

I saw buildings shimmering in the sunlight, I saw leaves swaying on the road, I saw birds flying in the sky...

The world of the living is so beautiful. I wonder if I ever truly cherished my time while I was still alive?

Seeing Jianlan's melancholy appearance, Lin Jiade's anger at being exposed dissipated, replaced by sympathy. He sympathized with this woman who was still unable to find peace even after death.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not trying to play the victim and get anything from you," Jianlan said. "Go to class."

"Yes, together."

Gladiolus brushed her hair aside: "What, do you still consider me a living person?"

Lin Jiade didn't answer because someone went into the restroom. He hurriedly took Jianlan away and sat down in the classroom, where many people were already seated, leaving only the first and last rows.

Lin Jiade sat in the last row to reunite with his good brothers. Jian Lan wanted to sit next to him, but Lao Mu took the seat next to Lin Jiade first. He looked at Jian Lan apologetically, but she shook her head and just floated behind his seat.

"It feels a bit cold," Old Mu muttered.

I owe 59 chapters in total, have paid 10, and still owe 49.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Worms III

"Is there?"

Lin Jiade didn't feel anything. He asked the guy next to him, who was busy studying Football Manager and didn't feel anything either.

Like the Civilization series, Football Manager is a particularly time-consuming game. Although Lin Jiade is a football enthusiast, he would rather play a couple of shooting games than spend that time on such games. Therefore, he has always avoided such time-consuming games.

Lin Jiade nudged Lao Mu's elbow with his own and said, "Nobody else feels cold, is it because you're not feeling it?"

Old Mu smiled, sunlight filtering through his fair skin, instantly drawing the attention of some of the nearby girls. Lin Jiade always thought he was a bit effeminate... of course, there was some jealousy involved.

In general education courses, everyone who knows the material already knows it. 90% of the time, the teachers from other departments teach perfunctorily, and the students learn even more perfunctorily. Today, a teacher from the School of Humanities was lecturing on Gogol's *Dead Souls*, which made a group of math students drowsy.

Lin Jiade glanced back at Jianlan and noticed that Jianlan was listening very attentively to the teacher's lecture and was even muttering the name "Korobochka".

Thanks to the presence of other living people, she, this "dead soul," actually became the most energetic student in the classroom.

Because of his interest in the sword orchid, Lin Jiade listened for a while and learned that Korobochka was a greedy, conservative, and stubborn feudal landlord in the novel, spiritually empty, living a stagnant life, and extremely foolish.

For this reason, in the novel’s savage revelry surrounding the serfs, the crimes committed by this feudal landlord are far less serious than those of the bourgeois adventurers. She is a microcosm, representing the landlord class that the bourgeoisie replaced.

Lin Jiade's general knowledge of literature was approximately d(dx) = 0, and he wasn't interested in it, so he lowered his head to prepare for Jasmine's tutoring. His good friend next to him glanced at it and whispered, "This is... a high school question?"

"Yes, I tutor people, and they pay me a lot, so I have to do my best."

"Male and female?"

"Girls."

His good friend's gaze turned meaningful. Lin Jiade said with a headache, "What are you thinking? He's very ambitious. His mind is entirely on the college entrance exam right now."

She sounded a little guilty saying this. Jasmine was thinking about attending the same university as him, and even went so far as to use medication to suppress her upcoming heat so that she could focus on her studies without any distractions.

As for him, he's either lusting after Jasmine's body, or blushing and having his heart race because of Azalea, and recently he's become infatuated with Gladiolus's mature temperament and figure.

"Isn't it too much to fall in love with every girl you meet?" he whispered.

"Ah, you mean your anime female characters? Don't you have dozens of wives? Every time we play online together, your avatar is different from the last time."

Lin Jiade has no qualms about falling in love with every character he meets in the anime, just like his favorite is Kinomoto Sakura, but that doesn't stop him from liking Zhou Meili/Sugo Asuka/Cat's Eye/Haneoka Masami/Yao Ling/Lan Tu/Haibara Ai/Kanaru.

But in reality, he was tormented by guilt.

As if sensing his mood, Jianlan's head suddenly appeared between him and Old Mu, startling Lin Jiade.

Old Mu covered his cheek, then touched his shoulder, and muttered, "Why is it cold again?"

Lin Jiade shook his head, indicating that he was fine. After class, as he was about to head to Mu Mian's martial arts classroom, her avatar popped up on his screen, informing him via chat that something had come up.

After everyone left the classroom, Jianlan came to Lin Jiade's side and asked curiously, "What's next?"

"Let's go home. Senior Kapok has something to do tonight, so let's go to the supermarket to buy some things first."

Even if Lin Jiade didn't say anything, Jianlan would still go with her fate box. Ordinary people couldn't see her, but occasionally when some people passed by, they would look at Lin Jiade thoughtfully, not understanding why they would feel a slight chill in the pleasant temperature of early autumn.

On the bus, Jianlan sat inside Lin Jiade, curiously observing the slowly receding city scenery. Lin Jiade put on his headphones, pretending to be on the phone to conceal his conversation with Jianlan.

“Your classmate is very interesting,” Gladiolus said.

"Which one?"

"The one sitting to your right."

"Old Mu, indeed, he is a handsome guy after all."

A faint hint of jealousy and an even stronger sense of inferiority—that's what Jianlan sensed from Lin Jiade's tone. She had more to share about Lao Mu with Lin Jiade, but right now, that topic wasn't appropriate.

"Does anything come to mind? I see that the lady is quite interested in that name from 'Dead Souls'," Lin Jiade asked.

"It feels familiar, like someone I know, but I just can't remember them."

"And what about this city?"

"No, this city doesn't move me in the slightest. It's as if I've never been here before."

Jianlan paused for a moment, then continued, "In the early hours of the morning, we had so many things we didn't have time to think about or say."

Now, I want to ask you, if it takes me a very, very long time to fully reunite my soul, construct a physical body, and then sever the bond between us, what do you... think of this possibility?

"I do not know."

"If, after my soul has coalesced and my physical body has been constructed, I am unwilling to sever the relationship between you and me, what will you do?"

"I do not know."

"If, after I am transformed into someone else, someone who is indifferent to you or even harbors malice towards you, what would you do?"

"I do not know."

Gladiolus was a little angry and a little sad: "Common sense tells me that I should be more tolerant of a young person like you. But you have to start thinking about it now."

"why?"

"Because I used to turn you—an innocent citizen—into a death trap, it's hard for me to imagine that I was a kind person before."

"It may sound strange to me, Lin Jiade, but perhaps the only time I can have such a peaceful and friendly conversation with you is when I have amnesia."

"Ah."

"If one day I turn back into who I used to be and do something that threatens your life..."

“I’ll beat you until you lose your memory, so you can communicate with me amicably again,” Lin Jiade replied.