A Self-Cultivation of a Stand-in [Transmigration GL] - Chapter 8

It only took two songs for Cai Xinyue to be completely won over.

Hua Luoyue had claimed her skills were rusty, but the moment she opened her mouth, Cai Xinyue felt she had far exceeded expectations. In fact, it was even more stunning than when she had heard her humming acapella before.

Cai Xinyue didn’t even bother asking the other band members to listen; she immediately declared with grand authority that the spot was filled.

On the way back to the dormitory, she couldn’t help but lean in closer to Hua Luoyue. “Sister, I feel like you’re at a professional level. Have you ever considered becoming a vocational singer?”

After their chat, Cai Xinyue had learned that Hua Luoyue was two months older than her. She immediately started calling her “Sister” (Jie), acting so attentive she was just short of massaging Hua Luoyue’s legs and shoulders as they walked.

Hua Luoyue said, “I have considered it…”

Her tone suggested there was more to the story. Cai Xinyue instinctively followed up: “And then?”

Hua Luoyue smiled slightly. “I failed.”

“Why?”

Hua Luoyue’s voice turned ethereal. “For true love.”

Cai Xinyue listened to that voice, which sounded like it was about to transcend to the heavens, and only realized after a moment that Hua Luoyue was likely joking with her.

“I really feel like the phrase ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ fits you perfectly,” Cai Xinyue said in amazement.

“Actually, it’s ‘don’t judge a person by their appearance,'” Hua Luoyue corrected playfully.

As they chatted, they reached the top floor of the dormitory. When Hua Luoyue took out her key to open the door, her two roommates inside instinctively turned to look. The four people inside and outside the room stared at each other for a moment; the silence was deafening.

Hua Luoyue paused for a second, put away her keys, and walked in, calmly informing them: “I’m back to pack my things. I’ll be living off-campus from now on.”

The roommates hadn’t expected her to initiate conversation. They nodded instinctively, then felt a wave of awkwardness. Not knowing what to say, they lowered their heads and pretended to read.

Cai Xinyue took in their subtle reactions. Recalling the rumors about Hua Luoyue, she immediately realized what was going on—even within the small circle of the dorm, Hua Luoyue was the one being isolated.

Cai Xinyue’s expression grew complicated, but she said nothing. After standing outside for a moment, she hurried in to help Hua Luoyue pack the books on her desk.

“Do you want to take this?” Cai Xinyue asked, holding a textbook. “It’s a hassle to carry it back and forth. How about you leave it with me? I’ll bring it to class for you.”

“Are you actually going to attend class?” Hua Luoyue countered.

“…” Cai Xinyue choked, recalled her recent attendance rate, and quickly deflated. “I’ve been really busy lately! I usually attend class properly.”

Hua Luoyue smiled. “It’s okay. My sister arranged for someone to help me. We just need to move everything downstairs in a bit.”

Cai Xinyue gave an “Oh” and didn’t push further, taking the books off the shelf one by one. Aside from the textbooks, she felt a thick original-language book. Glancing at the title, she couldn’t even distinguish what language it was.

Cai Xinyue was surprised. “You can read this too?”

Hua Luoyue glanced at the dust-covered book. Sifting through the corners of the original host’s memory, she recalled it was a graduation gift from her mother when she first started university. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a book related to her major. The original host had no interest in linguistics and hadn’t bothered to study it.

But Hua Luoyue nodded without hesitation. “I can.”

She really could. Although it wasn’t her primary language, she had encountered it frequently in her past life due to work. Moreover, this was a famous novel; reading it to understand the general meaning by following the context wasn’t too difficult for her.

Cai Xinyue flipped through the pages. Looking at the characters that resembled alien hieroglyphs, she praised with genuine admiration, “You’re really amazing.”

“I am…” Hua Luoyue accepted the compliment candidly, adding with a smile, “I might be even more amazing than you imagine.”

Her voice tilted upward at the end, betraying a hint of playful pride. It wasn’t annoying; rather, it was like a clever cat quietly curling the tip of its tail.

Cai Xinyue dazed for a moment. Once she recovered, she thought to herself that stereotypes really were unreliable. People called her gloomy and antisocial, but perhaps she was just lazy about socializing. She looks pretty lively like this.

With an extra pair of hands, the packing went much faster. The original host hadn’t left many belongings behind—one box of clothes, two boxes of books, and some daily necessities were soon ready.

Assistant Li had booked a moving company before she left. Hua Luoyue sent a message, and someone arrived quickly to pick her up.

As she was about to leave, the roommate who had been pretending to read finally shifted positions. She lifted her head several times and eventually couldn’t resist calling out to Hua Luoyue.

“Um…” The roommate’s gaze drifted from the ceiling to the floor. Finally, she took a quick glance outside the door before whispering, “Miss Yuan was throwing a tantrum in the classroom today. She said she’s going to kill you.”

It was a well-intentioned warning. Hua Luoyue looked at her with some surprise. She didn’t harbor much hostility toward these roommates.

Yuan Xiaoxiao was a local from City X, and her father was a local bigwig. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at parenting. Rumors of this “Eldest Miss” bullying classmates had persisted since elementary school, but they were always settled by her doting father’s money. X University was the only undergraduate university in the city, so many locals flocked there, allowing Yuan’s notoriety to follow her to the campus.

Hua Luoyue’s other five roommates were all poor students from mountainous or rural areas with soft personalities. They had “coincidentally” been assigned to the same dorm after the sophomore reshuffle. They weren’t close to Yuan Xiaoxiao and usually kept their distance, but after being warned several times, they feared ending up like Hua Luoyue and instinctively distanced themselves from her.

The result was, undoubtedly, isolation. But self-preservation was understandable.

Hua Luoyue nodded slightly to the roommate who warned her and said “Thank you” before calmly turning and walking out.

Cai Xinyue, fearing Hua Luoyue might be in a bad mood, changed the subject and started telling her embarrassing stories about the band members. They chatted all the way downstairs, where the movers had just pulled up. They proactively took the boxes and loaded them into the truck. After two trips, the room was basically cleared out. The sky was getting dark.

Hua Luoyue mentioned she needed to visit her mother at the hospital first, so it wasn’t convenient for Cai Xinyue to follow. Cai Xinyue walked her to the intersection outside the dorm. As Hua Luoyue got into the car, Cai Xinyue didn’t forget to remind her to come back to school over the weekend to meet her teammates for the next two months.

Hua Luoyue nodded and waved. When she picked up her phone again, she remembered that Yu Zhezhi had arranged two classes for her over the weekend. However, two classes wouldn’t take up the entire day. She replied to the teachers who had messaged her, set the times, and looked up to find the car driving through unfamiliar streets.

They were heading toward the hospital where Mother Hua was staying. For her, this was perhaps the “final boss level” of this transmigration journey.

Though she had thought about it the whole way, standing outside the ward and seeing the middle-aged woman lying lifelessly on the bed through the glass window made Hua Luoyue’s stomach churn. It might have been the residual emotions of the original host or Hua Luoyue’s own complex feelings.

The newly transferred ward was quiet and clean. Mother Hua lay alone, covered in medical equipment; only the faint ripples on the monitor proved she was still alive. The probability of her waking up was microscopic. Soon after she fell into a coma, doctors had repeatedly reminded the original host to let go of the burden. The original host knew this deep down, yet she couldn’t let go of this final biological connection—even though her mother had never been gentle with her.

If one spoke of “love,” Mother Hua naturally loved her daughter. But it was as if she lacked the gene for gentleness in her nature. She wasn’t very educated herself, but her demands on her daughter were extremely harsh. Scoldings and beatings over grades were common. But compared to the father—who was indifferent and would strike her for no reason—at least the mother made sure she was fed, didn’t force her to do all the housework, and would occasionally ask about her well-being with a stiff face when she was in a good mood.

Looking through those fragmented memories, Hua Luoyue didn’t know whether to feel regret or sympathy. Sometimes she felt the original host was another version of her in a parallel world; other times, she felt they were completely different.

In her past life, Hua Luoyue had also lost both parents and had seen her mother die in a hospital bed. Her massive debts had stemmed from expensive medical bills. She had tried every way to make money, even taking leaves of absence or dropping out. They both had a talent for music; Hua Luoyue had even lived off it for a time before eventually giving it up.

…But Hua Luoyue hadn’t experienced domestic violence or campus bullying. She had excellent grades, yet she never met a benefactor during her most desperate times. She had scrambled on her own, taking many detours before finally returning to the starting point to begin again. Looking back, the pain of losing her family had slowly faded with time.

Now, suddenly back at a different starting point, Hua Luoyue felt that same indescribable, agonizing struggle. But in the face of life and death, she maintained a basic level of reverence. This was the original host’s final wish; Hua Luoyue would help her sustain it until the moment her mother’s vital signs truly vanished.

Hua Luoyue stood at the ward door for a long time, then slowly leaned against the wall, looking down at her phone. She paused on Yu Zhezhi’s number for a while before backing out and clicking on Assistant Li’s contact. She typed a message: “Thank you…”

Assistant Li didn’t reply. She was likely a busy woman with a thousand things to do. Hua Luoyue didn’t mind. She put away her phone and walked toward the elevator. It was only after she stepped outside the hospital that she felt as though she had truly let go of something.

As night fell, Hua Luoyue walked toward her new home.

It was two days later when Assistant Li finally saw the “Thank you” from Hua Luoyue. She was carrying a stack of documents to Yu Zhezhi’s office and accidentally clicked into the message inbox while hanging up a call from a business partner. Seeing the contact name “Hua Luoyue,” she realized she had forgotten about her for a while.

But since the girl hadn’t called again, it probably wasn’t anything urgent. Assistant Li quickly tossed the mindless “Thank you” to the back of her mind as she reached for the door handle.

Yu Zhezhi, sitting behind her desk, had just stood up and “clacked” something face-down onto the desk. Assistant Li set the documents down and happened to catch a glimpse of Yu Zhezhi’s phone on the desk. It was a still frame from a video; from the back, the figure looked familiar.

Because she had just seen the name, Assistant Li recognized her instantly: “Is that Hua Luoyue? Did something happen over there again?”

Yu Zhezhi sat back down and clicked the video to show her. “The piano teacher sent me this video.” She paused, then added, “She recorded it secretly.”

Assistant Li gave a casual “Oh,” her attention entirely on the video. After watching for a bit, she noticed something wasn’t right. “If I remember correctly, this was only the first lesson, right?” she asked. “Did she have a foundation before?”

“She should have some basics.”

“Maybe she learned as a child. Their family trouble only started in the last two years; their background might have been slightly better before.” Assistant Li tried to give a reasonable explanation, but she was just speaking casually. To her, such a small matter was irrelevant.

Seeing Yu Zhezhi frowning unconsciously, Assistant Li asked, “Isn’t it a good thing she has a foundation? Or do you feel the gap between her and your sweetheart is too wide?”

Assistant Li glanced at the video again. She only knew a little about piano, but at first glance, she thought Hua Luoyue’s posture was quite beautiful. If this was considered “the difference between clouds and mud,” then Yu Zhezhi’s sweetheart must be a literal fairy from the heavens.

Yu Zhezhi shook her head. The truth was the exact opposite: at first glance, it was too similar.

Yu Zhezhi looked down at the frame she had flipped over. The person in the photo was the “White Moonlight” she had been obsessed with for many years—the perfect phantom she had chased since her youth. The clearest scene in her memory was that person sitting at a piano. She would stand nearby, clutching a small ball, staring blankly at her back.

Back then, the person was still young, but seeing Hua Luoyue’s back now made her feel as if she had been transported back in time. For a split second, she almost thought “Sister Shen” had returned.

It wasn’t until the end of the video, when the piano teacher spoke up to correct a mistake, that the illusion shattered. In terms of pure skill, Hua Luoyue was far behind the original. But that feeling of similarity—was it really just because of the face?

Yu Zhezhi felt a moment of confusion. Previously, she was certain that aside from her face, Hua Luoyue couldn’t compare to her White Moonlight in any way, which allowed her to enter the contract marriage without any psychological burden. In fact, she had even looked forward to it.

When she first made the decision, she had hesitated: Is finding a substitute really a good idea? Logic said it wasn’t a good option. However, when she saw that face by accident, she couldn’t look away. Now that she had finally found that face again in reality, she couldn’t bear to let it fade back into the crowd.

Ultimately, banking on the fact that few people knew about her connection to that long-gone, unheard-of White Moonlight—and that finding a substitute wouldn’t bring her trouble—Yu Zhezhi had gambled on her choice. The more she noticed Hua Luoyue’s flaws, the more clearly she could distinguish the two.

But when she suddenly saw a similarity beyond just the face, she felt a strange surge of panic. She was afraid that one day, she might truly confuse the two. How could a fake be compared to the real thing?

It shouldn’t be possible.

The more Yu Zhezhi thought about it, the more agitated she became. She decisively flipped her phone face-down as well. A crisp clack echoed.

Assistant Li was startled, looking at the flipped phone with an expression of financial pain. It was a brand-new phone; heaven knows how much time they had wasted last time trying to recover lost data.

Unfortunately, Yu Zhezhi clearly had no intention of explaining her inner turmoil. She leaned back against her chair, narrowed her eyes at Assistant Li, and asked, “Before the banquet tonight, is there anything else that needs handling?”

Once she entered work mode, Yu Zhezhi could calm down with incredible speed. Assistant Li patted the documents and briefly reported several changes she had just received. Most of them required a meeting to confirm, but generally, they weren’t too urgent. After finishing the company business, Assistant Li pulled a list from the bottom.

“This is basically the guest list for Miss Zhong’s banquet tonight.” Assistant Li pointed to the second-to-last row, instinctively lowering her voice to remind Yu Zhezhi: “It seems Miss Xu will be there as well.”

Yu Zhezhi pressed her fingers against her brow. “I remember she and Zhou Junyao are… cousins?”

“First cousins,” Assistant Li said.

Yu Zhezhi sighed deeply, holding her forehead. “Why didn’t he take his dear sister with him when he went abroad?”

One of the reasons she chose to marry Hua Luoyue was to avoid the nuisance that was Zhou Junyao. The elder of the Zhou family had finally shown some tough love by kicking his precious son out for “training,” giving her a few days of peace. But she never expected she wouldn’t be able to dodge it completely.

Zhou Junyao and Miss Xu were cousins on paper, but they had been raised together since childhood; their relationship was closer than most biological siblings. In fact, it was so close that there were once absurd rumors of incest. From the facts, Miss Xu acted more like Zhou’s mother—the “evil mother-in-law” type.

Assistant Li looked at her boss’s slightly contorted expression and couldn’t help but show a trace of pity. Anyone who was relentlessly stalked by a persistent, powerful lunatic they couldn’t get rid of would look pitiful.

“Then, President Yu… are you still going to the banquet tonight?” Assistant Li asked.

“Yes…” Yu Zhezhi squeezed the word out through gritted teeth. She covered her face, slowly calming her mind. Once she settled, she took the list and continued scanning it. Her gaze swept over the thin sheet of paper before finally landing on her own fingers.

Yu Zhezhi turned the back of her hand over, studying her bare fingers for a while. A thoughtful expression gradually appeared on her face.

“Yunting…” Yu Zhezhi called her assistant.

“Yes! What are your orders, President Yu?” Assistant Li snapped to attention at the overly calm tone.

Yu Zhezhi slapped the list onto the desk and commanded: “Now, immediately, right this instant. Go buy me a pair of diamond rings. Specifically for married couples. They must look very expensive. Limited edition. And they should strongly emphasize the ‘loving and happy’ state of a newlywed couple.”