My Paranoid Girlfriend Asks Me to Be Her Kept Woman (Rebirth) - Chapter 2

“Hey, are you okay?”

Lin Yi’s heart clenched viciously, then seemed to drop back into place. She awakened from endless darkness.

Before her was a cold, indifferent face. The woman had sharp brows, a high nose bridge, and an air that made her look difficult to approach. Right now, she was staring at Lin Yi with a frown.

“I…” Lin Yi opened her mouth and found her voice again. “Zhao Qi…”

She had not expected it to be true. That lotus named Wuming had really sent her back!

A scorching sensation came from her chest, as if something had taken root in her heart. At this moment, it seemed to be beating wildly in place of her heart.

“You know me?” Zhao Qi raised a brow and looked at the person who had just stumbled into her arms.

Her face was flushed like peach blossoms. Her hair was dyed with an unusual shade of pink. She had fair skin and beautiful hair, but she looked to be in a very poor state.

“I…” Lin Yi opened her mouth.

“Xiao Yi, why are you here? President Li has been waiting for you. He said he must drink another cup with you. No one gets to leave tonight until there’s a winner!” A man reeking of alcohol walked out from around the corner.

Lin Yi tightened her grip around Zhao Qi’s wrist. Zhao Qi could feel the person in her arms trembling.

“Who are you?” Only when the man drew closer did he see that Lin Yi was being held by someone.

He grabbed Lin Yi’s arm and yanked her out with vicious force. Lin Yi staggered and nearly fell to the ground.

Zhao Qi furrowed her brows and stepped out from the darkness. “Do you need help?”

When the man saw that she was a beautiful woman with a cold and imposing presence, one look told him she was not someone easy to provoke. Then he remembered that this was, after all, a place where wealthy young heirs drank and played. If a brick fell from above, who knew how many important figures it could kill? This woman’s bearing alone made it clear she was no ordinary person. He immediately forced a grin.

“Misunderstanding, misunderstanding. I’m her manager. There’s a gathering with the company’s higher-ups today, so I brought her here to broaden her horizons.”

Zhao Qi understood the hidden meaning in his words. Her face instantly turned cold. Though she did not say anything, Lin Yi could feel the disdain in her eyes.

Lin Yi knew Zhao Qi had misunderstood, taking her for someone trying to cling to wealth and power.

She clenched her teeth. In her previous life, after seeing that look on the woman’s face, she had stubbornly held herself up with sheer pride and refused to let Zhao Qi help her. Then she had been dragged back by her manager and had fallen into the abyss that followed.

Gathering her strength, she flung off her manager’s restraint and threw herself toward the woman.

What greeted her was a familiar scent: the heavy fragrance of pinewood mixed with the cool scent of mint, strangely giving her a sense of support.

“Help me,” she murmured.

Hearing the voice in her arms, Zhao Qi’s brows relaxed without her realizing it. In the next instant, she looked toward the manager, her gaze sharp and aggressive.

“I’ll be taking this young lady with me.”

“Huh?!”

“She’s my—” The manager finally reacted and reached out to grab Zhao Qi.

Zhao Qi gave a cold laugh and showed no mercy. She stepped on the manager’s foot. Her ten-centimeter stiletto heel twisted viciously into the back of his foot.

The manager sucked in a breath of cold air, curling over in pain.

Zhao Qi steadied Lin Yi and said coolly, “When you take revenge in the future, make sure you don’t target the wrong person. I’m the Zhao family’s Xiao Qi, Zhao Qi.”

“You, you, you’d better—” Before the manager could spit out his threat, his ferocious expression froze halfway. When he heard that this woman had a powerful background and was actually a member of Huaicheng’s top aristocratic family, the Zhao family, his face twisted like a palette of colors. Then he pulled together a shattered expression and stammered, “Z-Z-Z-Zhao…”

“Heh.”

Leaving behind that single word, Zhao Qi supported the slender waist of the person in her arms and walked out of the manager’s sight.

“Thank you.” Lin Yi spoke between breaths.

Zhao Qi’s mind calmed as well. She looked at the person who could only walk by leaning entirely on her strength and asked, “Should we go to the hospital?”

Lin Yi shook her head. She leaned against the woman and took a deep breath, as if drawing some inexplicable strength from her.

“To the hotel next door.”

Zhao Qi supported her, and the two crossed a narrow road before entering the nearby hotel.

Lin Yi clutched Zhao Qi’s clothes and hurried into the elevator.

“You’re staying here?” Zhao Qi finally realized.

“Mm.” Lin Yi’s fingers trembled. Several times, she could not align them properly with the fingerprint scanner.

Zhao Qi held Lin Yi’s beautiful, slender fingers and pressed them to the fingerprint lock. With two beeps, the door opened.

Lin Yi leaned against the door. Zhao Qi stood at the entrance, somewhat hesitant. She had the vague feeling that if she stepped inside, she would be entering an unknown world.

“Cough, cough—ugh.” Lin Yi could not hold back a cough and started retching.

This body had been forced to drink too much alcohol, as well as some things that had been drugged. At this moment, all of it was churning in her stomach.

Zhao Qi hesitated no longer. Perhaps a vomiting drunk was even scarier than the unknown. She supported Lin Yi into the room, kicked the door shut, and went into the bathroom.

Lin Yi hugged the toilet and dry-heaved a few times. Then she shoved her index finger down her throat, and finally, with a violent rush, vomited everything out.

After she finished throwing up, she collapsed to her knees on the floor. She felt as if all the strength in her body had vanished. Her mind went blank, and she began spacing out uncontrollably. A flush rose on her face, and she giggled foolishly, as if drunk.

Zhao Qi had retreated outside while Lin Yi was vomiting. After hearing no movement for a long while, she opened the door and saw Lin Yi kneeling on the floor, giggling foolishly.

Zhao Qi’s brows furrowed again. She crouched down and immediately smelled the thick scent of alcohol. Reaching out, she patted the person on the floor.

“Wake up.”

The person on the floor showed no awareness at all. She even slid sideways slightly. Zhao Qi finally sensed that something was wrong. She placed her index finger against the pulse at Lin Yi’s neck. Her pulse was pounding extremely fast.

Rubbing her brow, Zhao Qi stood and looked at her for a while. In the end, she could only do a good deed to the end. After much effort, she got Lin Yi onto the bed and called her family doctor to come over.

When the doctor arrived, he was startled, thinking something had happened to the young lady of the family for her to summon him in the middle of the night. After all the fuss, it turned out that it was the young lady’s friend who had gotten into trouble.

After examining Lin Yi carefully, the doctor made a diagnosis, gave her a sedative injection, and put an oxygen mask on her. Only then did the person on the bed quiet down.

When Zhao Qi saw the doctor administer the sedative, her brows drew together. “What’s going on?” She had not expected it to be serious enough to require a sedative.

The doctor explained, “This young lady most likely ingested a hallucinogen. That’s why her blood pressure is elevated, her heartbeat is too fast, and she is showing symptoms of hysteria.”

Zhao Qi understood what the doctor meant. The sedative had been given out of fear that Lin Yi would hurt herself.

“As for the hallucinogen, we can only wait for her body to metabolize it on its own. But I heard you say that after she came back, she made herself vomit up the food in her stomach. There shouldn’t be much left in her body. Still, when this young lady wakes up, it would be best to take her to the hospital for a detailed examination. Also, once she wakes, she needs to drink plenty of water to flush out the drug.”

“I understand. Thank you, Uncle Zhang.”

The doctor smiled. “It’s nothing. I’m just glad nothing happened to you, Miss.” With that, he picked up his medical bag, waved, and left.

After seeing the doctor off, Zhao Qi sat by the bed, feeling as though she had picked up a huge problem as soon as she returned.

She stared at the flushed face on the bed. Her rosy cheeks were nestled in soft pink hair, as if she were pillowing herself on a gentle dream.

Lin Yi’s nostrils fluttered slightly, her breathing steady.

Zhao Qi gave a scoff. “I must be possessed.”

From the moment she had first seen this person, her heart had started beating uncontrollably, as though she had encountered something worth rejoicing over.

But was she, Zhao Qi, someone so easy to command? When she heard that fat man say those things, she had truly wanted to leave. But when her wrist was gently held, and when that person fell into her arms, her heart had thundered and trembled violently. It was as if, if she did not grab hold of her, something would happen in the future that she would regret deeply. And her intuition had always been accurate.

She could not help reaching out and pinching the sleeping person’s cheek. The person on the bed let out a soft whimper. Zhao Qi released her hand, and the skin she had pinched instantly reddened.

Zhao Qi stared at that patch of skin and clicked her tongue softly. “Your skin is quite tender.”

The night passed in the blink of an eye.

The next day, glaring sunlight fell onto the bed. The person on the bed stirred beneath her eyelids. Her lashes struggled in the sunlight for a long while before her white, hazy vision finally shifted back to reality.

Lin Yi had slept soundly all night, though her dream had been a little noisy.

Wuming muttered in her mind, “When you need me, you call me Little Sweetie. Now you think I’m noisy. Scumbag!”

Lin Yi instantly sobered at the voice. “Why are you in my head?”

“Have you forgotten? Weren’t you the one who called me?”

Lin Yi recalled the emergency last night. In fact, she had not only been drugged with hallucinogens, but also narcotics…

Under the dual stimulation of the hallucinogen and the drugs, she would have fallen into madness last night and nearly lost her life. If she had not summoned Wuming in time to help dilute the toxins in her body and let them be expelled with the vomit, what remained would absolutely not have been merely a trace amount of hallucinogen. And if she had been taken back, today, in that hotel, she would have been ruined beyond repair and left at the mercy of others!

Thinking of this, Lin Yi shuddered all over and sprang up from the bed.

“Mm…” A long sigh came from beside her. Zhao Qi looked sleepily at someone who was acting deranged first thing in the morning.

“It’s me.” She propped her head up with her right hand. “There’s no one else. No need to get excited.”

Lin Yi’s body froze. She turned to the side.

The person beside her had a head of fluffy chestnut-brown curls. Her expression was languid, and even in that half-awake, half-asleep state, she could not hide her astonishing presence. Her face was indifferent. At this moment, she raised a brow slightly, as if asking Lin Yi what she was doing.

Wuming was about to be driven mad by the noise inside Lin Yi’s mind. Lin Yi had been screaming “ahhh” in her head for quite some time, but her actual movements were very calm.

She pulled off the oxygen mask and said composedly, “Someone will come later. Let’s get up first.”

“Someone?” Zhao Qi was puzzled. She watched Lin Yi get up and enter the washroom. After a while, several thumping sounds came from the washroom, then it quieted down again.

She raised a brow in amusement, pulled back the quilt, and got up as well.

Wuming waited until Lin Yi washed her face and calmed down before reminding her, “Look at your chest.”

Lin Yi pulled open her clothes. In the mirror, a pink lotus bud lay at the center of the woman’s chest, waiting to bloom.

“When the seven lotus petals bloom again, that will be the moment you return to the human world.”

Lin Yi placed her hand over her heart. Her heart beat steadily—thump, thump.

“What happened last night?”

Lin Yi asked, “Did you sense my call?”

Wuming said, “I sensed the power of love and anger, and saved you while I was at it.”

Lin Yi straightened the clothes over her chest. “Aren’t I a complete energy body? Why would I still be affected?”

Wuming: “…”

“You have returned to the Sea of Fate now. Although I turned back your time, I cannot violate the rules of the Sea of Fate. Anyone here can only obey the rules of fate.”

“The rules of fate?” Lin Yi sneered. “Didn’t saving me already violate my fate?”

Wuming said, “Your end is not here. My interference will not change your end.”

Lin Yi looked into the mirror. The entire washroom was reflected in it. The mirror showed a woman with pink hair and fair skin, but only she knew there was also a mysterious being in her mind, its purpose unknown.

“Is my end death?” she finally asked.

Wuming explained patiently, “You have already died once. As long as you collect all seven substances, you will return to the human world.”

“What if I don’t?”

“The Sea of Purity will devour your spirit, and you will sink into slumber at the bottom of the sea.”