Chapter 2: In the middle of night, someone entered the backyard!

Xu Yiran glanced at the time on the phone screen and saw the date was still the same day when she had disappeared.

It had been only one week since she moved back to Ninghai Village. So her current age was twenty-three in her world.

How old was she in total?

It was such a long time ago that she had lost count. Whatever, Xu Yiran thought. It didn’t matter anymore.

When she first entered the space, her real-time memories were stored in a strange Pandora’s box. Now, when she was teleported by the system again, the Pandora’s box was opened, and all those memories came back with her.

It was a good thing.

Feeling the coldness against her cheek, Xu Yiran picked up the remote from the coffee table and raised the temperature a bit more. She clutched the woolen blanket and sank into the soft couch even more. But it didn’t take much time before she sat up with an annoyed expression.

It was nothing else—she just felt hungry. In the past, besides depression, she also had the problem of anorexia. So she had hardly eaten full meals before. Like now, she hadn’t eaten for a day and a half.

Helpless, Xu Yiran made her way toward the lonely kitchen. Initially, she hadn’t had much hope because, in the past, she had cared way too little for food and almost never cooked anything. If she felt hungry, she’d grab her purse and randomly find any restaurant for a quick bite.

Hah! How messy she was in the past, and she still hoped to cure her depression in that way!

Suddenly, Xu Yiran started to disdain her past self somehow!

She found something. Looking at the packets of frozen dumplings at the corner of the freezer, a satisfied smile appeared on her face. She had bought these on a whim but later found them troublesome, so she had tossed them into the freezer randomly. Now they came in handy.

A bowl of hot dumpling soup on such a cold day—it felt good just thinking about it.

She took out a packet, hummed an unknown tune, and started getting busy.

As for her depression! Anorexia! Not knowing how to cook! They didn’t exist in her life’s dictionary anymore. Her depression and anorexia had been cured when she was fiddling with all sorts of miscellaneous things in the trapped space. The thing she was most grateful for about that place was that it had a huge collection of various items, books, scripts, and many other things.

She spent all day reading this, learning that, or trying to make this. Anyway, there were no clocks, no rankings, no comparisons. She wasn’t rushed to learn quickly because time wasn’t running out. She was happy, very happy, even though she was trapped in a space without any human life. But there were a few animals to keep her company, so she didn’t feel lonely often. If she did, she would sit by the blurry glass and observe those figures and their surroundings.

All in all, she might have been frightened at the beginning, but gradually she fell in love with that place.

***

**Midnight, around 1 AM.**

At the end of December, the temperature had dropped sharply. The weather was so cold that even bones ached from the wind.

The surroundings of the jungle were so dark that one couldn’t identify the object in front of them. It was so silent that the hair on one’s body would stand up at the slightest unusual noise.

The crickets and cicadas hiding in the dark constantly made noise. They weren’t scary, but in such eerie silence, they gave goosebumps to little Xu Lianyi. She clutched her elder brother’s hand even tighter while burying her head in her second brother’s neck.

She could hear her second brother’s heavy breathing from carrying her on his back. Her pair of big, doe-like eyes, which had always been lively, were now red and misty. She bit her lips tightly for fear of making her choked-up sob obvious to her brothers. She wanted to walk by herself so her brothers could rest, but her body was weak, her fever making her ache, and she was so hungry it hurt.

But her brothers hadn’t eaten longer than her. They gave all the food and water to her.

Suddenly, a string of long, steady howls resonated throughout the silent forest, scaring the four-year-old Xu Lianyi, who was already tense, into trembling. A small sobbing sound escaped.

Xu Yuqiong quickly hugged his trembling sister in front while patting her back to soothe her, like his mother always did. But his tightly pursed lips and constantly moving eyes already revealed his fear. He subconsciously moved closer to his twin brother. Xu Zehao silently grasped his brother’s arm.

Even though for the last two days they had appeared unafraid in front of their sister, trying to assure her and cheer her up, deep down they were scared. They were so scared they were at their wits’ end. They had never faced such a situation in their thirteen years of life. They had never been alone without any family members before, nor had they suffered anything like this.

But they couldn’t show it. They couldn’t express it in front of their sister. They needed to get out of this forest quickly. Otherwise, they would either die in some animal’s mouth or from cold and hunger.

Ten or twenty minutes later, little Xu Lianyi pointed at the woodshed they could see from afar. “Brother, look. A house.”

Xu Yuqiong exchanged a look with his brother, squeezed his sister’s cold hands, and said softly, “Yeah, brother saw. You stay with elder brother. Second brother will go and see if there’s anyone there. Okay?”

“Kay,” Xu Lianyi nodded softly. She didn’t see her elder brother tightly gripping her second brother’s hand to stop him.

“You stay with Yiyi. I’ll go,” Xu Zehao said. After experiencing enough worst-case scenarios over the last two days, Xu Zehao dared not trust anything. He had been so traumatized that he regarded everything as dangerous. He dared not let his brother go there alone.

Xu Yuqiong shook his head. He also knew what his brother feared, but the same went for him. He wanted to make sure his siblings stayed safe first. He quickly shook off Xu Zehao’s hand, quickened his pace, and dropped the words: “Wait here. Don’t go there unless you see my signal.”

He tried to make as little noise as possible as he crept closer and closer to the house emitting smoke from its chimney. His heart beat faster and faster with each step he took.

Little did he know, as soon as he stepped into the backyard, the owner of the house had already snapped her eyes open.