Chapter 2 – Reborn  

Slender fingers paused on the line “Both the emperor and the empress are buried within Zhao Mausoleum” for a long time. Song Xiao slowly heaved a sigh, closed his book, and pressed the button by the head of the bed.

Along with a deafening ring, a chubby nurse wearing a light pink dress rushed in asking, “Ready to pull out the needle?”

“Yes.” Song Xiao nodded, and raised his left arm that was connected to an intravenous tube, “Sorry to trouble you, Sister.”

“Aiyah aiyah! No need to be so polite!” Having such a delicate and fair-skinned young man calling her sister in a clear and bright voice, anyone’s heart would melt with adoration.

The chubby nurse smiled so wide that one couldn’t see her eyes. She skillfully unwrapped the medical tape and pressed a cotton ball on the insertion point with one hand while her other hand swiftly removed the needle. She then told the young man to press on it.

Song Xiao pressed down on the spot where the needle had just been removed from and nodded to the nurse in gratitude. As he waited for his arm to stop bleeding, he picked up the history book on the bed and started reading again.

“This young master of the Song house is different from what the news says.” The chubby nurse, who walked out with a face full of smiles, was pulled aside by another nurse who nodded her chin towards the person silently reading within the room.

“Aiyah, how can you possibly believe in such tabloids? Last year someone even spread the rumor that our hospital transfused a patient with AB blood type with A blood type on the left hand and B blood type on the right.” The chubby nurse curled her lip, turned to look at the young man in the room, and made a heart shape with both of her hands. “How could such a delicate lordling possibly be getting into fights? He was definitely bullied by somebody….”

After hearing the chubby nurse’s words, her colleague couldn’t help but shudder and rub her arms to get rid of the goosebumps before turning back to check the temperature of the patient in the next room.

After the nurse left, Song Xiao rubbed the point between his eyebrows. Again, he heard a word that he didn’t understand. What on earth was a “tabloid”?

Even after waking up for so many days, his head was still filled with a fog of confusion about the things around here. He rubbed his neck, thinking that he should have been on the road to the netherworld when he opened his eyes.

Just as he had decided to muster up some courage to find Yu Jin Tang on the Bridge of Helplessness[1], he had never expected that “the road to the netherworld” would actually be a small, white, square-shaped room. Opening his eyes, he saw a man dressed in a white robe, holding a flexible rope with a round metal shard at the end, walking around in front of him.

“Is it alright for me to ask if you are Bai Wu Chang[2]?” Song Xiao slowly sat up and greeted the person in front of him, thinking that the soft rope was the rope they used to tie up souls.

“Bai Wu Chang” seemed very shocked by what Song Xiao had said. After blanking out for quite a while, he put the round metal shard of the “soul rope” onto Song Xiao’s chest and removed it after waiting a while. He then used two fingers to take a look at his eyes and touched his head, asking, “Does your head hurt?”

It was now Song Xiao’s turn to be stunned. This person’s hands were warm and he could understand his words, except for the fact that he spoke in a very strange accent. Also, the men here were all short-haired and all the women were dressed very weirdly. Could it be that he was not dead, but had stumbled into the land of some barbarians instead?

“Here is…?” Song Xiao didn’t dare to say much, afraid that these people would notice that his accent was different from theirs. After all, barbarians were usually very hostile to outsiders.

“This is the Third People’s Hospital. You’ve been unconscious for 3 days. Are you feeling uncomfortable anywhere?” The man wearing a white gown asked him warmly.

Hospital? It would seemed that this man clad in a white gown was actually a physician.

“Hearing that he was awake, we came here to record his statement in writing.” As the physician was speaking, two young men wearing green short gowns walked towards him, holding a pen and paper in their hands. “Song Xiao, who hit you at that time?”

Song Xiao frowned slightly, what were these people talking about?

“The patient has just regained consciousness. Can’t you people come back another day?” Although the physician was unhappy, he still didn’t throw out the two people. Instead, he turned to Song Xiao and asked, “Do you still remember what happened before you fell unconscious?”

Song Xiao shook his head. He had used the Mo Ye blade to slit his own neck and had definitely died then. Yet the situation in front of him was very unusual, and he couldn’t just answer without careful consideration.

Song Xiao didn’t know until after the conversation that the two people in green were actually police officers, who were equivalents to the officials in charge of catching criminals within the government office.

After the physician and the officers questioned him continuously for half a day, they reached a very shocking conclusion: Song Xiao had lost his memories. He couldn’t remember where he lived, who his parents were, let alone remember how he was hurt. All he could remember was that his name was Song Xiao.

“Oh, you poor child!” Auntie Chen, who was employed by his family to take care of Song Xiao, hugged him and burst into tears.

Song Xiao stayed silent, not uttering a single word as he observed his surroundings for a few days. He requested Auntie Chen to buy some books for him to read and he realized a very unbelievable fact. The Great Yu Empire had fallen almost a thousand years ago and it was now the 21st century!

Standing in front of the mirror in the restroom, he stared at the image of the young man in the mirror who looked exactly like him when he was sixteen or seventeen years old. The only difference was that his current face was a lot paler and not in high and vigorous spirit like he had been after becoming Zhuang Yuan that year.

The current him was also called Song Xiao, and he had just turned 16 this year. His mother had passed away very early on and the only family he had left was his father.

“What kind of work does my family do?” Song Xiao speculated that he didn’t drink Meng Po soup[3] before reincarnating, but he didn’t know why he was missing his memories of the past 16 years. Also, there might be a chance that Yu Jin Tang had also been reincarnated.

Currently, he was more concerned about his family background, because if he were a noble, he could still participate in the imperial examination. And after becoming an official, he would have the means to find the one he was searching for.

“Your father runs an entertainment agency.” Auntie Chen took out the fruits she had just bought and started peeling an apple for him.

“What does an entertainment agency do?” Song Xiao frowned slightly. It sounded like it had something to do with merchants. Although the social position of a merchant wasn’t too good, at the very least he could still study.

“Oh, they hire a group of good-looking young people who sing, dance, and act to earn money.” Auntie Chen smiled as she said this.

She had worked as the housekeeper of the Song house for many years. Looking after Song Xiao as he grew up, he had never been one to make a conversation with others, and had always been absent-minded. Mr. Song said that the child had some kind of autistic disorder and was not very intelligent, so he asked her to pay more attention to him.

This time Song Xiao’s head broke down after a beating. Even though he didn’t have his past memories, he looked like he had become more intelligent and was speaking more. So it was probably a good thing.

Song Xiao’s heart thumped. After hearing what Auntie Chen had said for the past few days, it sounded like his house was relatively well-off. Originally, he had hoped that his family was at least at the level of a squire, but he didn’t expect that his house was actually a theatrical group! An actor had a very low rank in society, and if his father was born from an actor, that meant that he wouldn’t have the chance to take part in the imperial examination!

Song Xiao heaved a sigh, and depressingly raised the new book Auntie Chen had bought for him to read. The words within this book were all so weird; there were only a few strokes in each character. It felt like a wild scribble, but the good part was that he could still understand most of them.

“Song Xiao!” A bright and clear sound came from outside the door. Song Xiao turned his head and saw a youth that was around his age with a very colorful head peeking in. Seeing that no one was around, he hurried inside, closed the door, and removed the sunglasses he was wearing.

“Sir is…” Song Xiao had read more than ten thousand books since he was a child and he was gifted with extraordinary retentive memory. He had mastered the intonation the people around here used, except that he hadn’t gotten used to some of the words they used.

“It’s me, Da Wei! You can’t even remember me?” The colorful young man circled him in shock and sighed as he continued, “You really lost your memories? Such a cheesy plot, I didn’t believe your dad when he told me!”

The young boy named Da Wei circled around him again in pity, and started to sprout facts about himself without stopping. His given name was Lee Wei Wei, and Da Wei was his stage name. He was an entertainer working in Song Xiao’s family’s company and he had been acting since he was eight years old. He was a child actor through and through.

Because of Song Xiao’s solitary personality, he had had no friends, so his father had allowed the company’s only child to come by and play with him. After spending a long time with each other, Da Wei had become Song Xiao’s one and only friend. Of course, these were only the words of Lee Wei Wei and the truth was still debatable.

Song Xiao silently stared at this young man who was beaming with joy as he spoke. Although he dressed like beggar and his hair was strangely riotous with color, he had a pair of clear and honest eyes. Having been in the court for so many years, even now he still had the ability to read people. Song Xiao could feel the friendliness from the youth and even with his long-winded talk, he could at least say this much.

“Aren’t you leaving the hospital today? Your dad is busy participating in the premiere of a new film and let me come in his place to pick you up.” Lee Wei Wei rolled his eyes as he said, “For an old lady, he could even disregard his own son. If he weren’t my boss, I would have already condemned him in the media.”

“What he means is that, putting aside the fact that the master didn’t come to visit you for the past few days, he even neglected to come and see you on the day of your release from the hospital…” Auntie Chen complained as she started packing.

Song Xiao knit his brows. After hearing their words, his father in this life sounded like someone who indulged himself in beauty. He had learned about movies from a book, which was basically a show where actors act. In other words, his father had an actor as a mistress and in order to flatter the mistress’ new movie, he abandoned his sickly son without a qualm.

“Children shouldn’t condemn their father for their mistakes. Since my father didn’t appear, he must have his own reasons.” Song Xiao, who came out from the restroom after changing his clothes, saw that the two of them were still scolding his father by enumerating his wrong-doings and spoke up to stop them.

Song Zi Cheng, who took his time to come here after the premiere, arrived just in time to hear this sentence and immediately stopped outside the door, stunned.

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Translation Notes

[1] 奈何橋 : A bridge every soul has to cross before being reincarnated.

[2] 白無常 : One of the two deities in charge of escorting the spirits of the dead to the netherworld.

[3] 孟婆湯 : On the Bridge of Helplessness, souls have to drink this soup so they will forget everything in their current lives and prepare for reincarnation.