Life-Saving Days by the Husky’s Side

Life-Saving Days by the Husky’s Side
Same boat

The Wei family have not moved in a long time. The house was relatively old, with many sub-structures* for the large family.

[T/N: 家族建筑群: family complex]

Grandpa Wei lived alone in a small building, surrounded by a circle of flowers and wild plants that grew as they pleased. It perfectly suited his style.

While lunch was still being made, the assistant opened the book with gloved hands and translated the contents for them.

The opening briefly discussed the gods worshipped by the Tiansang people, followed by a few specious words. To put it bluntly, they thought that those who came in contact with the Zhonglian were blessed by fate, and they must be able to deal with the difficulties encountered, including the difficulties of the person connected to them.

Grandpa Wei and his assistant did not understand what these words meant, but Ji Shaoyan and Zhou Li did.

It meant that Zhou Li could solve the troubles he encountered after transmigrating, and the same could be said for Qian Liye.

Zhou Li dwelled on Qian Liye’s character, finding it a little difficult to think of a dilemma that could only be solved by a little hoodlum who only knew how to fight… There was! Campus bullying ah! So the thing in Qian Liye’s hands right now was a blood-racing high school script?

The pitiful little kid who had been abused to death suddenly became Qian Liye, who immediately began his vengeful killing rampage. Zhou Li felt that the scene he conjured up was a bit cruel and reprimanded himself, saying how it wasn’t good to let his brain run off track too much. Perhaps it was another script that had landed in Qian Liye’s hands.

He listened intently afterwards, wondering where the remaining pieces of jade were.

The conclusion was…there were none.

Zhou Li said, “How can there be none?”

The assistant pushed back the glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, carefully examining the contents on the pages, replying, “The Tiansang people believed that the Zhonglian had spiritual powers and was scattered across three thousand worlds, and one piece of their tribe’s sacred artifact can take people to the world of the other jade petals, regaining a new life.” 

Zhou Li blinked, slowly digesting this onslaught of information.

The assistant didn’t read the other accompanying book and was unaware of what happened in the parallel time and space after death, so he speculated based on his current knowledge, “That piece of jade may be an artifact for blessing souls, to bestow the people a peaceful reincarnation… En, this is mentioned at the back of the book. The author of this book wrote that after some research, he found that there really was a sacred jade lotus in the possession of the Tiansang tribe, but it was actually only one petal.”

When he mentioned this, Grandpa Wei seemed to recall something, and said, “Oh, I remember, I heard that there were several pieces of this thing and specially went out to look for them. I later studied this book with an expert and found out that it was actually just that one piece. That ancient tribe carved a single petal, fancying the idea that there were more petals in other worlds. Basically, it was just a case of water flooding some person’s mind.” 

“……” Ji Shaoyan and Zhou Li were speechless.

If it were not for their personal experience, they wouldn’t believe there was such a thing in the world either.

The Zhonglian only had this many words dedicated to it in the book, the rest being the tribe’s traditions.

Just in case, the two listened carefully for a while more but realised there really was nothing else about the jade lotus, so they gradually became uninterested.

At this time, the food began to be served on the table one after another, and Grandpa Wei invited them to sit for a meal while chatting with Zhou Li about mobile games.

Zhou Li reluctantly turned his attention back and introduced him to several styles of games. Grandpa Wei’s eyes gleamed upon these new discoveries and instantly got the itch to create them right away to play around with. He asked, “How do you feel about coming to work for my company?”

Zhou Li reminded him, “I’m still a high school student, a minor.”

Grandpa Wei said, “No problem, I can pay you under the table.”

Zhou Li answered, “No thank you, I have plans to start a game company in the future for myself.”

“It takes too much effort to start-up by yourself,” Grandpa Wei offered, “How about this, I’ll directly hand over the company to you.”

The assistant was taken aback.

Although their boss was curious towards everything, in recent years, creating mobile games have grown to become his second biggest hobby after antique collecting.

He invited ten people who had cleared the game to dinner with intentions to contact with them, then he can slowly observe the candidates and choose one out of the group to inherit his new game company. Unexpectedly, in less than a day, he actually came to a final decision.

The company currently only had a few employees. Strictly speaking, it was more of a workshop.

But as far as he knew, the boss might leave more than half of his antique collection to the heirs of the company.

From a normal standby point of view, for his possessions to not be passed down to his own family but to an outsider, it would seem that this old man was more than a little unreasonable and cold-hearted. But when one thought about it seriously, the road to the Wei family’s current standing was entirely paved by the old man. Now that he has succeeded in giving his son the easy route to anything in life, if he spent his own money to buy some antiques, he can naturally hand it over to whoever he wanted.

Zhou Li humbly asked for statistics. “What is the size of your company?”

Grandpa Wei said, “Including you, nine people in total.”

Zhou Li: “Are there any notable works?”

Grandpa Wei: “There is ah, it’s that game you all played.”

Zhou Li, “No need, you can keep it to yourself ba.”

The assistant:”……”

Grandpa Wei: “……”

Grandpa Wei said, “Don’t look down on the number of people, they are fine talents.”

Zhou Li, “Oh, the fine talents that came together to design that game.”

Grandpa Wei said, “It was at my request. Besides, the project didn’t have much RAM, and the time constraint resulted in the final product.” 

“That settles it even more.” Zhou Li said, “We have conflicting aesthetics. I don’t want to work under a boss like you.”

“I won’t care about the design details in the future, I’ll hand the company over to you, get them to follow your orders.” Mr. Wei said, “Or I can nullify the company name and fire the lot, you can register with the name of your choosing and hire them back, how’s that?”

“……” Zhou Li didn’t know what to say. “What picture are you painting*?”

[T/N: ‘what are you getting at’]

Grandpa Wei sighed with a great change in attitude. “When I was young, I had a good brother. The two of us agreed to start up a company under this name. Unfortunately, he passed away. I had brooded over our plans for so many years, thinking about fulfilling the promise by myself. The people working for the company don’t have the best family conditions and have suffered a lot, like you, always under disdainful eyes, they can’t even afford one bite of a full meal…”

Seeing this far too exaggerated act, Zhou Li couldn’t hold back and interrupted, “Don’t sell pity, it’s useless to me.”

Grandpa Wei slapped the table with anger. When he saw that the boy was about to pick at one of the dishes, he grabbed the plate and slid it back, dragging it until it stopped in front of himself.

Zhou Li remained unimpressed, switching his attention to another dish.

Grandpa Wei was quick with his eyes and dragged the dish over. Seeing this kid fall into a silence but before he was able to let out a smirk, he saw Ji Shaoyan place the vegetables into Zhou Li’s bowl. He immediately glared.

Zhou Li happily ate the food his boyfriend had grabbed for him, then asked, “Can you tell me the truth?”

Grandpa Wei angrily admitted, “The little brats at home all look down on what I do. I want to start from scratch and grow the company on my own. They all know the name of my company, and now I just want to make a sensational mobile game and pa pa pa slap them in the face, have them kneel down and call out for their grandpa while playing. Can’t I do that?!”

“…you can do that.” Zhou Li said, “Why don’t you just go to the job market to dig up some talented people?”

“How can it be that easy?” Grandpa Wei went through a great change in attitude once again. “Young people nowadays want to work for big corporations and ordinary companies are not willing to come to my small workshop. There have been a few graduated young’uns that were willing to look, but when they see my age, they feel like I’m going to drop dead at any time, and end up getting scared away.”

Zhou Li: “……”

Ji Shaoyan: “……”

So just how ugly are the people who are still around today?*

[T/N: if the people working at the company aren’t scared of his looks, how ugly can they be to not be afraid]

“Look, you are the person chosen by the game I personally made, which makes you my direct descendant.” Grandpa Wei coaxed, “Join us bei, you can be in charge of the game design and I will help you manage the rest. I have experience in this area, and once I pass on my experience to you, this company will be handed over to you.”

No matter how peculiar this old man’s personality is, he was still the former helm of the Wei family, and his experience stretched as far as the ocean.

Zhou Li was finally a little touched. Thinking about how the studio was just a small broken workshop, he felt that it was no different from a newly constructed one, so he said, “If I am not satisfied with those people, can I look for new hires?”

Grandpa Wei said, “You can ah, we’ll listen to what you want. As a little boss, you’re more reliable than me. Those young graduates may be willing to come work for you. You can hire people according to your tastes.”

Zhou Li said, “Then I will buy shares.”

Anyway, a small workshop doesn’t cost much, so this was just to make the old man happy and can also be considered as paying tuition.

Ji Shaoyan said, “Count me in.”

Zhou Li had told him about the development of the other world and he knew that Zhou Li would not be able to compensate. The old man said that he wanted to hand over the company to Zhou Li, and although it was unlikely that the Wei family would get their hands on it, but just in case, with his shares, Zhou Li will not run into any troubles in the future.

Grandpa Wei glared at him. After thinking back to Zhou Li’s “I will no go anywhere without my boyfriend”, he had no other objections. He pushed the two dishes back to Zhou Li.

Zhou Li was finally able to eat a meal in peace.

After dinner, they chatted with the old man for a while more before standing up to say their goodbyes. Only afterwards did they discuss matters around the Zhonglian.

Nothing was written about the side effects, nor was there anything written about what would happen if two travellers got together, let alone why he had fallen into a coma for three days… Not only did this book fail to solve their problems, it had thrown them into further confusion.

Zhou Li helplessly said, “Why don’t I talk to your brother ba, he may know something. He’s already suspicious and wants to own up. If I use the second personality excuse to face him, it might seem a bit fake.”

Ji Shaoyan said, “You will be exposing your weakness to him if you do things this way.”

Zhou Li said, “That’s the same on his side. Besides, this matter is too mystical, not many people will believe it.”

Ji Shaoyan did not have an evasive characteristic, but he was unwilling to proceed without worry in face of such uncertainty.

He thought that if his stupid brother really dared to make trouble, he would pinch the other to death. In the end, he reluctantly agreed.

It wasn’t just them who thought about reaching out. Ji Tianyang couldn’t help but want to take the initiative to contact Zhou Li, so he sent him a WeChat message, saying that there was a small get together at night and asking if he wanted to come.

Zhou Li agreed without hesitation, telling Ji Shaoyan about this encounter.

Ji Shaoyan reserved a private room at the meeting spot in advance under another name. The two went on to buy new phones and registered new numbers. At night, Ji Shaoyan took the bodyguard Liang Jingxiu had asked for into the private room while Zhou Li went to Ji Tianyang’s gathering. Along the way, he dialled Ji Shaoyan’s new number to let him listen in.

He opened the door to the private room and found that there really was only Ji Tianyang present. Pretending to be surprised, he asked, “Is it only you?”

Ji Tianyang quickly got up and greeted him at the door, saying, “I have something to discuss with Zhou-ge, so I had to tell a small lie.”

Zhou Li hesitated briefly. “What do you want to talk about?”

Ji Tianyang observed his expression, then took out his phone chain. As if he was torn over the matter at hand, he said, “I wanted to ask Zhou-ge, have you come across this thing in the past?”

Zhou Li’s expression suddenly grew complicated.

Ji Tianyang noticed his appearance and said, “I’ve seen it before.”

Zhou Li was silent for a while, then sighed softly, “I have seen it too.”

Ji Tianyang’s heart dropped back in place and he tentatively asked, “Transmigrated?”

Zhou Li nodded.

Ji Tianyang said, “Me too.”

Zhou Li raised his doubts. “I’ve asked a few people and they all said you haven’t changed. Was your personality like this before?”

Ji Tianyang said, “No.”

As he spoke, he began to straighten his back slightly and hid away any hints of his haughty traits. With only one adjustment of posture and expression, he changed into an entirely different person.

He nodded at Zhou Li and modestly admitted, “I was in the entertainment industry in my previous life. I was given several film emperor awards, if you can believe*.”

[T/N: 影帝: to incur ridicule through one’s poor performance (humble)]

Zhou Li: “……”

Ji Shaoyan, on the other end of the phone: “……”

Zhou Li said, “Do you want to return to the entertainment industry in this life?”

“No. I’m the second young master of the Ji family, I don’t need to make money through acting.” Ji Tianyang continued, “And I’ve had enough of those days of being stared at by paparazzi every day, not to mention those stalker fans*, the whole lot of them are straight up neurotic.”

[T/N: sasaeng fans]

Zhou Li silently stared at him.

Ji Tianyang had finally found his relative* and could finally let loose of his grievances. “But it’s not much better here. This original body has left me such a big pot*. I haven’t figured out how to rescue myself so far, but even if I give up on saving this person, his name just sounds bad in general. Every day, I have the urge to change my name.”

[T/N: not literally; someone in the same situation as him]
[T/N: pushing the blame on him]

Zhou Li: “How does it not sound good?”

Ji Tianyang: “Ji Tianyang, sacrifice to heaven, sacrifice to heaven ah!”

[T/N: 季天扬，祭天昂，祭天啊: in pinyin, ‘ji tian yan, ji tian ang, ji tian ah’]

He looked at Zhou Li. “Listen for yourself, how unlucky is that?”

Zhou Li: “……”

Ji Shaoyan, on the other end of the phone: “……”

The author has something to say:

Zhou Li: Fortunately, the husband’s name is Ji “shao” whatever. Otherwise, Ji Tianyan…how scary.

[T/N: the ‘shao’ in JSY’s name can mean young master. As for Tianyan/天宴, both characters have so many different interpretations so I will be listing what I’m assuming is scariest for Zhou Li: ‘being eaten all day’, ‘feasting all day’, etc.]