QT: Don't fall in love with the Male Lead

Chapter 116: Don't be fished

Xi Zirui wakes up in the white limbo area, feeling a sense of peace achieved only through acceptance of one's circumstances.

No, that's not quite right.

He hasn't accepted his circumstances, he has accepted that he knows what needs to be done in order to change them.

"Uhm, Host didn't successfully finish the assignment, so no experience points have awarded again."

Xi Zirui gets up his feet with a nonchalant shrug. "Frankly, Ni Ni, I don't give a fuck."

That leaves her speechless for a moment. "Okay, does Host want to know what happened to Han Yu, and everyone else?"

He tightens his hands into fists. Why would he want to know? So there will be another scar he can add to the many he already has?

So that the Shopkeeper can hold it over his head like a carrot on a stick to ensure he continues to put himself through this, over and over again?

"Save it," he says, "Let's just go."

Moments later, everything dissolves into nothingness.

---

Han Yu stays in bed with Xi Zirui and Little Thunder a while longer, until he can no longer bear it.

He covers their bodies with the white sheet and makes his way towards the pilot's cabin.

"Ni Ni, can we warp back to our previous location?" he asks the ship's controls, as he has seen Xi Zirui do.

Ni Ni answers him haltingly. "Technically, but it will cause the immediate destruction of the ship on arrival."

"That's okay." He taps a few controls. "Let me adjust some coordinates manually."

Ni Ni switches over control to him and wonders what he's planning to do.

Han Yu works in silence, and then straps the seat belt across his torso. "Okay, you can go now."

He crosses his legs on the captain's seat and closes his eyes.

The Irregular warps out of existence, and blinks into it, almost on top of Shen Yun's ship, in the processes of being repaired by the UHN vessels.

The last thing Su Xueyi sees is a huge ship careening towards him and then the blinding white glare as it disintegrates and consumes everything in its path.

---

Xi Zirui wakes up in the Transmigrator 4000's chair with a crick in his neck.

The Shopkeeper is already looking down at him with concern etched across her features.

"I understand you have some questions," she says, sliding a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

Xi Zirui gets up from his prone position and sits up sideways on the chair, giving her an accessing look.

"Who am I, really?"

She lets out an awkward laugh. "My, such a big philosophical question. How can little old me hope to answer it?"

Xi Zirui sighs. "Cut the fastidiousness, I'm not amused." 

The grin vanishes from her face. "You need to be sure you're ready to hear this."

Xi Zirui nods.

The Shopkeeper waves towards the shop. "This world is no different than the other ones you go through on the Transmigrator, it's another parallel reality. There are real people there, real lives, but none of them is yours."

It's what Han Yu suggested, and as much as Xi Zirui came to accept, considering he doesn't have a clear memory of his own family.

"So which of them is my real world?"

She blinks at him owlishly. "None of them."

"What?"

"Ok, so while I've been calling them parallel realities and multiverses before, a more accurate term would be pocket dimensions," she says gesturing wildly. "Of course that wouldn't have made sense to you considering your current understanding of, like, human physics."

One thing she's right about. 

None of it is making any sense to him.

Noticing his confusion, she elaborates, "They're like a pocket of time and space that the Transmigrator allows you to travel to."

Xi Zirui's head hurts. "Okay, but how, and why me? And where did I come from if not here?"

This is a source of genuine anguish for him, he wants to understand what's happening to him.

He feels as if he's still drifting alone among the stars, with nothing around him but the vastness of space. No past to guide him, no future to look forward to.

All of the things regular people have that inform their whole lives -- he has none of that.

It's no wonder that his previous life in this world felt so empty and shallow.

Until he found Han Yu.

Another drifter like him, a piece of home, maybe?

"Stay with me please." The Shopkeeper takes a big breath. "This is going to be hard to believe, but... you're a god."

Xi Zirui has a sudden screeching recollection of Su Xueyi raving about their lives as young gods, some nonsense he dismissed as his character being completely twisted in the third world.

He doesn't say anything for a long time. 

The Shopkeeper begins to panic.

"Shit, look, there are a lot of Gods okay, you're just one of them, although....anyway, that's not important right now! None of those worlds is your home, because your home is in the heavenly realm, where gods and other immortals inhabit."

That sounds insane. How can he be a god?

The Shopkeeper groans. "Please don't have a mental breakdown over this, you're unstable as it is."

Wait what?

"Listen, you need to figure out a way to get your memories back," she says, placing a non-too-gentle hand on Xi Zirui's shoulder. "That's the only way you, and everyone else, will be able to get back."

"Why?" Xi Zirui can do very little else besides stare in wide-eyed stupefaction at her.

"Because you're the only ones who know how this entire mess happened, and possibly how to reverse it!"

"Then what are you doing here?" Xi Zirui asks her with a frown. 

"I'm the poor idiot who was tasked with getting you all back!" she growls. "Believe it or not, it's causing a lot of trouble not only in the heavenly realm but in the mortal realm as well."

Xi Zirui scoffs and crosses his arms. "So all that stuff about me dying in the Transmigration and dying in real life was bullshit?"

The Shopkeeper widens her eyes. "No, that's very much true. Unless it escaped your notice, you're not a god right now, yours is very much a human body. That's the whole problem, your souls have been dispersed across multiple pocket dimensions in the mortal realm, and no one knows why or how."

"Well, we won't have to wait long then, Su Xueyi is getting his memories back fast, in the third world he seemed to remember we are actually gods."

The Shopkeeper sighs. "Yes, I know, but in his case, it might not be a great sign, since we strongly suspect he caused the whole thing."

"Why?" Xi Zirui has a lot of trouble imagining someone voluntarily trapping himself on alternate realities without his memories.

The Shopkeeper rolls her eyes at him. "Well, obviously this mess wasn't his original plan. Something must have gone wrong. That's what you need to figure out in order to get everyone back."

Xi Zirui opens his mouth to ask another question but the Shopkeeper cuts him off with an exasperated gesture. 

"You can stand here asking questions, or you can hop back in, and pester Ni Ni once you arrive in the next world. She can answer a lot of this too."

Xi Zirui holds up a finger in front of her nose. "If you're fucking with me, I'll make you regret ever crossing my path."

When he turns around to sit back down on the Transmigrator's leather chair, the Shopkeeper mouths, "yes your Heavenly Highness," with a mocking tone behind his back.

---

Xi Zirui doesn't ask for anything this time around. There's no point.

He'll just have to continue doing this for however long it takes for his memories to return, or for him to find out by other means how all of it happened -- and how it can be reversed.

It's not a reassuring thought, but at least it's a concrete objective.

The first thing he notices when he regains conscience in the next world is the feeling of water all around him, enveloping him like a warm blanket.

He opens his mouth by instinct and water rushes in, but instead of overwhelming and choking him, it nourishes him and keeps him afloat.

Uhm, weird.

Xi Zirui opens his eyes with slow blinks and comes to two starling realizations:

He's underwater, looking out at the reedy depths of a lake teeming with hundreds of fish, all of them swimming leisurely around.

The golden sheen he's been catching glimpses off is coming from his own fins.

Because he's a fish.

A brocade carp to be more precise.

Before he can find out if a fish can drown from shock, Ni Ni's voice rings out inside his head.

"Please don't be alarmed, Host."

'I'm a fucking fish!' Xi Zirui tries to scream out, but only bubbles leave his mouth.

"Host is a fish spirit, from a clan of other spirit carps, which means he can switch between a human and animal appearance."

That's a little more reassuring, but it still doesn't put him at ease.

"Don't panic with what's about to happen..," Ni Ni says out of the blue.

Xi Zirui is confused only for a moment, until a net descends over him, trapping him in the fine mesh, and then pulling his struggling, slippery body, out of the water.