I Crossed Over with My Enemy, Only to Find Him Running the Empire - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Sudden Clarity

Li Qiaoqiao saw Wu Ya with his back to her, facing the pitch-black corner of the room.

In his hand, he held the withered rice ball Mrs. Wei had just given her, and he was currently taking a massive, ruthless bite out of it!

That rice ball… she gave that to ME!

“You—!” Rage surged into Li Qiaoqiao’s brain.

At a critical juncture like this, he actually had the heart to eat? And he was eating her private rations!

Wu Ya didn’t stop. He swallowed the last bite before slowly turning around. He met Li Qiaoqiao’s murderous glare with a calmness usually reserved for afternoon tea.

“I was hungry,” he said indistinctly, acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “It’s going to take time for it to react, isn’t it? Isn’t standing around exhausting?”

“That was mine!” Li Qiaoqiao felt a fire shoot straight to the top of her skull. All the energy she had used to twist the rope transformed into an impulse to kick him.

This jerk!

Wu Ya chewed a few more times, finally swallowing. He licked his lips with lingering relish, his eyes squinting at her. “Food is food, regardless of who eats it. Are you afraid I won’t have the strength to carry you if we run? Relax, I won’t let you starve. If it works, I’ll grab you and bolt.”

Li Qiaoqiao was so angry her vision blurred. Just as she was about to pounce on him—or at least scratch him a few times for revenge—the light in the room suddenly dimmed.

They both froze. It was as if a giant hand had seized their throats. They fell silent instantly, their eyes locked onto the Concentric Lock.

The light faded further, as if the sun had abruptly plunged below the horizon. But the lock remained motionless.

Li Qiaoqiao’s heart drummed. Wu Ya’s fingers, still holding a tiny scrap of the rice ball, tightened silently. Time ticked by. Still, nothing happened.

There was nothing but a deathly silence. Li Qiaoqiao stared at the bundle on the chest as if trying to burn holes in it with her eyes.

“I give up!” she muttered, her voice trembling with despair.

The forced composure on Wu Ya’s face vanished. After a long while, he moved his dry lips, his voice sounding like metal scraping against a pot.

“The rope… it won’t work.”

“We need to change it. Something stronger.”

…

Li Qiaoqiao sat cross-legged on the earthen bed, her brow furrowed into a knot. Wu Ya’s face was sun-baked and dark, but his eyes were no longer those of an “idiot.” They were terrifyingly bright—exactly as they used to be in the modern world when he wore bespoke suits and called the shots at a negotiation table.

Unfortunately, he was a dragon trapped in a shallow pond. Right now, they were just two loaches in a ditch.

“Here, keep trying! I refuse to believe it!” Li Qiaoqiao grumbled, shoving her half of the stone lock into Wu Ya’s hand while she held the other. “Same old way. Touch them together!”

The two pieces met. The two people on the bed didn’t dare breathe, their eyes glued to the seam.

Nothing. Not a vortex, not a spark.

Li Qiaoqiao slumped back against the edge of the bed, grabbed a chipped ceramic bowl, and gulped down cold water. Droplets slid down her chin.

What a miserable life!

To think she, the great modern food blogger Li Qiaoqiao—with a million followers and the luxury of dining at Michelin-star restaurants—was now huddled in a shack, eating wild herb mush and brown rice porridge, serving a “dummy husband,” and wrestling with a broken piece of stone!

“This morning was real!” she whispered, guarding against eavesdroppers. “That golden light, the suction… why isn’t it working now? Did you break it, you dummy?”

She squinted at Wu Ya.

Wu Ya’s sharpness felt a bit hollow in this environment. He frowned, examining his half of the lock. This thing had sucked them to the modern era this morning, but now it was just dead iron.

“Try this,” Wu Ya said suddenly. “Don’t just let them touch. Bind them together. Make them a single unit.”

Li Qiaoqiao rolled her eyes. “Duh! Should I plate it in gold?” Despite her complaining, her eyes scanned the room. A rotted mat, broken pots, a dirty winnowing basket… nothing useful.

Finally, her gaze landed on herself. She had been wearing this faded blue-grey jacket for nearly two months. The cuffs were frayed and stained with mud and grass juice from the hills. It was a greasy, dark mess. She looked at Wu Ya’s even filthier sleeves with disgust.

Fine, let’s see who’s more desperate. Li Qiaoqiao gritted her teeth. Rrrrrip!

She tore a long strip of fabric directly from her left sleeve, starting from the shoulder. The coarse cloth was fragile and tore easily.

“You!” Wu Ya was stunned. He hadn’t expected her to be this fierce.

“What ‘you’? Is your shirt worth more than mine?” Li Qiaoqiao winced with heartache; this was her only decent change of clothes.

She rubbed the long strip of cloth to shake off some dust, though it did little. She didn’t care. She took his half of the lock, snapped hers onto it, and—imitating the way Zhang Jinhua wrapped zongzi—she bound the two pieces together with the cloth strip, tying it into a tight knot.

“Done! Let’s see if it works now!” She placed the “cloth-wrapped lock” in the center of the bed. They leaned in, four eyes staring so hard they nearly popped out.

Fifteen minutes passed…

Not a damn thing.

“Argh—!” Li Qiaoqiao couldn’t take it. She let out a muffled scream of frustration, wanting to kick the lock across the room.

Is it really broken? Can we never go back? Am I stuck as a child-bride in this godforsaken ancient farm forever? Serving this husband who’s just wearing an ‘idiot’ skin?

She slid down against the mud wall, staring at the cobwebs on the rafters. Wu Ya’s face also darkened. He stared at the bundle, his gaze sharp enough to pierce stone.

“Bound… tied…” Wu Ya’s index finger unconsciously traced circles on the mat. His mind replayed the lightning-fast scene from the morning like a movie. Every detail was chewed over. Suddenly, a thought pricked his consciousness like a needle.

“This morning wasn’t like this!” He looked up, his voice filled with sudden clarity.

Li Qiaoqiao was drained. “Then how was it? Did the lock grow wings and fly you across time?”

“No!” Wu Ya ignored her sarcasm, his voice firm. “When it glowed this morning, it wasn’t tied together! It was separate! I held my half, you held yours, and we pressed them together—holding them in our own hands!”

Separate? Held in their hands?

Li Qiaoqiao’s sluggish brain clicked. It was like a rusty lock finally feeling a key. Before the golden light exploded, she had been clutching her half tightly. She could clearly remember Wu Ya’s fingers right next to hers, both of them gripping the edges of the joined seam.

She sat bolt upright. “You mean we both have to be holding it? Is touching it with our hands the key? And tying it together makes it useless?”

“Let’s find out!” A spark of light returned to Wu Ya’s eyes. He immediately began fumbling to untie the cloth strip. The fabric, damp with sweat and dust, was stubborn, making his fingers look clumsy in his haste.