The Eleventh Year of Making Hate with My Lover - Chapter 20

[System Detection: The simulated environment of the Cocoon Domain matches the Sky Calendar Year 3085.]

[Your identity is…]

The broken System seemed to crash again, stalling halfway through its processing and failing to output the result.

Shen Wang stood beneath a Western-style townhouse, watching the surrounding scenery instantly morph from a desolate pile of rubble into a vibrant, bustling city. He thought to himself that it was no wonder the Base’s scanners had registered this Cocoon Domain as having low lethality.

So it was just a massive roleplaying game? Who could have guessed that a supernatural anomaly capable of engineering an S-rank Cocoon Domain was merely using it to replay history rather than actively slaughtering intruders?

However, the thought was dismissed the very next instant. A blunt knife often grinds harder; some individuals might become so profoundly immersed in such an illusion that they could never break free.

If he wanted to locate the core body of the anomaly, his only viable option was to follow the narrative flow of the illusion for now.

Beside him, He Shu opened her mouth as if to say something, but it looked as though an invisible hand had clamped tightly around her throat. She desperately wanted to say that this Cocoon Domain was highly unusual, but her mouth automatically blurted out: “Eldest Miss…”

The moment the words slipped out, not only did she freeze, but the handsome young man in front of her also froze. Shen Wang knit his brows: “What did you just say?”

He had no idea what role He Shu had been randomly assigned; judging by her current appearance and outfit, nothing had changed. Yi Yi was still perched securely on his shoulder, but as Shen Wang surveyed the perimeter, Lang Xi who should have been right beside him was nowhere to be found.

“……” Truly an absolute magnet for bad luck.

Who knows where the kid had been randomly placed? Had he been spawned somewhere else entirely as a generic NPC?

The front door of the Western-style townhouse swung open, and a woman dressed as a housemaid stepped out. She bowed deeply and respectfully toward Shen Wang: “Eldest Miss, you’ve returned.”

Who?

Shen Wang’s eyebrow twitched. He looked left and right, confirming that the maid was indeed staring straight at him. Incredulous, he lowered his head to check his body, confirming that his physical form had not altered.

The bizarre part was that despite his internal confusion, his mouth automatically answered on its own: “Yes. When Celine returns, tell her to come to my room.”

Who is Celine, and who exactly am I?

Shen Wang maintained a flat, expressionless face, but a massive storm was raging in his mind. This Cocoon Domain possessed an incredibly powerful forced-control capability.

He had already been forced into a specific identity native to this world. Even though his voice and physical features remained unchanged, in the eyes of everyone here, he was exactly the “Eldest Miss” recognized by the servant.

……

Next, his body began to move entirely against his will, walking into the residence with He Shu and the maid following closely behind.

As if he had executed these routine countless times before, Shen Wang traversed the long corridor with practiced ease, heading straight toward his bedroom. The walls of the corridor were lined with various paintings. Judging by the style, they were all the work of a single artist, though some brushstrokes appeared slightly immature likely painted by the homeowner during her youth.

Upon reaching the doorway, Shen Wang began to methodically audit the room. The interior design adhered to a soft blue palette and featured nothing particularly remarkable. However, a picture frame stood before the vanity mirror. The photograph depicted a pair of young girls with similar statures, but their faces were completely blurred out. These were likely the two young misses the maid had referenced.

“Eldest Miss, the custom attire requested by the Second Miss has been delivered. She asks that you put it on so you can head down to the city gates together.”

The maid pushed in a garment rack displaying a long black dress. It featured a minimalist design entirely devoid of overly complex tailoring, yet it exuded a high-quality texture.

The neckline of the gown was trimmed with a delicate, fine white wavy border, while the chest area featured layers of off-white silk satin patterns. The body of the dress utilized a heavy, matte fabric with excellent drape. As the rack rotated, the fabric rippled beautifully with the movement.

After the maid left the room, He Shu hesitated before speaking up from the side: “I can’t shake the feeling that this garment looks incredibly familiar… Captain, how about we just blast this entire Cocoon—” The remaining words were forcefully choked back. It appeared they could converse normally, provided they refrained from uttering terms directly related to anomalies, Cocoon Domains, or the supernatural context.

Shen Wang stared at the dress, sinking into a prolonged silence.

The System had warned him not to break character, but surely skipping the dress wouldn’t constitute an OOC violation? As long as his behavior and speech matched the persona, it should be fine…

Suddenly, a rapid “thump-thump-thump” echoed from downstairs. Cheerful footsteps patted against the staircase, arriving at the doorway a few moments later. A girl with long brown hair stepped into the room, clad in a simple white dress, cradling a bouquet of pale green lilies in her arms. Her clean, fair face projected an air of innocent, naive innocence.

This had to be the Second Miss, Celine.

Atop his shoulder, Yi Yi’s back suddenly arched violently as a low hiss escaped the cat’s throat. Shen Wang extended a hand to gently soothe the creature, but Celine appeared entirely blind to its presence.

“Sister, why haven’t you changed your clothes yet?” Celine placed the fresh lilies into the vase on the vanity table, grumbling half-coquettishly, “Brother-in-law and the others are returning today. Didn’t you say yourself that you were going to wear this specific dress to the city gates to welcome them?”

Shen Wang narrowed his eyes. This identity came with a husband too? …

Shen Wang engaged in casual, detached banter with Celine, managing to harvest a baseline understanding of the situation. Celine’s brother-in-law meaning his identity’s “husband” operated as a researcher at the Polar Research Institute and essentially only returned home once a year. The couple spent massive epochs separated from each other, yet their emotional bond was allegedly profoundly strong.

“You… what was your name again? Hurry up and assist the Eldest Miss with her attire!” Celine barked orders at He Shu. It was bizarre what was this maid’s name again? For some reason, her mind simply couldn’t recall it today.

“Sister, I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.” Celine let out a light yawn and sauntered out of the room.

“…” He Shu cast a glance at her captain, then turned her eyes toward the simple, elegant gown hanging on the rack, a faint flush creeping onto her cheeks: “Um, well… Captain, how about I go keep watch by the front door?”

Shen Wang paid absolutely zero attention to He Shu’s expression. His body was already moving automatically against his will, rising from the chair to reach for the dress on the rack. His conscious mind attempted to resist the forced directive; the two conflicting forces clashed so violently that his vision nearly went black, and traces of dark mist began to bleed into the surrounding environment.

An intense irritation flared within Shen Wang. So even refusing to wear the dress was penalized as breaking character.

He Shu stepped toward the threshold, considerately pulling the door shut behind her. Before the door clicked closed, she hesitated and noted, “Captain, I just remembered…” From the moment the maid delivered the garment, she had felt a lingering sense of familiarity, which only intensified upon seeing Celine’s face.

“Our current coordinates should correspond to the Sky Calendar Era… meaning the epoch prior to the War of Gods and Humans, when humanity had yet to undergo genetic evolution.”

During this era, everyone lived equally as ordinary human beings devoid of supernatural abilities, Evokers, or anomalies.

“This specific identity you are currently occupying… she might very well be one of the revolutionary pioneers of the very first generation of Evokers Lady Semei.”

“In the history archives, she was famously depicted wearing this exact dress…”

“…Got it.” They had truly saddled him with the identity of a monumental historical figure.

The door was gently pulled shut. Shen Wang leaned against the back of the chair, pinching the bridge of his nose in sheer exasperation. A moment later, he stood up in utter self-abandonment.

Fine. We play out the narrative, then.

…

The door swung open from the inside shortly after. A tall, well-built man emerged with low-set eyes, pulling with blatant disgust at the black dress swathing his frame.

His frost-white knuckles formed a stark, violent contrast against the ink-black fabric of the skirt.

His entire frame was tightly bundled up, leaving only a small patch of skin visible at his neck and collarbone. The soft fabric pooled gracefully on the floor, and the high-waisted tailoring sat perfectly at his sharpest waistline, bypassing any unnecessary pleating. Layers of silk satin lilies clustered over his chest, further accentuating the clean, razor-sharp lines of his jaw.

Bizarrely enough, the look wasn’t jarring in the slightest… he looked somewhat like a disgruntled, cross-dressing combat maid straight out of a comic book, radiating a strange, intensely ascetic aura.

“It… it actually looks really good…” He Shu delivered a genuine compliment, thoroughly amazed to discover that her captain possessed such an elite potential for cross-dressing.

“You are fully aware that receiving a compliment for this will not elicit a single shred of joy from my systems,” Shen Wang replied with a sour face. He hoisted the voluminous hem of the skirt with one hand as he made his way downstairs, ensuring he wouldn’t trip over the fabric and suffer a humiliating tumble down the steps.

When Celine caught sight of her “sister” walking down in the fresh attire, she couldn’t stop showering him with praise. Perhaps in her eyes, Shen Wang simply mirrored her sister’s exact physical form.

The butler opened the door to the vehicle, but Celine waved him off: “There’s still plenty of time. Let’s just walk over.”

Celine looped her arm through her “sister’s” forearm: “Sister, you’re always so swamped at the hospital. It’s a rare treat for us to go out for a stroll together.”

Shen Wang subtly withdrew his arm from her grip, gathering the pooling fabric of his skirt as He Shu maintained a measured distance behind them.

Within this Cocoon Domain, the structural restoration of the entire city was remarkably flawless—at least from an exterior vantage point. The jewelry boutiques, eateries, central administrative blocks… they bore zero difference from the architecture of the real world. Yet, if one were to breach the interior, certain obscure corners might simply dissolve into absolute pixelated mosaics.

He noticed that among the pedestrians traversing the streets, some possessed crisp, highly defined countenances, while others were blurred into an illegible mass of static.

After all, executing a flawless, absolute duplication of a massive ancient capital was a structural impossibility; the baseline energy consumption required would be catastrophic. It was entirely possible that before he could even progress through a significant portion of the narrative, this Cocoon Domain would experience a catastrophic structural collapse under its own weight.

Celine ground to a halt before the display glass of a bridal boutique, staring spellbound at a fishtail wedding gown adorned with cascading layers of red crystal carvings and intricate pearl chains.

Celine murmured under her breath: “How gorgeous… I want to wear this exact gown when I get married.”

She pushed open the boutique door, waving back toward Shen Wang: “Sister, hurry inside and take a look.”

“You head in first, I’ll join you in a moment,” Shen Wang offered dismissively. He felt as though the hem of his dress weighed a thousand pounds, harboring an intense urge to slice the lower half of the garment off on the spot.

As he turned his torso, a small white bundle slammed headfirst into his lap. Shen Wang staggered slightly from the impact. Stabilizing his stance, he lowered his gaze to study the tiny figure buried within the folds of his skirt.

It was a small child, roughly five or six years of age. His facial features were exceptionally sharp and defined—defined to a degree that clearly separated him from the generic NPCs populating this illusion.

Huh? White hair.

The tiny bundle hoisted his head to look up at him. He possessed a soft, porcelain-white little face, with long, snow-white hair cascading all the way down to his tiny waist, the tips curling slightly. Resting atop his head were a pair of translucent, pointed ears, while a pair of flat, translucent tentacles extended subtly from his waist behind his back.

The little bundle appeared slightly dazed from the collision, blinking a pair of large, brilliant blue-pink eyes as he stared straight at him.

This… was practically a miniature, toddler-sized replica of Wu Que.

Shen Wang’s eyes widened in absolute shock.

…Could this genuinely be Wu Que? Had he been shrunk down by some anomalous variable, subsequently losing his orientation within the depths of this illusion?

During the microsecond Shen Wang spent locked in his daze, an individual suddenly lunged out from a vehicle idling along the curb. A heavy cloak was instantly thrown over the little bundle, scooping him into the cabin with a velocity that mirrored a brazen, daylight kidnapping.

Anxiety surged through Shen Wang as he lunged forward to seize the perpetrator. However, the assailant operated with terrifying speed, practically gliding through the air as he swept the little bundle into the vehicle.

The engine roared to life.

Shen Wang thrust his hand forward, attempting to deploy his puppet threads, but his systems yielded absolute, dead silence.

Right. Our current timeline corresponds to the epoch preceding human evolution; he possessed zero supernatural capabilities here.

Dammit…

He could only stand by and watch the vehicle tear away down the street. Little Wu Que pressed his frame against the rear windshield, pulling down the hood of his cloak to lock a distant, unreadable gaze onto him from afar.

“Sister, what are you staring at?” Celine emerged from the boutique. Seeing her “sister” frozen on the pavement, she followed his gaze toward the far end of the street.

Celine: “What is this item?”

Shen Wang tracked the direction of her gaze. The maiden in the white dress was currently reaching down to retrieve a flickering lantern from the asphalt.