RWWAI 39

Chapter 39: The System's User Experience Is Abysmal

"Any of you bastards dare lay a hand on my son, and I'll hack you all to pieces!"

Right as I bellowed those words, the brawny thug holding Qi Sile kicked Qin Miaomiao aside as she clung desperately to his ankle.

Yet even as she tumbled to the ground, Qin Miaomiao locked her arms around his lower leg with unyielding tenacity.

Seeing his next kick aimed squarely at Qin Miaomiao's head, I charged forward like a madwoman, brandishing my cleaver.

The next second, a crisp "Whoosh!" cut through the air.

The burly thug let out a blood-curdling screech and crashed hard to the ground.

Even tossed onto the dirt, Qi Sile didn't waste a second crying over pain, scrambling frantically straight into my open arms.

Before I could even process what had just happened, a rapid succession of heavy "Thud, thud, thud!" impacts hammered into the dirt right around the feet of the sour-faced old man and his mob of cronies, revealing a cluster of heavy arrows tipped with blazing red tail feathers.

This blatant, unmissable warning pinning the ground right at their toes scared the wits out of the Qi family rabble, freezing every single one of them in place without daring to twitch a muscle.

The old man was so terrified he plopped straight down onto his backside in the dirt.

A moment later, the rhythmic pounding of heavy hooves rumbled into our ears.

Dozens of cavalry troopers wearing crimson plumes fastened to their helmets materialized before our eyes.

The leading officer leaped down from his saddle the instant he spotted me.

Striding respectfully over to where I stood, he cupped his fists in a formal military salute and announced:

"Crimson Feather Cavalry commander Wang Ye, acting on orders from the Middle General, has come to ensure the complete safety of Madame Qi."

The Crimson Feather Cavalry? Weren't those imperial guards?

I blinked in astonishment, feeling a sudden surge of awkward embarrassment.

When that sour-faced geezer came to pick a fight yesterday, just to be safe, I had dispatched a messenger to send word to Princess Yong'an.

At the time, I merely hoped that if matters truly escalated to the yamen, she could apply a bit of top-down administrative pressure; I certainly hadn't intended for her to dispatch her husband's personal strike force.

Mobilizing the elite Crimson Feather Cavalry just to settle a family inheritance dispute—wasn't that a wee bit over the top?

Catching the perplexity swirling in my eyes, Wang Ye lowered his voice and offered a deadpan explanation:

"Madame, our Princess has always been fiercely protective of her inner circle."

Ah, fair enough!

With a subtle flick of Wang Ye's hand, the Crimson Feather troopers mounted behind him raised their bows with a synchronized "Swish!", locking every single arrowhead directly onto the old man and his trembling mob.

With booming authority, Wang Ye barked:

"Audacious commoners! This is the imperial capital's doorstep—how dare you brazenly stir up lawless riots here?"

A bunch of overgrown country bumpkins flush with a bit of local cash, the Qi family thugs had never laid eyes on such terrifying military might in their lives, coming within a hair's breadth of wetting their trousers on the spot.

Well, since the Crimson Feather Cavalry had already made a house call...

I stepped forward to hoist Qin Miaomiao to her feet, gently brushing the dust from her skirts before placing Qi Sile's little hand right into hers.

Turning my attention to the trembling old geezer still planted flat on his rear in the dirt, I inquired sweetly:

"I hear Uncle is merely a collateral branch of the Qi family. In that case, wouldn't the ancestral property left behind by the main Qi lineage be far safer managed under the direct branch's custody?"

Yes, I was shaking them down right in broad daylight.

Sue me—I had an army backing me up now!

With that, I casually tossed my heavy kitchen cleaver onto the ground to look marginally more civilised.

Noticing the old man staring blankly with glassy eyes and zero response, I leaned down with bright, friendly hospitality to prompt him:

"Is Uncle playing deaf today, or what?"

That finally jolted a frantic, bobbing nod out of him.

Forget ancestral properties; if I demanded one of his kidneys right this second, he'd probably slice it out himself and hand it over.

Skipping lightly over to Wang Ye's side, I flashed a polished, impeccably polite smile:

"Please convey my deepest gratitude to the Princess. Lady Liang will forever engrave this massive kindness into her heart."

Wang Ye nodded, replying:

"Her Highness also instructed this subordinate to pass along a message to Madame."

"Oh?" I tilted my head.

"Should you host another medical consultation salon in the future, make sure you don't leave out the capital crowd."

Ah, so Doctor Zhou's underground medical salon had managed to leak all the way up to the capital, huh?

"You got it!" I beamed. "Next time for sure!"

Just how exhilarating freedom and absolute victory felt right at that moment probably didn't require further elaboration.

Just as I reached my hand out toward Qin Miaomiao so we could stroll back inside together...

In a blink of an eye, I jolted awake in my own bed.

Not a classical rosewood bed carved in ancient dynastic style.

My own bed.

The one tucked away inside my matchbox-sized apartment, littered with a scattering of stray snack crumbs.

Wait... wasn't this transition a bit too abrupt?

That counted as clearing the mission?

Just because the Crimson Feather Cavalry showed up to flex and max out my smug satisfaction levels, the game called it a wrap?

What kind of rigged nonsense is this!

Yet, giving it a second thought, there weren't many new achievements left to unlock anyway.

My real estate was locked down, rental dividends were flooding in on auto-pilot, my kid was secured, and now I had officially seized the entire Qi family ancestral estate into the bargain.

Unless Liang Jingjing harbored secret ambitions to launch a rebellion and ascend the Dragon Throne, there genuinely wasn't anything left on the to-do list.

All snark aside, this system's user interface and experience were downright abysmal!

Clearing the game successfully didn't even reward a proper end-credits screen, let alone a generic congratulatory pop-up banner?

How else was I supposed to verify whether I had actually finished checking off Luo Fan's mission list?

Still, judging by current parameters, I was back home.

Zhang Yue had truly returned to the modern world.

Having spent an eternity lingering in antiquity, I initially couldn't even gauge how much actual time had ticked past in reality.

The moment my fingers wrapped around the smartphone I'd nearly forgotten how to operate, I discovered that only a single night had passed.

I had compressed nearly eight full years of Liang Jingjing's life into the duration of a single modern dream.

The next morning, I punched into work just like any other day, slotting right back into the monotonous grind of Zhang Yue's ordinary routine.

Yeah.

Even if I could run town politics, outmaneuver noble clans, and seize property empires in ancient times, back in the real world I remained nothing more than a front-desk dental receptionist grinding away from nine to nine.

I should've stayed put; at least out there I could occasionally drop in on Doctor Zhou for some eye candy.

Back in reality, my dental clinic boss possessed a gleaming bald pate ringed with a pathetic tuft of fringe—he couldn't hold a candle to Doctor Zhou, not even in a parallel universe.

I didn't rush out to hunt down Luo Fan, keeping his parting words firmly in mind: he said he would come find me.

So during the very first weekend following my return, I made a rare trip back to my hometown.

The ancestral home that had stood empty except for my mother ever since grandmother passed away.

Ever since I moved away to work in a different city, I rarely bothered making the trip back home even once a year, despite the train ride taking barely two hours.

Pushing open that familiar yet strangely alien front door, I called out:

"Mom! I'm home!"

A faint clatter drifted out from the kitchen.

A moment later, my mother poked her head out, wearing a surprised smile:

"Yueyue, what made you decide to come home out of the blue?"

"Just... felt like seeing you." I replied casually.

Wiping her hands against her apron, she stepped out of the kitchen.

My mother's hair had turned completely silver long ago, and with zero time or money spent on personal maintenance, she looked at least a decade older than her actual peers.

Having not seen her in so long, she somehow appeared even more exhausted than she had back when grandmother was still alive.

In the past, catching her looking like this would have drawn a harsh internal complaint about why she never took proper care of herself.

But for some inexplicable reason, all I wanted to do right at that moment was walk over and give her a long, tight hug.

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