Wei Chen followed an old red pickup truck through the busy streets of New York.
The pickup truck was an old friend of his father’s. He remembered riding in it during his childhood.
The old pickup truck carried both his father and mother as they headed toward the city center.
Wei Chen and his parents endured the traffic jam together, though he watched from a nearby rooftop while reminiscing about his old life.
The truck passed through several city blocks before heading straight toward a hospital.
Then, the pickup truck turned and entered the hospital parking lot.
Huh? Is someone sick?
Wei Chen wondered as he leaped from rooftop to rooftop, using his concealing technique to follow the truck.
With his body concealed and his presence erased from the memories of the people around him, Wei Chen quickly descended into a dark alley nearby. He then blended into the crowd and followed his parents into the hospital.
He used his spiritual sense to locate his parents as he entered through the hospital’s front doors, walking in as if he belonged there.
One thing Wei Chen noticed was that, in this world, his spiritual sense was greatly weakened. Clearly, it had been weakened by the laws of this world, which placed greater importance on physical laws and science.
His spiritual sense now had a much smaller radius, much, much smaller than what he was used to in the world of cultivators.
Instead of having a spiritual sense that could cover 30 to 100 kilometers, it could now only reach about 3 to 5 kilometers at most when he was in this world.
Furthermore, the information returned by his spiritual sense was coarse and nowhere near as precise as it used to be.
Instead of actually seeing someone as clearly as if he were looking at an HD monitor, he could only perceive a rough silhouette and outline. He also needed to mark the person he wanted to track with his spiritual sense. Otherwise, in an environment with many people, it would be very easy to lose track of his target.
As he walked in, the receptionist completely ignored him.
Wei Chen waited in front of the row of elevators while using his spiritual sense to determine which floor his parents had stopped on.
He followed his father’s spiritual presence and discovered that he had stopped on the twelfth floor. Wei Chen followed along, entering the elevator with several other people while continuing to track his parents with his spiritual sense.
Through his spiritual sense, he noticed that his parents seemed happy.
Very happy, considering they were an elderly couple who had just lost their only son.
Wei Chen felt a little complicated.
It was a good thing that his parents had moved on from his death and were no longer consumed by sadness. But seeing them so happy, without even a trace of grief, also gave him a painful little sting.
Was he really that bad?
He mean... come on... he was their only son.
Sure, he had been a jerk. He had caused plenty of trouble with all of his nuisance-streamer shenanigans, but...
Come on...
Just a little bit?
Wei Chen felt like he wanted to cry, but he had no tears.
The elevator eventually arrived at the twelfth floor, the same floor where his parents had stopped. He stepped out and followed them into the patient ward.
The corridor was lined with VIP rooms.
It seemed that whoever his parents had come to visit must have had deep pockets. Otherwise, in this country, they probably would not have been able to afford a VIP room.
Through his spiritual sense, Wei Chen saw his parents enter a VIP room. He followed them, but only until they entered the room. Once they were inside, he pretended to walk past the room instead.
He couldn’t perceive what was actually inside. His spiritual sense could only return rough outlines.
He noticed that there were three and a half people inside.
Yes, half.
The reason was that the last one was a baby.
His spiritual sense returned the outline of a baby girl. Since there was nothing between the baby’s legs in the silhouette, he figured that this one should be a girl.
There was also the mysterious silhouette of a woman who looked very familiar to him.
But that shouldn’t be possible.
After gathering enough information, Wei Chen walked back to the lobby area on the twelfth floor and waited.
He decided to wait for his parents to finish visiting the mysterious woman first. Then, he could sneak into the room and see who she actually was.
Wei Chen waited in the lobby, pretending to read a newspaper he had picked up from a nearby newsstand. He casually flipped through the pages while keeping part of his attention focused on the VIP room with his spiritual sense. As he skimmed through the news, one headline caught his attention.
’President Jonah Crump Makes Surprise Visit to China.’
Huh?
Wei Chen raised an eyebrow and briefly read the article. Apparently, the American president had made a visit to China for some kind of diplomatic meeting. It was probably something important, but Wei Chen did not pay much attention to it.
Then he waited...
And waited...
His long wait eventually caused the nurses working near the lobby to start paying attention to him, despite the fact that his concealing technique prevented them from recognizing his presence.
However, even a concealing technique had its limits. Someone standing in the same spot for two hours was bound to attract some attention.
Then...
Two hours finally passed.
At last, the door to the VIP room opened.
Wei Chen immediately lowered the newspaper slightly and glanced over.
His parents finally walked out of the room.
Wei Chen waited until his parents took the elevator downstairs before slowly getting up from his seat and walking toward the mysterious VIP room.
He stopped in front of the room to read the name of the patient inside, but it seemed that the hospital staff still hadn’t updated the name tag in front of the door. It still displayed the name of the previous patient.
It was clear that the patient inside was a woman, while the name on the door belonged to a man.
Wei Chen couldn’t contain his curiosity. He activated his concealing technique and quietly slipped into the room.
The VIP room was clean, quiet, and surprisingly cozy.
It was much more comfortable than an ordinary hospital room, with a large window, a comfortable sofa, a small table, and modern medical equipment neatly arranged around the bed.
It almost felt more like a private bedroom than a hospital room.
Wei Chen quietly looked around before his attention fell on the woman lying on the bed.
"Hello? Anyone there?" the woman asked toward the door.
Wei Chen had used his concealing technique to its fullest, making it impossible for the woman to perceive his presence.
From her perspective, the door had simply opened on its own.
She craned her neck to look toward the door, wondering if someone was playing a prank on her, but there was no one there...
Then she started thinking about all those creepy pasta stories set in hospitals, and suddenly felt a chill run down her spine.
Beside her, a baby girl was sleeping peacefully in a small crib.
As for Wei Chen, he had stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyes widened as he stared at the woman in front of him.
She was someone he could never forget, even after reincarnating into a new life.
"Cindy..." Wei Chen blurted out the woman’s name.
The woman was Cindy Liu, his ex-girlfriend.
Her clear, bright eyes, face, and features were still deeply imprinted in his memory. Even though her beauty could not compare to Dream Butterfly or Mo Xingyao, her face was something Wei Chen could never forget.
Why were his parents visiting her?
And what about the baby girl?
Shouldn’t Cindy have moved on?
Wei Chen’s eyes scrutinized the baby girl.
She had the features of a mixed-race baby, with a blend of Asian and Caucasian features.
Cindy Liu looked left and right. She could have sworn she heard someone call her name, but she couldn’t see anyone.
"God~ Don’t tell me there’s some creepy thing living in this room with me and my girl~" Cindy blurted out as she looked around warily.
While Cindy was getting creeped out, Wei Chen felt as if he had been dropped into the North Pole. A cold chill ran through him, his breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t form a coherent thought.
The only thing that came to mind was the fact that he and Cindy had slept together. They had been a couple, after all. And many times, they hadn’t used protection because Wei Chen had never planned to marry anyone other than her.
Don’t tell me... this little baby girl... this little baby girl... is my....
Images of all the deadbeat dads from anime flashed through his mind, whether it was the pirate dad or the sorcerer dad who went out to buy milk and then went MIA.
’No! I’m not that kind of dad!’
That was the only thought in Wei Chen’s mind right now.