"Seriously, Rita, you should have told me sooner! I had no idea Otto had this kind of hobby—freezing a young girl in a coffin for hundreds of years. Doesn't he know that's how you get freezer-burned zombie meat?"
Li Sushang was still frozen inside the "coffin." Word was that she was some little mistress Otto had picked up back in the day, though Noldrei wasn't sure if that was true.
"What if she wakes up and comes after me for revenge?"
Noldrei was genuinely concerned about this and looked to Rita, hoping she could give him an answer.
"I don't think she would," Rita replied. "I don't know her personally, but according to Fu Hua, Miss Li Sushang is a woman of honor and reason."
Rita didn't have a definitive answer. In fact, deep down, she hoped Li Sushang would remain frozen, if only to spare her from seeing what human civilization had become.
Rita felt that the shock of modern civilization would probably hit Li Sushang harder than the news of Overseer Otto's death.
The thought of a girl from a feudal society hundreds of years ago suddenly being thrust into Academy City, a paragon of advanced civilization, made Rita pity the girl named Li Sushang from the bottom of her heart.
"Besides, given Miss Li Sushang's abilities, she shouldn't be capable of causing you any harm, Mr. Director."
Rita's answer didn't please Noldrei. Instead, he said fretfully, "Am I supposed to teach her a lesson with my tentacles? If she decides she wants revenge, my only options will be to kill her or punish her with my tentacles."
'Can't you think of any other punishments? Even making her wash your smelly socks would work! No, wait... the Director's body doesn't even have the problem of making socks and shoes smelly.'
Rita then remembered that Noldrei's body was, in fact, thousands of times cleaner than her own.
She realized that every time she asked Noldrei to use his tentacles on her, it was probably her who was dirtying the Director's body.
Whether it was the metabolism of her sweat glands or any other physical contact.
Dr. Tesla could attest that Noldrei's body was impeccably clean; perhaps not even a speck of dust could cling to him.
'Wait... has the Director been enduring me this whole time?'
Rita suddenly felt like she wasn't a very good person.
'No, no, that's not it. We're talking about Miss Li Sushang right now.'
Rita quickly steered her thoughts back to the matter at hand. "As long as we explain what Overseer Otto did, I don't think she would have much reason to seek revenge on you. If she did, we would never have allowed her to be unsealed in the first place. If you ask me, we shouldn't unseal her at all."
"Mr. Director, think about it... Given this woman's relationship with Otto, how heartbroken would she be to learn of his death? She has the right to remain ignorant. Therefore, we shouldn't wake her up only to tell her that Otto is dead."
Rita thought her plan was perfectly reasonable and the best way to prevent any trouble from Li Sushang.
However, Noldrei had taken it upon himself to deal with the loose ends Otto left behind. He couldn't engage in such pointless self-deception.
"Rita, let's just wake her up."
Noldrei chose to awaken Li Sushang. He had other work to do with Vitas soon and couldn't get bogged down with this for too long.
She was just one of Overseer Otto's little mistresses, after all. If Noldrei hadn't decided to clean up Otto's messes, he wouldn't have even found out about her existence.
It was clear that when Otto charged toward the Imaginary Tree, this person named Li Sushang wasn't on his mind at all.
"It's too cruel to leave her frozen in there forever. We have a duty to inform her of her true place in Otto's heart!"
Noldrei said this with a perfectly straight face, uttering words so cruel that Rita could barely stand to listen.
Nevertheless, she dutifully carried out Noldrei's instructions. After performing a series of procedures, she woke Li Sushang from the cryogenic chamber.
Perhaps being frozen for so long had damaged her cerebral cortex. The moment Li Sushang opened her eyes, Rita thought she saw a dazed, almost idiotic look in them.
After a moment, Li Sushang's hazy, unfocused pupils gradually came into focus.
Things seemed different from what she had expected, or rather, she sensed that something had changed.
For Li Sushang, there was no sensation of time having passed at all.
It was as if one moment Otto had frozen her, and in the blink of an eye, she was being awakened by people she didn't recognize.
The white-haired young man said with a solemn expression, "You're awake? I have some very unfortunate news. Otto has crossed over to a parallel world to be with his true love."
"Huh?" 2
Not only did Li Sushang look bewildered, but even Rita was confused.
'Is that true? Did Overseer Otto cross into a parallel world and revive Saint Kallen?'
Rita was unaware of what Otto had done to the Imaginary Tree. She also didn't know that Noldrei had used Otto to conduct an experiment on it, thereby deducing its true nature.
The way the power of the Imaginary Tree was divided and used, with a clear hierarchy of permissions much like a human class-based society, was clear proof that some entity was manipulating Imaginary Energy from behind the scenes.
Only a living being would design such a flawed, permission-based system for using energy.
So after Noldrei returned, he had Tesla and Einstein secretly try to observe the essence of this world again to reverse-engineer proof for his personal theory.
In Otto's mind, the "realization of concepts" existed within the material world.
In Noldrei's mind, the "realization of concepts" involved special circumstances where a hidden force was acting behind the material world.
To accept Otto's hypothesis was to reject Noldrei's.
In practice, both of their conclusions pointed in only one direction: to continue to delve deeper into the nature of Imaginary Energy.
As a maid, Rita was not privy to the conversations between Noldrei and Otto.
And Otto would never tell anyone about his discussions with Noldrei.
As for Miss Li Sushang, she was even more in the dark. Perhaps Otto's conscience wasn't entirely dead, or perhaps he knew Li Sushang still possessed a chivalrous heart. In any case, he had not let this woman who held him in high regard get entangled in his affairs.
The world simply believed that Overseer Otto, the evil leader of Schicksal, had been brought to justice and publicly punished by Noldrei.
And Otto, understanding the depth of his own sins and that no one would ever forgive what he had done, had voluntarily chosen to cooperate with Noldrei, becoming a tool to test the Imaginary Tree.
This was something that His Majesty the Emperor could never reveal to the public. Noldrei had no desire for the people of this era to be burdened by the cruel, cumulative sins of a doctrine based on genetic destiny, as the people of his own era had been.
Thus, there was only one conclusion for the revived Li Sushang to draw.
Otto had gone to find his true love.
As for you, the twin-tailed loser heroine, you get to be revived, go to high school, and be the protagonist of some "Wuxia Master in High School" story!