Chapter 1088 Theory of the Remnants
Indeed, Jin Liwei didn't bother haggling prices with Amanpio Kileksky. The inventor blurted an exorbitant amount as his fee but Jin Liwei didn't even blink before agreeing right away.
"I'm paying you this much so make sure that the product is of the highest quality," he said to the inventor.
"Of course! What I'm planning to make Xiulan is a one-of-a-kind product that exceeds the effectiveness of anything available on the market right now."
After the satisfying deal with Amanpio Kileksky over the phone, Jin Liwei's mood felt much better. He resumed reading the pregnancy books while Ketchup went to gossip with her Uncle Dom. There was finally some peace and quiet. He loved his AI daughter but the kid could be too chatty most of the time.
While reading the books, his pregnant wife was always at the forefront of his mind. He learned a lot about pregnancy and became even more amazed at women's ability to grow new human beings inside them and give birth. As a husband and would-be father to their first human babies, he needed to step it up so his wife would never feel alone in her pregnancy journey to the birth stage and of course when raising their children.
There was something that had been bothering him ever since his wife started showing pregnancy symptoms. Although he and the others including the doctor attributed it to the common extreme mood swings of pregnant women, Jin Liwei sometimes felt that his wife would turn into a completely different person that he didn't recognize.
He took a break from reading and leaned back on the couch while staring at the slightly ajar door of their bedroom.
Based on what he remembered about his wife's personality when he first met her in person and started pursuing her shortly afterwards, she was mostly a calm and unflappable person. Her innocence was also very endearing. It still was even today. She was completely different from the Long Xiulan that he heard from the tabloids and the reports from his private investigators.
Now he knew that she was no longer Long Xiulan, a.k.a. Iris Long, but a reborn soul occupying the original's body instead. She was Evelina. His beautiful wife, Evelina.
During the course of their relationship, he noticed how she had become much more expressive in her emotions. There was a brief period where her emotions became extreme like they were now. It was after they made up and returned home from Europe.
"It was the remnant," he murmured.
The little clues that he hadn't paid much attention back then now seemed significant in understanding what was happening to his wife. All the pieces were gradually falling into place and he could finally understand more of the bigger picture. Not everything but definitely more than he understood in the past.
From what he knew of his wife's innate character and from his brother-in-law's infrequent stories about the siblings' past lives, Evelina was indeed a very calm person. She was a Vetrov after all. Although she refused to become directly involved in the family organization, she was still forced to undergo the basic training that all the Vetrovs and their subordinates had to go through.
"Even if a war were to break out in front of her, I always believed that Evelinka would be able to maintain most of her composure without breaking down," Jin Liwei remembered his brother-in-law telling him one time.
Unlike Nikolai and the rest of the Vetrovs, however, Evelina's composure wasn't the cold and dispassionate type. It was just her nature to remain calm and collected.
"She's not like that anymore, though." Jin Liwei returned to the bedroom and climbed on the bed to lie beside his sleeping wife.
He caressed her face. "Is it because you're pregnant? Or is it becauseā¦of Long Xiulan's remnant?"
He had a theory.
Perhaps the original Long Xiulan's personality was gradually merging with his wife Evelina's personality through the remnant. Or maybe it had already merged. He didn't have any way of proving this theory because even his wife didn't know that much about the remnant.
The possible merging of personalities was even more plausible now that his wife was pregnant as evident by her extreme mood swings. Maybe it was because of the massive hormonal changes happening inside her body. Or perhaps it was something more abstract than this, like a gap between the body and the soul.
It was Evelina's decision to marry him so she was the mother of their children. However, now that she became pregnant with their firstborns, her body which was originally Long Xiulan's had to bear the babies.
Jin Liwei could only use his imagination grounded by his logical thinking to analyze the possible reasons why his wife was suffering so much during her pregnancy, not to mention acting out of her usual character more and more often. The most worrying for him, however, was the deterioration of her health.
"Does the remnant have anything to do with all this or am I thinking too much?"
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. It was so difficult making sense of something so fantastical and out of the ordinary. If this kind of thing didn't happen to his own wife, he would never have believed it. Ever.
Thinking more about it, his wife wasn't the only one who might have a gradual change in original past life's personality due to a remnant's possible influence. His brother-in-law, Nikolai, might also be in the same situation.
Based on his wife's stories, the Vetrov report, and popular hearsays about Nikolai Vetrov, he was never a tolerant man except when it was for his sister. Yet the Nikolai who was now living as Lu Zihao was displaying quite an impressive amount of tolerance.
Well, it could be explained as Nikolai just trying to put up an act to maintain his new identity as Lu Zihao. Jin Liwei had some doubts, though. Nikolai's changes to Lu Zihao's original lifestyle ever since returning to China from Canada were even more drastic than what Evelina did to Long Xiulan's original way of doing things after waking up from her first coma.
"Nikolai as Fifth Brother Zihao is vicious but not as vicious as the original Nikolai who was considered a true living devil back then."