Dragon Clan: My Dad is Ange

"Where are you going back to? Did you sleep yourself into oblivion?" Fatty Wang winked. "Did you stay up late reading novels again last night?"

On the way home from school, Ye Fan slowly accepted this reality. He felt like he had a very long dream, and there were important things he had to do in the dream.

He pinched his face and grimaced in pain.

"Why does life sleep..."

This question is deeply engraved in my mind.

"Light rain!"

Fatty Wang suddenly waved forward.

A girl with a ponytail turned her head, and the sunlight filtered through the leaves of the sycamore tree, casting mottled shadows on her face.

"Ye Fan was caught daydreaming in class today by the teacher. It made me laugh to death!" Fatty Wang complained loudly.

Lin Xiaoyu trotted over, her hair scented with jasmine. She glared at Ye Fan in mock anger: "We agreed to take the college entrance exam together, and you're being lazy again!"

Ye Fan's heart skipped a beat.

Lin Xiaoyu - his first love, the girl who died young in a car accident in real life, is now standing in front of him alive.

"I..." Ye Fan's throat was dry, "I had a very long dream..."

"Dreams are always the opposite of reality!" Lin Xiaoyu pulled a carton of milk from her schoolbag and stuffed it into his pocket. "Get some protein. I have homework to do tonight."

The three of them walked along the tree-lined path on their way home from school. The setting sun stretched their shadows very long. Ye Fan suddenly asked, "Why do you think life falls asleep?"

"Huh?" Fatty Wang picked his nose. "If you're tired, just go to sleep. What's the reason?"

Lin Xiaoyu was lost in thought. "I think... just like a computer needs to hibernate to organize its memory, sleep allows the soul to sort through the day's memories."

This summer is exceptionally long.

Ye Fan gradually absorbed himself into this "reality"—getting up at six every day to memorize vocabulary, peeking at the laundry drying in the girls' dormitory with Fatty Wang at noon, and pretending to touch Lin Xiaoyu's hand when he walked her home after evening study...

On the day of the college entrance examination, Ye Fan looked at the essay topic "The Meaning of Life" on the test paper and couldn't help but write: "Sleeping is not the end, but a way to accumulate strength to move forward..."

The day the admission letters arrived, the three of them cried together in the small restaurant. Fatty Wang was admitted to a local second-tier university, while Lin Xiaoyu and Ye Fan both received first-tier university admission letters.

"Cheers to our future!" Fatty Wang raised the can of Coke.

At the moment of clinking glasses, Ye Fan thought of the question again. He looked into Lin Xiaoyu's bright eyes and suddenly felt that the answer might be hidden in these ordinary happiness.

The four years of college were like a dream.

Ye Fan read poems to Lin Xiaoyu by the Weiming Lake, kissed her in the corner of the library, and made a lifelong promise to her under the cherry blossom rain.

The year he graduated, he proposed to Lin Xiaoyu on the single bed in his rental house, using a can pull ring as a ring.

"I do." Lin Xiaoyu's makeup was smudged with tears. "But you have to promise me one thing."

"what?"

"Don't ask weird questions anymore, like why do living things sleep?" She burst into laughter. "The purpose of life is to love each other, and you don't even understand that!"

Ye Fan also laughed, and he laughed very happily.

"I understand now."

Life after work is plain but fulfilling.

Ye Fan became a Chinese teacher at a key high school, and Lin Xiaoyu worked as an editor at a publishing house. They took out a loan and bought a small two-bedroom apartment, with a balcony filled with succulents.

Whenever it was late at night and everyone was asleep, Ye Fan would always stare at the desk lamp while correcting homework - the question of sleeping seemed to be getting farther and farther away from him.

On his 30th birthday, his daughter Ye Xiao was born. When the nurse placed the wrinkled little baby in Ye Fan's arms, he suddenly burst into tears.

"Why are you crying?" asked the weak Lin Xiaoyu with a smile.

"I just feel...life is so amazing."

Ye Fan kissed his daughter's forehead.

Time flies by like a white horse.

Ye Fan watched his daughter grow from a toddler to a rebellious teenager, from the college entrance examination hall to the university dormitory.

He sent off the retired old principal and became "Director Ye" himself. The students called him "Devil Ye" behind his back, but on Teacher's Day, they sent him greeting cards that filled his desk.

When he attended a class reunion when he was 40 years old, the fat Wang had already opened three chain hotpot restaurants.

"Do you remember that philosophical question you asked back then?" After three rounds of drinks, Fatty Wang put his arm around Ye Fan's shoulders and said, "I have the answer now—people sleep to dream of getting rich! Hahaha..."

Lin Xiaoyu kicked Ye Fan under the table: "Ignore this upstart."

On the way home in the taxi, Lin Xiaoyu leaned on Ye Fan's shoulder and fell asleep. The neon lights outside the car window were reflected on her face, and Ye Fan suddenly noticed that his wife had fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

"What are you looking at?" Lin Xiaoyu asked with her eyes closed.

"Look at you."

"You're such a pervert..." She smiled and pinched his arm, but the force was much lighter than it was twenty years ago.

The year his daughter graduated from college, she brought home a gentle boy wearing glasses. When Ye Fan was smoking on the balcony, the boy followed him out nervously.

"Uncle... I promise to treat Xiaoxiao well..."

Ye Fan blew out a smoke ring: "Don't ask my daughter strange questions in the future."

"Ah?" The boy looked confused.

"Dad! You're asking weird questions again!" Ye Xiao rushed over and dragged her boyfriend away. "He can even fall asleep while watching Interstellar. What philosophy does he understand?"

Ye Fan watched the two young men playing and fighting with a smile, the cigarette butts flickering in the twilight.

Perhaps the answer is not important. What is important is the evening breeze blowing across the balcony, the aroma of my wife cooking in the kitchen, and my daughter's expression when she is furious, which is exactly the same as when she was a child.

Life after retirement goes by quickly.

Ye Fan goes to the park to practice Tai Chi every morning, helps his grandson with homework in the afternoon, and watches melodramatic TV series with Lin Xiaoyu in the evening.

One ordinary night, when he was helping his presbyopic wife thread a needle, he suddenly found that his hands were shaking slightly.

"We're old." Lin Xiaoyu smiled, squinting her eyes. "But it's nice to be able to grow old together."

On his 80th birthday, the whole family held a grand birthday banquet at the hotel.

Ye Fan looked at his grandchildren and suddenly thought of a white villa with many people laughing in it.

"Why does life sleep..."

This question that had been buried for sixty years suddenly surfaced in my mind.

After the banquet, Ye Fan sat alone in a rocking chair on the balcony. Lin Xiaoyu, who had become an old lady, brought a cake and said, "Old man, make a wish."

In the candlelight, Ye Fan looked into his wife's cloudy but gentle eyes: "Xiaoyu, do you still remember the question I used to ask you?"

"I remember." Lin Xiaoyu stroked his white hair with her age-spotted hands. "I now have a new answer—life sleeps to make the reunion upon awakening more precious."

"Yes, it's precious...it's really precious."

Ye Fan answered softly while holding his wife.

When the midnight bell rang, Ye Fan suddenly understood something. He trembled and opened the drawer to find the utility knife that his daughter had used when she was a child.

"Old man?" Lin Xiaoyu poked her head out of the bedroom. "Why aren't you sleeping yet?"

Ye Fan hugged his wife with tears in his eyes:

"Thank you for giving me such a wonderful life... but I have to wake up."

"I've been lying to myself. I'm such a coward. I want to be with you forever. I really want to walk into that fucking death with you."

"But I don't have time. I can feel that if I peacefully enter death in this world, I will really die..."

The old man's voice became choked, but inexplicably, the hoarse voice began to have some of the clarity of youth.

"But I can't sleep yet. Please forgive me for being so selfish. There are still many people waiting for me outside. They can live. As long as I wake up, they may be able to escape that damn fate..."

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

Ye Fan tried hard to hold the person in his arms, tears kept flowing down. He really couldn't bear to let go and really wanted to sleep like this forever.

A pair of hands gently embraced Ye Fan's back and patted him. His wife's voice was still so calm but reassuring:

"I know, I know. Honey..."

"Go and tear apart that damn fate!"

The moment the blade cut across my neck, all the memories came flooding back.

In the endless darkness, a mysterious voice was heard.

“Why does life sleep?”

"Because we will eventually wake up, walk the path we should walk, do what we should do, and then step into the eternal sleep!"

The young man roared in the darkness.

The cold air of the underground cave filled his lungs. Elna was leaning over him, her golden eyes filled with approval.

"You did very well."

"I'm your mom!!"

Chapter 143 The Holy War between the Black King and the White King

Ye Fan's muscle memory reacted faster than his thinking. His body jumped up like a spring, and his right fist smashed towards the holy face in front of him with a whistling sound.

"I've accepted my mediocrity and have been working diligently for over 40 years!"

The first punch hit Elna's nose, and her knuckles felt as hard as rock.

The Eternal Lord didn't even flutter his eyelashes, his three-meter-tall body remained motionless, and he just stared at him calmly with his pure golden eyes.

"Teachers work so hard every day teaching and studying ancient Chinese literature all day long!"

The second punch aimed at the chin, and Ye Fan felt like he was hitting a mountain. His finger bones made a crisp sound under the heavy weight, but he didn't care.

Tears mixed with sweat slid down his cheeks.

Those false yet real memories surged in my mind - the desk lamp correcting homework until late at night, the wrinkled little face of my daughter when she was born, and the aroma of my wife cooking in the kitchen.

"I already have a wife and a daughter..."